APF MP1000 game console from 1978

Last Updated on April 15, 2024 by Dave Farquhar

The APF MP1000 was a second generation video game console produced by APF, a small New York City based electronics firm that started out producing calculators, moved to a first-generation console called TV Fun that played Pong-type video games on an ordinary TV, and then decided to try to build on that success by going up against Atari and Mattel. In this blog post, we’ll talk about this rare 1978 game console.

Distinctive things about the APF MP1000

There were two distinctive things about the MP1000, which was also known as the M1000. First, it was largely designed by an African American engineer who escaped the Up South phenomenon, like Jerry Lawson’s Fairchild Channel F, the first cartridge-based console. Second, like the later Coleco Vision, it was possible to expand the 1000 to a full blown home computer. This made it ahead of its time.

The MP1000 was relatively inexpensive. It initially cost $180, but by May 1980 it was selling for $130. It really only had two problems. First, the games library was fairly limited and definitely leaned toward traditional games rather than fast paced games like the more successful consoles of its generation. APF only had one full time programmer, so this was part of the reason for that. But the M1000 hardware wasn’t exactly suited for fast-paced action games.

It came with two non-detachable controllers with 6-foot cables. The controllers had a 12-key calculator-style keypad and a joystick. The system unit measured 11.5″x7″x2.5″. Like other second-generation consoles, its games came on cartridge, and connected to any household TV.

Where could you buy one?

Every account I could find says the MP1000 sold a modest 50,000 units during its lifetime. That doesn’t sound like a lot, and compared to the Atari 2600’s 20 million units sold, it isn’t.

One big problem is that I can’t figure out how someone who wanted one in 1978 or 1979 could have bought one. I’ve heard stories of Ed Smith, the designer of the MP1000, going into Sears, telling people he helped design it, and being told, “Yeah, right.” So you could buy one at Sears, at least if you lived along the eastern seaboard of the United States.

But while Sears was selling the MP1000 in at least some of its stores, I couldn’t find it in Sears’ 1978 or 1979 Christmas catalogs. I also couldn’t find it in any competing catalogs. Montgomery Ward sold APF’s TV Fun console in its 1978 Christmas catalog, and JC Penney sold an earlier APF 4-in-1 console in 1978. But neither had the next-generation MP1000, just the Atari 2600 and Fairchild Channel F.

Reviews of the MP1000 listed APF’s Madison Avenue address and sometimes a phone number. I’m sure if you called or wrote, APF was happy to tell you where you could buy one. But even early on, you didn’t have to be looking for it to encounter an Atari in a store.

The software

APF’s M1000 had a total of 13 titles available, including Rocket Patrol, a simple shooting game built into the console.

• Catena
• Hangman/Tic Tac Toe/Doodle
• Bowling/Micro Match
• Brickdown/Shooting Gallery
• Baseball
• Blackjack
• Backgammon
• Casino Roulette/Keno/Slots
• UFO/Sea Monsters/Break it Down/Rebuild/Shoot
• Pinball/Dungeon Hunt/Blockout
• Boxing
• Space Destroyers

Early reviews of those games were more positive than negative, and on paper, this list looks like it could compete with the Atari launch titles and Mattel launch titles.

Were the games any good?

But by modern accounts, most of the games weren’t very good. APF’s Baseball game was arguably as good as any other baseball video game released in the 1970s. The last and best cartridge for the MP1000 was a title called Space Destroyers, a clone of the arcade hit Space Invaders. And the rest of the library wasn’t on par with those two.

The problem was, nearly every other console and early home computer ended up with at least one Space Invaders-type game that was just as good. And the successful platforms also ended up with at least three or four titles you’d always come back to. Not just two.

The problem for APF was they only had one full-time software developer, where most of their competitors had several. They were able to learn from each other, challenge each other, and grow together while building larger and more interesting software libraries.

And while third party developers are a big part of the reason for the 1983 video game crash, not all of the third-party publishers were bad. Activision built up a compelling library for the Atari 2600 and eventually for other consoles as well. But APF wasn’t one of them. Activision was the biggest and longest-running of those developers, but Epyx and Imagic are two more examples of third-party publishers with good track records in the early 1980s.

The computer expansion option

The ability to expanded into a computer was an idea a little too far ahead of its time. It was designed with off-the-shelf hardware, and in the late 1970s, the off-the-shelf options for a display processor were a bit limited. Motorola had a couple of options that included color, text mode, and bitmapped graphics. General Instruments had an option that included sprites, but lacked a text mode. Maybe the Signetics 2637 could have done the job. It sported much lower-resolution graphics, but had four sprites and a 26×16-character text mode.

Leaving the door open to a computer expansion ended up limiting the console, in a way. Either the General Instruments or the Signetics chip would have made the MP1000 a better game console, but at the expense of how good of a computer you could get after the expansion.

There were other early platforms that found a way to do action games without sprites, so APF’s choice of a Motorola graphics chip that lacked sprites didn’t have to be a showstopper. But with only a single developer, finding ways to really push the platform was more difficult. The MP1000 was better than the Atari 2600, and comparing Atari’s Space Invaders to APF’s Space Destroyers hints at that. But the MP1000 never had a game along the lines of Activision’s Pitfall.

Was the computer expansion option more successful?

The M1000’s long-term success really depended on the ability to expanded into a full blown computer. And popular magazines in 1980 suggested buying an inexpensive APF MP1000 as an introduction to computing, then deciding whether to buy the computer expansion option.

That computer, dubbed the Imagination Machine, did not turn out to be a raging success. That was due more to financial difficulties than anything else. The Imagination Machine, unlike the later Coleco Adam, generally worked and APF was generally able to keep up with demand. The biggest problem was APF ran out of money trying to compete in a market that got crowded very quickly. The story of the Imagination Machine and why it failed specifically is another story.

After APF went under, another company acquired the tooling, and the tooling for the lower case and the cartridges ended up being used in 1982’s Emerson Arcadia 2001 console.