The most significant players were the Coleco Telstar, PONG and the Magnavox Odyssey. PONG was hardware consoles consisting of a single game, PONG. As PONG was a very popular game, it was very quickly cloned to all game consoles of the day as well as several other generations.
The Magavox Odyssey was the first console on the market in which Ralpha Baer spent most of his effort. While Baer came up with the idea early in 1951, it took years of convincing the right people that it was a viable product. However, various market conditions also conspired to delay the product still further.
The Coleco Telstar entered the market some four years after the Odyssey. Over the next four years, Coleco released ten different versions of the unit with the later versions including colour and special attachments such as light guns.
Name:
Coleco Telstar
Console Type:
GameConsole
Generation:
1
Coleco enter the new market of video games with the Telstar in 1976 and sold over one million units before they stopped production. Over the next several years, Coleco released some twelve game consoles.
The games came on cartridges and the controllers were wired directly to the box. This became a frustrating point for those that were a little too hard on the devices.
Name:
Magnavox Odyssey
Console Type:
GameConsole
Generation:
1
The contrast between today?s video games and those that first started appearing in he 1960s is huge. Most early games were black and white and operated on a black and white TV. When we look at today?s Gears of War on a 1080p widescreen, the difference is stunning.
It?s stunning that a gentle by the name of Ralph Baer actually got the idea for building a video game console back in 1951 in the Bronx, New York. His vision for an interactive TV was ahead of its time.
However, the got nowhere until 1966. Baer was the Chief Engineer and Manager of the Equipment Design Division at Sanders Associates. He built a two-player video game using a standard television set where two dots chased each other around the screen. This may not seem like much, but sots bouncing round the screen was the basis for most video games for the next seven years.
After Bear demonstrated the device to the company's director of R&D Herbert Campman, funding was approved. In 1967, they brought Bill Harrison on board and added a light gun was constructed from a toy rifle.
With Bill Rusch joining the project, development speed up with the end result being a third machine-controlled dot that was used to create a ping-pong game. With additional funding, even more games were built for the console.
Baer had the idea of selling the product to Cable TV companies that could transmit static images as game backgrounds. However, the Cable TV industry was slumping and the idea went nowhere.
Development continued on the unit for a few more years. The prototype had two controllers, a light gun and sixteen switches that selected the game to be played. These first generation games were actually built into the unit. Baer eventually signed with Magnavox in 1969 with the prototype being released as the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972, some 21 years after the concept was imagined.
The Magnavox Odyssey was with a combination of analogue and digital circuitry. While there has been some disagreement over where the unit is digital or not, it is the first game console and it does have a considerable amount of digital circuitry.
Name:
PONG
Console Type:
GameConsole
Generation:
1
The video game industry did not take off with the Magnavox Odyssey. However, a few years later in 1975, PONG was released in time for the Christmas season and went on to be a huge hit. It was so successful that is sparked hundreds of clones, including the Coleco Telstar that went on to be a success in its own right, with over a dozen models.
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Coleco enter the new market of video games with the Telstar in 1976 and sold over one million units before they stopped production. Over the next several years, Coleco released some twelve game consoles. 
The contrast between today?s video games and those that first started appearing in he 1960s is huge. Most early games were black and white and operated on a black and white TV. When we look at today?s Gears of War on a 1080p widescreen, the difference is stunning.
The video game industry did not take off with the Magnavox Odyssey. However, a few years later in 1975, PONG was released in time for the Christmas season and went on to be a huge hit. It was so successful that is sparked hundreds of clones, including the Coleco Telstar that went on to be a success in its own right, with over a dozen models.