Odyssey & Odyssey 2
How do you build a better television set?
That was the question before Ralph Baer, an engineer at Loral
Electronics, in the early '50s. One of Baer's ideas was to use the
TV to play some sort of game. Nothing came of it at the time, but
the idea stayed with Baer.
By 1966, Baer was employed by Sanders Associates Inc., a military
electronics firm, and no longer worked with television technology.
Yet somehow the idea of TV games kept returning to him. One day,
while waiting at a New York City bus terminal, he jotted down some
notes. By September he had schematics, and by October, he and fellow
engineer Bob Tremblay had built a working video game involving two
spots on a screen, chasing each other. It was simple, but impressive
enough for Sanders management to authorize and fund the project.
By 1967, the project had matured into the "Brown Box," which played
a variety of games and supported a light rifle. Sanders shopped the
device around, and in 1971 licensed it to Magnavox. The television
manufacturer re-engineered the console, packaged it with some
accessories, and released it in 1972 as the Odyssey. The world's
first home video game was born.
The Odyssey is a sleek, white console with a black veneer. It can
display only rudimentary graphics: two player-controlled squares, a
moving "ball" square, and a vertical line. As a result, nearly all
its games play like Pong. Moreover, the Odyssey cannot keep score,
cannot display color, and produces no sound effects. To compensate,
Magnavox packaged most Odyssey games with translucent plastic
overlays that players fit over their TV screens, providing some
color and aiding in play. Most games also use accessories like dice,
poker chips, play money, and so forth. The console came with six
numbered cards that plugged in to select the different games.
The Odyssey contains no microprocessors, only its internal circuitry
of diodes and transistors. The plug-in cards contain no chips, and
hence no programming code, making them unlike future game
cartridges. Rather, the cards' circuitry interfaces with circuitry
inside the console to reconfigure it, changing the movement and
placement of onscreen objects. Since all the graphics are identical,
multiple games are often played using the same card, only with
different accessories. Most games lack the sophistication even to
enforce their own rules. In maze games, for example, only players'
honor keeps their spots within the paths shown by the overlay.
The Odyssey controls consist of two boxes shaped like cigarette
packs. Each sports a reset button and rotary knobs on both sides.
One knob controls a paddle's vertical movement, another the
horizontal. A third knob adds English to the ball. A light rifle
attachment was separately available. Because the rifle only senses
light sources, simply aiming at a light bulb and pulling the trigger
can register hits.
Odyssey sold in acceptable numbers, moving about 200,000 units by
the time production ceased in 1974. Sales might have been higher,
but ads implied the system would function only on Magnavox-made TV
sets. Also, Magnavox salespeople were not well trained in pushing
the machine. The success Odyssey did enjoy is probably related to
the success of Atari's Pong coin-op, which also debuted in 1972. As
Baer said, "If you wanted the Pong experience at home, there was
only one way to do it: go out and buy an Odyssey machine."
Ironically, Pong may owe its existence to Baer's handiwork. Atari
founder Nolan Bushnell played the Odyssey version of Table Tennis at
a product demonstration in Burlingame, CA, and dreamed up Pong
shortly thereafter. Once Pong came out, Magnavox sued Atari for
copyright infringement and won. However, Atari was able to continue
producing Pong units after paying Magnavox a licensing fee.
Magnavox had patented the concept of a home video game system, and
would bring litigation against several companies entering the
emerging video game market. The courts usually sided with Magnavox,
and the only game companies to prosper were those, like Atari, that
were smart enough to pay licensing fees. Litigation pertaining to
these early days of video gaming was still being pursued as late as
25 years later.
Pong may have kicked the home video game revolution into high gear,
but Odyssey is where it all started. Odyssey may not have had the
renown or popularity of Pong, but it sold well enough to warrant
future consoles in the Odyssey line. Magnavox released several
Odyssey consoles containing built-in games, giving them numerical
suffixes (Odyssey 200, Odyssey 4000, and so on). There was even a
cartridge console, the Odyssey 2, which hit the market in 1978.
