Console Overview #01: Magnavox Odyssey - The Return of Baer's Brown Box

I'm looking to try a new type of article with this post: the console overview. I'm keen on the idea of writing an introductory piece on each new platform as they appear in the chronology. This would include not only consoles, but computer systems as well. These will be exclusively informative and historical - I won't be giving out review scores or anything like that, but I'll give my own personal thoughts on the platform throughout. Consider this the pilot episode of this concept.

More than any other type of article, I'd appreciate your comments, reader, for feedback on whether this is a type of article you'd be interested in seeing more of. I thoroughly enjoy the research component of this blog, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you enjoy reading the fruits of it.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the Mathdice article, 1972 is a pivotal year in the infancy of the video game industry. One of the reasons for this is what we're taking a look at in this article - the Magnavox Odyssey, the first ever home video game console. With the release of the Odyssey in mid-late 1972, families could now bring this brand new entertainment device (they weren't called "video games" back then) into the comfort of their own homes, allowing them to play games on their old fashioned black-and-white TV sets. No longer did people need to go to a dank arcade, or get a degree in computer science. An entertainment revolution was here, and here to stay.

Grab yourself a cup of your preferred beverage and strap yourselves in, because this is gonna be a long one.

The visionary that created the Odyssey is a man by the name of Ralph H. Baer, a Jewish German-American engineer. He was born in Germany at a time where being a Jew living in Germany was becoming an increasingly bad situation. As a result, his family sought refuge from the increasing persecution, crossing the Atlantic and moving to the big 'ol city - New York City, that is. From there, Baer studied to become an electrical engineer, first working with radio, later television, and eventually found himself working for a defense contractor, Sanders Associates, where he conceived of the idea for the Odyssey, and began working on the first prototypes.

I'll circle back around to this in a moment. I want to take a moment to talk about where my information is coming from for the Odyssey's development history. Almost all of it comes directly from the mouth of Ralph Baer himself, from his 2005 book Videogames: In the Beginning. I have a lot of things to say about this book, both positive and negative. 

For one, the development process of the Odyssey is fantastically detailed, beginning 6 whole years before the console even made it to market. Baer also includes loads of scans of development documents, photos and even hand-written sales charts from 1976 - detailing the sales of arcade games from 1973 - 76, derived from Playmeter magazine. Invaluable documents for helping put together a picture of what the industry looked like in its most formative years. It's a treasure trove of history, one which I'm very grateful to Mr. Baer for.

My chief source... with Baer correctly titled.

The endorsements for the book are also pretty wild, ranging from veteran video game journalist Bill Kunkel, through to legendary developers David Crane (Atari, founder of Activision), Howard Scott Warshaw (Atari) and even Apple's technical wizard, Steve Wozniak! It's an impressive list, to be sure.

On the negative, Baer spins the whole narrative of video game history in this book to make himself out to be the sole inventor of video games, scornfully dismissing anything that came prior to the Odyssey based on arbitrary technical specifications (i.e. it wasn't made to run on a TV set), or because he patented it first, or because he won a few court cases. The tone he takes is very, very bitter and extremely demeaning towards others who disagree with his claims. Those parts of the book are honestly quite difficult to read.

My purposes with the book are in trying to summarise the development history of the Odyssey, leaving out most of the raft of technical details Baer includes, as he gets very technical. As a simpleton who doesn't have a lot of electronics knowledge, most of the technical specifications are well above my understanding. Probably doesn't help that we're dealing with 1960s tech here, either. I'm merely interested in the timelines and key moments that create the story of the Odyssey's development. If you're interested in the actual hardware and detailed technical creation process, the book is free to read on the Internet Archive.

Before going any further, I need to discuss the book's foreword, as it seriously agitated me. It's written by video game historian Leonard Herman, who claims to be the "Father of Video Game History" and "The Game Scholar." I'd honestly never heard of him before reading this book, so I did a quick search on him and found his website. He's pretty much been around since the beginning of the industry and wrote a history in the early 1990s, Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Home Videogames. He makes it out to be a big deal, but I genuinely have never heard of this book before. Steven Kent, author of The Ultimate History of Video Games highly recommends it, so that's a point in its favour. If you've read it, I'd appreciate a comment on whether it's worth a read or not. 

So, what's my issue with Mr. Herman's foreword? I'll put it bluntly: it's so hilariously biased that it's impossible to take seriously. It's clear Herman is trying to look after his buddy. He first claims that you'll get "four different responses" when asking who invented video games. I mean, this is partly true, and probably more so in 2005 as we didn't have the wealth of information back then as we do now. What "four responses" he means, though, I'm not so sure. I'd guess Pong and Spacewar! would be two of them. He then bemoans that "the rightful inventor doesn't always get recognized for his work." Again, partly true as a generalisation. All of this is written purely to assert that Baer is the rightful, indisputable inventor of video games. What evidence does he give? 

"The first patents are under his name." 

I honestly kind of lost it here. This is absolutely ridiculous. Patents? That's what we're going off of? Well, I guess the Chinese mustn't have invented fireworks then, since they didn't file a patent for it under United States law. Nor did Johannes Gutenberg invent the printing press, for he had filed no patent for his titanic, world-changing invention. I could go on with more examples of the stupidity of equating patenting with inventing. It's intensely ironic and hypocritical, considering the opening line of Herman's forward reads:

"As a videogame historian, it is my job to get the facts straight, with little room for my own personal opinions."

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, mind you. The historian's job, in my opinion, is to collect, collate and present data in an honest, unbiased manner, while using their research to provide educated speculation to fill in the gaps. Mr. Herman ain't doing this right here, though. His foreword is all personal opinion. To base originality on arbitrary legal patents is utterly ludicrous and is just plain dishonest.

I know, I'm getting riled up here, but as someone who deeply values integrity, truthfulness and not compromising yourself, this type of blatant dishonesty and manipulation of history genuinely angers me. Baer rolls with Mr. Herman's endorsement (and his own legal victories) throughout the entirety of the book when talking about any competitors (except Atari's Al Alcorn, developer of Pong, whom he seems to respect quite a lot) to justify his dismissive attitude of them. The book as a whole is worth a read if you can get past his bitter and entitled attitude in parts of the book. It doesn't paint him in the best light, overall. He is undoubtedly the father of home console video games (as the title of his book clearly states), and should get credit for that. But he definitely did not invent video games as a whole. No matter what any silly (and now expired) patent says.

Development History

Anyway, back to the Odyssey. The story begins some time before the concept for the Odyssey was even in Baer's mind. In Nashua, New Hampshire, Baer took up a job with Sanders Associates, soon becoming the manager of their "Equipment Design Division," and eventually "Chief Engineer for Equipment Design." He states that he had roughly 500 staff working under him during that time. His position and the size of the company allowed him room to work on side projects without interfering with Sanders' primary operations. A perfect scenario for someone who comes up with big ideas like Ralph Baer.

During his tenure as Chief Engineer, Baer recalls that, on September 1, 1966, he had his and I quote, "Eureka time." The concept for playing games on an ordinary TV screen had wandered into his mind while waiting at a bus stop. He scribbled down some notes, and later turned those notes into a more professional four-page write up outlining his concept. As a side, Baer claims to have originally voiced the idea of playing games on a TV all the way back in 1951. Remarkable if true, as that predates the first video game experiments of 1952. He recalled his boss at the time basically telling him to shut his pie hole and get back to work, and that was the end of that thought for 15 whole years.

