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  • Growing Pains: The Magnavox Odyssey | Hazy Bit #1

Growing Pains: The Magnavox Odyssey | Hazy Bit #1

A look at the history behind the first video game console, the Odyssey.

Author

groovinflannel
August 01, 2024

Welcome to the first edition of Hazy Bit!

Hazy Bit dusts off the ol’ video game collection with retrospectives, reviews, and other nostalgic content sent directly to your inbox on the 1st and 15th of every month. If you enjoy what you’re reading, subscribe and follow me on Instagram and Threads!

This week’s retro releases:

  • Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (GameCube, July 28, 2003, NA)

  • Seaman (Dreamcast, July 29, 1999, JP)

  • Jurassic Park (Game Gear, July 30, 1993, JP)

  • Super Mario Land (Game Boy, July 31, 1989, NA)

  • Mega Man X4 (PlayStation/Saturn, August 1, 1997, JP)

  • Streets of Rage (Mega Drive/Genesis, August 2, 1991, JP)

  • International Superstar Soccer 2000 (N64, August 3, 2000, NA)

Check out this list on GameFAQs to see other titles released this week.

Rewind to 1966 - a year of great change. The Vietnam War is escalating, and along with it, anti-war protests and counterculture movements. The USSR will successfully land the Luna 9 and Surveyor 1 spacecraft on the moon in February and June, respectively. Pop culture in the US is also turning its eye toward space and the future with the television debut of Star Trek.

In a room at Sanders Associates, a defense contractor in New Hampshire, a bespectacled man is speaking with a colleague named Bob Tremblay about his idea to bring great change to living rooms across America: a “game box.” The man is Ralph Baer, and little does he know it, but that idea he’s talking about? It’s going to launch the home video game industry.

Ralph Baer and the “Brown Box”

In a short essay titled “Genesis: How the Video Games Industry Began,” Baer wrote about when the first idea of using a TV for something other than watching a program started to take shape:

In 1966, thoughts about playing games using an ordinary TV set began to percolate in my mind. When I designed and built a TV set at Loral in 1955, I had proposed doing just that: Build in a game to differentiate our TV set from the competition. Management said No and that was that. During a business trip to New York City on the last day of August in 1966, while waiting at a bus terminal for another Sanders engineer to come into town for a meeting with a client, I jotted down some notes on the subject of using ordinary home TV set [sic] to play games.

Ralph Baer, Genesis: How the Video Games Industry Began

As time rolled into 1967, Baer, fellow engineers Bill Rusch and Bill Harrison, and their team continued to tinker with and build seven prototypes. The final one built in 1968, called “TV Game Unit #7,” quickly became known as the “Brown Box” due to the woodgrain-style vinyl used to make it look more like a product and less like a mess of wires and circuits. A good choice, IMO - it made the Brown Box look like the video game equivalent of a woodie.

The next step was to find a customer for the Brown Box. General Electric, Zenith, Sylvania, and RCA all visited Sanders Associates for demonstrations of the product, with RCA going so far as to have contracts written. It wasn’t until Magnavox hired a former RCA employee, who convinced the executives at the company to set up a meeting with Sanders, that the idea of producing a home video game machine began to pick up steam.

Magnavox was mainly a manufacturer of radios and TVs until that point, but it was no stranger to new ideas, having recently produced the first plasma displays. The company wasn’t initially gung-ho about producing the new-fangled device; it took a positive word from Gerry Martin, the Vice President of Magnavox Console Products Planning at that time, to push the company to consider a manufacturing deal. In January 1971, the agreement between Sanders and Magnavox was signed.

The Brown Box would soon be going on an Odyssey.

From prototype to release

With a deal in place and a prototype on which to base the new machine, Magnavox got to work on building their new product under the direction of George Kent and a team of engineers. Ralph Baer wasn’t far from the action, however, as he and Harrison made several visits to the team, which was located in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Ralph Baer (left) and Bill Harrison playing the Brown Box. Image: Giant Bomb

Several key decisions were made during the design phase of the Odyssey, chief among them being the choice to have separate “cards” to play different games. These cards changed the console’s circuitry instead of storing an actual game, allowing users to select a different display mode depending on which card was inserted. The Odyssey’s cards can be seen as a precursor to cartridges, and later compact disks, DVDs, and Blu-Ray.

The ability to display color was also removed from the final product. Most TVs at the time were black and white. Color TVs, even entering the 70s, were still expensive and considered a luxury. To help enhance the experience of the Odyssey, which could only display a few white pixels, Magnavox decided to include plastic screen overlays, playing cards, paper money, and poker chips. This unique blend of analog and digital mediums provided consumers with an experience unlike anything they had ever experienced - and, funnily enough, unlike the experiences offered by modern gaming.

The Odyssey was released in the fall of 1972, in August or September - hard release dates for video consoles weren’t a thing yet. The journey from a spark in Ralph Baer’s mind to Magnavox store shelves was complete.

How did consumers react when the Odyssey was released?

