"A Simple Guide to Home Computers"
By Steve Ditlea
1979

Keywords: Bally Arcade/Astrocade, Bally Professional Arcade, Cybervision 2001, 
Programmable Video Games, Odyssey 2, VideoBrain

The pdf is just an excerpt of the book that includes the table of contents, 
Chapter 7 - Programmable Video Games and the index.  Here is the complete part 
of chapter 7 that covers the Bally Arcade/Astrocade:


Bally Professional Arcade--Though new to the consumer electronics field, the 
Bally Manufacturing Corporation, in business since 1931, is the world's largest 
manufacturer of coin operated amusement games. Bally's programmable video game, 
the Professional Arcade, was the first of the expandable home units to be 
advertised to the public.

Designed to sell for under $300, the Bally starter unit is structured around 
the same Zilog Z-80 microprocessor used in more expensive home computer 
systems. The Arcade module encloses 4K of RAM and 8K of ROM for a useful amount 
of internal memory.

Game-playing input is provided by four pistol-grip hand controls. Each has a 
trigger for shoot-out games as well as a knob that can be turned or swiveled 
like a joystick. Other input is entered with the help of a 24-key calculator-
style key pad.

Built into the Arcade are three games: Gunfight, Checkmate (a game of wits), 
and Scribbling (multi-color graphics), in addition to a convenient calculator 
with five functions and ten memory locations. Another handy feature is a pause 
control which freezes action and allows it to be resumed without starting the 
program over again. The unit shuts itself off automatically when left 
unattended to prevent damage to the TV picture tube.

Bally offers a variety of software on Videocade cassettes (actually ROM 
cartridges) at prices from $19.95 to $24.95. These cassettes include action 
games like Space Race, sports like Demolition Derby, educational programs like 
Bingo Math and Spell 'N' Score, and even an innovative Astrology cassette which 
will pinpoint the positions of stars and planets at any moment in the past, 
present, or future on a computer model of a planetarium.

The Bally BASIC program cassette turns the calculator key pad into the 
equivalent of an ASCII keyboard. It might seem a little slapdash to use a 
plastic key pad overlay and four different shift keys to express a full range 
of alphanumerics. This requires a lot of hunting and pecking on the user's 
part. Yet, this Bally unit is intelligently designed so that you can feed in 
entire instruction words with the push of a single key.

The Bally BASIC program includes a limited, though well thought-out, set of 
instructions that allows simple user programs for games, graphics, even music 
(with the help of a built-in 3-octave synthesizer). A clearly written and 
illustrated manual teaches elementary programming in a matter of minutes. The 
BASIC Cassette also makes the Arcade the first home computer system to utilize 
a full color TV spectrum of 256 hues.

To turn the Professional Arcade into a fully operational home computer, Bally 
has made available an interface for tape cassette mass storage and an ASCII-
type keyboard with an additional 16 K of memory. Promised for the near future 
are a high-speed printer and a MODEM telephone coupler.

One enterprising merchandiser has announced a Bally owners' Dial-A-Bargain 
Ordering System. This program allows the Arcade to place orders for electronic 
gadgetry with the retailer's computer right over the phone.