Baer had some forward-thinking concepts in this document - some amusingly so. He outlined various different genres of games he considered viable at the time, ranging from action, sports, board games and "chase" games. He doesn't explain those here, but he's referring to basic "tag" like games, where one player chases another. He also describes how his "game box" would be tuned on an old analog TV, calling the channel it'd be tuned to "Channel LP," the "LP" standing for "Let's Play." I'm surprised he didn't sue every YouTuber in existence for stealing that phrase. Baer also provides scans of those four (technically five, including the title page) pages for all to see, complete with evidence stickers from the court cases over the years, along with a typed transcript so that you can actually read the damn thing.

A couple of pages from Baer's original document.

This is really worth a read to get an idea of how forward-thinking Baer actually was. Not only does he discuss the genres I previously mentioned, but he also considered art and educational games. Many of the early 2nd generation consoles would have art programs and several educational games available, meaning Baer's document is actually quite prophetic, considering what early console gaming would end up looking like.

Five days after writing his concept document (September 6, 1966), Baer created a basic schematic for his new device, which would allow the TV to generate two white spots that could be moved around the screen. The spots would be controlled by two rotating knobs, one for vertical movement, and the other horizontal. He also considered how colour could be added on screen, which is something that the Odyssey would not end up being able to do due to cost. A more creative solution would be implemented to incorporate colour graphics into the Odyssey's games.

Baer would enlist technician Bob Tremblay to put his concept schematic into action, having a working concept produced by December that year able to do almost exactly as Baer envisioned. Tremblay also modified the device to display colour upon Baer's request. They gave the little device the name TV Game Unit #1. There's going to be plenty more of these prototypes getting made as we get further into things. Apparently that device still existed at the time of Baer's writing, with it being kept at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History. That was back in 2005 - I wonder if it's still there in 2025?

Also that December, after the completion of TV Game Unit #1, Baer decided that "it was time to go 'public'." He wanted to demonstrate the game concept to Sanders' Corporate Director of Research and Development, Herbert Chapman (whom Baer affectionately refers to as "Herb" throughout much of the book.) Chapman saw the potential in the device, but wanted to see more. He was interested enough to green-light the project, providing Baer with $2,500 to get it started. That's almost $25,000 in today's US currency, by the way.

Minimal work was done over the 66-67 holiday period. Baer and engineer Bob Solomon brainstormed more game ideas early in the new year, including a "bucket-filling game," among "an ever-lengthening list of games that looked technically feasible." February 1967 was when initial plans for the next prototype began, with Baer creating the initial sketches and enlisting technician Bill Harrison to assist with building the new device. Shortly after, Baer instructed Harrison to change course, as he'd had an idea for a quiz game, using a light pen to point at the answers on the TV screen. Work on this device also produced Baer's first patent.

However, all work came to a halt, as Harrison was pulled from the project to finish urgent work elsewhere at Sanders. He wouldn't return until May of that year. The only work that took place during that time was done be Baer alongside engineer Bill Rusch, who conceptualised more game ideas, and eventually collated all these ideas into a memo to be shared exclusively with Rusch, Bob Solomon and John Mason, another of Baer's engineers.

Baer was already envisioning a cockpit cam for racing games.

When Harrison returned, they set to work on making a working game. What they came up with was a "pumping game," essentially a button-mashing game where two players tried to fill their horizontal side of the screen with water. The first round of this game was played on May 15, 1967, won by Harrison. Four more games were created by Harrison, and later additional components were added to allow two spots with independent movement on screen. This would be the foundation for TV Game Unit #2.

As development on TV Game Unit #2 progressed, the team were able to refine some of their game ideas more. They created a chase game which they called their "Fox and Hounds game." They also managed to create a primitive on-screen score display, and random number generation for moving the spots automatically on screen. These are all pretty interesting details to point out as none of this made it into the final product. But, it shows the experimentation, innovation and foresight of Baer and his team. They knew where video games could go, even at their most primordial, conceptual stage.

Harrison also made up a couple of light guns in June of 1967. Shooting games and light guns existed in amusement arcades in the mid-60s, most notably with Sega's (yes, that Sega) Periscope, but nothing of the sort had been attempted with standard television sets. They got it working pretty well by the sounds of it, and brought in Herbert Chapman again to show off their progress. Baer suggests he got quite into the shooting game, and Chapman came back later in June with Louis Etlinger, Corporate Patent Counsel, for another demonstration. They decided that it was time for a proper demo for the bigwigs at Sanders... on the very next day, no less. Baer and his team worked hard at preparations, including producing pre-recorded instructions for each of the games they planned to present.

On June 15th, 1967, Baer and his team presented TV Game Unit #2 to Sanders Associates' entire board of directors, executive vice-president Harold Pope and the main man himself, company president Royden Sanders were all present for Baer's demonstration. Seven games were demonstrated, including the "Fox and Hounds" game, shooting game and pumping game. Baer also commissioned draftsman Stew Gregory to produce some cartoons for their TV overlays, which were to be put over the screen for some added pizzazz. Oh, apparently they decided at some point to make overlays. Don't know when, because Baer only brings them up now in his book. TV overlays were integral to the Odyssey, so for him to not properly introduce the concept strikes me as an oversight.

So, what was the reaction from the execs? It was mixed - some expressed more interest than others, but apparently enough of them were convinced for the board to support Baer in continuing with the TV game project, on the provision that he could make it into something profitable, of course.

In order to do this, for TV Game Unit #3, the team looked to streamline the design and cut costs wherever they could. They first wanted to focus the unit on playing only chase and shooting games, meaning that the hardware for colour, timers and the pumping game had to go. Still, this wasn't enough. Baer wanted the device to cost $25 US (roughly $240 in today's US currency!), but at the current state of the project, it was looking more like $50 (closer to $470 - $490 - still better than what the final price ended up as.) He knew that the device as is couldn't justify such a price, so Baer decided he needed some fresh, exciting new games to add more value.

Fortunately, Baer got some reinforcements to help in this area. He was able to get Bill Rusch back in August, 1967, and he was able to bring some of the additional game concepts listed in the memo Rusch and Baer conceived previously to life. He was able to add a third white spot to the two the team had started with, enabling them to create some rudimentary sports games.

Most of the backend of 1967 would be consumed with creating these sports games, which would become part of the basis of the new TV Game Unit #4 prototype, and included soccer, hockey and ping-pong. The last of these is very important for future developments. The response from Herb Chapman was extremely positive to the new sports games, which encouraged Baer's team. They continued working on this prototype into 1968, re-introducing colour, however there were also some technical issues that caused friction between Baer and Bill Rusch. Not enough to cause Rusch to leave, but enough for him to become more disruptive as a means of voicing his displeasure. They were also beginning to experiment with incorporating advanced, "realistic" ball physics into the games.

During this time, Baer was also working on a different business venture with video games. He was considering the potential of working with TV companies to use cable as a means of getting video games into homes. He was working on a huge deal with the TelePrompter Corporation, which appeared promising. However, severe economic stresses on both Sanders and the TV industry during the 1960s saw that deal fall apart. This little side story had come to a dissatisfying end. Baer saw the concept retrospectively as a possible precursor to online gaming. He obviously didn't know about all the crazy stuff going on in the computer scene of his day that really was "online gaming before the internet". But that's for another time.

