Development and Technical Specifications
The original Battleship-prototype of the Playmate, presented by Cartwright to Milton Bradley in 1968, was characterized by a robotic claw-arm, similar to what one would find in a claw game, with rubber tips to allow the claw to more accurately grasp game pieces. This claw was mounted to a large cabinet measuring 20'x10'x3'. A red light on the front of the machine would blink to signal which coordinates on the board it would play. Four separate "games" were hard-coded into the robot's hardware. Its size and the lack of variety in play modes would have made it rather inconvenient for sales and would have cost tens of thousands of dollars.
After receiving the Milton Bradley funding, Cartwright added a programmable punchcard setup to the robot. This not only enabled the size of the robot to be decreased, it allowed the addition of multiple games to the robot's repertoire. Among the games that Cartwright eventually programmed the Playmate to learn were chess, checkers, Connect Four, Stratego, Candyland, and Mouse Trap.
Due to the large servo motors required to operate the claw arm and the primitive state of computing at this time, Cartwright was unable to get the Playmate to an acceptable size and cost before Milton Bradley pulled his funding. The final version of the Playmate was around the size of a filing cabinet and would have cost an estimated $5000 USD.
Read more about this topic: Milton Bradley Playmate
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