The "Jerry" Lawson 8-Bit | Google's NEW Retro Console

Channel:

Gaming Jay

Subscribers:

6,240

Published on December 1, 2022 8:16:30 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BY1mE3lA54

Game:

Super Mario Maker (2015)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 31:01

2,000 views

18

Thank you Jerry! Play here: https://www.google.com/doodles/gerald-jerry-lawsons-82nd-birthday

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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try!

Jerry Lawson
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Lawson_(engineer)

Gerald Anderson Lawson (December 1, 1940 – April 9, 2011)[3][4] was an American electronic engineer. He is known for his work in designing the Fairchild Channel F video game console as well as leading the team that pioneered the commercial video game cartridge.[5] He was thus dubbed the "father of the videogame cartridge" according to Black Enterprise magazine in 1982. He eventually left Fairchild and founded the game company Video-Soft.

In 1970, he joined Fairchild Semiconductor in San Francisco as an applications engineering consultant within their sales division. While there, he created an early coin-operated arcade game called Demolition Derby in his garage.[6][7][10] Completed in early 1975 using Fairchild's new F8 microprocessors, Demolition Derby was among the earliest microprocessor-driven games.[11]

In the mid-1970s, Lawson was made Chief Hardware Engineer[12] and Director of Engineering and Marketing for Fairchild's video game division.[6] There, he led the development of the Fairchild Channel F console, released in 1976 and specifically designed to use swappable game cartridges based on technology licensed from Alpex.[5] At the time, most game systems had the game programming built into the hardware so it could not be removed or changed. Lawson and his team refined and improved technology developed at Alpex that allowed games to be stored as software on removable ROM cartridges. These could be inserted and removed repeatedly from a console unit without any danger of electric shocks.[5] This would allow users to buy a library of games, and provided a new revenue stream for the console manufacturers through sales of these games.[13] The Channel F console featured a variety of controls, including a new 8-way joystick designed by Lawson and a "pause" button, which was a first for a home video game console.[14] The Channel F was not successful commercially but the cartridge approach was popularized with the Atari 2600 released in 1977.[15][16]

While he was with Fairchild, Lawson and Ron Jones were the sole black members of the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of early computer hobbyists that included several who became well-known including Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.[15] Lawson noted he had interviewed Wozniak for a position at Fairchild, but did not hire him.[6]

In 1980, Lawson left Fairchild and founded Videosoft, a video game development company that made software for the Atari 2600 in the early 1980s, as the 2600 had displaced the Channel F as the top system in the market.[5][17] Videosoft closed about five years later, and Lawson started to take on consulting work. At one point, he worked with Stevie Wonder to produce a "Wonder Clock" that would wake a child with the sound of a parent's voice, though it never made it to production.[13] Lawson later collaborated with the Stanford mentor program and was preparing to write a book on his career.

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