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29-517: The precursor to the Groupe SEB consortium was originally formed by Antoine Lescure in 1857. In 1977, they released the dedicated first-generation home video game console Telescore 750 . Later, they released two revisions, the Telescore 751 and the Telescore 752. For the first half of 2008, Groupe SEB reported an increase in profit from 52 million euros in 2007 to 94 million euros. Groupe SEB now has

58-545: A manufacturing company is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Dedicated console A dedicated console is a video game console that is limited to one or more built-in video game or games, and is not equipped for additional games that are distributed via ROM cartridges , discs , downloads or other digital media. Dedicated consoles were popular in the first generation of video game consoles until they were gradually replaced by second-generation video game consoles that use ROM cartridges. Most of

87-624: A 61% interest in the Chinese cookware company Supor . For the second half of the year, Groupe SEB did not predict major changes in outlook. In 2004, Groupe SEB acquired the high-end American cookware company All-Clad . Weakness in the European markets is expected to be balanced out by further growth in North America and Asia. This French corporation or company article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to

116-424: A collection or built-in games, dedicated handhelds tend to employ simple VFD or LCD screens although older models often utilized even more primitive arrays of small light bulbs or LED lights to produce calculator-like alphanumerical screens. Dedicated handheld systems typically comprise a screen, a number of control buttons, and a compact body that houses the game engine. Nintendo's Game and Watch series increased

145-612: A game appears on the screen. Examples for this technique are the Magnavox Odyssey , the Coleco Telstar Arcade and the Philips Tele-Game ES 2201 . Developing from earlier non-video electronic game cabinets such as pinball machines , arcade-style video games (whether coin-operated or individually owned) are usually dedicated to a single game or a small selection of built-in games and do not allow for external input in

174-468: A line of their classic arcade games, including Frogger , on "plug and play" dedicated systems. The Pelican VG Pocket was an attempt to make a TV game with a backlit color LCD . Dedicated consoles and handheld electronic games with LCD screens that only have one game are rather distinct devices, but the release of the Pelican VG Pocket has blurred the categorization between the two. Beginning with

203-544: A portable Mega Drive with the firecore firmware, with LCD screen and several games built in, but it has no cartridge port and instead has a SD card slot. In 2004, a miniaturized version of the Atari 7800 home consoles was released with 20 built-in games and no cartridge support called Atari Flashback . The dedicated console is actually based on a clone of the NES hardware, but running Atari software. A newer version, Atari Flashback 2 ,

232-417: A stand-up cabinet that holds a video screen, a control deck or attachments for more complex control devices, and a computer or console hidden within that runs the games. First released in the mid-1970s by games such as Mattel Electronics' Mattel Auto Race and Mattel Electronic Football , dedicated handheld video games are considered the precursors of modern handheld game consoles . Devoted to one game or

261-481: A time was extremely profitable. Mattel pioneered the category of handheld electronic video games when it released Auto Race in 1976. It was the first in a line of sports handhelds including Football , Baseball , Basketball , Soccer , and Hockey , as well as non-sports games. Auto Race was reworked into Missile Attack , also released in 1976. NBC refused to air the Missile Attack commercial because of

290-531: Is based on actual Atari hardware, and includes some new built-in games developed by modern hobbyist Atari 2600 programmers, as well as old favorite games. While the new console has no cartridge slot, it is designed so that one can be added, and multiple online tutorials exist detailing this process. In the late 2010s, Nintendo, Konami, Sony, Sega, and SNK released dedicated consoles with built-in games that had been released earlier for their historic video game consoles. Examples of these dedicated consoles include

319-558: The NES Classic Edition , Super NES Classic Edition , PlayStation Classic , Neo Geo Mini , TurboGrafx-16 Mini , and the Sega Genesis Mini , which usually are miniaturized replicas of their historic consoles. Mattel Auto Race Mattel Electronics Auto Race was released in 1976 by Mattel Electronics as the first handheld electronic game to use only solid-state electronics ; it has no mechanical elements except

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348-754: The 2001 release by Toymax (and later Jakk's Pacific) of the Activision TV Games, there has been a revival of interest in dedicated consoles by nostalgia-driven retrogamers. The subsequent 2002 release of the Atari 10-in-1 system prompted speculation of an Atari revival. In 2002, the Brazilian Sega distributor Tectoy re-released the Master System with numerous games built in. These are not, strictly-speaking, dedicated consoles, however, as they also support cartridge-based games. As of 2006, no new official cartridges were available for sale. Tectoy also released

377-511: The 512 bytes of program code. From a top-down perspective, the player controls a car on a three-lane track and moves between them with a switch. Opponent vehicles move toward the player, in an effect similar to vertical scrolling , and the player must avoid them. A second control shifts gears from 1-4, with the speed increasing for each. Auto Race was followed by other successful handheld sports games from Mattel, including Football and Baseball which were both programmed by Lesser. The design

406-521: The B6000 chip used in Auto Race . Sound is produced by toggling the speaker in embedded timing loops from within the program itself. Without prior programming experience, Lesser wrote the game in assembly language for the 512 bytes of ROM . He spent eighteen months getting the code to fit. Sales of Mattel Auto Race exceeded expectations. Mattel in the 1970s, known mostly for Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels ,