Work on prototypes continued into 1968. Bill Harrison introduced two new games into the fold, a volleyball one and a handball one. They were being sidetracked by the TelePrompter deal at the same time, so work was sporadic, but the team were able to put together the next prototype. We're up to TV Game Unit #5 now. Baer got Harrison to revise the quiz game idea, also revising their light pen design to make it more like another light gun. 

At this time in January 1968, however, a major setback occurred for the project. The once supportive Herb Chapman issued the team a "Stop Order." He cut off funding for the project, and the team was scattered amongst Sanders' various divisions. Eight months would pass with no work done on bringing video games into the home. Yet, the flame didn't fade from Baer's mind. He wanted to keep going.

In September of 1968, Baer was finally able to resume work. Chapman provided him with funding, and Bill Harrison was re-enlisted, and it was all systems go for beginning work on TV Game Unit #6. This prototype seemed to be less of a huge leap like many of the previous ones, and was more about refining the hardware. No new games were added, but a new gun was created for the shooting games. A version of this unit was completed by the end of 1968.

And now, it's time for the most important of all Baer's prototypes: the Brown Box. I've already written an article on Baer's Brown Box, but that was early in the blog's life and is severely lacking in detail, which I will now aim to rectify. Baer's team continued to tinker with TV Game Unit #6, managing to add a volleyball game (even though I thought they already did that?) and a "golf putting game" which I assume is referring to mini-golf? According to Baer, this game used "an actual golf ball mounted at the end of a joystick." In other words, a physical golf ball peripheral in which you tap the ball with an actual putter, moving the ball on-screen. There's been some wacky peripheral controllers over the years, but that one's up there.

The final design of the Brown Box is in the top picture. The golf ball peripheral is in the bottom right.

With the completion of this peripheral, the team decided to move on from the TV Game Unit #6 design and begin work on a new design that could accommodate the new changes. They also decided to turn it into something more presentable than the previous prototypes, achieved by Harrison applying wood-grain vinyl to the device's aluminium (NOT aluminum) chassis. Hence the coining of the Brown Box nickname. The Brown Box included 7 games (9 technically):

• Ping-Pong
• Handball
• Hockey (which doubled as soccer and football with different overlays)
• Target Shooting
• Golf Putting
• Checker Games

Some games used overlays, like was previously mentioned, to add necessary details that the Brown Box couldn't generate itself, like goals. The Brown Box was considered by Baer to be in working shape in January 1968 and almost a ready-for-market product. The team also produced a TV Game Unit #8, which highlighted their advanced ball physics, but that was quickly swept under the rug as it was way too expensive for them to produce. With that little experiment pushed to the side, the team went back to add the finishing touches to the Brown Box, and by October 1968, it was complete.

Now came the hard part - selling the product. First, they had to find an interested company who were willing to invest in such a new, novel product. That wouldn't be easy.

The marketing process seemed to start in late 1968 - early 1969. Naturally, they looked to TV manufacturers as the natural fit for a device designed for TVs. Several manufacturers visited Sanders for a demonstration of the Brown Box over 1968 including RCA (who get into the video game business themselves later on), General Electric and Motorola. Nothing came of any of these meetings, and the companies all passed on the device, except for one - Magnavox.

The man who pushed Magnavox to invest in the device was one Bill Enders, who worked for RCA when they were investigating the Brown Box. Enders liked the device then, and still did six months later, and pushed for Magnavox management to look into the device. Baer was invited to Magnavox HQ in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to present the Brown Box to the Magnavox leadership.

At first, Baer didn't perceive the reception as enthusiastic whatsoever. Magnavox's higher-ups seemed disinterested at his presentation. That is, until one of them spoke up. Gerry Martin was excited about the product, and saw the potential in it. He also happened to be "the boss!" So that was it - Magnavox was in.

You'd think that would settle things, and work would get underway immediately. Well, that wasn't the case. Gerry Martin had to convince the corporate bigwigs at Magnavox to fund the project, which took 9 months. Only after that was settled in March 1970 could licensing negotiations between Sanders and Magnavox begin, and that took another year to sort out. Eventually, an agreement was settled in January 1971. Remember, Baer had the Brown Box ready to go in 1968!

Regardless, its time finally came. It was time for Baer to hand over his baby - the TV game device he had worked on creating for the better part of a decade, to Magnavox's engineers to work it into a marketable product. Work on this began in March 1971, with the device being given the Model 1TL-200 tag. Internally, the device was called the "Skill-O-Vision." Baer doesn't recall who coined the Odyssey name, or when the name appeared. It must have happened quite late on, as it was still being called "Skill-O-Vision" late into 1971 at least. Several changes and removals were made for cost-cutting reasons, including the circuitry for the pumping game, golf game and colour (overlays were the preferred method of adding colour to the games), with the final design being settled on sometime in late 1971. Baer doesn't provide a specific date, but does provide a partial transcript of a letter from Magnavox engineer Bob Fritsche outlining cost-cutting measures dated to November 18, 1971.

Also during this development phase, at Magnavox's labs, were when the concept of interchangeable game cards was developed. The original design of the Brown Box had switches on it to change the game, and it had sixteen of them. When exactly the change too place, and who was responsible, Baer doesn't say. His only remarks on the change amount to him being thrilled with it. These cards are the earliest form of interchangeable game cartridges as we know them today, although these cards were quite different to a ROM cartridge. These cards essentially modified what was already built into the system, rather than containing a ROM chip with the game data stored within.

Bob Fritsche also had many conceptual ideas for successors to the Odyssey, including including all the game concepts removed from to Odyssey, and colour would also return. Several Odyssey sequels would be produced, only with the very final ones featuring colour. None of Fritsche's other ideas made it. 

Work on the Odyssey as a whole product continued for most of 1971, mainly focusing on what Baer calls "product definition." This included producing overlays for the system (which were initially monochrome), and what I can only describe as an early version of "dev tools," to help with testing. By July of 1971, Magnavox were ready to begin public testing of the Odyssey. 

Some of the early overlay concept designs. Brain Drain was renamed to Brainwave when it was released in 1973.

In July and October, they held "survey[s] of customer acceptance" for the Odyssey. These were the first rounds of public tests, sounding kind of like focus groups, from Baer's description of them. Participants were provided with a questionnaire, as well as a demo of the Skill-O-Vision (as it was still called at the time). Overall, the response was quite positive to the Odyssey (89% of consumers liked it), and it was decided to aim for an official launch date of May 1972. Baer here pronounces the birth of the home video game industry.

On May 3, 1972, the Odyssey made its public debut. Magnavox rolled out what they called their "Profit Caravan" (subtle as a sledgehammer there, boys) travelling roadshow, travelling the country to show off the first home video game console. Like a proud father, Baer was overjoyed at seeing his invention introduced to the world. Over the course of 1972, Magnavox supplied retailers with the console and all its attached goodies. Included were the game overlays and additional game components (more on those later), as well as extra game packs sold separately and a plastic rifle for the shooting games.

