Coleco’s Telstar ‘Combat!’ Video Game System

While I loved my Atari 2600 and it was perhaps one of the greatest toys I received as a kid. I still had great affection for dedicated systems like Coleco’s Telstar ‘Combat!’.

Sure they had lower replay-ability, but they just felt more like an arcade experience with the dedicated controllers, even if they were a little too close for comfort most of the time.

I know what you thinking, “but peripherals were made for Atari!” Sure they were, but a lot of those felt pretty flimsy when compared to a Coleco Telstar (which didn’t exactly feel rock solid).

So I would still circle any dedicated system in old Christmas catalog in the hopes that Santa might make an error in my favor and deliver me a 2nd system to put next to my Atari.

The shelf life of systems like the Telstar Combat was short. Released in 1977, by 1979 they had disappeared from most stores.