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Description
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 Odyssey˛ 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 Odyssey˛ 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 Odyssey˛ used the standard joystick design of the 1970s and 80s: the first wave 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, while later releases had a similar black controller, with an 8-pointed star-shaped housing for it's eight-direction joystick. In the upper corner of the joystick was a single 'Action' button, silver on the original contollers and red on the black contollers.
One other difference in these controllers is that the earliest releases of the silver joystick were removeable. They could be plugged and unplugged from the back of the unit, while all later silver and all black contollers were hardwired into the rear of the unit itself.
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 Odyssey˛ 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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61 out of 117 people found the following review helpful
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The way games were changed,
11 Feb 2009
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by
Jt august
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The way games were changed on the system is not entirely complete in the above text. While the overlays must be put on the screen by the player (held in place with a few drops of water on the side that contacts the TV screen), a wafer card must also be plugged in. This card effectively alters the internal wiring of the machine so that the ICs inside it interact differently, producing varied output on the screen.
The machine produces no sounds and the video signal is white blocks and/or bars; no colour or
shades of gray.
Rules and scoring for all games are handled by the players. This allows for players to cheat, and from personal experience I can state that cheating does inprove the enjoyability of some of the games (particularly in party situations).
A few accessory game packages were sold for the system. Some included additional game cards for the machine, others only provided screen overlays and table top pieces. The best known of these packages is the Shooting Gallery. It consists of two cards, some overlays, and a toy rifle (very realistic looking) that has to be cocked before it can shoot. Due to the rudimentary technology of the time, the cheat point for this unit is to point the gun at any light. The optic sees a light and blanks the dot from the screen.
In some collectors circles, it is suspected that less than 5,000 Odysseys still exist of the original 100,000 (with only a small portion still being complete packages), and significantly fewer Shooting Galleries still exist. From personal experience, I can state that three people I have known who had Odysseys back "in the day" simply threw theirs away, meaning that those three packages no longer exist. In the 70's and early 80's, few thought that anyone would ever want this stuff ever again. |
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