However, we need to double back a bit to these whole "Profit Caravan" shenanigans. Specifically, we need to talk about the Odyssey demonstration that took place at the Airport Marina in Burlingame, California on May 24-25, 1972. There was one individual that visited this demonstration who would walk out of it with a plan that would (unintentionally) see the arcade industry explode in popularity. This individual was Nolan Bushnell, who had created the first arcade video game, Computer Space alongside Ted Dabney at the startup Syzygy Engineering. In short, he went back to Syzygy, renamed it Atari, hired engineer Al Alcorn to produce a table tennis game resembling what he played on the Odyssey, named it Pong, and unleashed it on the world in November 1972, whereupon it became a massive fad, was copied by countless other companies, basically launched the arcade industry into the stratosphere, and was the topic of at least a few lawsuits over the coming years. Bushnell, after originally denying having been at the demonstrations, later admitted in court that he was in fact at the demonstration. Magnavox suits had evidence on him anyway, with his signature on the visitors' list, so the truth was going to come out eventually anyway. I'll expand on all this later, in the upcoming Pong article.

Anyway, back to the Odyssey (again.) All the previous talk about cutting costs during development appeared to have amounted to naught. What Baer had envisioned originally as a $25 device had ballooned out to costing $100. In today's money, that's a whopping $767. This included the console, six of the 12 game cards, playing 12 games total, with overlays and additional components. You did get a lot of stuff for your money, to be fair. Imagine a new console coming bundled with 12 games at launch nowadays (that's if they had 12 games available at launch.) You'd probably be paying $1,500 for it. The rifle? 25 bucks for that. $191 in today's money. I know controllers are sold for exorbitant prices now, but that's something else.

The pricing caused some issues for the Odyssey, alongside Magnavox's business practices. You see, the Odyssey wasn't just sold to any old retail store like consoles are today. You couldn't drive down to your local Toys R' Us, Sears, Big W or comparable retailer. No, you could only get the Odyssey exclusively through Magnavox's own stores. An unintended consequence of this business decision was confused consumers, who thought that this exclusivity meant that the Odyssey would only work with Magnavox TV sets. From continuing to read through Baer's history, he doesn't rate Magnavox's marketing of the Odyssey. It's like they didn't really care that much about it.

However, they somehow managed to convince Frank Sinatra of all people to do a commercial for the Odyssey. I'd love to know how that conversation went down. According to Baer, this helped sales tremendously, and "almost one hundred thousand Odysseys were sold that season." So sales ended up being relatively good, all things considered. However, by 1973, Magnavox were already discounting the Odyssey, which wasn't a good sign. The two additional game packs also failed to sell well, according to Baer, due to Magnavox's sales staff apparently not being trained to push the game packs to customers. The release of Pong also had a positive knock-on effect for the Odyssey, who saw it as a way to play a version of Pong at home.

To summarise the Odyssey's sales, Baer claims that it sold approximately 350,000 units over its lifetime, with Bob Fritsche claiming it to be as high as 367,000. 1974 was its best year, selling around 150,000 units. It did quite well in the international market also, being exported to at least 12 other countries, including Australia (I should see if I can find one, ha), while also being copied in a few others. The most infamous of these "clones" has to be the Swedish Kanal 34, which took the whole Brown Box concept a little too literally.

The Swedish Odyssey knock-off, the Kanal 34. Now with 100% more wood.

The Odyssey met its end in 1975, with increasing production costs causing Magnavox to look to alternatives to keep their hold in the video game market, with the understanding that Atari was looking to make inroads into the home video game market. They made a deal with Texas Instrument, who would supply their brand-spanking new AY-3-8500 chip for use in two new consoles in the Odyssey line up: Odyssey 100 and Odyssey 200. Creative names, no? These were heavily stripped-back versions of the original console, only playing a select handful of Odyssey games. There would be more later additions to the Odyssey line up, but I may discuss them later in a broader article on the insane first console generation.

Game Library

Now that the history of the Odyssey has been laid out, it's time to discuss the games. This is going to look a little different compared to future system overview articles. The normal layout would be to briefly summarise the make-up of the system's game library, highlighting notable games. Here, I'm going to discuss the whole library of the Odyssey.

I can (and need to) do this for two reasons:

1. The Odyssey only has 28 officially released games over its lifetime.
2. I can't actually play any of them.

Reason 2 needs some explanation. First off, most Odyssey games are exclusively multiplayer affairs. As per my rules, I don't go in-depth on multiplayer games.

Some of the more in-the-know readers at this juncture might go "well, what about OdySim?" Yes, I know about OdySim. For those unaware, OdySim is a digital Odyssey simulator. It's free to download from the OdySim blog. It sadly hasn't been updated in a few years, but still includes most of the original Odyssey games, with a few homebrew titles also included.

However, this doesn't change the fact that I can't play Odyssey games. This is due to one crucial detail I've deliberately skimmed over until know. I've hinted at it, that Odyssey games have... extra components, shall we say. To say that the Odyssey is a video game console is not strictly 100% true. Many of the games come with what are essentially board game components, and lots of them. Scoresheets, dice, playing cards, tokens, game boards the whole lot. The Odyssey ends up being more of a unique hybrid entertainment device, mixing both video and board games together (with varying levels of success.) 

So here's the crux of the issue: if you don't have these physical game pieces, it renders the majority of Odyssey games unplayable. As it stands, I don't own an Odyssey, and it's highly unlikely I ever will due to living in Australia. And I suspect finding the console would be the easy part - I shudder to think of how hard it would be to find board game components and overlays in a respectable condition. There are alternative methods to obtaining the board game components, which I will discuss at the end of the library overview.

That being said, I'm still going to utilise OdySim for game images, as it's the best method for capturing game screenshots I have. For games not on OdySim, I turned to Odyssey Now, a website dedicated to preserving the Odyssey. I also rely heavily on their gameplay videos for understanding some of these games, and they can get quite complicated.

The Odyssey distributes its games in a similar manner to early second generation consoles: the "game cards" essentially work like multi-cart games, in that several games are attached to one card. For example, card 2 plays four games: Ski, Simon Says, Fun Zoo and Percepts. A couple of the cards only have one game - but - a couple of games use multiple cards. Just to make things that little bit more complicated. For an extra piece of trivia, there are 12 Game Cards, but Game Card 11 was never used in an officially released game.

There's also differences in the games available for the US and international releases. At launch in the US, the Odyssey came with 12 games, whereas it only had 10 for the international launch. 11 games were exclusive to the US, while only one was an international exclusive (Soccer). That's all the additional information, so let's have a look at the games. I'll be looking at them in order of release according to the US chronology.

Analogic (Game Card 3)

What am I looking at??

Starting with a complicated one. Analogic, according to the Odyssey manual is a game about...

"establish[ing] interstellar contact by activating their light beam transceivers."

Rightio. I assume kids in the 70s had great imaginations. To translate, this is a two player game, where one player begins on "Planet ODD," (bottom-right corner of the grid) and the other on "Planet EVEN" (top-left corner.) The objective of each player is to arrive at the opposite planet first by moving across the grid. The movement rules are as follows:

• A coin toss determines who goes first.
• Movement is one square at a time.
• For the first move, the player starting on Planet ODD can only move to an adjacent odd-numbered square.
• Vice versa, the player starting at Planet EVEN can only move an adjacent even-numbered square as the first move.

Sounds simple enough, but then things start to get complicated...

• For every move after the first move, maths is required. To sum up the manual, each player can only move to a square that, when added to the previous move, makes a number matching the player's starting planet. So, if ODD moved first, he has to move to 3. EVEN, then, has to move to 5, because 3 + 5 = 8.
• But wait, that's not all! You know how I mentioned the whole "light beam transceiver" thing? Well, what that means is that you're basically also playing a game of Table Tennis while all of this is going on. The small spot, used as the ball in most sports games, is used here, and it must be perpetually bounced between both players. You use the controller's english dial to adjust the trajectory of the ball. If either player misses, they must go back a move. The ball can be ignored once players are 3 vertical columns apart. Getting lost yet?
• There's still more! For the player who misses the ball ("interstellar beam," as the manual calls it) also lets their opponent take a "Diagonal Chip" which allows a single diagonal move. This is the only way you can move diagonally through the game board, by using one of these chips.
• A Diagonal Chip can also be acquired by touching one of the planets in the middle of the screen ("Planetary Belt," the game calls it.)

