Merlin (console)

Merlin, also sold as Merlin the Electronic Wizard, is a handheld electronic game first made by Parker Brothers in 1978 and invented by former NASA engineer Bob Doyle together with his wife Holly and brother-in-law Wendl Thomis. Housed in an octagonal case with a grid of red LED-lit buttons, it ran on a Texas Instruments TMS1000 processor with just 48 bytes of RAM and could be powered by six AA batteries or an AC adapter. Players selected among six built-in games, including Tic-Tac-Toe, the Simon-like pattern game Echo, Blackjack 13, Magic Square, Music Machine, and the code-breaking game Mindbender. Merlin became one of the best selling toys of its era: the Toy Manufacturers of America named it the top selling toy and game item in the United States in 1980, when about 2.2 million units sold, and it went on to sell more than five million units during its original run.