Has any country besides the US and Japan ever developed...

[123forever]

...a video game system?

It just occured to me one day that I didn't know of any consoles that originated in any other countries. No British, or German, or Brazilian or Korean. Just American and Japanese. Am I wrong?

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Hong Kong, certainly: the Watary Supervision was produced there, as was the machine that was licensed by Mattel to become the Aquarius "computer."

The U.K. as well: the Sinclair computers, the Acorn, the BBC Micro.

I'm sure there are others too.

[CrazyImpmon]

British also developed the world's first computer to crack German's code but it was kept a secret and ultimately destroyed during WWII so it never got the credit. A few years later ENIAC came along and stole the title as the first computer.

Let see... Japan, HK, USA, and UK... I guess the rest of the world is a parasite, depending on these 4 countries to invent new stuff. :P

[Arrrhalomynn]

Philips is a Dutch company that developed the cd-i. I don't know if it was actually developed in this country though.

[jdl]

one more country to add to your list, mine ... FRANCE
with amstrad and thompson which are french companies
and made computers and video games systems.

[Mayhem]

Amstrad... French? Erm I think you'll find that was a UK company too.

Amstrad = Alan Michael Sugar Trading company... a Englishman well known for putting lots of fingers in lots of pies. Owned Tottenham Hotspur football club for a while, and also bought out Sinclair in the late 80s.

[Atariguy]

the GP32 is Korean.

[Zaxxon]

The Jaguar was designed by a British or Scottish company, Flare 2, but released by Atari. These same guys also designed the Konix Multi-system which looked cool and had some of the same hardware design ideas but was never released. Konix may have released some other console type system.

[tom]

Do you mean computer or mainly a Game system?

Consoles:
As for a (home) Video game system, everyone knows the Magnavox Odyssey from 1972, which is of course, American, but invented by 'German born' Ralph Bear. And it was the first. After that, everyone copied, including Atari, Nintendo and the rest of the world. Shortly after the Odyssey, Nintendo done the Arcade Laser gun game, but mainly they were still interested in gimmick toys, like the 'grapping hand' and the 'Love tester'.

Computers:
In 1962, Steve Russell from MIT did Space War on a DEC PDP-1, also American. In 1971, Atari did 'Space War' as an Arcade game

Before that, in 1958 William Higginsbotham did 'Tennis for two' on his Oscilloscope and a Donner Computer, also USA.

In 1949, the UK's (Cambridge) EDSAC was the worlds first Computer with built-in memory, and it played a mean 'Tic-Tac-Toe' (1951), one of the three programs done for this machine. http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~edsac/

Computers existed before 1949, but the EDSAC had memory, so a program could be stored. Some people argue that the 'Baby' from Manchester (UK) was the first computer with memory, buy this project was very shortlived and didn't really materialised. The Colossus from 'during the war' was a UK computer to break codes only, it had no memory. Zuse in Germany done some Computers, also in the 1940's, and America had IBM since 1924, founded by Herman Hollerith, born in 1860 to German immigrant parents in the USA .

Of course, in 1830(something) Charles Babbage starts work on the 'Difference Engine', mathematical games would have been possible on this machine. CB never manages to complete the computer.
read it all here: http://www.icwhen.com/book/index.shtml

Have fun

[Arqueologia_Digital]

Well, if you walk in Southamerica, you can find a lot of clones...this is the clone paradise, for example, 2600, Genesis, NES, Famicom and...SUPERVISION!!!!! clones!!!!!!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

AFAIK the Interton VC 4000 is the only German videogame console system.

[Ruudos]

Philips CD-I is Dutch yes. If it was developed in Holland I don't know. But there's a R&D department.

[Ruudos]

And there's also the Philips Videopac.

[hydr0x]

german:

interton vc 4000 and a lot of pong systems

and i'm sure some other systems where co-produced by germans or had german developers involved, like the phillips-systems, the odyssey and perhaps even more

concering computers, germany had the first ones in the world the zuse zx systems made by konrad zuse, they where half-mechanical but who cares

[slapdash]

AFAIK the Interton VC 4000 is the only German videogame console system.

Funny thing though... This thing is a ROM-compatible clone with the British Interton, and no one's sure which came first.

But more mysteriously, these systems may have been predecessors to the Arcadia 2001, and having Signetics chips in them, may actually have been designed by Philips, possibly making it a Dutch system after all.

[Ruudos]

A NES also has Philips chips in it. But I discovered another mother board, which has chips from another company.

[slapdash]

A NES also has Philips chips in it. But I discovered another mother board, which has chips from another company.

My apologies... I didn't mean that just because it has Signetics chips that it MUST be from the Netherlands...

But, Philips owned Signetics, and there's speculation that Signetics, or even Philips, had designed the architecture for the system and then licensed it to a variety of companies all over the globe, including Interton and Acetronic. In fact, there's also a computer built with a very similar architecture (i.e. it's almost the exact same system except with more RAM and the ability to read from cassette instead of just cartridge) that was detailed how to build in a book published by Signetics. If Signetics hadn't designed it, then they would have had to license the technology just to publish the book, and there's no valid reason for them to do that as far as I can see.

So it's by that evidence -- circumstantial, I admit -- that I feel that the Interton might be Dutch, not German. And unless someone can prove that the Interton VC-4000 came out before the Acetronic and all the MPT-02s, we can't even say that the Germans had it first anyway.