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Fairchild announced the console at the Consumer Electronics Show on June 14, 1976, and the Federal Communications Commission approved it for sale on October 20. [8][9][10] It was released as the Video Entertainment System (VES) at the price of $169.95, but renamed to the Channel F the next year.
Fairchild was no exception, and they discontinued the Channel F just after the 1977 Christmas season. Having lasted only a year and 4 months, one would have thought the Channel F's story...
The Fairchild Channel F was a game console released by Fairchild Semiconductor in August 1976 at the retail price of $169.95. It has the distinction of being the first programmable ROM cartridge-based video game console.
Jul 14, 2020 · Lawson had by 1980 left Fairchild to found Videosoft, a company producing Atari software, and the chipmaker would not release any follow-up to the console. After Videosoft he became a consulting...
- Summary
- Background
- Revolutionary Design
- Atari Takes Notice
- A Second Chance to Succeed
- Legacy
- Technical Specifications
The console that changed home video games as we know them, the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES), latter known as the Fairchild Channel F, revolutionized the video game industry. Its many innovative design properties marked numerous firsts in the video game industry.
By 1976, the single chip Pong and Shooting Gallerygames dominating the video game market were becoming over-saturated with clones and cheap knock-off consoles. At this point, Fairchild entered the market with a new machine that attempted to differentiate itself by doing numerous new and exciting things. The Fairchild VES was engineered by Gerald Je...
The VES's overall look and design (made by the industrial designer Nicholas Talesfore) was a fusion of new and established ideas. The console only resembled its competition from a superficial perspective. Any person who examined the console from the inside would see that that was not the case. The controller is a ribbed grip with a triangular contr...
With all of this Atari had finally decided to release their own cartridge based home console called the “Atari Video Computer System” or "Atari VCS" (Atari later retitled the console to the more well known name Atari 2600). Despite changing the console name from "Fairchild VES" to "Fairchild Channel F" - to differentiate the console from Atari’s - ...
Having lasted only a year and 4 months, from 1976-1977, one would have thought the Channel F's story would end there. However, by 1979, a company by the name of Zircon made a curious move; they bought all the rights to the Channel F and games released for the console. Later they re-released Fairchild's "Channel F System II" aka "Channel F II" which...
By 1978, Fairchild had released 20 different Videocarts for the Channel F, with Zircon chipping in six new titles during the following years. The games vary from single to multi-game cartridges and the various options for the games are most often selected by the 4 main buttons on the front of the console. While its library pales in comparison to th...
CPU: Fairchild F8 processor system, operating at 1.79 MHz (PAL v1: 2.00 MHz, v2: 1.77 MHz)RAM: Only 64 Bytes, 2 KiB single direction VRAM (2×128×64 bits)Resolution: 128×64 pixels, close to 102×58 visible depending on TVColors: 4 foreground, 4 background, pixels turn white if black is used, background color is set per line.The Fairchild Channel F, short for "Channel Fun", was the first video game console to use ROM cartridges, instead having games built-in, and the first console to use a microprocessor. It was released by Fairchild Camera and Instrument in November 1976 across North America at a retail price of US$169.95 (equivalent to $763.58 in 2019).
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Mar 20, 2023 · In 1976, the first cartridge-based video game console was released — to little fanfare. A year later, it would have sold a mere 250,000 units, and would ultimately be discontinued. Not only was it the first console to use programmable cartridges, but it was the first console with an included microprocessor.
