Pro Coach

 

From Roger Hector: "This was considered a "table top" game for two players.  Each player entered a 'program play' on their private keyboard by selecting the Pass, Run, Kick, etc. button, and then a path sequence to the end zone.  Offense and Defense strategy worked very well, and once the play started, you watched the play-field matrix LEDs to see what happened.  It was a low-cost electronic game, and was actually a lot of fun to play!  Dennis Koble did a great job of programming it and I did the industrial design, but Atari would not commit to moving forward, so it never went past the prototype stage."

From Dennis Koble: "I designed and programmed most of the games in that series with input from a variety of people - most notably Roger Hector for the football game.  Atari had split out that group into a separate division with a small group of people (about 10?), including myself.  The (LED) hand-helds were done in a separate division and in a separate building.

Since I was never involved with the manufacturing of any of the games it is quite possible there were case problems.  The procedure in those days was to make very expensive machined metal molds and then make the plastic parts from those molds.  I think however (and I’m probably wrong) that was all done in the U.S.  The ROMS came from Southeast Asia and those were the long lead time and expensive items.  I think maybe it was just Atari money problems that killed the hand-helds.  I remember hearing that 10,000 of each game (except  Football) were made, although I never saw any of those.  The Football game (of which I still have one of the working fiberglass prototypes) case was quite different and I don’t think more than a few prototypes were ever made."

 

 

 


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