History of video game consoles (second generation)

The second generation of computer and video games began in 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F and Radofin Electronics' 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System. It coincided with and was partly fuelled by the golden age of arcade video games, a peak era of popularity and innovation for the medium.

The early period saw the launch of several consoles as various companies decided to enter the market; later releases were in direct response to the earlier consoles. The Atari 2600 was the dominant console for much of the second generation, with other consoles such as Intellivision, the Odyssey², and ColecoVision also enjoying market share.

The second generation had a mixed legacy affected by the video game crash of 1983. The Atari 2600 was discontinued on January 1, 1992, ending the second generation. The duration between the start of the 2nd generation in 1976 and the start of the 3rd generation in 1983 was seven years. Due to the long lifespan of the Atari 2600, which was available from 1977 to 1992, the second generation is the longest generation so far.

Some features that distinguished second generation consoles from first generation consoles include:

The earliest console, the Magnavox Odyssey, uses removable cartridges that are merely jumpers housed in cartridges, that activate the games already wired into the console. This method was soon replaced during the move to Pong consoles, where the logic for one or more games was hard-coded into microchips using discrete logic, and no additional games could be added. By the mid-1970s, cartridges returned with the move to CPU-based consoles. With games now consisting of microprocessor-based code, these games were burned onto ROM chips mounted inside plastic cartridge casings that could be plugged into slots on the console. When the cartridges were plugged in, the general-purpose microprocessors in the consoles read the cartridge memory and ran whatever program was stored there. Rather than being confined to a small selection of games included in the box, consumers could now amass libraries of game cartridges.

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