RCA Studio II

Release: January 1977

Created shortly after the Fairchild Channel F (1976), this small system with numeric keypads attatched to it adapted the cartridge technology. The system displays black and white graphics from an attatched cable to any tv screen, and beeping sounds come from a speaker on the system itself.

The RCA Studio II did terribly. Poor promotion and the colourless graphics kept buyers away. RCA would have done better in the gaming market if they had accepted Baer, who presented his "Brown Box" game system concept to the company years before. (After no deal was made, Baer presented it to Magnavox which adapted the system and created the Odyssey.)

The bottom line: The RCA Studio II was simply inferior technology, no match for the Atari 2600 which was released nine months later.