Modern Living: TV’s New Superhit: Jocktronics

The liveliest action on the TV screen these days is not interrupted by commercials. It does not involve cops, medics, superwomen, paterfamilial farceurs or country-rock carolers. It is not even rated by Nielsen. Television’s new superhit is Yourself, the Athlete (or Racing Driver, or Op Artist, or Blackjack High Roller). The name of the game —which is provided by a wide and wildly competitive assortment of electronic contests that can be simply hooked into any TV set—is Jocktronics.

The first home video game, Odyssey, went on the market in 1972. Now some 40 manufacturers are producing TV games at list prices of $40 and up. By the end of the Christmas season, Americans will have bought some 3 million of them this year—at least ten times as many as in 1975. Some of the leading makers, notably Atari, Fairchild and Magnavox, have plants working overtime and still cannot meet the demand. Nor, it seems, is there any limit to the TV games people will eventually play. By TIME’s count, there are already more than 50 different varieties of video contests available, from tennis to tank warfare to ticktacktoe.

In tennis, the basic game, there is a dotted net, a white ball and oblong bars representing racquets on the screen. By twiddling their control knobs, players can drive, volley and angle shots without sweat or risk to tendon. Fast reflexes are demanded, however. As the game progresses, some units automatically speed up the ball; others allow the players to set the pace as well as select the length of game (from 2 to 20 minutes). The screen keeps score. Pong and other games emit an exultant plonk! or ping! when the player smites the ball (losers supply their own Nastase noises). They can also be used for squash and handball. In the ticktacktoe game, the set may sneer, flashing a sign-off YOU LOSE TURKEY. For those who want to be the neighborhood Bobby Hull, most of the sets programmed for tennis also provide a hockey game in which armchair dudes can try to blast a puck past an agile goalie. Soccer aficionados can pretend they are Pelé, since the same game simulates soccer. For would-be Andrettis, there is Indy 500 (list price: $130), which comes with a vrooming sound track that may make parents wish the children were watching Captain Kangaroo. The Fairchild Video Entertainment System ($ 150 for the basic unit, $20 for cartridges containing additional games) enables homefront Pattons and Rommels to blast the bejabers out of whippet tanks in the desert; or lets the player be a skeet shooter; or pits blackjack skills against an electronic dealer who tots up bucks lost or won, keeps track of the bets and will advance credit if somebody goes broke.

Some games have different aims. By inserting one cartridge into the sophisticated Fairchild unit, a player can become an Op artist, concocting complex traceries and Cheopsian constructions across the screen for hours on end. The unit can also make its own doodles. Fact (around $400), another system that uses cartridges to extend the range, may be a valuable teaching aid when it comes on the market next year. It flashes questions about history, science or literature onto the screen; they are answered by pressing multiple-choice buttons.

The manufacturers are also considering games that would involve the intellect as well as cognitive skills. The possibilities seem limitless. Working with a memory bank and a TV screen that lends itself to the graphic presentation of ideas, gamesmen could pose all kinds of cultural guessing scenarios that might match a contestant’s deductive powers with Sherlock’s, invoke the suspense of an archaeological hunt or even put pizazz into a philosophical discourse—as manual Scrabble has put verve into vocabulary. And how about video Scrabble?

The home video sets are pared-down, slicked-up versions of the old coin-operated barroom games. The more advanced models are already minicomputers, with memory banks and calculating ability equal to the capacity of a 1950 room-size IBM model; thanks to fingernail-size silicon-chip microprocessors, they weigh only a few pounds. Within a few years, these latch-on TV widgets may be able to perform such tasks as adding up tax returns and flashing messages to neighbors’ screens.

Meanwhile, the games that exist are bringing kids and kids’ friends and families and neighbors back into the cathode circle in numbers unequaled since the days when they first loved Lucy and glommed onto Gleason. Perhaps Nielsen will be forced to create a new ratings category.