This system is totally diferent from any other Telstar pong system or console you might have encountered until now. It looks like a common pong but it doesn't play the common pong games. This one offers 2 kind of games: Shooting games and Pinball games. A gun is available for it.
The nice devices are the 2 flipper buttons on both side of the system simulating a real Pinball. There is also a big red button on top of the case to launch the ball in the playfield. This button may be used in two ways: a short tap will shoot the ball out slowly and a long press will shoot the ball out faster. Excellent!
The pinball game display is totally adjustable: 3 sliding knobs (on the left side of the unit) can adjust the playfield (bumpers and chutes) up and down so you have completely different ball action in each game. These are also very useful when the ball is stuck...you can move them enabling the ball to get unstuck. The scoring is also very complex depending on what you're hitting with your ball, including "special" scoring like in real pinballs. There are 2 playfields available.
The shooting games are more simple: one is a 2 player game where you have to hit the target before it disappears, and the other is a moving target shooting game.
The system is powered by a Coleco home made chip: the MPS 7600. This chip offers 6 videogames: 4 pinball games and 2 shooting games. The shooting games don't exactly look like the ones of the GI-AY-3-8700 chip or the AY-3-8500 chip. The external rifle was dedicated to these 2 shooting games. The graphic display of this system is very good for the era and is in color. There is even a digital scoring on the screen.
The base of the unit was also used to store the switch box and the AC adaptor. You had to place the plastic rubber bumpers (under the unit) yourself.
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Taneli Lukka reports:
There are actually two completely different Coleco systems, both of which are called Gemini. Telstar Gemini shown here is the older and probably rarer machine. The second machine is an Atari 2600 clone by Coleco. They probably gave it the same name as the older console (without the "Telstar"-word) to hide it from Atari's lawyer armada. This worked for a while, but soon after the launch of the console Atari sued Coleco for braking copyright laws. The machine was a low-budget release meant for gamers with little money.
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