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[–] 2 pts

These "secret" games were only new to this guy. The Radio Shack TV Scoreboard released in 1976 had a later variant model which came with a light gun and the console had these "secret" skeet and target games. The TV Scoreboard was based on the very same General Instruments AY-3-8500 chip this guy used. I had one of these variant models circa 1980 and it did come with these games, which were extremely lame.

GI also produced a number of other chips featuring different kinds of games like breakout, tank battle, racing and submarine battle. A few of the chips were mostly pin compatible with the AY-3-8500 so you could swap out the chips and play different games, poorly, due to some controls being wired to N/C pins on the 8500 boards. If you hooked up these extra pins to their appropriate controls, you could make a multi-chip capable console. Probably only worth doing it today as a challenge because the games are really boring and have very little re-play value.

[–] 1 pt

I agree, I remember the light gun games too. It was just a different time when being forced to buy an extra piece for your (expensive) new game system may have put a dent in the new industry. It was easier and friendlier to the vendor to have a more expensive version with all the extras.

[–] 1 pt

It isn’t uncommon for distributors to publish video games with unused assets still included in the data. In our modern era, that is often done to support future DLC (downloadable content).

AKA;

In the past they used to give unused assets away, now they jewprice them in some jewLC.

[–] 0 pt

The unused assets in this instance were for games where the hardware wasn't included or was unavailable. So you had to buy some physical "DLC" in order to use the games.