The Fairchild Channel F: First and Finest?

First yes, finest no; I had one as a kid and I sure do not recall any games that looked even remotely as nice as her example at the top of demaking one of her own games at its resolution. It was an amusing toy to play with when my engineer father got it for me but I was covering my friend’s VCS by the time next Christmas rolled around.

A quick search for a list of all its games shows how visually underwhelming it was: https://voxodyssey.com/fairchild-channel-f (and confirms my feeling that Nicole’s demake of her game looks tons better than any actual Fairchild games)

The controllers were interesting, but quirky as hell: a shaft held in one hand with a triangular head poking out, to be held by the other hand. Push up/down/left/right to function as a digital joystick, rotate l/r as well, push it down into the shaft to act as a button.

It was a wonderfully quirky machine. I had one as a kid because where my Mom worked they hired a former Fairchild engineer who told her it was the best game console you could buy.

I did not know about the "command" bus stuff for memory, that was pretty wild. The first Fairchild microprocessor I looked seriously at was the PACE16 which I decided was too complicated and went with a Z80 for my first "computer."

That said, one of the things I love about the Vintage Computer Festival/Faire events is that it is really easy to see the dividing line in time between "we're trying all sorts of ideas" and "we're following the leader to grab some market share." Consoles were not much different in this regard. The difference between the 2600, the Coleco, and the Odyssey seems huge compared to looking at the differences between the PS5 and the XBox. There is still room for variation though and the Switch is a good example of that.

My very first game console which I look back on with fond memories, though that is mostly the nostalgia of an old man. To be honest, when I received it as some sort of present (Christmas or Birthday) from my parents.... I was very disappointed. As mentioned in other comments here: it wasn't the console to have... that was the Atari 2600. And using it only compounded that disappointment... the controllers which were part joystick, part paddle and wanted you to pump the joystick for a button press was just odd and a bit clumsy. The best game I had for it was the one that came with it (as I remember): you were a block of some size and other blocks would move across the screen an you had to dodge those and not run into the sides of the screen... no characters, no theming: just square blocks. There were other games, but no cool factor at all.

In the end it wasn't terrible, just OK. It was entertaining enough that we chose to play it when could have just left it turned off. I wish I still had it. But eventually I did get the 2600, and not too long after having gotten it I traded it in for a deal on my first computer: the Commodore VIC-20.... I wish I still had it, but I eventually traded that in for a deal on a Commodore 64... I wish I still had that... but...

My dad built one of the large Heathkit 27”(?) console TVs, I remember being 3 or 4 and watching my cat chase the airplanes around the TV in Spitfire, noting how weird it was, an animal chasing electronic dots around the screen that they’d never catch.

My brother and I had the Fairchild and we preferred it to the Atari, though we enjoyed both. We were sad when the games stopped coming out for Fairchild and Atari started getting all the attention. Thanks @nicole for bringing back memories.