SO. ULTRAPLAY.
I went on a bit of a journey with this one, and I think I bit off more than I could chew, concept-wise. It's come out a little half-cooked, but I'm hoping that you all (and especially
@andrewelmore, I think!) can help shape it to its full potential!
Huge shoutout to
The Vintage Knob,
@sonylogos on instagram, and all of the people uploading old Sony catalogues to archive.org.
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After the Atari 2600 found success in people's homes in the late 1970s, Sony realised that since many people were plugging their Atari's into Sony televisions, and they had Sony Hi-Fi audio stacks and Betamax players in their homes already, they should be able to sell a compatible Sony Computer Video Game system.
Enter the Sony
UltraPlay, released in 1982.
The UltraPlay symbol which would appear on the console and compatible accessories, such as the controllers.
The product name and model number, as would be written on the front of the console.
In this particular form, the name 'UltraPlay' would be used mostly in marketing, rather than being featured prominently on the system.
Designed to integrate into your existing Audio/Video stack as part of Sony's
ES series of products, the UltraPlay played cassette games which loaded into the front of the system via a motorised cassette door, and games were controlled using a wired remote similar to the
RM-50 Remote Control Unit of the time.
The system itself might resemble the Sony TC-FX500R from 1982, which supported the RM-50 controller, except styled in black metal to match the other systems in the ES product line.
I like to think it had a digital screen which displayed game or stage information, in a similar way that media players would display audio track info.
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Alternatively (and because I couldn't decide which direction I liked better!), here's a form of the UltraPlay if Sony decided to design this one a little closer towards how they approached the
Walkman - with it's own distinctive style, separate from it's current range of media hardware:
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I'm not a huge audio nerd, so this was my first time exploring the world of vintage Sony hardware.
The first issue I ran into was that prior to the
Walkman, there was very little discernible logomarks or branding used across Sony's hardware. It seems that they quite literally just used Helvetica for almost everything they created, and then distinguished different products by impossible-to-understand product codes.
Even the
ES Series logo itself was just ES written in Helvetica within a box, and that didn't appear on the product, only as headers in catalogues.
So the UltraPlay logo is based around that, and some similarly styled Sony logomarks of the time, such as the
Betamax,
Session Hi-Fi series,
accessories,
features,
and more.
Let me know your thoughts, and if you'd like to see it pushed further in one direction or another!
buttons. Also, great backstory and research notes. 
