Collector and I have been discussing a timeline of game consoles. We disagree on a few specifics so we're each working on our own. At least, I'm working on my own. I don't know if Collector's working on one or if he was just expressing a desire to make one at some point. I'm really working on one though. So far I have the approximate releases or every major console (and the approximate release times for most minor consoles as well, but two have almost no information on the internet), and I'm currently working on locating the logos for all of them. The next phase after that is to create a graphical timeline.

For the purposes of tidiness, I'm going to commit a huge faux pas and intentionally double post. The next post will be the start of the list. If you have any corrections/criticisms, please say so. I'm very interested in accuracy. I used multiple sources when looking for release dates and some of them conflicted (in one case, Wikipedia even conflicted with itself), so it's hard to say what the real dates should be. For two of them I could find any release date info at all, and one of those I'm not even sure was released in the US.

A few notes:

You'll notice I added an extra generation. Gen 2.5 is my compromise. Both Collector and I feel that this ought to be an entirely separate generation from the others. If you look at the System F and ColecoVision, there's a huge difference in graphical capabilities between the two as well as an 8 year difference in release dates. However, the rest of the world doesn't agree with us (mostly since the Atari 2600 stayed on top all throughout), and calling the NES a 4th gen console be confusing to most people. Hell, we're having enough trouble convincing the kids these days to stop calling the PlayStation 3 a 3rd generation console as is. This way, it's still a separate gen, but it doesn't screw up the numbering.

I lumped all pong machines into one "Pong madness" entry. There's a damn good reason for this. People think it's important to list all the most significant pongs and other dedicated consoles. I say there's so damn many and they were all basically the same thing (most even used the same goddamn GI pong-on-a-chip) that it's both impractical and redundant. However, pong machines and dedicated consoles were very significant and can't be skipped, so I wanted to throw in a nod.

On a related note, I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't just skip the first gen entirely. Every single machine released in that generation (in the US anyway) was a dedicated console, and I'm going with the definition of console that says the machine has to be programmable. Unfortunately, this means having an entirely blank first generation, and we can't have that. It just wouldn't be right. It's not like nothing happened.

This list is US only. The reason for that is because being international AT ALL opens up too many doors for too much silly nonsense. For example, should I distinguish between the Atari 2600 and the 2800? What about the Famicom and NES? What about countries that only got an unlicensed clone of a certain console like Russia's Dendy? Does that mean all clones are in? What about console "families" like the PC-50X cartridge family that only exist in European countries? They're all logically compatible but you'd never know that unless you plugged one cartridge into another machine. And what about the fact that the generations don't match up between countries? It just makes things entirely too messy, and the list is crowded enough as is, especially with all the children's "educational" consoles that get released every 5 seconds without fail.

Yes, I included the educational consoles. Sorry for that. I just feel that there's not enough difference between the V.Smile and the SNES for me to exclude it, and that means I have to drag every other damn one along with it. Similarly, I included a few VHS consoles. I don't know enough about their internals to say that they shouldn't be included, even if the gameplay involved is almost nonexistant. I will listen to reasons against their inclusion though.

I'm a bit up in the air as to whether or not the EVO: Phase One should be included. It's a multimedia device (that argues against it), but so are the Pippin, LaserActive, CDTV and, hell, even the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It plays games, but they may or may not be compatible with Windows. It runs a form of Windows, but apparently so does the Dreamcast. It really blurs the line between a computer and a console and a set-top box (as if that distinction weren't vague enough...).

Unknown release dates:
Video Buddy
Discovery System

Gen 1 - 1972
Odyssey (fall 1972)
Pongs (too many to list)

Gen 2 - 1976
Channel F (august 1976)
Studio II (january 1977)
2600 (october 1977)
Telstar Arcade (xmas 1977)
Astrocade (early 1978)
Odyssey2 (1978)
MP-1000 (1978)

Gen 2.5 - 1979
Intellivision (late 1979)
Arcadia 2001 (mid 1982)
5200 Super System (1982)
ColecoVision (August 1982)
Vectrex (November 1982)
Halcyon (January 1985)
Video Art (1985?)

Gen 3 - 1985
Nintendo Entertainment System (October 18, 1985)
Sega Master System (June 1986)
7800 Pro System (June 1986)
Video Smarts (1986?)
Action Max (1987)
XEGS (1987)
Socrates (1988)
InteractiveVision (1989)

Gen 4 - 1989
Genesis (august 14, 1989)
TurboGrafx 16 (septemper 1, 1989)
TurboGrafx CD (1990?)
Neo-Geo Advanced Entertainment System (1990/1991)
CDTV (March 1991)
Super Nintendo Entertainment System (august 13, 1991)
CD-i (1991)
Sega CD (october 15, 1992)
Video Information System (1993?)
LaserActive (august 20, 1993)

Gen 5 - 1993
3DO (sept 93)
Jaguar (nov 18, 1993)
Pico (1994?)
Neo-Geo CD (sept 9, 1994)
32X (nov, 1994)
Saturn (may 11, 1995)
Jaguar CD (1995?)
Playstation (sept 9, 1995)
Pippin (sept 1, 1996)
Nintendo 64 (sept 29, 1996)

Gen 6 - 1999
Dreamcast (September 9, 1999)
PlayStation 2 (October 26, 2000)
Nuon (late March, 2001)
Xbox (November 15, 2001)
GameCube (November 18, 2001)
V.Smile (July, 2004)
XaviXPORT (August, 2004)
Leapster TV (summer 2005?)
Go Go TV (fall 2005?)

