In 1976, Steve Wozniak designed the Apple-1
computer, Seymour Cray delivered his company's first supercomputer to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and
Queen Elizabeth II sent a demonstration email over the precursor to the internet, ARPANET. But in Hong Kong, Allan Wong and Stephen Leung had fun and
games in mind when they founded Video Technology Limited, or VTL, which later changed its name to VTech.
The small company's first product was a home console called the Grandstand. Intended for two players, it was essentially a copy of the popular
arcade game Pong that users could play on their
television sets. Play settings on the console allowed players to choose from tennis, squash, football, and target practice, while skill settings let users control ball speed, ball angle, and the player's paddle size as either "amateur" (easy) or "professional" (difficult). A pair of hand-held remotes, each wired to the console, enabled the players to move around on the screen and return shots.
From the beginning, VTech would leverage advances in technology to produce toys and games. For example, VTech quickly embraced LED technology to create a handheld gaming platform for
RadioShack. That device, which resembled a small
calculator with a slightly wider screen at the top, was powered by the latest single-chip processor, the Intel 4004. It allowed users to play three games—Grand Prix, Code Breaker, and Blackjack—or to use the device as an actual calculator. Clones of model number CGS2011 were given names like the Prinztronic Micro-Game Centre and the Videomaster Enterprise, while Grand Prix was sometimes rebranded as Speedway. Similarly, Code Breaker and Blackjack were sometimes replaced by games called Brain Drain and Pontoon.
Another LED game capitalized on the Grandstand brand. This soccer game featured an LED pitch in the center of the console, with angled control panels on either end. In the U.K., the game was endorsed by Kevin Keegan, who made...
In 1976, Steve Wozniak designed the Apple-1
computer, Seymour Cray delivered his company's first supercomputer to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and
Queen Elizabeth II sent a demonstration email over the precursor to the internet, ARPANET. But in Hong Kong, Allan Wong and Stephen Leung had fun and
games in mind when they founded Video Technology Limited, or VTL, which later changed its name to VTech.
The small company's first product was a home console called the Grandstand. Intended for two players, it was essentially a copy of the popular
arcade game Pong that users could play on their
television sets. Play settings on the console allowed players to choose from tennis, squash, football, and target practice, while skill settings let users control ball speed, ball angle, and the player's paddle size as either "amateur" (easy) or "professional" (difficult). A pair of hand-held remotes, each wired to the console, enabled the players to move around on the screen and return shots.
From the beginning, VTech would leverage advances in technology to produce toys and games. For example, VTech quickly embraced LED technology to create a handheld gaming platform for
RadioShack. That device, which resembled a small
calculator with a slightly wider screen at the top, was powered by the latest single-chip processor, the Intel 4004. It allowed users to play three games—Grand Prix, Code Breaker, and Blackjack—or to use the device as an actual calculator. Clones of model number CGS2011 were given names like the Prinztronic Micro-Game Centre and the Videomaster Enterprise, while Grand Prix was sometimes rebranded as Speedway. Similarly, Code Breaker and Blackjack were sometimes replaced by games called Brain Drain and Pontoon.
Another LED game capitalized on the Grandstand brand. This soccer game featured an LED pitch in the center of the console, with angled control panels on either end. In the U.K., the game was endorsed by Kevin Keegan, who made his reputation as a forward for Liverpool, although, by the time the game appeared, Keegan had moved on to Hamburger SV in Germany. Each player could move their on-screen character up and down the pitch via four arrow buttons, while two shooting buttons encouraged split-second decisions.
By the end of the 197os, the company had embraced LCD technology, which allowed its Diamond Hunt and other games to look more like actual games a child would want to play than a hand-me-down calculator discarded by an older sibling. That said, VTech did not cast aside its rudimentary roots quickly—a version of its Home Sweet Home game was built into a functioning calculator before being replicated as a part of the company's Tini Arcade series of tabletop games, which were distributed by other companies and whose titles included Monkey Jump and Chicky Woggy.
Similarly, VTech's Time & Fun line was sold in both calculator and handheld forms. Titles in the Time & Fun line included Pancake and Banana, Condors and Monkey, Pirate and Sleepwalker, and, of course, Escape. While these were all single-screen games (some Time & Fun games were also packaged in Arcade versions), VTech also released a number a folding tri-screen games, including Diamond Hunt, Deep Diver, and Rabbit Hop. Other games were designed to be worn like necklaces resembling precursors to the Tamagotchi devices of the 1990s, albeit with far more rudimentary electronics inside. Games in this series included Bomb Fight, Tennis Menace, and Hippo Mouth.
Concurrently, VTech also produced education toys, beginning around 1981 with Lesson One, which had a speaker and a 30-key, alphabetical keyboard (i.e., not qwerty), offering children the chance to learn via 10 activities, from math and spelling to music and strategy. This would lead to a string of learning products aimed at children throughout the 1980s, such as Number Cruncher, Smart Start, Talking Whiz Kid, Socrates, and Little Smart Driver.
