Review! The Sears Tele-Games Pinball Breakaway
Sears, Roebuck & Co. A name that will surely echo throughout American business forever; of course, such a storied department store chain would dip its toe into the video game market, and we all know of Sears Tele-Games, their rebranded Atari line. But now Atari, despite their new Video Computer System, has released a new standalone console, and Sears has dutifully followed. Why is Atari having regrets?
This blog post was due to be published in 1978. However, due to Nicole not being born yet at the time, or even her parents having met, it was shelved. We now republish it today. Close enough.
Didn’t you think you saw the last of these? With Atari pushing their clone of Fairchild’s Channel F so heavily, you’d think they’d leave the dedicated consoles to johnny-come-latelies like the Connecticut Leather Company. I mean, when even tiny Japanese playing card companies with names like “Heavenly Luck Temple” are making Pong clones, you know the market’s saturated. Aren’t dedicated consoles dead, and shouldn’t we all be playing “game programs” from “videocarts”?
But look closer. This game is pinball: neither Fairchild or Atari have been able to bring a pinball game to their consoles, and it’s likely that the underpowered microcontroller systems just aren’t up to the task. Pinball, after all, is a wholly analog experience, with physics determined by the motion of a real ball on a real table, propelled along by solenoids and gravity.
