The Gaming History of Magnavox!

Hey guys, I know I haven’t posted anything in a while but now is the new post. So today I’m going to talk about the history of Magnavox in their gaming industry. Now you might be thinking, ‘What the @#$% is Magnavox?’ or if you know them, ‘Magnavox made video game consoles?’ and the answer to that is a yes. Today I’ll be talking about their history in the gaming industry in a time line.

Magnavox Odyssey!

In 1972 Magnavox release the very first home video game console which was super innovative. This console is super important to gaming as a whole. The console certainly revolutionized gaming but it was not all that great.

The worst part was that the graphics consisted of only squares and the background was always blue. So to actually play any games you had to put these gimmicky over lays on the screen to see that you were playing hockey, tennis, haunted house etc. But if you didn't have these overlays you were screwed since the background was only blue with on or two white squares, so these over lays were necessary to distinguish between an 'adventure' game or 'hockey'. The "cartridges" were only labeled with numbers and the instruction manual will tell you which numbered cartridge match what over lay. Each game involved 90% of it to be played with cards that you got with the odyssey and the game rules were super complicated. 

Games that weren't complicated were BORING like 'Simon Says'. The controllers were boxy and had weird controls. They stopped production until 1975. So in conclusion, not that great of a console but super important since it was the very first home video game console.

Magnavox Odyssey Pong Consoles!

After the thing with the first console, Magnavox stepped up their game and started to make better consoles, except this time, all of them were pong consoles. Pong consoles are consoles that pre-installed pong or pong similar games in the system already. They started to produce them in 1975 right after the Odyssey 1. It started from 100 and went all the way to 4000. But when they reached 500, they just skipped to 2000 when they went to the next console. They also made a 2100 for some reason. These consoles came out fast with since they only produced them from 1975-1977. Good consoles in my opinion.

Magnavox Odyssey 2!

Now its probably the best one on here and its the Magnavox Odyssey 2. Magnavox was now owned by Phillips. Not a bad console in my opinion, well made, good quality and fun. So, a good console. It was made to compete with Fair Child and Atari. In term of sales, it beat Fair Child by bit but barely passed as a competitor compared to the Atari 2600. In Europe it was called the Phillip's Videopac G7000.                

Released in 1978 and with 2,000,000+ units sold it did fairly well.

Now with inter changeable games with the use of cartridges you could play different games and without the over lay. But it did lack third party support and Magnavox had to make most of their games for the console, but that didn't mean they didn't have any third part support. Games like Frogger, Q*bert, Demon Attack, Atlantis and Popeye were some of the few games developed or ported by companies like Parker Bros and Imagic for the Odyssey 2. It's controller were similar to Atari's controller  with one action button, but the joy stick more sensitive and skinnier. It had a key-board on the console for games like Crypto-Logic! and was the first console to have a keyboard on the console.

It did have an add-on called The Voice and it was a voice synthesizer

module that  you would connect to the console and the sound would be synthesized and the sound would come from the module instead of the TV.

But the Magnavox Odyssey 2 was most famous for the board/video games that would come with them. It was a combination between board game and video game. Two games were released like it and were called: 'Quest for the Rings!' and 'Conquest of the World!' were released. The box came with the board game, cards etc. but also the game itself which you would put in your Odyssey 2. 

Quest for the Ring was fun and you and your friend could go on an adventure. Pretty fun and cool and did the integrating between board game and video unlike the Odyssey 1.

But this console fell during the crash of '83 and so did Magnavox's gaming products. Magnavox was done with making consoles and their products made a lasting impact on the gaming world and brought joy to my heart and many others.

SOURCES:

gamester81.com

en.wikipedia.org

www.hardwaresecrets.com

Cinemassacre or Angry Video Game Nerd

My experience with the console.