Being first means you’re a pioneer - the home video game industry didn’t exist before the Odyssey. Likewise, there was no roadmap for a successful console launch. The folks at Magnavox were flying blind, leading to some troubles when marketing the new console. Like Kate Willaert asks in the subtitle of her article “In Search of the First Video Game Commerical,” how do you explain video games when they don’t exist yet?

Newspaper ads in September 1972, an appearance on the TV show What’s My Line? (seen above - video from garrisonskunk), and later, after its release, an appearance in an hour-long TV special featuring Frank Sinatra all tried to explain this new device to consumers. Still, a common theme emerged: confusion. Potential buyers were largely unaware that the Odyssey would work on any television, not just Magnavox televisions. This confusion blunted the initial commercial impact of the Odyssey, especially when compared to its arcade-based competitor, Pong, which arrived about a month later in November 1972.

What did the Odyssey look like?

The look of the Odyssey, whether intentionally or unintentionally, reminds me of the blocky set pieces that defined the look of the Enterprise in the original Star Trek. The console is rectangular, has two “tiers” (a base with a smaller rectangular protrusion from the base), and is mostly black on the top and bottom and white on the rest of the console.

The Odyssey. Image: Evan-Amos, Wikimedia Commons

In what feels like a nod to the original Brown Box design, the console features woodgrain vinyl around the base and the controller has the same material on its top surface. The controller had knobs rather than joysticks and a thick tan cord connected the controller to the back of the console. Unlike the video game consoles that would follow, the Odyssey didn’t have a power button to turn it on - the system ran on batteries and simply worked when a game card was inserted and didn’t when a game card was removed.

How did the Odyssey’s gameplay work?

The Odyssey came bundled with 12 games on 6 game cards which, as previously mentioned, didn’t actually store data; instead, these cards modified the internal circuitry of the Odyssey to display different things. Multiple games could be played using the same card. All the player had to do was adjust a dial to move the middle line shown by the Odyssey and boom - you’ve got a different game.

Each one of the 12 launch titles (and post-launch titles) displayed three white dots and a white line, both moved by using the dials on the controller. Obviously, this didn’t change the gameplay mechanics all that much, which is where the screen overlays came in.

TV screen overlays for use with the Odyssey. Image: Mental Floss (Evan-Amos, Wikimedia Commons)

These overlays added color to the screen and created different experiences even with the Odyssey’s limited tech. They also let game cards be used for multiple games; for example, Cat and Mouse and Haunted House were stored on the same game card but had different overlays. Magnavox also included dice, paper money, poker chips, and a plethora of goodies to enhance the gameplay experience.

A total of 28 games were released for the Odyssey. Only one title, Soccer, didn’t make it to the US market. A light gun peripheral that was in part designed and built by Nintendo was sold separately and packaged with two game cards as Shooting Gallery.

How was the Odyssey received at release?

The previously mentioned confusion surrounding the compatibility of the Odyssey with non-Magnavox TVs predictably led to somewhat lackluster sales for the console. The fact that the console was sold exclusively at Magnavox dealers only amplified the problem. In addition, there was no national or global marketing campaign like we might see for a new console today; local dealers handled advertising mainly until late 1973.

That’s not to say that Magnavox didn’t make any attempts to market the Odyssey. It created brochures with attention-grabbing phrases like “a closed circuit electronic playground” to try to answer the question on most customers’ minds: “Just what is this thing?” The company also made a few TV ads and sponsored that TV special featuring Frank Sinatra, which was probably more about Ol’ Blue Eyes coming out of retirement than showcasing some newfangled tech device.

Estimates of initial sales of the Odyssey in 1972 ranged from 69,000 to 100,000 units, which was pretty darn good considering all the marketing troubles. While the first year of the Odyssey’s existence on the market may have been rocky, the console saw modest demand throughout its lifespan until it was discontinued in 1975. Ralph Baer himself estimates total sales were in the neighborhood of 350,000 by 1974, shortly before newer models of the Odyssey, such as the Odyssey 100 and the Odyssey 200, were released.

The Odyssey today

Tracking down an Odyssey in this day and age can be a bit difficult and if you can find one, it’s going to cost you. I checked eBay yesterday and found one system (complete with original box and accessories) for $500. I’ve seen other listings that climbed somewhere north of $4600, which according to Price Charting is waaaay overpriced.

Following the discontinuation of the Odyssey in 1975, Magnavox began to release dedicated video game consoles (consoles with games built-in) under the Odyssey name. The first in the series was the Magnavox Odyssey 100 and the final member of the series was the Magnavox Odyssey 4000.

Given the price point and the hassle of finding one in good condition, I feel like this console is more of a hardcore collector’s item. I don’t plan on shelling out that much, even though owning one would be super cool. That said, all gamers can raise a glass at what a groundbreaking console the Odyssey was and its place in video game history.

Thanks for reading! That’s all for this edition of Hazy Bit. Next week, I review my absolute favorite video game of all time: Star Ocean: The Second Story.

For more info on the history and impact of the Magnavox Odyssey, check out the sources I consulted below for further reading: