Welcome to the third of the ongoing series of exclusive photos here at Armchair Arcade from my private collection, the VideoBrain Family Computer Model 101 from 1977. The system pictured has its cartridge door raised up with the Wordwise 1 ED03 cartridge inserted. The next step would be to push the cartridge door down, making it flush with the system. The button just below would raise the lid again, i.e., eject the cartridge. One of the two single button joysticks that doesn't self center is plugged in. The underbelly of the Music Teacher 1 ED01 cartridge is displayed to the left of the system. Everything else pictured should be self explanatory with this delightfully well-maintained example of this particular computer model.

The photo's main page.
The full-size image.

Without further ado, here are some neat facts about this week's photo (feedback welcome!):

Data like this has been supplied by others before, but this is a particularly impressive charting of select console system prices over the years from the first programmable videogame system, the 1976 Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES, later Channel F), to the latest to release pricing data, the 2006 Sony PlayStation 3. What I like about this is that two charts are supplied, one for the absolute retail prices and one for the inflation-adjusted prices. As I've argued elsewhere, while paying $60 for a game stinks, relatively speaking we've been paying that and more for countless years. Same thing with modern consoles. While it's a difficult pill to swallow a $600 PlayStation 3 (my recommendation is don't even look at the crippled $500 model), relatively speaking it's not so bad, particularly since it pulls additional duties as a hi-def media center.

Click here for the original post on "Curmudgeon Gamer" and the links to the two separate PDF files.