Arcade Related Companies, Not on the KLOV Database

Phetishboy

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I have been researching a few arcade-related or inspired companies lately that bloomed before and during the golden age, and many who died shortly thereafter. Most of them produced hand-held electronic games, arcade-themed board games, etc. We've all heard of Atari and Nintendo, but how about Entex?

"Entex Industries, Inc. was founded in 1970 by G. A. 'Tony' Clowes, Nicholas Carlozzi and Nick Underhill. Originally started out making model kits, toys and construction blocks (Loc Blocs, in direct competition with Lego). In 1980, Entex achieved worldwide sales of $100 million in part due to their revolutionary electronic games based on sports and arcade games. Entex was based in Compton, California (303 West Artesia Blvd.) and was a big competitor with Mattel and Coleco, making head to head sports games similar to their sports games. Entex quickly moved into making very good quality VFD handhelds based on arcade games that competed directly with Coleco's mini-arcade line of games. They are no longer in business, Tony left in 1984 (to go to Tomy), and shortly after the company was sold off and all assets liquidated.

A little trivia: The name is a partial acronym of the two original founders (Nick Underhill joined them just after they came up with the name, but before the company was officially started). The First letter of Nicholas' name (N), the first letter of Tony's name (T), and add an X making NTX, which spells nicely into Entex.

The Logo was designed by Ben Templeton (creator of a comic-strip called 'Motley's Crew'), who kind of pictured Clowes (who is British) as an RAF type (Royal Air Force), so he took the RAF roundel logo and added a smiling face in the middle (rumored to be a caricature of Tony himself). Entex actually contacted RAF to get approval to use the design, and they actually approved their use of the logo."


Some of the cool stuff they produced between 1979 and 1984:

Entex-Galaxian2Box.jpg


Entex-BlackKnightPinballGame.jpg


Entex-Defender.jpg


Pretty sweet. Any other virtually unknown or 'unsung' companies related to this hobby?
 
I used to have one of those Galaxian2 ones...wish I knew what happened to it.
 
Mattel was another company that really had a lot of electronic games and arcade inspired toys and games. Here's the Horoscope Computer I used to own back in 1981 or so, sold at a garage sale and then picked up again on eBay 2 years ago:

Mattel-HoroscopeComputerBox.jpg


Weird as fuck.
 
I remember Entex and the Mattel games very well. I had the Defender but my one friend whose parents were recently divorced had all of them. He literally had every new game and toy that came out. It was a bad situation but his parents bought him anything he wanted trying to one up each other.
 
Mattel was another company that really had a lot of electronic games and arcade inspired toys and games. Here's the Horoscope Computer I used to own back in 1981 or so, sold at a garage sale and then picked up again on eBay 2 years ago:

Mattel-HoroscopeComputerBox.jpg


Weird as fuck.

I always thought the Coleco Zodiac version was cooler looking. Have two, but the codes stopped at 19xx.. can't remember. Pretty much display pieces.

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ArcadeMaze!
 

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I was aware of the Entex games, but growing up, my parents liked to get us "other" handhelds beyond the Mattel stuff. We had a DataMan from Texas Instruments, Electronic Quarterback from Coleco, and a Zingo from Radio Shack.

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For my birthday, I got to choose an Auto Race from Sears.


ArcadeMaze!
 

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I had a Dataman. TOTALLY forgot about it until your post!

How about one of these babies from Kenner? I wish I still had mine.

Kenner-LiveActionFootball.jpg
 
I used to play thing game about 25 years ago called Dark Tower.

I just found this game at my parent's house this past weekend. My father wants me to fix the motor in the tower because apparently the game with a working tower sells for quite a bit.
 
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