A Look at the Emerson Arcadia 2001 | The Untold Story of a Forgotten Console

The problem is, it wasn't better than the 2600. The 2600 is a powerhouse for 1977. It just happened to be uniquely susceptible to small ROMs and the lack of RAM. But cartridge technology kept getting bigger and engineers figured out how to expand the 2600's RAM on the cartridge slot. You can really see this with modern games, not to mention what can be accomplished with a helper chip in games like Mappy. But even games like Aardvark, as good as it looks, has no helper chip or extra RAM. Just a 32k ROM.

Note how none of the other 8 bit systems really benefit that much from the larger ROMs. They just make larger (in scope) games. The capability of the system does not improve.
The 2600 is a real time system. It has no video RAM or bios. If you want a score, you as the programmer need to create a font and make it part of the kernel. It does not have a fixed resolution or even frame rate. These are both created by the kernel created by the programmer. Games for the 2600 dramatically improved in a way other game systems never did.

1982 was the 1970s. Whether it's the Colecovision, Atari 5200 or the Emerson. Technology didn't improve, it's that 70s technology got cheap enough to be mass market devices. Coleco and Atari were really no better when it came to RAM. Coleco had 17kb of RAM, but only 1k was available. The 5200 had 16k of RAM, but generally you needed most of that for the video.

I actually have one of these, but I've never once hooked it to a TV. It might not even work for all I know. I stuck in a box and forget about it and only discovered it in my basement fairly recently.

Have to love the stolen designs for Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica ships on the cover art for many of the games...

I have the clone from New Zealand. Tunix.

I'd take crazy gobbler over PAC man for the Atari 2600 any day of the week

Great video !! Fascinating !! Crazy Gobler looked great !! Space Attack also looked good !!

Would you be interested in selling Crazy Gobbler?

Some of the sp4ecs may have been higher than the Atari 2600, but the definitely look inferior. I'll grant you that some of the graphics may look a little higher resolution than on the 2600, and yes, Crazy Gobbler does look better than Atari's Pac-man, but in general, Atari games just play better and smoother.

I also feel that way about a lot of the Intellivision games. Don't get me wrong, i love the Intellivision, but quite a few games on it feel kind of clunky.

why the moving backgrounds? my adhd brain cant watch your video

It was laughable back in the day. With the impending CV and Atari Supersystem releases, every teen like me wondered why anyone would release a clearly inferior system, that had a physical design from the 70s and Intv knockoff controllers with lite sticks screwed in, like the aftermarket sticks available at the time for the intv. And graphics on par with the 1977 vcs, which was getting better graphics every month by then from imagic, activision, parker bros, and the latest bank switch Atari carts, unlocking Miners revolutionary video chip for its time.
Got my cv August of 82, from an early order placed may or june of 82.
The graphics and capabilities of the cv were well known through the first half of 82, reported in all the video game magazines on the racks of every mom and pop pharmacy then.
Unless a system was going to meet or beat the cv, or offer something unique techwise like the Vectrex, it was game over for anything else

Plus, the name of the game then was official arcade licenses, not knockoff clones. Or well done original titles from the A list publishers, Activision, Imagic

And a year later came the Famicom.....

I remember finding the Cat Trax cartridge at an out of the way small indoor flea market & actually returned to buy it. I think I traded it for a couple Atari 2600 prototypes.

I had no idea Emerson didn't actually develop this, its a shame that the developers from UAL are basically lost to time, would be interesting to see if they went on to do anything else

I love how the Space Attack cover art shows a snowspeeder shooting at the Millennium Falcon.

Wow... it even undersold the Virtual Boy.

Very interesting console. I never heard of it until this video. I wonder how long it took someone to figure out the lie about the ram. Great history video as always. I'm a big fan of them.

It was my first console! In Italy was known as "Leonardo" distributed by Gig.

I never saw the system being sold at our local K-Mart. However I did see it at our local Wal-Mart, and I do remember it getting put on clearance for around $50 down to $40 before disappearing in very early 84 (systems gone by February games by April). I knew no one that actually had one, but I did see them in stranger's carts.

Interesting as I had never heard of this console until I voted for you to do a video on it. My only other encounter with Emerson was a terrible portable CD player my parents bought for my sister. Despite "advanced anti-shock technology" if a baby breathed on that thing wrong it would skip.

I had an Arcadia 2001, my Dad bought it and about 20 games new in the box at a Western Auto in 1983 or so. I think he got the whole package for about $100. It was a good system for what it was, as I remember, but the joysticks crapped out quickly and the overlays that went on the controllers were easily torn and rendered useless.

I bought this with 10 games in the clearance bin for $10 at a drug store back in the 80s

Missile War has Battlestar Galactica ships on the art