In the late 1970s, the console market was a warzone. The Atari 2600 was raking in millions, and its rivals soon appeared. One of them was the Bally Astrocade, originally known as the Bally Professional Arcade. Its hardware advantages were significant, and its design allowed up to four players at once, but a series of delays combined with Bally's early exit and a very poor advertising campaign limited its potential.
A Chaotic Launch
The Astrocade's launch was chaotic from the start. Early catalogs presented it under the name Bally Home Library Computer, and in late 1977 it could only be ordered by mail, but multiple production delays pushed all deliveries to 1978, ceding ground to the competition.
The situation improved a bit after Bally decided to completely abandon the arcade and console market, reaching an agreement with the Astrocade company. The console had a second launch in 1981 under the name Bally Computer System, but it was in 1982 that it finally adopted the designation Astrocade.
Hardware and Controls
A Zilog Z80 chip inside, two resolution modes (though only 160 x 102 pixels were accessible from the factory), 4 kilobytes of RAM (mostly occupied by video), and one of the most complex controllers of the era gave the Astrocade its shape. Its cartridge system for games not only solved memory shortage problems but also enabled the use of environments like BASIC, programmable through the console's built-in calculator. The controls were a combination of joystick, trigger, and potentiometer, undoubtedly superior in terms of range of motion, but very prone to failure.
The Game Library
The total number of official cartridges for the Bally Astrocade amounts to 28; however, some of them included two titles, so the final number of games is higher. Ms. Candyman, ICBM Attack, and Sea Devil are the three rarest games according to collectors, with prices reaching $1,700 per cartridge. Want to see them in action? If so, you have two options: play the video we'll share below, or visit the Internet Archive and play with its emulator. Thanks zadoc, for uploading so many lovely images of your console!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/SKGisth2q0sGallery
