Introducing My Daughter to the RCA Studio II - Every* Game Console in Order

Originally posted on my Medium account

In this entry of my attempt to introduce my daughter to every video game console in chronological order, I will be going over Sarah’s experience with the RCA Studio II.

The RCA Studio II (There Is No RCA Studio I)

The infamous RCA Studio II, so advanced (joke) that RCA skipped right past the RCA Studio I. Notable as one of the first big flops in game console history, the RCA Studio II was released in January 1977, several months before the much more popular Atari 2600. By the time RCA released the Studio II, the Fairchild Channel F (covered here) had already been on the market for around 3 months and was significantly more technically superior. While the Studio II rendered games in black and white at a resolution of 64 x 32, the previously released Fairchild Channel F rendered games in 8 colors at double the resolution of the Studio II, 128 x 64.

User input on the Studio II is relegated to two keypads with squishy membrane keys, another downgrade the from the Channel F which featured responsive joystick-like controllers. However, this may arguably be a step up from the knobs on earlier Pong consoles (covered here) solely due to the variety of button options.

Sales for the Studio II were bad, selling somewhere between 53,000 and 64,000 units during its lifetime. For comparison, the Fairchild Channel F and Atari 2600, both sold during the lifetime of the Studio II, sold around 350,000 units and 30 million units respectively. The Studio II was RCA’s first and last game console.

But does Sarah think it’s fun?

Sarah’s Experience

At the time of this writing, Sarah had been playing the RCA Studio II for around a month. We played each of the built-in games, Baseball, and Blackjack. I have a Tennis/Squash cartridge, but unfortunately, I could not get it working.

The two games that she appeared to have the most fun with was “Freeway” (pictured above), a game where the player weaves through cars in traffic, and “Baseball” (pictured below), a game where funny things happened to the rectangles on screen when buttons were pressed.

The question “Does Sarah think it’s fun?” has two answers:

It was clear early on that she was not interested in the games for the Studio II. The black and white graphics weren’t as aesthetically pleasing as what she had seen on the Channel F, the sound effects (simple beeps) were annoying, and the games weren’t engaging. She clearly did not think the gameplay was much fun and she rarely expressed interest in playing any of the games individually.

What she did appear to have fun with were the buttons. Not how the buttons controlled the games, but more that there were many of them and she could press them. Parents with toddlers or preschoolers will understand this one. She simply liked that there were multiple buttons, and she could press them. Was it her turn? Was something happening on the screen as the result of button presses? Did it matter? As long as she’s having fun, that’s all that matters to us.

Overall, Sarah’s interest in the RCA Studio II was low. She still asks to go to the game room, but she doesn’t want to stay for long. I can’t blame her, really. It’s a hard console to get excited about.

What’s Next

I wanted to get this post out there so Sarah and I can move on to one of the more fun consoles for the holidays. Something most readers have likely heard of, one of my favorite consoles, and a legend in gaming: the Atari 2600.