Gen 7 - 2005
Xbox 360 (November 22, 2005)
Game Wave (June 12, 2006)
V.Flash (June 12, 2006)
V.Smile Baby (Summer 2006?)
HyperScan (October 3, 2006)
Evo: Phase One (October 20, 2006)
PlayStation 3 (November 17, 2006)
Wii (November 19, 2006)
Click Start (June 7, 2007)

The timeline I wanted to make was probably more for me than for the world, but I'll definitely post it here when I make it. Oh, and I'm totally stealing your release dates. :)

That's fine. Just be aware that they may not be accurate. Feel free to use the console logos too. I don't even want to imagine what hunting for them on dialup would be like. 20 pages of google image search only to realize you're not going to find what you're looking for can take a while even on broadband.

In fact, I might as well share some of them now. I don't care if people steal them since I can't claim authorship of any of them. I cleaned some of them up a bit, but that's really all I did.

Gen 1s:





Gen 2s

Gen 2.5s














(I had to create this one from scratch. It's close to the real thing. Apologies for not using an official scan.)

Gen 3s






(also made from vectors since it's hard to find a good scan of this logo)

Continuing gen 3...


(considering there's NO info on this thing, I'm amazed I found the logo)




(semi home-made)




(why do these super obscure consoles heave easily found logos?)

Gen 4

Gen 4 continued (lousy 10 image limit...)











Gen 5

Can't believe I made it this far... And I can't believe I'm still hacking away at this. I'm not sure if this means I have too much spare time or if I'm just crazy. Or both. Maybe it's insomnia, which can result in both. In any event, I think we can safely say there's something wrong with me.

More of Gen 5











Gen 6

More More More Gen 6 (how do you like it?)









Gen 7 (OMG ITS NEXT GEN BUY IT NOWS!!!!!)

This is the final post of logos... For now... Until another stupid chunk of plastic and silicon comes out.

Gen 7 a fin

So in this post, rather than presenting new crunchy bits, I'd like to continue my original train of thought. Please look back at everything I've presented so far and criticise the hell out of it. I mean really try to tear me a new asshole. Find what's wrong with the above images or release dates, because I'd really like to know if anything's wrong. Until I can find ANY info whatsoever on the two other consoles I can't even put them in the list, and for all I know they weren't even released in the US.

I'm also debating what format to use for the timeline. I'm thinking of a vertical line with the beginning at the top and the end at the bottom, each segment being color coded to represent a different generation. Sound good?

The TG16 really came out after the Genesis? Good job, NEC.

I decided to make mine vertical, since that seems best for the web. Horizontal is better for magazines.


What's this EVO Phase One? Or GoGo TV? Or Game Wave? Click Start?

EVO Phase One is a weird thingamie. It's not quite a console, but not quite not a console. It's essentially a consolized PC running Windows XP Media Center. It has a game download service, kinda like the Phantom. However, it's also modular (you can upgrade the RAM), and it's marketted as a set top box. I'm not quite sure whether or not to include it, but I have it listed here until I can make up my mind further. I have a consolized Atari 800, Apple Power PC, and Amiga A500 on this list, and I have several other "it's more than a game console, it's a SOPHISTICATED MULTIMEDIA DEVICE SO PAY $700 FOR IT RIGHT NOW" machines listed, so I feel like I can't justify removing it.

The GoGo TV is sort of like the XaviXPORT meets the Eye Toy, only not nearly as cool or well implemented.

The Gave Wave is a weird one. It seems to be meant as a trivia game console. It uses remote controllers and it can handle up to 6 at once, but since they're just regular IR remotes I can't imagine the response time is great. The games are legit games and don't work on any other platform.

Click Start is a children's edutainment console posing as a computer. It has a GUI similar to a computer OS, but it's just used to select various games and activities. It takes cartridges for new games so as far as I can tell, it counts as a console.

Are you going to do one of these for handhelds? If so, I think you're going to run into a ton of things that kinda sorta count, like all those Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, trivia, etc. games that take carts and have LCD screens.

Lawl, double post.

I will do one for handhelds, but I don't think anyone would consider those to be handheld game systems specifically because the carts they accept don't contain entirely new programs. Rather, they just modify the existing program to include different questions. It's like switching a ROM bank or... some other technical term that I only vaguely understand. The qualifier is that is has to be PROGRAMMABLE. If the cart's ROM just contains new questions, you're not really making a new program.

What double post, I don't see any double post. :P

I wasn't completely sure that was the case with some of those games.

I'm also working on some graphics for the generations. Apologies for non Collector friendly image sizes.







Harsh criticisms welcome.

These new images are more Collector-friendly than the others.

Maybe it's just me, but that particular blue-on-white combo seems hard to read. Due to brightness, i think.

