Odyssey 2 - Ultimate Console Database

Odyssey 2 console and controllers. Make special note of that damn white hook-up box thing.

Odyssey 2 box, featuring very 70's psychedelic writing.

THE RANT:This was the other pre-NES system that I had as a wee one, the other one being a Colecovision (for about a week.) My dad got this because it had a keyboard, and I believe he mistakenly thought it could be used as a computer. For some reason he returned the Colecovision and kept this piece of garbage instead. I'll never know why. Thus I have a special place in my heart for this piece of garbage game system, because as it is a piece of total junk, it was my first foray into the world of console gaming. I owe it all to the Odyssey 2.

There is a reason why this system was voted " The worst system ever made." The console itself looks like a prop from Plan 9 from outer-space. You can imagine homosexual aliens using it to mind control zombies to take over the world. The keyboard was totally for looks; there was one game that used it called Cryptologic (where you had to unscramble different words) and a few games that used overlays on the keyboard (like Quest for the rings.) The controllers are to my knowledge analog sticks, which is fine, but they have the habit of breaking so that the stick doesn't center properly, and also they are hard wired into the console, so what happens often than not is that both controllers break and the whole thing gets rendered useless. (To be fair there are several versions of the Odyssey 2 with detachable controllers, however they are pretty rare.)

The games had this big ugly handle on the top of the thing, and you had to hold the console with one hand while pulling the game out with the other, which I guess is fine, it's just a PAIN IN THE ASS. How much more would it have cost to make an "eject" button? I know that was 1981 and the fine art of game console design was in it's infancy, but come on! Even the Atari 2600 has very easy cartridge removal and detachable controllers.

One final gripe: The thing is attached to the TV not through the standard RF cable, but with some kind of funky, weird, unique control box (the white box in the picture.) Why is this a gripe, you ask? Because that box is the only way to hook up your machine to a TV. If that box gets lost or broken then your game console is useless. Nowadays this particular control box is impossible to find outside of Ebay, and usually you only get it if you buy a whole new system from somebody.

The box attaches to the TV through those little plugs you screw onto a TV antenna, and as any TV made in the last 20 years doesn't come with antenna hook-ups what you have to do is get a standard RF game switch, hook the white box to that, then hook that to the TV, which means you end up daisy chaining two control boxes to your TV, which if you have 47 game systems under your TV like me leads to signal loss and snow while I'm trying to watch The Daily Show. But that's not all; The TV out cable on the console has this strange looking plug, where the tip is like attached with this little bridge, and as you expect more often than not the tip breaks off the cable, thus you can't hook it up to the box, can't hook the box to the TV, and can't play your game system. I don't know who the hell thought of this ridiculous design scheme but I think they all need a boot to the head. So anyway this log tried to compete with the 2600 and Colecovision and failed miserably. Magnavox released the "Odyssey 3" in Europe (known as the G74000 ) but it never got over to the states. From what I understand it was just the same Odyssey 2 games with backgrounds similar to the Colecovision. That's really all there is.

THE GOOD: Complaints about the console aside, the games are actually not so bad. They have a much more solid look than the 2600, like you don't see any scan lines. They suffer from the fact that no sprite seems to be made up of more than one color. The controllers (when they work) are responsive and easy to use. Just don't break them. Most of the games are (once again) clones of successful classics. K.C. Munchin is a Pac-Man clone where the walls change and the dots float around, giving the maze game formula somewhat of a twist. Quest for the rings came with a full game-board, cards, dice, etc. Kind of like a very primitive RPG. Collecting Odyssey 2 stuff is beyond cheap, like $10 for the console and less than $2 per game. Getting the weird French stuff is totally expensive though.

There is one exception to this rule: The game Power Lords was produced in limited quantities and thus is ridiculously expensive.

THE BAD: Everything else about the system.

THE UGLY: You see a pattern here?