Demonstration - Atari Pong C-100
5This is Atari's first Pong console for the home, the C-100. The C-100 was Atari's first significant product for the home consumer market and probably their first attempt at generating a color signal. As their earliest console, it only plays the single game. My version is the Sears Tele-games variant, which came before Atari's officially branded Pong and only has some case differences.
I am playing against myself, with one hand on each knob. The video from the console is RF only and is being recorded via the composite video out of my Insignia IS-TVDVD20A. This TV is a 20" CRT with a built in DVD player, composite and component inputs and composite output. Like a VCR, the TV will convert RF input into composite video output. This makes it very handy to record consoles with only an RF or composite input. I cannot blame a laggy capture window for my mistakes!
As the speaker is inside the console with no easy way to tap its output directly, I decided to record the sound from the console using a binaural microphone nearby. I used noise reduction in Audacity to reduce the background noise, but you will hear some "life sounds", including the console being switched on and off.
The boxes that appear before a game starts and once a game is finished (15 points) is called the "Light Show" and is normal. The movement pattern of the squares is somewhat randomized.