I hadn't noticed it before, but they do kind of burn the eyes a bit (or maybe I'm just sick).

I was thinking maybe each gen could be a different color, with 2 & 2.5 either being the same color or similar colors.

That will be the case. I just haven't settled on which will be which, so I went with the color that, to me, stands out best against white. It's harder to change black to a color than a color to black so... yeah.

I'm necroposting on a zombie board... That sounds like a zen koan.

So I got this thing as I posted in the cool finds thread and it's really perplexing me. Note that what follows is more of a meditation on my part so answers to my conundrum, while sought, are not expected.

So what's to be perplexed by? It seems straight forward. It's a plug & play that takes cartridges. Yes, THAT'S clear, but it makes me wonder, is this a console? If it contains a CPU and a dedicated game media, then yes, it's a game console. Well, obviously it has a CPU. That's a distinction we really only use to rule out the old Pong machines. What makes a console is its programmability. If new games can realistically be programmed for commercial use and sold on a physical media, it's a console (in your face, PSP Go!).

This unit, as you can tell from the packaging, comes with two "game keys". Collector and I believe these to be small ROM cartridges. I asked Collector to open one of his up, and he tried, but he ran into a hitch. It wouldn't open, and he refused to sacrifice a seemingly uncommon piece of gaming history to satisfy my whimsical curiosity (he clearly hates my freedom).

Okay, that still seems straight forward. Call it a console and call it a day. Right? It's not that simple. First, while they could be ROM cartridges, they could be something else entirely. For example, I once bought a cheap, crappy piece of tat masquerading as a portable game system. I'd wondered if it might be an actual game system since the games came on small cards not unlike SD cards. However, a quick glance told me I was dead wrong. The cards were just pinout cards much like the Odyssey's primary media. All they contain is a few contacts and these contacts are then connected in different ways to tell the machine which card is in the system, which does nothing but select from the games already on the machine. For all I know, the game keys are something like that.

Second, and this is where it goes all topsy turvy, while there are a score or so of these systems which accept the game keys (and they're all physically the same shape), they don't all work with each other. Jakks standardized the media but not the hardware. :dead:

Or did they? Collector tells me the keys are RECOGNIZED by each unit, they just won't play unless they're on the correct one. But why? What on earth would warrant that? They're too cheaply made to have different hardware. Indeed, even though the unit I bought comes with a twisty joystick, none of the games on the game keys use it. The only game to take advantage of the added hardware is Pole Position which is on the console itself. Anyway, clearly there's some sort of way for the console to tell when the wrong type of key is inserted.

So it seems like this is a "family" of consoles. They have similar hardware and SHOULD all be able to play the same game media, but due to what I can only imagine is poor planning, they don't. Each Game Key Ready Plug it in & Play TV Games (yes, that's the full name of the damn thing) has a two letter code identifying it. Mine is the Namco Ms. Pac-Man model and has the code NM (short for Namco, which is weird because it should really be broken up like Nam Co and not Na Mco but whatever) It only takes game keys that also have the code NM. Most of them have a name identifying the specific play & play, such as SD for Scooby Doo or F4 for Fantastic 4. But then the Spongebob Squarepants and Dora the Explorer models are both given the code NK for Nickelodeon. They can both use each others keys.

It only gets weirder from there. Fantastic 4 has its own code as I said, but Spider-Man has the code MV for Marvel. Why did Fantastic 4 also get this code? I dunno, bad planning? Like everything else about these system? There's a Disney model which has the code DY, but then there's also a Disney Princess model with the code DP and a Winnie the Pooh model with the code WP. As if to prove that Jakks realized right away what a bad idea it was to straddle this plug & play/console fence, quite a few models were made that don't even have any keys made for them. For example, there's a WWE model with the code WW. The keys were supposed to contain new playable wrestlers but they never materialized. There was a Capcom model with the code CC, but it didn't have any keys either. Supposedly the key was going to contain Bionic Commando and Mega Man.

Jakks's original plan was to include game key ports on all future products, but this didn't happen. The keys were introduced in 2005 and the 2006 models went back to being dedicated. This has made the systems not only hard to find, but hard to find information on. There's not enough interest to provide a clear answer on whether these machines meet my definition of a console. As far as I can tell, these were the only game keys ever made:

SW (Star Wars) one key, bundled with each of the 3 different models
NK (Nickelodeom) I think there were two of these made. One for Dora, one for Spongebob. These were sold separately.
DY (Disney) Two keys total. One bundle contained one key, another contained both.
DP (Disney Princess) One key was available and sold separately.
MV (Marvel(Spider-Man, really)) One key available bundled with the system.
NM (Namco) 2 keys total. One bundle contained both keys (MINE!), another only contained one and the other key was sold individually as a Wal-Mart exclusive.

So yeah, wow... What the hell, Jakks? Did you make a console family or just an insidious mess of plastic and silicon?

Was the Capcom one ever released in the US? I remember hearing about it, but then I never saw it in stores. I also didn't know it had a key slot.

Not sure. This was all based on that one guy's list which I showed you. You raise an excellent point. I'll only ever know if something was released by seeing a physical model in its original packaging with an ESRB rating on it.