I needed to rely heavily on Odyssey Now's gameplay video to understand what on earth was going on here. The Odyssey's manual often doesn't do a great job of explaining the games. Honestly, it seemed like a simple enough, arithmetic based board game at first, until the whole "light beam" nonsense was shoehorned in. That mechanic feels very forced, like Analogic wasn't "video game-y" enough for Magnavox, so something else ought to be added.

Cat & Mouse (Game Card 4)

Tom & Jerry this ain't.

This is a much simpler maze chase game. It's kind of like a 2-player Pac-Man (or Atari's Gotcha, for a temporally closer equivalent.) One player is the mouse, the other the cat. The cat must catch the mouse before the mouse gets to his "Mouse House," being the blue square in the bottom-right corner. Simple, eh?

Players can't touch any of the blue squares (except for the mouse and his "mouse house") or they have to go back to their starting position, indicated by the cat and mouse pictures on the overlay.

You might be asking what the numbers on the edge of the screen are for? They're actually for scoring. Cat & Mouse determines a winner based on a point system. The mouse player scores points based on where he gets caught on the grid. You'd take the two numbers assigned to that co-ordinate, and add them to get the mouse's points for that round. The game doesn't specify, but I assume the mouse player gets maximum points (25) if they get to the mouse house.

Each player gets 3 rounds playing as the mouse, and whoever has the highest total number of points wins. I can see this one being decent fun.

Football (Game Card 3 & 4)

This is for touchdown-bowl, or whatever they call it?

Hoo boy. Time for not-Football. We call it American Football or Grid-Iron here Down Under, for reference. I already don't understand this sport, so in lieu of explaining a game I don't understand based on a sport I don't understand, I'll defer to Odyssey Now's video. They do a great job of showcasing the game. All I'll say is that it has six pages of the manual dedicated to it. Most other games have one or two pages at most. This is also one of only three Odyssey games to use more than one game card, which are alternated between depending on the type of play being executed. 

It's also basically a full-on board game, complete with a physical game board, tokens, and six decks of cards. Odyssey Now's video describes Football as "One of the most difficult-to-learn video games of all time, it was and is rarely played." Good grief, not exactly a ringing endorsement. The incorporation of the Odyssey is minimal, but it does have some purpose for passing and running plays. Still, it's not entirely needed to play Football.

Haunted House (Game Card 4)

Spoopy.

It's a horror game! Maybe. Probably not, actually. It's an interesting concept, this one. One player plays as the Detective, who is searching the haunted house for a secret treasure, while the other player acts as a ghost, who seems to both help and impede the detective. This one also uses cards, which represent clues for the detective to gather while exploring the mansion. There's a specific order they must be collected in, too.

The player playing as the ghost chooses a spot in the house to hide himself also, and if the detective gets too close, he says "Boo!" and the detective loses half his clue cards. The clue cards the detective has collected upon finding the secret treasure are his points for that round. The players then swap roles, and whoever has the most clue cards at the end of that round wins.

Haunted House is a fairly creative game for the Odyssey that uses the console in a different way to how one might expect, which I certainly appreciate.

Hockey (Game Card 3)

That's Ice Hockey, thank you!

This one's surprisingly simple, and has no board game elements. I don't know the rules of Ice Hockey, so I have no idea if this game tries to stick to them. At it's core, it's Table Tennis with extra steps and rules. Have to be in your offensive half before you can score, various out of bounds rules, etc., etc.

Roulette (Game Card 6)

In the centre appears to be a Poke Ball? A Cherish Ball, maybe?

I bet the guy who made the text-based Roulette would be so jealous. Predictably, this game has plenty of physical components - chips, fake money and a game board where you place your bets.

To actually "spin" the wheel is a strange process. The Odyssey isn't actually capable of making the white spot move in a circular motion automatically, so a different approach was implemented. One player basically just sets all the controller dials into random positions, hits the reset button to launch the ball and see where it lands. There's not much to say here - Roulette is Roulette.

Simon Says (Game Card 2)

Are we sure this isn't the horror game?

Just a video game implementation of that classic children's game. There's also cards, which determine where to place your spot. Otherwise it's classic Simon Says. Ralph Baer would eventually go on to create one of the most famous versions of Simon Says in the electronic toy simply know as Simon. There's another bit of extra trivia for you.

Ski (Game Card 2)

Why are there Triforces on the mountains?

Here we have one of the few single-player games for the Odyssey. Ski is rather self-explanatory. There are different tracks you can choose to ski down, and the aim is to keep your spot on the track. Score can be kept track of either with points, time, or distance. You receive point or time penalties for going off course, hitting trees, gates or mountains. Distance scoring just has you ski until you go off course. You can either play time trials by yourself, or play with others to see who can ski the best.

States (Game Card 6)

Probably what the US would've looked like if the Dems had won.

Quiz time! This game is designed to test knowledge of United States geography. It uses that randomness design from Roulette to have the spot land on random states, and whoever is the round's "challenger" has to identify the state(s). If they do so correctly, they claim the state(s), but other player can challenge them to take states away. These challenges take the forms of trivia questions about that state.

The Great Lakes are also included as an extra challenge, and allow players to take a free state if they can identify the lake correctly. I'd be rather clueless playing this game. A version with Australian states would be far less exciting.

Submarine (Game Card 5)

It's just a matter of mind 'til we're in safe ports~

The Odyssey's attempt at a 2-player fixed shooter. One player controls the submarine (left of screen), while the other player controls the convoy of ships (top right.) It's the convoy player's goal to traverse the overly convoluted track and get their ships to safe port in the bottom left of the screen. All the while, the submarine player is shooting torpedoes, trying to sink the convoy. If a ship goes off course, it's considered lost to sea mines.

Each player takes 3 rounds as submarine and convoy, and whoever sinks the most ships overall wins. No dice, no cards, no tokens, just pure video game.

Table Tennis (Game Card 1)

Look familiar?

Well, here it is. The Odyssey's most iconic game - and also its simplest. This is the game that Nolan Bushnell saw and played at that fateful Odyssey demo, taking what he saw back to his newly-founded Atari and turning it into Pong.

Table Tennis really is just like Pong in many ways. There are differences, but the core is identical. The main difference is Table Tennis' "English" option, which allows players to curve the ball after hitting it.

Tennis (Game Card 3)

This is real tennis.

The last of the US launch titles. Apparently having just Table Tennis wasn't enough, and we needed real Tennis, too. It follows most of the rules of Tennis, including needing to have your serve land in the correct part of the field, and the scoring system. Apart from that, it plays just like Table Tennis. This one seems redundant.

So that's all 12 of the launch titles. A further 12 games were released in 1972, bringing us to a total of 24 games for 1972. These games were released in bundles, a bundle of 6, and a bundle of 4 with the light gun. Two games were special standalone cases, which I'll discuss as they come up.

