* CPU: RCA 1802
RCA Studio II
Some consoles are released prematurely, boasting advanced technology at high prices, offering gamers a glimpse into the future. The RCA Studio II was meant to be one such system, had Executive Meddling not resulted in the same expensive and experimental hardware being released one facade later against competition that had caught up with more commodity hardware.
The Story of the RCA Studio II
Development
The development of the system was extremely unusual, having started in 1969 as the FRED prototype. At that point in time, the only other serious home console in development was the Brown Box prototype, which later developed into the Magnavox Odyssey. By 1974 the CPU had been finished, by the same man developing the console no less. Had the console launched then, perhaps it would have done well on the market, being a programmable system rather than a simple pong machine.
Launch and Flop
However the system did not launch in 1974, but 1977. By then the second generation of video games had begun in earnest with the launch of the Fairchild Channel F, and the early hardware made without much of a reference point was both dated and just weird in general. By 1978 the system was taken off the market, killed off long before The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 would do the same to most of its competitors.
Why care about it?
No blockbuster hits ever made it to the Studio II that weren’t done better elsewhere. Still, it’s an interesting system, and has a sort of Early Installment Weirdness for game consoles.
One of the strange pieces of trivia regarding the console is that it hosted not just one of the first commercial indie games, but also one of the first commercial video games developed by a woman.[1] It turns out the daughter of the system developer, being quite intelligent herself and familiar with her fathers work, was able to convince the right folks at RCA to let her independently work on games for the system.
System Specifications
* RCA CDP1861 is used as the video display controller.
- Monochrome output only, a major disadvantage compared to color systems.
* Accepted custom ROM cartridges.
- ↑ If not the first well documented example of both.