Coleco Telstar
Developer: Coleco
Year Released: 1976
Generation: 1st
The Coleco Telstar was a low budget Pong system with built in Tennis, Hockey and Handball games. It was the first console to use the new General Instruments AY-3-8500 CPU chip.
With over one million units sold, the console was a success. Two major factors contributed to this:
1) It was inexpensive, selling at half the price of some other consoles.
2) This console was released during a large chip shortage. Coleco was one of the first to confirm their order and so received 100% of the chips they requested, whereas other companies got only 20-30%