Baseball (Game Card 3)

Overlay courtesy of OdysseyNow.com

Baseball is one of the few games unavailable for OdySim. It also falls into the exceedingly complicated category. You're even calculating your players' batting averages with dice rolls for crying out loud... and they can change during the course of a match. Don't get me wrong, I like detail and complex systems in my games, but I think this is pushing the boat out too far for the technology of 1972. 

All the Odyssey itself is used for in Baseball is a weird adaptation of pitching and hitting the ball. I don't get it. 90% of this game is board game.

Dogfight! (Game Card 9)

Never bring a gun to a plane fight... or something like that.

Dogfight! is one of the 4 games included in the Shooting Pack. One player assumes the role of the Red Baron (on-screen player), while the other is the "World War 1 Air Ace who blasts planes with his Electronic Rifle." I'm not sure that's how anti-aircraft combat works, Ralph...

The Red Baron player goes through the course three times, then the players swap roles. Whoever scores the most hits in the shooting role across the three rounds wins. There's no automatic scoring system, it all has to done manually. Hope your friends are honest.

Fun Zoo (Game Card 2)

Now I just want to play Zoo Tycoon...

A sort of educational game that's also similar in gameplay to Simon Says. Typically played with 3 players, with two players aiming to race to the correct animal on the card pulled by the third player. Meant to test kids on their animal (or food) identification ability. Whoever gets to the correct animal first wins that card, and whoever has the most cards at the end of the game wins.

Handball (Game Card 8)

Did you mean Squash?

This is... not the type of Handball I'm familiar with. I thought it was a team sport? This looks a lot more like Squash to me. Functionally, it plays exactly like Squash, too. Another of the no-nonsense, simple games available for the Odyssey.

Invasion (Game Card 4, 5 and 6)

Why is it we're never learning from all the mistakes we ever made~

Oh boy, this is the game I was dreading getting to. It's a monster, using three game cards - the only Odyssey game to do so. Odyssey Now's playthrough of it is 90 minutes long. Who thought this was a good idea? 

Invasion is a very ambitious strategy game, involving up to 4 players locked in a land and sea war, trying to invade and take control of each others' castles. It somewhat reminds me of Risk at first glance (even one of the guys in the Odyssey Now video mentions it being like Risk.) Players claim territories, fight different types of battles, get loot that they can spend on reinforcements... the boat that was pushed out with Baseball is fully in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at this point.

The video game component of Invasion is bizarre to say the least. All battles are fought on-screen through differing modes of gameplay. Direct attacks have you do a weird spinoff of a Soccer penalty shootout, and internal attacks are this memory game where the attacker's spot is turned off and they have to guesstimate where to move it... it doesn't make much sense and like Analogic, feels forced. It's like the game's designers came up with the entire board game concept first, and only then thought about how to incorporate the Odyssey into it. It isn't built for this type of game, and it shows. Invasion works fine enough as a standalone board game.

Percepts (Game Card 2)

Looks like an Atari 2600 game.

Percepts is a unique game in the Odyssey catalogue. It wasn't sold in stores - it could only be ordered by mail, specifically by filling out the "CONSUMER REGISTRATION and PRODUCT INFORMATION CARD" that came with every Odyssey system at launch. Filling out that card and mailing it to Magnavox would get you this game for no additional cost.

Gameplay wise, it's basically another variant of Simon Says and Fun Zoo, just this time with symbols and patterns. Physical cards are laid out in the same form as the overlay, and another deck is used to choose the target card. For a symbols game, one player get 30 seconds to look at how the cards are laid out before they're flipped face down. Then the other player will pull a card from the other deck, declare what symbol was on it, and the memorising player needs to remember where that symbol was. Each player does this once, and whoever gets the most correct wins.

The patterns version of the game is a race more akin to Simon Says and Fun Zoo. The cards are laid out the same way to start, but focus is on the patterns. Both players then take turns pulling cards from the other deck, try to locate it, and race to be the first one to the corresponding spot on-screen. They also must stay on the red zone during the race. Whoever gets first to the most cards at the end wins.

Prehistoric Safari (Game Card 9)

It's the Land Before Time. Get yer shotgun ready...

You know what's fun? Shooting dinosaurs. That must've been the thought process for whoever came up with Prehistoric Safari. According to the manual,

"Your Time Machine has landed in 1,000,000 B.C... Most of your ammunition has fallen into a volcano and you only have 15 bullets left!"

Uhh... okay? I don't know how one manages to lose most of their ammo in a volcano. And where did we get a Tardis from? Also, this is highly inaccurate according to the geological timetable... Which I would care more about if I believed it were true.

Just to make things even weirder, the animals, which are very clearly dinosaurs in the overlay are, according to the manual, in fact not dinosaurs. They are "Flying Lizards," "Sawbacks," "Leatherbacks," "Swamp Monsters," and "Jungletails." Make of that what you will.

The game itself is a simple shooting game. One player moves the on-screen spot around, lighting up the not-dinosaurs, while the shooter tries to hit as many as possible in 15 shots. Each creature is worth a set amount of points. Roles are then reversed, and whoever scores the most points wins.

Shooting Gallery (Game Card 10)

Roll up, roll up! To the Magnavox Midway!

The only game to use Card 10. It is what it says on the tin - an old-fashioned shooting gallery. One player sets up the white spots in such a way that the small one bounces between them behind each row of objects. The shooter has a few goes at trying to shoot the small spot before moving down a row of objects. Each player goes through all the rows of objects, and whoever scores the most points at the end wins.

Shootout! (Game Card 9)

Yee-haw!

Shootout! is the last of the light gun games for the Odyssey. This one takes the form of a wild-west gun fight, in which one player is the "Sheriff" - the shooter - while the other assumes the role of "The Dalton Gang." The Dalton Gang player runs through the overlay scenery in a specific order, stopping at each window long enough to say "You'll never get me, sheriff!" before moving on to the next. The aim is for the Sheriff to shoot the Dalton Gang player whenever they stop. Each player does this once, and whoever scores the most kills wins. These gun games are all pretty similar, at the end of the day.

Soccer (Game Card 3 and 5)

Apparently Americans don't like soccer. I'm with them.

Soccer is the other game not included in either game pack. In fact, Soccer is exclusive to international releases of the Odyssey. It's another of the games to use multiple game cards (Wikipedia is wrong about this - what a surprise.) Curiously, unlike the other multi-card games, Soccer has no board game elements.

The manual is confusing on this one. The game seems to be about getting the ball past your opponent, moving down successive offensive lines until you get to the goal line and can shoot for goal. Throw-ins, free kicks and an "eleven metre kick" are also included as mechanics, because they wanted to be realistic, apparently. Good luck with that, I say.

Volleyball (Game Card 7)

I've played Volleyball IRL. It's fun - an underrated sport.

The Odyssey's Volleyball is more-or-less a Table Tennis variant, but with the solid net in the middle you have to get the ball over. It tries to replicate serving, with each point requiring both players to begin in the serving position indicated by the white boxes at the edges of the overlay.

Volleyball requires the player to use their horizontal control and english control to hit and curve the ball over the net in a way that somewhat resembles real volleyball. Having played real volleyball myself, I can say that this is actually a decent take on the sport, and looks like it might be fun.

Wipeout (Game Card 5)

Any similarities to the Wipeout franchise are purely coincidental.

The last game for 1972, Wipeout is another of the Odyssey's board game hybrids. This time, it's a racing game for 2 - 4 players. 

