Colour Cartridge [Model VMV12]

The Colour Cartridge (model VMV12) was released in 1979 and was Videomaster's last PONG system. It is the only model which uses game cartridges. Like the European SD-050 consoles and others, the cartridges used General Instruments chips, so the games were same from a system to another: 10 PONG games cartridge, car race cartridge, motor-cycle race cartridge, submarine war cartridge, tank battle cartridge, breakout cartridge. The system is therefore very simple compared to others: the buttons have no specific role as each cartridge can use them differently. Games are selected by a 10-position switch, and three PRO/AM swithes allow changing the difficulty levels of the games (the chip included in the 10 PONG games cartridge was designed to use 6 switches for setting game difficulties, so only three of them were usable with this console). To finish, the cartridge connector has a strange location on the console and has no protection like most other cartridge systems. This was maybe due to the cheap manufacture of the system. The system case was directly inspired from the Colour Score II. Only one other system is known to have used the same cartridges: the Palson "Game Cassette System", model CX 336 (Spain, circa 1978-79).