The RCA Studio II is a game machine that was released in 1976, shortly after the boom of Pong clones and machines, only a few months after the Fairchild Channel F. It had the same shortcomings as the Channel F, namely being the technology was growing at such a rapid rate at the time that these machines were almost immediately made obsolete by the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and systems that followed thereafter.
It is a direct descendant of Pong games, and you can tell by its styling. It isn't made very well--it's small, which is unique for the time, and colored yellow. It doesn't have hand-held controllers. Instead, its controllers are on the unit itself, like Pong games. The difference is that while Pong games had paddles, the RCA Studio II had numeric keypads. There were arrows molded into the plastic case for easy use of the keypads as controllers.
Like Pong games and the Fairchild Channel F, its sound is limited to a small speaker inside the unit. The only sound this speaker can make is a beep. It was interesting the way they used this beep--for example, in the racing game that was included with the unit, when you crash, it has a grinding beep noise. Rather irritating, but apparently pretty good for its time.
Collecting the RCA Studio II can be challenging, because it's one of the more rare systems. To make it even more difficult, the way you hook it up to your TV is similar to the Atari 5200: plug the power supply and game into the switchbox. The Studio II doesn't have a power switch--the switchbox turns the power on when it's switched to "game".
One last unique item about the system is the cartridges seem "backwards" from what we are normally used to. Let's take the Atari 2600 as an example. The cartridge plugs into the game, and has two plastic tabs that insert into the console. The Studio II is reverse of that--the CARTRIDGE has holes, while the CONSOLE has two rods that insert into the cartridge!
All in all, it's a decent system to collect for. While its graphics are not close to the quality of some of the other games of the time, it's a neat system to rub in the faces of all your friends when they try to impress you with their Sony Playstations. :)