435-521: The Microelectronics Division of Rockwell International , a leader in designing handheld calculator chips, to supply Mattel with the hardware and provide technical support. Mark Lesser, a circuit design engineer at Rockwell International, modified the B5000 calculator chip, adding a display driver multiplexing scheme to the hardware and a custom sound driver for a piezo-ceramic speaker, resulting in

464-402: The controls and on/off switch. Using hardware designed for calculators and powered by a nine-volt battery , the cars are represented by red LEDs on a playfield which covers only a small portion of the case. The audio consists of beeps. George J. Klose based the game on 1970s racing arcade video games and designed the hardware, with some hardware features added by Mark Lesser who also wrote

493-514: The dark theme of the game, and Mattel removed it from the market. It was reintroduced in 1978 based on the Battlestar Galactica TV series as Battlestar Galactica Space Alert . The player remains at the bottom of the playfield, and a fire button is used to shoot and destroy adversaries. If one reaches the center-bottom space on the playing field, the Galactica is considered destroyed and

522-430: The display. He designed the gameplay for Mattel Auto Race , inspired by auto racing games found in video arcades in the 1970s. He built a proof of concept with a blip moving on an LED display without using a microprocessor to get approval from Mattel for further development. He then looked for a manufacturer to provide a circuit board that would fit into a compact package. Klose and his manager Richard Cheng approached

551-462: The earliest home video game systems were dedicated consoles, most popularly Pong and its many imitators. Unlike almost all later consoles, these systems were typically not computers (in which a CPU is running a piece of software ), but contained a hardwired game logic. In the mid-1970s, ROM cartridge-based systems, beginning with the Fairchild Channel F , had risen to prominence during

580-419: The form of ROM cartridges. Although modern arcade games such as Dance Dance Revolution X and Half-Life 2: Survivor do allow external input in the form of memory cards or USB sticks, this functionality usually only allows for saving progress or for providing modified level-data, and does not allow the dedicated machine to access new games. The game or games in a dedicated arcade console are usually housed in

609-702: The hardware and software of the entire game to be within a single controller, with no separate console at all. Some of these are clones of old games, and are produced in China or Southeast Asia (i.e. Power Player Super Joy III ), while others contain licensed games and are distributed in mainstream stores in the West. Of the latter, Jakks Pacific 's line of TV Games is among the most famous, which includes re-releases of many vintage games, from arcade classics to Atari 2600 games, as well as games based on currently-popular characters, such as SpongeBob SquarePants . Konami has also released

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638-405: The mid and late 1990s . All home video game consoles from the first generation of video game consoles are dedicated to one or a few games, and they can usually be selected with a game switch on the console. Less common, the games can be selected with a cartridge. On these cartridges isn't a program; there are just a few wires that connect electrically a few parts of the intern console hardware that

667-410: The popularity of dedicated handheld games during 1980s. Dedicated consoles have appeared for fishing games, where the unit's body itself becomes a specialized controller in the form of a rod and reel . Other dedicated consoles have been released with light guns , for hunting, shooting, and even archery games. Rising to popularity in the early 1980s, game watches are electronic wristwatches that allow

696-559: The second generation of video game consoles due to the success of the Atari 2600 , though stand-alone systems such as Coleco 's Mini-Arcade series continued to have a smaller presence in the home video game console market until the video game crash of 1983 . Since the Nintendo Entertainment System , ROM cartridge-based consoles had dominated the home market until CD-based consoles such as the PlayStation gained prominence in

725-429: The top of the screen 4 times (4 laps) to win, but, while making it towards the top, the player must swerve past other cars using the switch at the bottom of the system to toggle among three lanes. If hit by a car, the player's vehicle keeps moving back towards the bottom of the screen until it gets out of the other car's way. The goal is to beat the game with the shortest time possible before the 99 seconds given (as high as

754-414: The two-digit timer can show) are up. The player's car has four gears and the higher the gear, the faster the other cars come at it. The manual assigns ratings to completion times: George J. Klose, a product development engineer at Mattel, came up with the concept of repurposing standard calculator hardware to create a handheld electronic game using individual display segments as blips that would move on

783-554: The wearer to access an included video game that uses the display in the watch's face as its screen. Game watch buttons which originally may have been used for setting hour and minute gain secondary functions in relation to the needs of the game. A dedicated console differs from a handheld TV game (or a "plug and play game") in that the latter integrates the video game console with the game controller . Most modern dedicated home game systems are popularly referred to as "plug and play" because they are based on modern technology which enables

812-404: Was at first skeptical of products based on electronics, especially at what was considered an expensive retail price at the time: US$ 24.99 (equivalent to $ 130 in 2023). The success of Auto Race convinced Mattel to proceed with the development of Mattel Football which was often sold out and in short supply, and this led to the creation of a new Mattel Electronics Division in 1978, which for

841-468: Was tweaked into multiple other handhelds, including Missile Attack (1976), which became Battlestar Galactica Space Alert (1978) as a tie-in with the Battlestar Galactica TV series, and Ski Slalom (1980). Auto Race was cloned in the Soviet Union as Elektronika IER-01 . The player's car is represented by a bright blip (a vertical dash sign) on the bottom of the screen. The player must make it to

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