in damages from these patent infringement suits before the patents expired in 1990. Arcade video games caught on quickly in Japan due to partnerships between American and Japanese corporations that kept the Japan companies abreast of technology developments within the United States. The Nakamura Amusement Machine Manufacturing Company (Namco) partnered with Atari to import Pong into Japan in late 1973. Within the year, Taito and Sega released Pong clones in Japan by mid-1973. Japanese companies began developing novel games and exporting or licensing them through partners in 1974. Among these included Taito's Gun Fight (originally Western Gun in its Japanese release), which was licensed to Midway. Midway's version, released in 1975, was the first arcade video game to use a microprocessor rather than discrete TLL components. This innovation drastically reduced the complexity and time to design of arcade games and the number of physical components required to achieve more advanced gameplay. The dedicated console market The Magnavox Odyssey never caught on with the public, due largely to the limited functionality of its primitive discrete electronic component technology. By mid-1975 large-scale integration (LSI) microchips had become inexpensive enough to be incorporated into a consumer product. In 1975, Magnavox reduced the part count of the Odyssey using a three-chip set created by Texas Instruments and released two new systems that only played ball-and-paddle games, the Magnavox Odyssey 100 and Magnavox Odyssey 200. Atari, meanwhile, entered the consumer market that same year with the single-chip Home Pong system. The next year, General Instrument released a "Pong-on-a-chip" LSI and made it available at a low price to any interested company. Toy company Coleco Industries used this chip to create the million-selling Telstar console model series (1976–77). These initial home video game consoles were popular, leading to a large influx of companies releasing Pong and other video game clones to satisfy consumer demand. While there were only seven companies that were releasing home consoles in 1975, there were at least 82 by 1977, with more than 160 different models that year alone that were easily documented. A large number of these consoles were created in East Asia, and it is estimated that over 500 Pong-type home console models were made during this period. As with the prior paddle-and-ball saturation in the arcade game field by 1975 due to consumer weariness, dedicated console sales dropped sharply in 1978, disrupted by the introduction of programmable systems and