This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Magnavox Odyssey videogame system. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

In Spain, a clone machine was launched circa 1973. It uses switch rather than cartridges to swap the games.

Just remember - Pong wasn't the first home video game. Magnavox Odyssey predated it by a year to the month. I worked part time in a Magnavox TV store at the time and we couldn't sell many Odysseys because people thought they had to have a Magnavox TV to use it! People had no previous experience with video games so their ignorance was excuseable.

The oddysey *IS* a digital system. But rather than using a general purpose CPU it has dedicated game circuitry. The behavior of the ball, and paddles, and the existence of bounce zones, etc, are controlled directly by the cartridge pins. One pin is output of +5V to the cartridge. The rest are all inputs, and the cartridge asserts +5V on any of those inputs to activate a given behavior. So all a cartridge is is wires running from the one input pin to a certain set of outputs, that set varying by cartridge... it's really just a bunch of jumpers!

I am te proud owner of one of these, and when it failed on me, I took it apart and reverse-engineered it so I could figure out how to repait it. :)

SEARS & ROEBUCK offered a simple home-entertainment-system back

in 1974-75 ? It was called: HOCKEY-JOCKARY from Telegames .

It feature some of the games Odyssey had; Practice, Tennis-for-Two,
Jokary, and Hockey . Variants made a total of eight games to be played .

This game system did feature an onscreen player score count of up to 15 !
A Digital Counter of Modulo-16 would be needed for this effect . .

So it might have been analog crktry, but it needed Digital Logic IC's !

Controls were very simple; Potentiometers in handheld dial-knob tubes .
They only created an up or down motion control . .

It was Model# 362.997310

The first game of PONG, or 'Tennis For Two' (the first electronic

video game) was realized at Brookhaven Institute .

It utilized the laboratory's Giant Analog Computers

and Relay Logic to create a, on an Oscilloscope Screen,

a game of Tennis For Two(PONG) . .

The article from Old-Computers.com said that this game

console of Magnavox ODYSSEY had no c.p.u. ,

does that mean it had not have digital logic chips ?

It had game cartridges ? Were they not ROM ?

If this was an analog system, then what were the

game cartridges made of ? Was the game system a

hybrid of digital ROM chips and analog video circuitry ?



Sincerely, Chad Castagana, USA

Groan.. I am OLD... My brothers and I had this when we were little... where did 30 years go? : )

Ahh, I remember this.
When I was 8 my friend's mom had one. It was quite cool, although (even to this day) I thought the controllers were really weird.
Funky games, though. Never turn down the chance to play it!!

I think this system is very cool because it is the first ever system....