• Tag Archives 1977
  • Sears Tele-Games Video Arcade (Atari 2600)

    Sears has this weird thing they do where they contract with outside manufacturers to produce items for their store and then sell it under their own brand name. An example of this is Sears’ Kenmore line of appliances. These are actually made by companies like Whirlpool or whoever Sears happens to be contracted with at the moment. At one time they also did this with video games.

    The Sears Tele-Games Video Arcade was nothing more than an Atari VCS (later known as the Atari 2600) with a different name. Not only did they do this with the system, but they did it with a number of the games as well. For example the Atari branded Combat was known as Tank-Plus under the Sears Tele-Games label and Air-Sea Battle was known as Target Fun. The games and systems were exactly the same except for some labeling differences. A very few games were Tele-Games exclusive but of course these also worked on an Atari VCS/2600.

    This ad from a Sears catalog in 1977 shows what Sears had to offer early in the life of the Atari system. These early ads tend to exaggerate the number of games. Atari 2600 games typically had multiple variations. For example, Combat involves driving a tank around trying to shoot another tank (either another player or the computer). There are multiple game variations that change things like the maze layout, bullet behavior and even the visibility of the mazes and tanks. Many ads portrayed these as different games. In this ad it talks about being able to choose from 27 exciting video games with the Target Fun cartridge. Really that’s just 27 different variations of the same game.

    In 1977 the Atari VCS had just been introduced and there weren’t that many games yet. The days of Activision and other 3rd party developers was yet to come. The games in this ad probably represent most of what was available at the time and they include: Speedway II (Atari’s Street Racer), Outer Space (Atari’s Star Ship), Blackjack (also Blackjack under the Atari label), Tank Plus (Atari’s Combat), Race (Atari’s Indy 500), and Pong Sports (Atari’s Video Olympics).