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The new fall '77 line of Atari created home pong's offered by Sears debuted with Super Pong IV. A different pong system than the previously released Super Pong IV, it abandoned the signature pedestal style models. Introducing a flat style casing, it offered 10 games in 1/2/3 or 4 players with the now familiar wedge shaped padles. Two other Atari designed consoles used a similar flat style - the Pong Sports II and IV were the "cadillac" of pong styles. Each offering 16 pong games for 2 or 4 players respectively (with 2 or four fully detachable controllers included), they featured a nifty "rainbow background" tye-dye effect as well that put their presence far above other pong consoles.
Not including the two additional APF created pong consoles (Hockey Tennis II and III), there were two odd (or unique depending on how you look at it) consoles released by Sears that year. Atari had been interested in bringing it's Stunt Cycle coin-op to the home, but the feat was accomplished by General Instruments. They released the AY-3-8760 chip which was produced a very close duplicate to Atari's coin-op. So, Atari went with that for the Sears translation called Motocross which featured a unique motor cycle handlebar console with 4 detachable controllers. The paddles were for the 16 pong games (32 when counting 4 player mode versions) also included on the game, by the inclusion of the exact same Atari chip in the Pong Sports models. Breakout was even bigger Atari coin-op hit that was brought home through Sears that year with Pinball Breakaway. Looking like no other pong console, it had a hybrid breakout/pinball design (with 7 games) that included a top mounted dial and side mounted "bumper" controls. Atari's own entries in to the home pong mix that year were more or less their own labled releases of consoles they had created for Sears. The first was an Atari exclusive called Super Pong Pro-Am and housed in a case similar to the Sears Super Pong IV. In reality, it was nothing more than a scaled down Atari Super Pong Ten, using the exact same pong chip scaled down to play only 4 games. The Super Pong Pro-Am 10 system was to be the higher end version, and was in fact the Atari version of the Sears Super Pong IV. More Atari "clones", and Fairchild causes the pong crash....
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