| Make-It-Yourself projects TV Football Etc. (Television Magasine, July 1974) |
First released in July 1974, this long and
very interesting article required to be split over seven issues. The system
featured here is an analog TV Football game, which was quite advanced for its
time. In the first issues, each part of the article desribes a part of the
basic system. Later issues feature interesting add-ons such as sound
effects and automatic player simulator. The game pictured on the first page is
the basic two player version, which can produce pictures in color when wired to
the internal circuits of the television set. The best part of the article is the
last one: Superman, a special plug-in module which replaced a joystick to play
against the system. This clever design makes the system hard to beat. The
obvious and amazing possibility of such a module is to replace both joysticks to
let the system play alone. Very few arcade and home systems allowed playing Ball
and Paddle games against the machine.
It is interesting to note that the seven parts of the article explain very
clearly each part of the system: general aspects, how the graphics are generated
on the screen, how the bounces are made, how the collision detection works,
etc... Thus, a good electronician can easily improve the system and add more
players, more games variants, and why not, more balls...! This article is a true
reference for the hobbyist.
Click the thumbnails to see them in large scale. Note that most scans were reduced
in size, except the schematics and other technical drawings, which must be in
large scale for good understanding.