Fairchild Channel F Video Entertainment System: The first modern game console
Fairchild Channel F Video Entertainment System: The first modern game console
Written by Rev. Robert A. Vinciguerra Thursday, 31 May 2007 01:27
In the 1970s, a company called Fairchild Semiconductor had been watching an emerging market of electronic entertainment. Video arcades had already become wildly popular, and Pong-style games systems that could only play built-in games were amazing sellers and excellent revenue generators for companies like Magnavox, Atari, and Coleco. Fairchild, a Silicon Valley pioneer, was about to break ground in a new territory, one that no other game company had yet entered.
No stranger to innovation, Fairchild Semiconductor was founded in 1957 as a subsidiary of the Fairchild Camera and Instrumentation Company, and led the way in developing semiconductors from a new space-age material called silicon. In 1964 Fairchild introduced the first linear integrated circuit.
In the mid 70s, the company drew up plans to enter the microprocessor market. Research and design began on the F8 chip, a 1.78 MHz 8-bit microprocessor. The first public outing of this design came as Fairchild was poised to make video game history.
Technology Race
In 1976 Fairchild rushed to the market its Channel-F Video Entertainment System amidst internal worries that rival RCA would beat them to the market, and just in time for the Christmas season. Video game sales were very much seasonal at this point in history.
RCA, the TV manufacturer, was also working on getting a console of their own to the market, one with a cartridge design. They called it the Studio II. The concept of the ROM cartridge meant that manufacturer could first sell a game system, and then profit off of selling game programs to be used on the system. Previously this had not been accomplished.
In August of ‘76, Fairchild beat RCA’s Studio II console to the market. RCA lagged behind and didn’t even make the Christmas season, launching in early January 1977 instead. Fairchild won over RCA in every other way imaginable as well. The underpowered Studio II produced embarrassing graphics, the console output in black and white only even though the games were programmed in color. RCA killed support for its console by the end of the first year with only eleven games released.
The Channel-F became the world’s first reprogrammable video game console. In English that means it was the first cartridge based game system that the world had ever seen. The media was delivered in a ROM cart, which would become the industry standard for two decades, until CDs based games gained mainstream acceptance in the late 1990s.
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What about the Magnavox Odyssey? In 1972, the world’s first game console, the Odyssey, was released by Magnavox. Though it was able to play interchangeable games, it used “game cards,” not ROM cartridges. The game cards were circuit boards that actually altered the console’s circuitry. Game variations on the Odyssey usually involved a deck of playing cards, a game board, and TV screen overlays. This way each game card was capable of supporting a multitude of different “games.” In the end, many Odyssey titles are closer evolutionary cousins to traditional board games rather than modern video games.
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Design
The Channel-F, know originally as simply the Fairchild Video Entertainment System, was a breakthrough in many areas. Its banana yellow cartridges could hold variable amounts of data. The F8 processor at the heart of the console was able to produce enough AI to allow for player vs. computer matches.
The console’s design very much represents the home electronics décor of the era. With its wood grain exterior and back fiberglass finish, it would have been well disguised in any home entertainment center of the day, very much resembling an 8-track player, 
which were still popular at the time. In fact, the game cartridges and boxes share the dimensions of 8-track cassettes.
To add to the aesthetic appeal, the controllers tucked away in a special compartment hidden from view to prevent unsightly wires.
Hand-Controllers
Fairchild took a new direction with its “hand-controller” design, one which had never been seen before, and would never resurface thereafter, (which is unfortunate). To the uninitiated, the stick-like controller is confounding. However, it is the in actuality the perfect ambidextrous controller and remained unparalleled until Nintendo redesigned controllers forever with the Famicom (Nintendo Entertainment System or NES in America) in 1985.
The Channel-F’s controller can be held in either the left or right hand. The triangular head can be tilted in eight ways for directional control. That’s not all. The head can be twisted left or right for additional movement. Finally, the top of the hand-controller can be plunged-in or pulled-up to perform separate actions. This system allowed for exceptionally intuitive control.
With eight-way directional control, and potentially four action buttons, the Channel-F controller was far more advanced than the famous Atari joystick.
