Bally Astrocade

The Astrocade was a first generation video game console and simple computer system originally released in 1977 by Midway (the videogame division of Bally) under the name Bally Professional Arcade. It had little retail exposure and sold through mail order and through computer stores for a short time before Bally decided to exit the market, selling the rights to a third-party company, who re-released it under the name of the Bally Computer System (changing it to Astrocade in 1982), and selling it until around 1983.

The Astrocade was particularly notable for its very powerful graphics capabilities, using a video display chip that was also used in Midway's standup arcade games. The Astrocade used game cartridges known as Videocades that were similar in size and shape to a cassette tape, and also had two games built into the ROM, Checkmate and Gunfight, along with the simple calculator and a doodle program called Scribbling. The Astrocade also included a BASIC programming language cartridge.

The unit included a controller that had a pistol-style grip with trigger switch on the front and a small 8-way joystick that was placed on top of the grip so that the stick could be rotated to double as a paddle controller. This enabled a more complex interaction with the games than any other game controller of the era.

The Astrocade could be turned into a computer by using a ZGRASS unit, which sat under the Astrocade, giving it a math co-processor (FPU), 32k of RAM, and a new 32k ROM containing the GRASS programming language, along with a full keyboard.