The 1976 CONIC TVG 101-4 Electronic Video Game Console

[Scsam2345]

Oh wow!!!!!!!!!! I luv it

[rEdf196]

I was 12 years old when I last played this game in 76-77 period. Sounds exactly as I remember it, It is the first time I have ssen this model in 35 years. Thanks for the memories.

[dmine45]

Wow.. and I thought that I had seen everything regarding those old video games... thanks for sharing!

[AMStationEngineer]

I can't believe that you didn't have to do a re-cap, as items from Hong Kong often arrived "fizzing" with bad capacitors (Lloyds Transistor radios were the worst offenders). Rivest266 is correct, retailers would refuse to honor the warranty on the CRT's when the phosphor dot screen showed signs of "pong burn". Most families would sacrifice an old BW TV. I remember selling a ton of 75/300-ohm matching transformers, and 6BN6's and 6BQ5's because the things overdrove the audio circuits (Zenith's)

[trviideoman]

cool how old where you when you got it

[vwestlife]

There were endless variations of these Pong-clone consoles in the mid to late '70s, until the Fairchild Channel F and Atari 2600 came along and let you do much more than just ball-and-paddle games. Still, the Pong consoles hung on for a while, with the nicer ones having color video and many more game variations.

[Synthematix]

similar version here in the UK made by binatone

[Christianpreaching]

A whole bunch of companies created these pong clones. I have several including the 1976 Super Pong, athe Coleco system, and a couple others. I never saw this unit before and it looks like nice system.

[HardKnocks60]

I remember back in '76 or so I owned a video game console quite similar to that one. It seemed quite fun to play at the time.

The Atari 2600 I purchased in 1982 was quite a step up from that, though, and it wasn't cheap either --it cost me $150.00, and that was just with the "Combat" cartridge.

[goldbergje]

No Atari Pong? :)

[MACMANJW]

This game looks petty fun:) i would like to see a Wii or a Xbox 360 last this long i know it would not happen. i see your 58' motorola stereophonic in this video as well and i have to say in your other video of it that it sounds amazing it would be hard to find a stereo today that sounds that good:) Thanks for the videos keep them coming!. i was the one that asked in your other video what happened to all your vintage tv's in your basement:) i just got my real youtube account to work again:)

[TheTarrMan]

Good old Channel 3, used for VCR's, BataMax, LaserDisc, and the older game systems. I miss that channel.

[sapbeast]

So many of these were made based off the GI "Pong on a chip" variants. I had several myself. Radio Shack "TV Scoreboard' and APF "TV Fun". I imagine there were dozens and dozens likely made which all had the same damn GI chip inside with just different cases.

[batterymaker]

Man, does that bring back memories. Shortly after this, there came the earthquake called the Atari 2600....

[patsaxon]

Hybrid? I can not believe that such a word existed! I had no idea that they were still using old diode vacuum tubes back then for a 1973.

[retrochad]

Doug, we had a "Bentley" version of this device in the mid 80's which was a lot cheaper but had almost all of the same controls except the deflection angle. It modulated the sound in the the RF modulator and the sounds were exactly the same. The RCA connector on the RF probably originally connected to on of those TV/GAME switches which had a 300 ohm antenna input and output and an RCA jack for the game.

[rivest266]

there was a big newspaper article about these videogames causing screen burn damages to TVs in the Eaton's stores in Canada. Future games had to have a warning to turn down your brightness.

[willtoulan]

awesome

[MIKON8ERISBACK]

It's in such great shape.

[78recordrepair]

I wonder why they made it so the ball bounces off the side walls. Real tennis isn't like that.

[vwestlife]

@78recordrepair Due to the fixed angles, the ball needs to bounce off the sides in order to make the game playable, because there is no way to hit it straight across. Anyway, the name "tennis" is a misnomer here, because Pong was designed to mimic ping-pong (table tennis), not real tennis.

[lostsound2001]

cool unit..Peace from Old Hippie

[ataristeve]

Neat to see one of the not so common "pong" style consoles! At the time this one was made, there was nothing else to compare it to. I can remember dad bringing home a Coleco Telstar in the very early 80s, one of the first color ones. The only thing we had similar were those Mattel handheld football and basketball games. Since it plugged into the tv, I remember wondering how they got the signal to the tv station and processed my controlling the game and then send it back to the tv.

[ThisGuyFrritz]

I can remember seeing video game consoles like this in stores when I was a little kid. One particular console I would like is Atari's Video Pinball. They came out in the later '70s about a year after the Video Computer System a.k.a. Sear's Telegames a.k.a. Atari 2600. In the '80s, while at a flea market, I saw the Video pinball for $15. For that price, I thought that would be a good price for something that was kinda outdated at the time. I still have it today and I believe it still works.

[PigsInBlanket]

Doug, did you "retrofit" that RF coax connector or was it like that originally?

[Shanawolfo1]

I remember when our family friends had one of these. Many, many hours spent playing tennis.

Hard to believe how fun and "modern" we felt playing a game on the television. Had to believe we would get excited in getting the paddle "english" just right to get the ball just the right angle and speed.

A far cry from the games we play today. Thanks for sharing.