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Telstar Ranger

After the release of the first Telstar (the first "dedicated-chip" pong system) in 1976 which was a big success, Coleco conceived a whole range of pongs for release at Christmas 1977.

This is the first Telstar featuring the two shooting games of the GI AY-3-8500, hence its name "Telstar Ranger". It thus offers a total of 6 games which can be selected through a special knob. Despite the pictures beside, the two small controllers are not built-in the console and can be detached.

There's a 3 positions switch that controls difficulty (beginner : slow ball, big paddles / advanced : fast ball, big paddles / expert : fast ball, small paddles). If this is common to the first Telstars, this is quite different from most of the other pong systems which offer individual settings.