Magnavox Odyssey 2

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(Redirected from
Magnavox Odyssey²
)
"Odyssey 2" redirects here. For the science fiction novel, see 2010: Odyssey Two. For other uses, see Odyssey II.

Magnavox Odyssey 2
Magnavox Odyssey 2 and its two wired joystick–based game controllers
Also known as
Developer
Philips Odyssey 2100
SuccessorPhilips Videopac+ G7400

The Magnavox Odyssey 2 (stylized as Magnavox Odyssey²), also known as Philips Odyssey 2, is a

video game market crash, along with Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Intellivision and ColecoVision
.

In the early

1978, Magnavox, now a subsidiary of North American Philips
, decided to release an all-new successor, Odyssey 2.

In 2009, the video game website IGN named the Odyssey 2 the 21st greatest video game console, out of its list of 25.[6]

Design

The Videopac G7200, unlike Videopac G7000, had a 9" (23 cm) black & white display built in.

The original

alphanumeric membrane keyboard, which was to be used for educational games, selecting options, or programming (Magnavox released a cartridge called Computer Intro! with the intent of teaching simple computer programming
).

The Odyssey 2 used the standard

1980s: the original console had a moderately sized silver controller, held in one hand, with a square housing for its eight-direction stick that was manipulated with the other hand. Later releases had a similar black controller, with an 8-pointed star-shaped housing for its eight-direction joystick. In the upper corner of the joystick was a single 'Action' button, silver on the original controllers and red on the black controllers. The games, graphics and packaging were designed by Ron Bradford and Steve Lehner.[7]

During the time of Odyssey 2's manufacturing, some came with controllers that could be plugged and unplugged from the back of the unit via their DB9 connector, while others had their controllers hardwired into the rear of the base unit itself.

One of the strongest points of the system was its speech synthesis unit, which was released as an add-on for speech, music, and sound effects enhancement. The area that the Odyssey 2 may be best remembered for was its pioneering fusion of board and video games: The Master Strategy Series. The first game released was Quest for the Rings!, with gameplay somewhat similar to Dungeons & Dragons, and a storyline reminiscent of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Later, two other games were released in this series, Conquest of the World and The Great Wall Street Fortune Hunt, each with its own gameboard.

Its graphics and few color choices, compared to its biggest competitors at the time—the Atari 2600, Mattel's Intellivision and the Bally Astrocade—were its "weakest point".[8] Of these systems, the Odyssey 2 was listed by Jeff Rovin as being the third in total of sales, and one of the seven major video game suppliers.

Market life

United States

The console sold moderately well in the U.S. Prior to the nationwide release of the

1982
, though a distant third behind the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision.

To sell would-be customers on its resemblance to a home computer, the Odyssey 2 was marketed with phrases such as "The Ultimate Computer Video Game System", "Sync-Sound Action", "True-Reality Synthesization", "On-Screen Digital Readouts" and "a serious educational tool" on the packaging for the console and its game cartridges. All games, aside from Showdown in 2100 AD, produced by Magnavox/Philips ended with an exclamation point, such as K.C. Munchkin! and Killer Bees!.[10]

No

third-party game appeared for the Odyssey 2 in the United States until Imagic's Demon Attack in 1983.[11] The lack of third-party support kept the number of new games very limited, but the success of the Philips Videopac G7000 overseas led to two other companies producing games for it: Parker Brothers released Popeye, Frogger, Q*bert and Super Cobra, while Imagic also released Atlantis
.

Europe

European models had no power button, and black action buttons

In

monitor. Videopac game cartridges are mostly compatible with American Odyssey 2 units, although some games have color differences and a few are completely incompatible, such as Frogger
on the European console, being unable to show the second half of the playing field, and Chess on the American model, as the extra hardware module could not work with the console. A number of additional games were released in Europe that never came out in the U.S.

Brazil

In Brazil, the console was released simply as Philips Odyssey (since the original Odyssey had had only a limited release by a local company, Planil Comércio, under license[12]). The Odyssey 2 became much more popular in Brazil than it ever was in the U.S.;[13] tournaments were even held for popular games like K.C.'s Krazy Chase! (Come-Come! in Brazil). Titles of games were translated into Portuguese, sometimes creating a new story, like Pick-axe Pete!, that became Didi na Mina Encantada! (Didi in the Enchanted Mine) referring to Renato Aragão's comedy character, and was one of the most famous Odyssey games in Brazil.

