Bally Home Arcade

Bally, a pinball giant with moderate success in arcade games, had been completely 
side-swiped by the video game explosion of the First Generation. Unlike most arcade 
gaming companies during the late seventies, Bally had not been approached by an 
upbeat engineer with an idea for a new form of home entertainment. They did not even 
have the opportunity that RCA, Zenith, Teleprompter, and the like, had to turn down a 
video game system only to brood about it later. They were simply left standing at the 
starting line of a race they had not even known they were in.

Thus, in 1978 Bally released their own home system. Dubbed the Bally Professional 
Arcade, the system was to be in direct competition with Atari's 2600. Lack of software 
support and media coverage decimated the Professional Arcade before its first Christmas 
competition with the 2600.

After straining for three years to keep the system alive, Bally finally sold the rights to it 
in 1981. It was promptly re-released by an unknown company called Astrovision as the 
"Bally Computer System." Then, in a move that must have been an attempt to start over 
without the Professional Arcade's failure looming overhead, in 1982 it was renamed 
simply as "Astrocade."
Perhaps the most significant contribution this system had to the industry, was that its 
programming abilities would inspire many of the current generation of video game producers. 


Visit our new Bally Home Arcade Site
http://www.playerschoicevideogames.com/cat_bally.cfm

 

JP Anthony  javajs@hotmail.com  on Sunday, September 9, 2001 at 14:16:47
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I have two of these system in my Cybercafe with many of the games.   The hang on the wall along with many 
other systems as a form of memorabilia.   I was wondering if they are worth anything??   We also have Pong.

-Jay
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