For the setup, one of the controls is set up to be a timer, and then each player goes through the course on the overlay. Each time, they start with 30 points, and points are deducted for each time the timer makes a full trip across the screen, making contact with the timer, or going off course. Once all penalties are deducted, the player is left with their points for the round.

These points are then translated into spaces to move on a physical game board, which includes no-passing zones, where another player cannot overtake if someone else is already in that zone, and pit stops, which have the player take a card from the Pit Stop card deck. These cards have various different effects.

Apparently this was one of the more popular Odyssey games. I can see why to a degree. To me, it seems like one of the only games for the system that mixes the video and board game elements properly, so that neither are superfluous. You could alternatively not even used the board game component, and just do time trials with your friends. I can give it props for some smart design.

There were four additional games released for the Odyssey in 1973, these being the last developed for the system before its discontinuation in 1975.

Basketball (Game Card 8)

Weirdest looking Basketball court I've ever seen.

The final sports game for the Odyssey, completing the full complement of North American sports. It's another weird one that tries to adapt the sport's real life rules when it probably shouldn't be.

The game begins with a centre bounce, then dribbling is done horizontally against the wall on the left of the screen, and the player needs to maneuver the ball to their offensive half. Any time the ball goes near the basket, it's considered a shot at goal. If the ball lights the centre basket, it's considered a  goal for 2 points. First to 24 points wins.

It tries to do out of bounds, jump balls and fouls, which I think is trying a bit too much for the limitations of the technology. Later Basketball games for arcade and 2nd gen consoles learn from this.

Brain Wave (Game Card 3)

In my stream of consciousness, I could not come up with a witty caption.

Brain Wave is also unavailable for OdySim. Curiously, this (and all the 1973 games) appears to have been in development in 1971, based on Baer's information. Brain Wave was originally named Brain Drain during development, it seems.

Brain Wave is all about completing what the game calls "Trains of Thought." I'm trying so hard right now to not make any Dream Theater references... It's another one of these hybrid games that's overly complicated. At least the manual makes it out like that, it's not as complicated as it seems once you see the game in action.

The first phase of the game is to do "Brain Wave battles" on screen. One player is the attacker, the other the defender. The defender rolls dice to move to a position on the maze where the attacker is less likely to hit them. The attacker then sets up their controller to a position where they think it'll hit the defender (I don't think the english control is allowed for curving the ball.)

If the attacker hits the defender, they earn "Brain Power Points" relative to the defender's position on the grid (x + y co-ordinate, same as Cat & Mouse.) If the attacker misses, his turn is over and the defender earns 2 points. This goes back and forth, all the while the players can, on their turn, exchange their points for "thought tiles," costing 3 points apiece. You have to spend these when you can as you can only have a maximum of 2 points saved up at the end of your turn. 

These "thought tiles" remind me of the pipe games where you have to connect two ends of a pipe with differently shaped pipe pieces before water or oil gushes into them. That's essentially the goal of the game - complete your pipe before your opponent. Both players' trains start in the opposing bottom corners, and their finishes are in the opposite top corners (bottom left goes to top right, and vice versa.)

Interplanetary Voyage (Game Card 12)

Intergalactic.

The only game to use Card 12, which featured a "special inertia effect," according to Odyssey Now. Interplanetary Voyage is a 2-in-1 game, as it includes the titular game and also a trivia game called University of the Solar System. This one gets the award for coolest Odyssey game names.

Interplanetary Voyage's objective is for 2 - 4 players to complete missions spelled out on the deck of mission cards (yes, this is another complicated hybrid game.) The winner of the game is whoever completes the requisite number of missions first (this number changes depending on the number of players.) The missions revolve around moving your spaceship (white square) over to one of the planets without running into the sun.

The spaceship is controlled by "rocket blasts" which require flipping (flicking the dials of) the horizontal and vertical controls. It's not as simple as just moving the ship over, however. There are rules dictating the path you must travel. The solar system is split into four quadrants. If the target planet is in the same quadrant your ship starts in, you must pass through all three of the other quadrants before you can complete the mission. Can't have it be too easy.

If you run into the sun, your turn is over and you have to forfeit either a completed mission card or two "Power Chips." These chips are used to troll your opposition, basically. You can spend one to set a "force field" around the planet you believe is the target planet. If the player controlling the ship hits the force field, the player pays the one who set the force field with either a completed mission card or two Power Chips. The ship is considered safe if it's only in "orbit" (the dotted line around each planet) and not touching the planet. 

There's also a game board which is used to mark each player's location at the end of their turn if they used all their rocket blasts that turn but didn't complete the mission. There's a few more rules, but that's the basic gist of Interplanetary Voyage. The video game element is integral to the game, so I think it's well designed in that regard.

As for University of the Solar System, this one really could do without the video game element. The objective is to have 18 correctly answered "Knowledge Cards" in your possession, resulting in the earning of a "PhD in Cosmology." If only it were that easy in real life. 

The board game component is easy enough to understand - players take turns answering questions from the deck. They answer by placing their token on the part of the board they think is the correct answer. The player whose turn it is goes first, and then the other players can place their tokens elsewhere if they think the first player's answer is wrong (this is optional, by the way.) Only one token can be placed at each location.

Here's where things get convoluted. There must be a video game element forced into this somehow, right? On screen, one of the white squares must be put on the first player's answer. Then, from their assigned Space Station (these are determined by token colour), they use the other controller, having 2 boosts to hit the designated planet. If they're successful, the answer of the question can be revealed, and whoever was correct gets the card. If the other players have cards and guessed incorrectly, then they give a card to the correct guesser. If they have no cards, they lose their next turn.

I'm not sure what happens if you miss the target. The manual doesn't explicitly say. It seems like what happens is that the player's turn simply ends, and they come back to that question on their next turn. You can also go for two cards in one turn if you hit the target in one boost.

Let's be honest - the video game aspect of University of the Solar System is completely superfluous. If you took it out, the board game would play out in almost the exact same way.

W.I.N. (Game Card 4)

A game devised by the mad professor Winfred. I don't know, the manual doesn't explain these things!

The final game released for the Odyssey. W.I.N. (Word, Image, Number) is a game where the objective is to... win. Wow. Innovative gameplay, only on Odyssey.

But seriously, the actual objective is card collecting again. You must collect five cards - two numbers, two words, one image - and arrange them to spell out WIN horizontally and vertically simultaneously. For visual reference, it'd look like this:

W

W I N

N

At the start of the game, each player takes one of the cards - from whichever group they choose. From there, the players take turns. Each player declares the part of the board they're aiming for first. Then, the reset is hit on the controller to make the white square at the start position disappear. Then the player moves the invisible square to where they think the part is. Reset is hit again to reveal the location of the square. If the square is in their nominated part, they get to mark it on their slate, but nobody else can. If it lands on any other part, then anyone can mark off that part if they need it. If the square lands off-screen, then the player tries again. This keeps going until someone completes their card.

Once a card is completed, a players erases their slate and picks a new card. This gameplay loop continues until someone completes all five of their cards. A tiebreaker measure is in place in case two people complete their last card simultaneously. They draw a sixth card, and whoever completes that first wins.

Actually a fairly simple game, despite it looking complicated on the surface.

And that's all the games released for the Odyssey. It's a surprisingly varied library for only 28 games, although it is often too ambitious for its own good. I think that's it's downfall for me - it tried to do too much with extremely limited technology. The games that are pure video game are mostly simple and work quite well, but the hybrid ones often push much too far beyond the limitations of the Odyssey.

