Description

The Fairchild Channel F was released in 1976 by Fairchild and was one of the first consoles with interchangeable cartridges.The console is known for its odd controllers with featured a single joystick that could be pressed and turned. The console featured a front loading cartridge slot which was rarely by consoles aside from the Nintendo Entertainment System. Only 26 games were released for the console in its lifetime with its library consisting of sports games, board games and maths games. When the console was realeased in Europe it was liscesned to various televison manufacturers which cause it to have many different names, in the UK it was called the Grandstand Video Entertainment Computer. In 1979 the rights to the console were sold to a company called Zircon International who released an updated and more affordable version of the console called the Fairchild Channel F II which conected to the TV speakers rather than having a built in speaker and the controllers could be unplugged, only four games were released following Zircon’s aquisition with the last game releasing in 1981 and the system was discontinued in 1983. Despite this the console has a small homebrew community who have released games as recently as 2022.