This is a nice looking system from MBO, a famous electronic brand from Munich. It doesn't look at all like the other pongs. An original shape for both the unit (quite triangular in depth) and the remote controllers which are largely curved. The best part is that it has absolutely no switch, only buttons to select the different options. This system was sold in Germany as all the texts on the box are in german.
It is a classic pong system which uses the GI AY-3-8500 chipset, thus playing the 4 basic pong games. No shooting games here although the AY-3-8500 chip has got these games built-in. They simply did not implement the gun hardware :(
MBO produced a large serie of pong systems that they named "tele-ball" with numbers from 1 to 9. But there did not seem to be any real evolutivity as this model 2 for example, displays nearly the same features as the model 7 except for the 2 shooting games. Undoubtly it was just for marketing purposes. The chip included in the Tele-ball VII is dated from 1977 as the one included in the tele-ball II. So maybe they made different shapes at the same time just to propose "different products" and to sell more. The original Tele-Ball system for example, offers exactly the same 4 games...
An odd detail: whereas all the systems including a GI AY-3-8500 chip run with a 9 volts voltage, this one runs with only 6 volts.
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NAME
Tele-Ball II
MANUFACTURER
MBO
ORIGIN
Germany
YEAR
1977
BUILT IN SOFTWARE / GAMES
Tennis, Hockey, Handball, Practice
CONTROLLERS
Two detachable controllers with one slider each
CPU
AY-3-8500 from General Instruments
SPEED
Reset, Manual serve, Game selection, Power on/off, Speed fast/slow, Bat size large/small, Serve auto/manual