Now, I'd be wrapping up the article right about now, but...

Ski Festival (Game Card 6)

Winter Games.

Surprise! There's actually one more game we need to discuss. This is Ski Festival - a lost Odyssey game from 1973. It was designed for what was planned to be a "lite" version of the Odyssey, which ended up being scrapped. Odyssey Now worked at recreating the game based on the single extant screenshot, turning it into a homebrew title.

Ski Festival is a rare single-player game featuring four different Ski events - Downhill, Cross Country, Slalom and Ski Jump. Downhill sees you trying to follow a route down the mountain as fast as possible. Cross Country has you try to go through as many flags as you can, while aiming to stop in a specific section of the map in an allotted time. Slalom has you hitting every flag in order while avoiding obstacles. Finally, Ski Jump has you run down the ski ramp, letting go of the controls just as your square reaches the end of the ramp, letting the square drift; you are scored based on where it stops.

Ski Festival is the only unreleased game we know about from the Odyssey's lifetime. There is also a solid little homebrew collection, developed both by Odyssey Now and others. I won't cover these games here - you can discover them for yourself at Odyssey Now's website.

Now we're done with the game library. I promise.

Legacy

The final question remains - what is the legacy of the Magnavox Odyssey? As mentioned earlier, the Odyssey was discontinued in 1975 - but not without leaving a significant lineage. As mentioned earlier Magnavox wanted to produce cheaper versions of the Odyssey, which resulted in their partnership with Texas Instrument, resulting in the Odyssey 100 and 200. Several more numbered Odyssey consoles (100 - 500 and 2000 - 5000) were developed after this. There's about a dozen of these, most of them being iterative upgrades of the last, and mainly focusing on the simpler Odyssey games, like Table Tennis and Hockey. These would release progressively over 1975 - 1977. 

In 1978, a proper sequel console would be launched - the Magnavox Odyssey 2. Unlike all previous Odyssey series consoles, this second generation console used the new standard tech of microprocessors and interchangeable ROM cartridges, instead of the discrete components used in first generation consoles. The Odyssey 2 would see the end of Magnavox's involvement in the video game industry. Sort of. 

Magnavox had been acquired by Dutch electronics company Philips back in 1974, meaning that Magnavox's consoles were also seeing releases as Philips consoles in Europe. Philips also had its own regional variant of the Odyssey 2, known as the VideoPac G7000. That received a sequel console, the VideoPac+ G7400. This was planned to have a US release as the Odyssey 3 Command Center, but that never eventuated, most likely due to the video game crash happening around the same time. After this failed plan, the Odyssey name was buried for good.

The more infamous part of the Odyssey's legacy is the series of lawsuits that spawned from it, most notably the suits against Atari and Nintendo. Yes, Nintendo got involved in Magnavox's legal shenanigans.

Atari was sued, along with a handful of other companies in 1976 for infringing on Baer and Rusch's patents. This one was fair enough, as Nolan Bushnell has seen and played the Odyssey's Table Tennis, and effectively admitted to getting the idea for Pong from there. Atari settled that lawsuit, and a license was set up for Magnavox to receive royalties on Atari (and others') arcade machines. Magnavox's part of the deal was that they'd go after any of Atari's competitors.

As a result, Magnavox would proceed to sue the living daylights out of anyone else who made video games, up until the late 1990s. Magnavox was well out of the business by then, and even their patents had expired. Mattel was first after Atari, and then Activision, who didn't even make arcade games or consoles. Somehow it must've been to do with game cartridges or some other nonsense. Magnavox won all of these cases, by the way.

And then comes Nintendo. This one was different. Nintendo actually came after Magnavox, claiming that their patents were invalidated by the recent discovery of Tennis for Two. That game's creator, William Higinbotham, was even called to testify for Nintendo. It looked pretty clear that Tennis for Two was a video game, and it looked a whole lot like Table Tennis and Pong. Nintendo had a point.

And you know what happened? They lost. Nintendo lost the case. And, for reference, Magnavox was out the industry by the time this case came around in 1985 - the Odyssey 2 was killed off in 1984. Want to know why Nintendo lost the case? Well, according to Baer, Tennis for Two,

"...had nothing to do with playing games on the screen of a raster scan device such as a home TV set or monitor... a fun demonstration of how computers could handle and display ballistic motions and the Courts saw it that way."

There you go. It wasn't played on a TV, so therefore not a video game. Give us our money. Baer is very nasty towards Tennis for Two in his recollection of the case, and the same goes for his perspectives on Spacewar!, and even OXO - the 1952 EDSAC game. His mindset seemed to be that if the courts said it, it must be true. Baer goes so far as to accuse people of revisionism if they recognise anything or anyone other than him as the inventor of video games. The irony in the matter is that he's the one engaging in revisionism.

Magnavox also went after Sega, and into the 90s - 1997 to be precise - against Data East and Taito. The fact that Magnavox was still doing this long after exiting the video game industry, after such technological developments that would make the original patents unrecognisable, and even after those patents had expired truly makes my blood boil. Baer is all sunshine and rainbows in his recollection, and why wouldn't he be - he got the recognition he so desperately desired, and lots of cash to go along with it. At least, that how he comes across in the book. This whole lawsuit saga truly leaves a black stain on the Odyssey's legacy, and its creator's legacy.

As for Baer, his contributions to the world of electronic games extends beyond video games. He was also co-inventor of the electronic memory game Simon. This game was a massive hit, spawning a mass amount of sequels, clones, and even more dodgy lawsuits. Simon itself was based on Atari's Touch Me, which Atari would then do a handheld version of after Simon's release. In a huge bout of irony, Atari would be the ones suing Baer. Slight bit of poetic justice, there. I couldn't find any information on the result of this case, unfortunately.

Baer would go on to receive the US National Medal of Technology for his contributions in 2006, presented to him by President George W. Bush himself. In 2014, Baer would pass away, aged 92. His legacy as the inventor of home video games will always stand, and we can be thankful to him for launching a part of the industry that we as gamers so love today. 

The Odyssey itself has a small, yet dedicated fanbase today that create homebrew game for the system. I've mentioned Odyssey Now quite a lot through the article, and to go into a bit more detail, that was a project created back in 2019 at the University of Pittsburgh by Dr. Zachary Horton. He was concerned that the Odyssey was heavily misrepresented online, and wanted to bring the spotlight back on to the misunderstood console. It's honestly a pretty cool project, and, as previously mentioned, has gameplay videos on YouTube for every Odyssey game, including the unreleased Ski Festival, and a few homebrew games he and his team came up with. Worth checking out if you've gained some interest in the Odyssey from this article.

We've finally reached the end of this first console overview. This was an unexpectedly large project to undertake - and I've learned a lot about not just the history of video games, but a bit more about my work process, which will hopefully lead to better articles in the future. I've also learned how much I dislike Magnavox as a company and Ralph Baer as a person. I can respect their contributions, but it doesn't mean I have to like them.

So, what did you think? I would greatly appreciate comments on this type of article. Did you enjoy it? Would you like to see this become a regular series? What do you think of the Odyssey? Was I too harsh on Ralph Baer? Any and all feedback is welcome - provided it's written in a respectful manner, of course.

If I were to continue this series, the next one would be on the PLATO computer system. I'd be very excited to do an article on that, as PLATO was light years ahead of its time. It also had the first RPGs - a genre very near and dear to my heart.