Artwork of the Channel F (external)
Just a fun little link post. Title link goes to a lengthy and well-illustrated post by Kate Willaert highlighting the design of Fairchild Channel F game cartridges, manuals, and boxes. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately discussing the specific aesthetics of various consoles, and why they gravitated toward those aesthetics. The Channel F is one of those systems that I know all about the history of, but have somehow never actually experienced in person. So, I never really had it in my mind to mull over its aesthetic, but it is a trip. Of course, much like the later VCS, this was a time when video game graphics were… y’know, dots. So box and cartridge art tended to just go buck-wild.
Anyway, the Channel F had a colorful and cohesive aesthetic to its game art, and Willaert does a bang-up job of walking us through it. Apparently this is the third in a series she’s doing, with the Magnavox Odyssey and those games you’d type in from magazines and such being the first and second entries, respectively. Good stuff.