Sound and Graphics
One area where the Channel-F shows its primitive origins is in its sound capabilities. It sports a single on board speaker that produces beeps and tones.
The graphics, while not exceptionally good, were also not that far behind some of its peers, such as the Magnavox Odyssey2. It was however inferior to the market leader, Atari’s Video Computer System, better known as the 2600.
The F8 chip was only able to produce single-colored sprites, and only had eight colors to choose from at a resolution of 128 × 64 with 102 × 58 pixels with help from the only 64 bytes of system RAM, half the amount of the 2600.
Games
A total of 26 games were released for the console between 1976 and 1981; 21 of
published by Fairchild themselves. Two additional games, Tennis and Hockey were built into the system.
Within its library exist some true gems, as well as some awful stinkers. Among the most innovative is Videocart 9. (Catchy titles these games had, I know!) Videocart 9 was also known as Drag Race. It takes full advantage of the Channel-F’s brilliantly conceived controllers by using it as a gear shifter.
Unfortunately, Videocart 9: Drag Strip faces a dilemma that hurt the appeal of many games in the Channel-F’s library. It was two-player only. Though the F8 could produce powerful enough AI for some player vs. computer games, (Videocart 4: Spitfire being a perfect example), many games were too complex. This is perhaps the console’s greatest shortcoming.
Sometimes the console’s AI goes too far, as with the Channel-F iteration of Tic-Tac-Toe, in which it is impossible to win.
Fairchild Abandons the Videogame Market
Only three years after it re-imagined what a home videogame experience can be, Fairchild Semiconductor left behind the market and their console forever.
Popular belief has it that intense competition from Atari is what spurred the decision. However, this is not the case. In fact, Fairchild had planned a redesign for the original Channel-F and drew up early plans for a follow-up; though no know prototypes or diagrams are known to exist. Most likely, it never made it past the planning phase.
Fairchild Semiconductor resorted to niche markets in the 1970s as it lost mainstream appeal for its core business. In 1979 the company was bought by an oil field services company by the name of Schlumberger Limited. Wanting nothing to do with the videogame “fad,” the decision was made to sell off the Channel-F business.
A digital watch maker called Zircon Corporation was eager to expand its business and bought up the rights to the Channel-F, and with them all of the games and the redesigned console, which Zircon released as the Channel-F System II.
Unlike its older brother, the System II featured sound that was produced by the TV, not an onboard speaker, detachable controllers which were not yet popular in 1976, and more of an 80s-esque futuristic design.
Zircon went on to release five more games for the system over the three years, some of which were already in development by Fairchild. By 1981, the Channel-F, once a retail hit, was pushed off of store shelves and sold only in catalogs.
Videocart 26: Alien Invasion (pictured right) was the last game released for the system, and that was in ’81. It was sold only by mail-order, and came in a plain white box, a far cry from the rainbow-multicolored box art that used to attract the attention of shopping consumers in department stores and malls across America.
The great videogame crash hit in 1984, permanently putting an end to the console, which by this time, was already largely forgotten.
The Clones
Licenses of the hardware and cloners carried the console overseas, where the Channel-F was know by many different names and took different shapes. This was a common practice in the early years of consoles. In Germany it was known as the Saba Videoplay, Nordmende Teleplay, and ITT Tele-Match. In the United Kingdom Grandstand rebranded it as the Adman. A Swedish version is known as the Luxor Video Entertainment System.
Fairchild Semiconductor and Zircon: Where are they now?
In 1997 “Fairchild Semiconductor was reborn as an independent company, heralding the return of a company steeped in the history of innovation and infused with the design talent and manufacturing capabilities to reshape the technology of the twenty-first century.”
The company currently employees over 9,000 people worldwide in four states and six separate countries.
In 1980 Zircon finally found a home for themselves in the marketplace when they developed the StudSensorTM, an electronic tool “designed to detect wood and metal studs and other objects hidden within walls, above ceilings, and under flooring.” Zircon continues to successfully manufacture and distribute electronic hand tools. Their products are marketed in 30 countries.