I've really shifted into hyper-nerd when I'm making demos for game consoles people don't even realize exist! This is Byron, enjoying the Bally Astrocade. It's got about a million names, but what you need to know is that the Astrocade was a super system of its era. While the industry leading Atari 2600 had 128 bytes of RAM, the Astrocade had all of 4K. While the 2600 had to constantly redraw the screen to keep graphics on it, the Astrocade has a persistent display... once you put something on the screen, it STAYS there. While the 2600 had tone-deaf single channel sound, the Astrocade has four channel sound with a vibrato tuner, nearly identical to what was used in Midway's arcade games. And so on and so on and shoobie-doobie doo.
Problem is, in spite of its superiority in many respects, the Astrocade was steamrolled by the 2600 and Intellivision. It wasn't even as popular as the feeble Odyssey2, and it's STILL hard to find ways to play its games. The only compatible emulators are MAME and MESS, and that's only because MAME and MESS emulate everything.
That didn't stop Byron from making an appearance on it, though! Here he is, in full four color glory, on the Astrocade's bitmapped display. This kid's going places! Including places nobody has thought about for decades, apparently.
Also? In a horrible turn of events, the name "Astrocade" is currently being used for an online AI game maker. Bally's game system is the real deal, though.
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1 month, 3 weeks ago
26 Jul 2026 16:45 CEST
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