As for the home video game industry the console launched, that
odyssey continues with no sign of stopping.
In 1977, Magnavox announced an
exciting new game console as the successor to the Odyssey. Calling
it the Odyssey 2, it would contain 24 games, accommodate four
players, and sell for under 100 dollars.
Unfortunately, with the dedicated game market deteriorating rapidly
in 1977, Magnavox didn't plan to release the console until they took
notice of Atari's successful Video Computer System (VCS). In 1978
Magnavox began making plans to reinvent Odyssey 2 as a programmable
machine. By accepting cartridges, the potential for new games was
unlimited.
However, since the future of the entire video game market was
uncertain, Magnavox nearly canned this incarnation of the Odyssey 2
as well. Luckily, Odyssey inventor Ralph Baer got wind and rushed to
meet with Magnavox management. Baer, who had assisted Coleco with
its successful Telstar game line, was convinced video games had a
future, and armed with Telstar sales figures, convinced Magnavox as
well. The engineers developing the Odyssey 2, who had already hung
black crepe paper on their office walls, were told to go back to
work.
Magnavox was well aware of the uncertainty in the video game market,
but believed personal computers held a bright future. By creating
the Odyssey 2 with its own self-contained, membrane keyboard, the
company was capitalizing on the public's desire for PCs. Magnavox,
by developing a game machine with "the mind of a computer," promised
the keyboard would be the key to educational games and computer
literacy.
The Odyssey 2 is a bulky, black console with shiny silver trim. The
two boxy, self-centering joysticks are responsive in eight
directions, and each has a single, large fire button labeled
"ACTION." The joysticks were detachable on early Odyssey 2 models,
but this design was quickly dropped in favor of hardwired controls,
making them difficult to repair.
Powered by a 1.7KHz Intel 8048 processor, and only 64 bytes of RAM
and 1K ROM, the Odyssey 2 is lacking in graphics power. With lower
resolution than the VCS, most Odyssey 2 graphics consist of
characters built into its ROM, giving virtually all games a similar
appearance. Still, the Odyssey 2 is better at producing text than
other early consoles, and can display up to 16 moving objects with
no screen flicker.
The console suffers from having only one sound channel, severely
limiting its audio. In 1982, North American Philips (who took over
Odyssey 2 distribution after merging with Magnavox) attempted to
compensate for this by releasing The Voice; an attachment that
produces speech in certain games. The Voice came with a
self-contained speaker, producing vocalizations that strike an odd
balance between realism and sounding computerized -- "Darth Vader on
Quaaludes" was how one game magazine at the time described it.
Several Odyssey 2 games are "Multi-Mode," meaning multiple games are
contained on one cartridge. Most of its "fun" games are arcade-style
shooters, typical of its period. There is also a mediocre sports
lineup, one licensed arcade translation (more arcade ports were
released overseas), and a high proportion of educational and
"utility" cartridges. Perhaps Odyssey 2's greatest innovation was
the Master Strategy game series; three cartridges packed with
special game boards and tokens for added complexity and depth.
Although it fared better in Europe and Brazil, Odyssey 2 never
managed to achieve great popularity in the U.S. Still, a fair number
of units were sold, especially in areas Magnavox had strong
distribution. Odyssey 2 enjoyed a popularity surge after the release
of K.C. Munchkin! in 1981 but suffered when the game was banned due
to a copyright infringement suit. In late 1983, Philips discontinued
the Odyssey 2 in the U.S. Plans to follow up the console with an
enhanced, backward-compatible system called the Odyssey 3 Command
Center were scrapped due to the collapsing video game market.
Approximately 50 Odyssey 2 cartridges made it to American store
shelves. Interestingly, about half were programmed by the same man
-- Magnavox engineer Ed Averett. Averett also programmed K.C.
Munchkin!; reportedly it was his favorite game.
— William Cassidy
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