Japan

The Odyssey 2 was released in Japan in December 1982 by Kōton Trading Toitarii Enterprise (コートン・トレーディング・トイタリー・エンタープライズ, a division of DINGU company) under the name オデッセイ２ (odessei2). "Japanese" versions of the Odyssey 2 and its games consisted of the American boxes with katakana stickers on them and cheaply printed black-and-white Japanese manuals. The initial price for the console was ¥49,800, which is approximately US$200 (equivalent to about $630 in 2023). It was apparently not very successful; Japanese Odyssey 2 items are now very difficult to find.

Games

Main article:
List of Odyssey2 games

Technical specifications

  • CPU
  • Memory:
  • Video:
    • Intel 8244 (NTSC) or 8245 (PAL)
      custom IC
    • 160×200 resolution (NTSC)
    • 16-color fixed palette (8 basic colors - black, blue, green, cyan, red, magenta, yellow and white - with a half-brightness variation (4-bit RGBI)); sprites may only use 8 of these colors
    • 4 8×8 single-color user-defined sprites; each sprite's color may be set independently
    • 12 8×8 single-color characters; must be one of the 64 shapes built into the ROM BIOS; can be freely positioned like sprites, but cannot overlap each other; each character's color may be set independently
    • 4 quad characters; groups of four characters displayed in a row
    • 9×8 background grid; dots, lines, or solid blocks
  • Audio:
    • Intel 8244/8245 custom IC
    • mono
    • 24-bit shift register, clockable at 2 frequencies
    • noise generator
    • NOTE: There is only one 8244/8245 chip in the system, which performs both audio and video functions.
  • Input:
    • Two 8-way, one-button, digital joysticks. In the first production runs of the Magnavox Odyssey and the Philips 7000, these were removable and replaceable; in later models, they were permanently attached to the console.
    • QWERTY-layout membrane keyboard
  • Output:
  • Media:
    • ROM cartridges, typically 2 KB, 4 KB, or 8 KB in size.
Videopac with chess module
  • Expansion modules:
    • The Voice: provides speech synthesis and enhanced sound effects. Unlike
      Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games predicted "that eliminates any incentive to buy the $100 voice module".[14]
    • Chess Module: the Odyssey 2 did not have enough memory and computing power for a decent implementation of chess on its own, so the C7010 chess module contained a secondary NSC800 CPU[15] with its own extra memory to run the chess program Gambiet 80[16]
    • Atari 400
      shared the same look in 1979, surprisingly. [The latter was advertised itself: « The affordable home computer that's easy to use even for people who've never used a computer before ».] This expensive module is not to be confused with the cheap cartridge #9: Computer Intro!)

Emulation

An

Mac OS X. O2EM (originally not open source) was created in 1997 by computer programmer
Daniel Boris and further enhanced by André Rodrigues de la Rocha.

The open source multi-platform multi-system emulator MAME has Odyssey 2 support, and is the only emulator to emulate The Voice expansion module without using sound samples.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Memorias de los mejores años de la Feria del Hogar, la tradición que acompañó a los peruanos por décadas | SOMOS". 13 October 2019.
  2. ^ a b c "The Odyssey² Timeline".
  3. ^ Courtesy titles, New Scientist 10 May 1979, Page 445, ...The Phillips G7000 Videopac will be on sale in the UK this summer at around...
  4. ^ "The Odyssey²".
  5. ISBN 3-00-015359-4
    .
  6. ^ "Magnavox Odyssey 2 is number 21". IGN. Retrieved 28 July 2012.
  7. ^ Electronic Game Wizards Archived 8 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  8. Collier Books
    , 1982
  9. ^ "Video Game Timeline". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 102. Ziff Davis. January 1998. p. 120.
  10. ^ William from The Odyssey 2 Homepage. "HYPE!". Retrieved 2 February 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  11. ^ Katz, Arnie; Kunkel, Bill (June 1983). "Programmable Arcade". Electronic Games. pp. 38–42. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
  12. ^ "Bojogá - Odyssey". Bojogá. Museu Bojogá. 5 January 2016.
  13. ^ "Gerações se confrontam em consoles de videogames antigos". O Globo. 3 July 2006.
  14. ^ Goodman, Danny (Spring 1983). "Home Video Games: Video Games Update". Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games. p. 32.
  15. ^ "Videopac C 7010". Retrieved 6 February 2024.
  16. ^ "Schaakcomputers van Luuk Hofman" (PDF). Retrieved 5 February 2024.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Magnavox Odyssey².
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