The Odyssey originally included twelve games, with eleven more games and a shooting gun attachment marketed shortly thereafter. The Odyssey and its later versions did not have sound capability. In that way the Odyssey was very similar to traditional board games. In reality, games were mostly played with the accessories instead of the simple graphics on the screen. Depending on the game, the light, which showed through the overlay, could be a race car, a baseball, a hockey puck, etc.ĭifferent games could be played on the same circuit card by simply changing the acetate television screen overlay, which simulated background color graphics, and by using a different set of accompanying accessories: game boards and pieces, scorecards, chips, maps, etc. Rather, it altered the signal path in the machine to change the light output coming through the television screen. The card did not contain the actual game program, though. To play a game, one inserted a circuit card (similar to a game cartridge) into the console. The game console looks similar to today's games, but its functions were not. Magnavox released it in the fall of 1972, but Baer had already created a functional prototype a few years earlier. Ralph Baer, often considered the "father of video games" designed the Odyssey. It demonstrated that the home console system would work and that there was a viable market. The Odyssey brought the arcade experience into the home and helped pave the way for the next generation of home video games such as the 1970s icon Pong.
For that reason, most later "Pong" games had an explanation on their box saying "Works on any television set, black and white or color". Sales of the console were hurt by poor marketing by Magnavox retail stores, in addition to many consumers being led to believe that the Odyssey would work only on Magnavox televisions. While inferior graphically and with a smaller library than it’s competitors, the Odyssey2 managed to last until the crash of 1983. When the Fairchild Channel F and the Atari 2600 released in 19 respectively, which both featured programmable ROM cartridges, Magnavox responded with the Odyssey2 (also known as the Philips Videopac G7000 or the Philips Odyssey).
MAGNAVOX ODYSSEY SERIES
However, the games were all included on the circuitry the cartridges were nothing more than a series of jumpers to select the game. Magnavox released the first video game console, the Odyssey, in September 1972, predating the Pong machines by three years.
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