Arcadia 2001
Foreword by Ward Shrake

Before a handful of historians and researcher types had begun doing serious digital archaeology on the Arcadia 2001 console and its library, if you asked most collectors to talk about the system you might get an answer like, "Why are you asking me about that system? Everyone knows it is a pile of garbage and the games all stink badly. Now go away, kid, you're bothering me".

But a tiny percentage of highly respected people said just the opposite. A quote on Greg Chance's old "History of Home Videogames" web site stuck with me… "The Emerson Arcadia has got to be one of the most underrated systems on earth. It also tends to be one of the least collected systems out there -- sometimes I think me and JerryG are the only ones collecting for it." The part of my brain that loves to stay busy solving mysteries was immediately intrigued.

Would you be surprised if I told you that we've discovered that the people that were REALLY behind this console's global spread were Philips and Signetics? Forget Emerson… they were merely a licensee. If you had the means to manufacture electronic devices cheaply you were a potential licensee then, too. A few dozen companies, all over the globe, licensed this console and its games before technology moved on.

The history of the Arcadia 2001 starts with two other consoles; the Odyssey 2 and the Interton VC-4000. Magnavox was one of the companies that Philips owned. Magnavox used Intel chips to make their new Odyssey 2 game console, so Intel wanted to help Magnavox sell as many consoles as they were able to. When Magnavox programmers hit a creative wall, an Intel employee convinced his bosses that he could sell more silicon for Intel by writing games for the O2 console. Ed Averett became a one-man coding force, single-handedly writing most of the O2 console's library. His games always sold out… but Philips did all they could, according to an interview, to sabotage his efforts and the Magnavox game team's efforts. By the time Philips finally woke up and smelled the money, Intel had low morale and no faith left in Philips.

When Philips asked Intel if they wanted to collaborate on creating a next generation console, Intel said "no thanks". The Odyssey 3 console was still-born as a result. Philips was not going to give up that easily now. Signetics was an in-house Philips company. They had quite a bit of experience with a game console or home computer that researchers are calling the "Interton VC-4000" console group. This was a hardware system that was based on the Signetics "2650" CPU and their "2636" co-processor chip. These two chips, along with a mimimum of support chips and other electronic components, were all that it took to make up the innards of the Arcadia 2001's predecessor console. This prequel machine went through some planned updates, the most obvious of which was a heavily updated "2637 UVI" co-processor chip and more RAM.

What kept the Arcadia 2001 from gaining a better foothold in gamer's minds and hearts? Atari correctly sensed that Philips could easily take their market dominance away from them if they began to start making better decisions. Atari began fighting HARD for their survival. When Philips told the world it was going to create a console that was many times more powerful than the Atari 2600 console, and that it would fill the console's software library with cloned arcade games, Atari took a lesson from Magnavox and began to sue its competitors. This came as an incredible shock to many companies. Atari had done something no one had anticipated; they paid big for a monopoly on many of the most popular arcade games. Over the next few years, Atari took so many of its competitors to court that the legal system refused to accept any more cases from Atari over the long term. It did not matter; in the short term, Atari's dominance was assured.

One reason Atari fought as hard as they did is that Philips' 1982 plan was literally for world domination. They wanted to create a console, create the games to go with it, and then license it to any company that wanted to pay a licensing fee. They probably learned that from various "Pong" infringement settlements. If they had succeeded, they would have had an arrangement like the one envisioned for the 3DO game console… except a dozen years earlier. They design it, you build it, they profit from it. Unlike the 3DO, this game console was cheap to manufacture. Philips had a great plan… they just had it a few years too late.

Date codes on game ROM chips show that some games had been ready for release since mid to late 1980. The circumstantial evidence we've gathered so far shows the Palladium consoles came out first, followed by the MPT-03 and/or Ormatu consoles. The console Emerson released in the USA wasn't ready until late 1982. The Atari 2600 had been on the market for 5 years by then; it was arguably overdue for retirement. The Bally Astrocade computer / game system had been out for 4 years, the Intellivision for 3. The ColecoVision and Vectrex systems came out alongside the Arcadia 2001. Home computers like the soon-to-be-ultra-popular Commodore 64 were now competing for gamer's money. It wasn't much of a fight.

This helps to explain something that was pretty confusing to many of us… why some games seemed so lame, while others seemed like pretty good little games. The over-simplified reason is that the earliest games were almost direct ports of earlier games, with very few changes. These were outdated at birth in even the earliest licensed consoles… and some companies took a long time to become licensees, which made these games seem even older by the time they were finally released. Other games were written later with more memory space; once the 4k ROM memory barrier was broken games improved quite a bit. In a relatively short time, the console had some really nice games. But by then, companies like Emerson had already given up on the market so the really great games were never seen by most gamers. Thinking the console was simply not capable of playing any good games, collectors ignored the console from day one.

Are there any good games for this console group? Actually, yes. Jumpbug is pretty popular, and this is the only console you can play it on. Astro Invader is one of this author's favorite games on any console. There is a nice version of Crazy Climber. Combat on this console isn't half bad. Parashooter can be fun. If you're looking for Pac-Man type games, try Cat Trax or Crazy Gobbler or R2D Tank or Super Gobbler. There are more licensed arcade games than most people think; for instance, Turtles or Red Clash or Pleiades or The End or Spiders or Funky Fish or Route 16, among others.

Come on, what are you waiting for? Give this console and its games a try; you might be pleasantly surprised at a number of its games. Get in on it now, before everyone else discovers it!

Last updated Sunday, August 18, 2002 09:00 AM