Grandstand (game manufacturer)

Grandstand (also known as Grandstand Leisure Products) was a video game console and electronic game manufacturer and distributor. It was based in the United Kingdom and New Zealand and was active in the 1970s and 1980s.

The company behind the Grandstand label was Adam Leisure Group PLC of Harrogate, UK. The company chiefly imported electronic products from other manufacturers such as Epoch, Tomy & Entex, selling them in the UK re-branded under the Grandstand name.

Some imported products' names were changed for the UK market. For example, the Tomy tabletop electronic game sold in the US as Pac Man (and in Japan as Puck Man) was released by Grandstand in the UK re-badged as Munchman.

Grandstand released numerous products over the years of which some are listed below. There were large numbers of similar variations, alternative names and model numbers typically referring to multiple evolutionary versions of the various game consoles and electronic games. Particularly, this is found with the Pong type game consoles as the semiconductor technology rapidly progressed during the period that the Grandstand brand was active.

The black & white T.V. Game 2000 and the colour capable T.V. Game 3000 were fully integrated Pong-derived consoles sold under the Grandstand label in the mid-to-late 1970s.

Subsequently, the primitive cartridge-based Grandstand Colour Programmable video game console (sold in New Zealand as the Mark III Video Game) and several compatible Grandstand programmable video game cartridges were introduced. These consoles were still essentially Pong type affairs, but had a limited selection of cartridges available, each housing a different General Instruments processor chip. This arrangement allowed for some variation in gameplay including the implementation of simple racing games featuring Pong-era graphics. However, these systems lack the flexibility found in later ROM cartridge based consoles, and there were never more than a few such processor-based cartridges released.