One of the many Arcadia 2001 clone systems. This one was marketed in Australia, Germany and some other European countries.

At a quick glance, it would appear to be a pong type console, but in fact was a fully fledged cartridge system, and was one of the many Arcadia 2001 clone systems. This one was marketed in Australia, Germany and some other European countries.

The Arcadia 2001 was a group of consoles designed to run on the Signetics 2637 processor, an improvement and the successor of the 2636 chip which Philips had previously licensed to other companies, and is to be found at the heart of the Interton VC-4000 and the Voltmace machines among others.

This chip led to a new wave of licensed early consoles Ormatu Spelcomputer 2001, Advision Home-Arcade, Prestige MPT-03, Tele-Fever etc. as well as the Arcadia 2001, the latter being the most common and well known, which is why other consoles using the technology are referred to as Arcadia 2001 clones.

Cartridges designed to run on any of these machines could in theory run on all the others, but were often different shapes, these are called subgroups of the Arcadia 2001 clones and include the Hanimex HMG 2650, Leisure Dinamics and intercord machines.

The software libray for the series is not extensive and is not often of great quality, most are ports of earlier Interton games. Then Philips had great plans for these new games and produced arcade classics such as Pac-Man, Galaga, and Phoenix among others, but were forced to drastically change the games after court action from Atari. Some games in Europe were released unmodified, as Atari did not produce cases there as vigorously. 

The controllers are not unlike the Intellivision, with a keypad, but also contain a removable joystick, like the Mattel machine the games were supplied with key overlays. There are also two fire buttons, but they appear to have the same function.

The Control panel is made of 4 buttons (Start, Clear, Select A and Select B) and the power on/off button.

With a limited number of cartridges, the emergence of the Home Computer in Europe and the Home console crash in the US, the machines did not survive in the market place for long.

Manufacturer: Hanimex
Date: March 1982

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH63176. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.