The Ping-O-Tronic (stylized on its logo as ping • o • tronic and also known as Zanussi Ping-O-Tronic or Sèleco Ping-O-Tronic) is a dedicated first-generation

home video game console A home video game console is a video game console that is designed to be connected to a display device, such as a television, and an external power source as to play video games. Home consoles are generally less powerful and customizable than ...

produced by

Zanussi Zanussi () is an Italian producer of home appliances that was bought by Electrolux in 1984. Zanussi has been exporting products from Italy since 1946. History The Zanussi Company began as the small workshop of Antonio Zanussi in 1916. The 26 ...

, an Italian

home appliance A home appliance, also referred to as a domestic appliance, an electric appliance or a household appliance, is a machine which assists in household functions such as cooking, cleaning and food preservation. Appliances are divided into three ty ...

company, and released under their

Sèleco Sèleco S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of consumer electronics. History Sèleco was born in 1965 as a spin-off from the home appliances maker Zanussi. In the first years of its life, Sèleco produced mostly black and white televisions with ...

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...

in late-1974 only in Italy. It was the first Italian video game console, excluding

Magnavox Odyssey The Magnavox Odyssey is the first commercial home video game console. The hardware was designed by a small team led by Ralph H. Baer at Sanders Associates, while Magnavox completed development and released it in the United States in September ...

imports and clones. Ping-O-Tronic came in an orange and white plastic container with a paddles housing. The control logic is based on three 7400 chips. Usable games are only three similar ones: ''

Pong ''Pong'' is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released in 1972. It was one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcor ...

'', ''Squash''/''Solo'' and ''Automatic''/''Attract''. The last one was the only game that did not require players and was used by stores to demonstrate the system without having anyone play it. There are several versions of the Ping-O-Tronic, marked by the abbreviations PP-1 up to PP-10. Starting from the PP-5, there was a new slot to which an optical gun could be connected to play a new aiming game. This accessory is called Gun-O-Tronic (stylized as gun • o • tronic). The only other known consoles at the time which allowed the user to play aiming games were the Magnavox Odyssey and

Philips Tele-Game ES 2201 The Philips Tele-Game series was a series of six dedicated first-generation home video game consoles manufactured, released and marketed between 1975 to 1978 by Dutch company Philips. All Philips Tele-Game consoles have the contraction "ES" whi ...

. On April 21, 1975, Zanussi obtained the license to implement Pong from

Sanders Associates Sanders Associates was a defense contractor in Nashua, New Hampshire, United States, from 1951 until it was sold in 1986. It is now part of BAE Systems Electronics & Integrated Solutions, a subsidiary of BAE Systems. It concentrated on developi ...

Play-O-Tronic

In 1977, Zanussi produced and sold a new model of a Pong-like console called Play-O-Tronic (stylized as play • o • tronic and also known as Zanussi Play-O-Tronic or Sèleco Play-O-Tronic). Unlike the Ping-O-Tronic, which was built with discrete components, the Play-O-Tronic was built from a single AY-3-8500 chip.http://www.pong-story.com/zanussi.htm Dal sito pong-story The console was also sold in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

by German mailorder company Quelle, who sold the console under the name Universum TV Multi-Spiel (stylized as UNIVERSUM TV Multi-Spiel). A built-in

power supply A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a r ...

comes with the Multi-Spiel.

Sales

Zanussi was reported to have sold 21,514 units of the Play-O-Tronic from October 1, 1977 to December 31, 1977 and earned a total of 620,408,000

Italian lira The lira (; plural lire) was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. It was first introduced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different states that would eventually f ...

(

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

127,782,334), of which 5.5%, 34,122,440 lira (US$7,028,028) went to Sanders Associates. As of 1983, around 1 million units of both the Ping-O-Tronic and Play-O-Tronic have been sold.

External links

Play-O-Tronic
on

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...

Play-O-Tronic
on pong-story.com

References

{{Dedicated consoles First-generation video game consoles 1974 video games 1970s toys Dedicated consoles Video games developed in Italy