The Coleco Telstar Marksman, commonly abbreviated as Telstar Marksman, is a first-generation home video game console that featured a light gun. It was released by

Coleco Coleco Industries, Inc. was an American company founded in 1932 by Maurice Greenberg as The Connecticut Leather Company. It was a successful toy company in the 1980s, mass-producing versions of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls and its video game console ...

in 1978. Because it had a manufacturer-set number of games, it is considered a dedicated console. It was part of the

Coleco Telstar series The Coleco Telstar brand is a series of dedicated first-generation home video game consoles produced, released and marketed by Coleco from 1976 to 1978. Starting with Coleco Telstar ''Pong'' clone based video game console on General Instrumen ...

Pong-based home video game consoles; it is essentially a Coleco Telstar Colortron bundled with a "3 in 1" light gun and two shooting games. The Marksman light gun is a

pistol A pistol is a handgun, more specifically one with the chamber integral to its gun barrel, though in common usage the two terms are often used interchangeably. The English word was introduced in , when early handguns were produced in Europe, an ...

that features an attachable stock and barrel.COLECO TELSTAR MARKSMAN
The video game collector It is similar in this regard to the later-released Stack Light Rifle and the Sega Menacer. The elongated barrel included a simple aiming sight. In addition to the light gun, the system featured two paddle controllers built directly into the console. Its reported features included "on-screen digital scoring" and three different difficulty settings (beginner, intermediate, pro). It required two nine-volt batteries or Coleco's Perma Power AC adaptor to power the system. There was also a Sears-branded model called the Gunslinger II, which has a beige plastic shell instead of black, and an extra decal on the stock of the gun.

Games

The console came bundled with six color games:

Tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

, Hockey,

Handball Handball (also known as team handball, European handball or Olympic handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of throwing it into the g ...

, Jai-Alai, Skeet and Target. The first four games are variations on Pong, The last two games are

single player A single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. A single-player game is usually a game that can only be played by one person, while "single-player mode" is usuall ...

shooting games that utilized the light gun. All of the games are incredibly simple compared to the games of today or even the early 1980s. The sports games were minor variations on Pong, with differences in the number of paddles, players, and the main surface to bounce objects off of. ''Skeet'' consisted of aiming and shooting at a square that moved diagonally across the screen in one direction, while ''Target'' was a variation that made the same square bounce around on the screen.

References

Telstar Marksman First-generation video game consoles Dedicated consoles Home video game consoles Light guns Products introduced in 1978 {{videogame-hardware-stub