M Network Electronic Football

[ZylonBane]

...never existed. April Fools!

But wait, some of you may remember seeing this old catalog scan.



Yeah, about that. Back in September of 2003, for reasons I've now completely forgotten, I decided to start a hoax that Mattel had been working on a port of their Electronic Football handheld for the Atari 2600. Perhaps because it seemed like an idea that was goofy, yet somehow plausible. So I found a suitable old M Network catalog scan...



Next I opened up Paint Shop Pro and eventually ended up with this, which I'm like 90% sure a 2600 could actually do without any flicker.



I scaled that down, filtered it a bit, resaved it as a low-quality JPEG, and pasted it into the catalog scan. I casually referenced it in the forums here a few times, and that was that. End result, not as much mayhem as I'd hoped, but it did apparently inspire the creation of the Blip Football homebrew, and was briefly mentioned in the Letters section of 2600 Connection #87.

 

 

So now you know... the rest of the story.

[Atarikid96]

Lol