This is an Electronic game designed by Ralf Baer, inventor of the Pong game and Simon. Released by the Ideal Toy Company, who would later have massive success with the Rubik's Cube. It has four different games built in, known as challenges and can be played by up to four players, each with their own paddle button.

The first challenge is a game of reactions, the machine plays a short tune, which abruptly cuts out, the first player to hit their button gets two points, the second fastest gets one point, the other players get nothing, the first to twenty five wins.

The second challenge is a memory game, the game plays a series of tones of varying speed and pitch, the players must count the tones, after completing playing the tones, the Maniac starts beeping, when the player thinks it has reached the correct number of tones the player hits the paddle, the scoring is the same as above.

The third challenge is a visual game, the game shows lights in a seemingly random pattern, then displays three more patterns, if one of them matches the original, it's time to hit that paddle.

The final challenge is another reaction game, the game plays a constant high pitched tone for a varying length of time, when it stops, the players must hold down their paddle for the same length of time, the closest to the game wins.

Each game repeats three times before moving on to the next game, the first player to score 25 points wins.

Manufacturer: Ideal Toy Corp
Date: 1979

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH69147. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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