Magnavox Odyssey²

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The Magnavox Odyssey², known in Europe as the Philips Videopac G7000, in Brazil as the Philips Odyssey, and also by many other names, is a video game console released in 1978.

In the early 1970s, Magnavox was an innovator in the home video game industry. They succeeded in bringing the first home video game system to market, the Odyssey, which was quickly followed by a number of later models, each with a few technological improvements. In 1978 Magnavox, now a subsidiary of North American Philips, released the Odyssey², their new second-generation video game console.

1 Features
2 Market life
3 Technical Specifications
4 Emulation
5 See also
6 External links

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Features

The original Odyssey had a number of removable circuit cards that switched between the in-built games, of which there were 10 in Europe and Asia, or 12 in America. The Odyssey² followed in the steps of the Fairchild Channel F and Atari 2600 by being designed to play programmable ROM game cartridges. With this improvement, each game could be a completely unique experience, with its own background graphics, foreground graphics, gameplay, scoring, and music. The potential was enormous, as an unlimited number of games could be individually purchased; a game player could purchase a library of videogames tailored to his or her own interest. Unlike any other system at that time, the Odyssey² included a full alphanumeric membrane keyboard, which was to be used for educational games, selecting options, or programming. (Philips also released a game cartridge with the intent of teaching simple computer programming.)

The Odyssey² was the first home video game console to introduce what was to become the standard joystick design of the 1970s and 80s: a moderately sized black joystick unit, held in one hand, with an eight-direction stick that was manipulated with the other hand. In the upper corner of the joystick was a single 'Action' button.

One of the strongest points of the system was its excellent speech synthesis unit, which was released as an add-on for speech, music, and sound-effects enhancement. The area that the Odyssey² may well be best remembered for was its pioneering fusion of board and video games: The Master Strategy Series. The first game released was the instant classic 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.

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Market life

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United States

The Odyssey² sold moderately well in the US. Even without third-party developers, eventually (by 1983) over a million Odyssey² units were sold in the US alone. For quite some time, Odyssey² fans griped that there was no third-party support, thus keeping the number of new games very limited. Unbeknownst to American gamers, 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 released outstanding versions of their hit games Demon Attack and Atlantis. Finally, in 1983 the two Imagic games were brought to the states; these became strong sellers.

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Europe

In Europe and Brazil, the Odyssey² did very well on the market. In Europe, the console was most widely known as the Philips Videopac G7000, or just the Videopac, although branded variants were released in some areas of Europe under the names Radiola Jet 25, Schneider 7000, and Siera G7000. Philips, as Magnavox's European parent company, used their own name rather than Magnavox's for European marketing. A rare model, the Philips Videopac G7200, was only released in Europe; it had a built-in black-and-white monitor. Videopac game cartridges are mostly compatible with American Odyssey² units, although some games have color differences and a few are completely incompatible. A number of additional games were released in Europe that never came out in the US.

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Brazil

In Brazil, the console was released as the Philips Odyssey; the Magnavox Odyssey was never released in Brazil, so there was no need to specify a number. Odyssey became much more popular in Brazil than it ever was in the US; tournaments were even held for popular games like K.C.'s Krazy Chase! (Come-Come in Brazil).

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Japan

The Odyssey² 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 Odyssey² 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. It was apparently not very successful; Japanese Odyssey² items are now very difficult to find.

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Technical Specifications

CPU
- Intel 8048 8-bit microcontroller running at 1.79 MHz
Memory:
- CPU-internal RAM: 64 bytes (1/16 KB)
- Audio/video RAM: 128 bytes (1/8 KB)
- BIOS ROM: 1024 bytes (1 KB)

Input:
- Two 8-way, one-button, digital joysticks. In the first production runs of the Magnavox Odyssey and the Philips 7000, these were permanently attached to the console; in later models, they were removable and replacable.
- QWERTY-layout membrane keyboard
Output:
- RF Audio/Video connector
Media:
- ROM cartridges, typically 2KB, 4KB, or 8KB in size.

Expansion modules:
- The Voice - provides speech synthesis & enhanced sound effects
- Chess Module - The Odyssey2 didn't have enough memory and computing power for a decent implementation of chess on its own, so the C7010 chess module contained a secondary CPU with its own extra memory to run the chess program.

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Emulation

An open source console emulator for the Odyssey² called O2EM is available. It includes Philips Videopac G7400 emulation among other features. The emulator works on Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, DOS and other platforms.

O2EM, (originally not open source) was created in 1997 by computer programmer Daniel Boris.

The open source multi-platform multi-system emulator MESS has rudimentary Odyssey² support, although many games have problems and 4KB Challenger Series games are completely unsupported.

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