Polycon PG-7

Polycon PG-7 is a typical system using cartridges based on the different chipsets developed by General Instruments in the late 70s. Each GI chip was able to generate several games, ball games for a start, then later car racing, motorcycle, submarines, tanks and shooting games. The system has two detachable controllers with one analog joystick and one fire button each. The control panel is composed of 10 buttons to select the different games offered by each cartridge (10 being the maximum). Three option switches, a power switch and a RESET button can also be found. There is also a weird color switch/slider which function is to select one of the 4 display color combinations (red, purple, blue, green). The original fact with the PG-7 is that it has an unusual design. Mainly because of the cartridge slot placement, vertically aligned with the control panel. There is no real "slot" to insert the whole cartridge, but only a thin connector for the contact edge of the cartridge. Placed at the top of the case can be found a feature usually found on old pong systems but more scarcely on later ones: score sliders to keep track of total winning games for each player. These sliders are not electronically connected to anything, there are just "physical reminders". At the back of the system can be found connectors for optional controllers like a light gun, or Battle Tank controllers. In fact both controllers are labeled "Light Gun 1" and "Light Gun 2", but they must be used by the optional Tank Controllers. The Tank Battle game produced by the AY-3-8710 chip from General Instruments, is often missing from available cartridges for this type of systems (based upon GI chips). There is one good reason. All the other games use analog controllers whereas the Tank Battle must be played with digital controllers (like direction buttons for example). And all these video-game systems were designed with analog controllers and no numeric ones. However, some systems, like the Polycon PG-7 (and the Prinztronic Micro 5500 or SHG Blackpoint) offered optional digital controllers (pads with 5 buttons: directions and fire) with the Tank Battle cartridge. The Polycon PG-7 is a quite rare little machine.