I wanted an Atari, but my older brother insisted we get an Odyssey2 so that is what our parents ended up getting us for Christmas. They went all out and got 'The Voice' module for it as well. The most fun I can remember having with it was making it say curse words and other funny things. Being so young, I had no clue how expensive it and the five or six games they bought with it would have been for them. It reminds me just how lucky I am to have had the childhood they worked so hard to provide for my brother and me. I didn't expect this video to prompt a call to my parents to let them know how much I appreciate them and love them.
My parents were cheap and never bought us any video games... even though both my brother and I were born in the 70's. Our cousins had an Odyssey 2, but all they had was Baseball! and they never let us play it.
@@activelow9297 Sorry that happened to you, brother. You should let your parents know how they cheated you back when you were young and your cousins were A-holes.
My grandfather was a VP at Magnavox, and I remember he had several of the TVs shown in the promo materials, and gave me a prototype Odyssey 2 when I was probably 3 or 4 years old, the Voice accessory, and about 20 prototype cartridges. The cartridges were just black shells with typewriter-written and hand-written labels on them. With the Voice accessory, you could power on the machine with no cartridge plugged in to the voice, type whatever you wanted and it would read out what you said. I remember a shoot-em-up style prototype game that I used to play that used the Voice accessory to "speak" taunts to you while you played. It was a really cool system for its time. I was born in 84, and the Odyssey2 was pretty outdated by the time I was old enough to play with it. We got an NES when I was a kid, and my parents sold the Odyssey at a yard sale because we never played it after getting the NES. Man I wish I still had it! What a blast from the past.
That sounds awesome! Those prototype carts were probably worth something. I wonder if you had any games that were never released. Our mall had a Magnavox store, and they always had a huge selection of Odyssey carts in a glass case that I would drool over.
@@discopants68 Yeah, I was so young I don't remember all of them by name, but several of them seemed like they were released. I really wish I still had them. One of them needed a physical game board (like with the plastic pieces), but I didn't have the board to go along with it... it didn't look like any of the others shown off in this video. I had no idea how to play it, but I figured out it would speak to you through the Voice when you pressed certain buttons, so I'd just figure out how to make it talk, lol. My sister had some promotional T-shirts for a couple of games with the box art on them.
My parents bought me an Oddysey 2 after I broke my arm and couldn't play outside for a while. I absolutely loved it. I remember a game where you flew a helicopter and had to rescue people off the rooftop of a building by lowering them a rope and flying them to a pad on the ground. That was the whole game. It got old after about five minutes, but i remember playing a lot of it.
My grandparents had an Odyssey2 and I played it every summer that I visited them. I have fond memories playing the games with my cousins, and I'd love to own one. I had (and still have) an Intellivision at home.
I was born in 1980, and my parents owned an Odyssey 2 before I was born, there's a high likelihood that "Speedway!" is the first video game I ever played. Since that was that was the pack in, we had that, along with "Alien Invaders-Plus", "Computer Golf" and "War of Nerves!". My grandparents also had one and had "UFO!", "K.C. Munchkin", "KC's Crazy Chase" "Blockout! / Breakdown!" and " Armored Encounter! / Subchase!". Had a lot of fun playing Armored Encounter w/ my cousins over there growing up. Been considering picking up an Odyssey 2 since it seems fairly easy to collect for.
I had a Philips Videopac G7000 as a kid. My favourites were KC Munchkin (used to spend ages designing my own mazes!) and UFO. It also came with Cartridge 9, which was supposed to turn it into an actual programmable computer. It took ages to enter a program--and even then it would only do something trivial like add 2 numbers together! But basically I loved it, and played it endlessly.
The Odyessy had the best marketing team. I remember as a kid seeing the box art for Quest for the Rings and wanting so bad, even before I saw the actual game.
I loved this system. We got one in the early 80s and my father and I would play the heck out of "Quest for the Rings." I would also create mazes in KC Munchkin that would pretty much trap the ghosts and I had free range on the dots. I am extremely jealous of your boxed units and I hope to own one again someday.
This was my first video game purchase. I was 25 years old and bought the machine back in 1978 from Hechts dept store. I applied for my first credit card to purchase the Odyssey 2. My wife at the time fussed at me for wasting money, but I didn't care, I loved playing (at that time) all the cool games. I'm not sure now, but I think it came with a word scramble game.
We were an O2 family. No flicker and KC Munchkin rocks. If you get The Voice module, KCs Krazy Chase is (IMHO) the best game on the system. Good without The Voice, but Awesome with it
That's a good point! The video is flicker free and doesn't suffer from any glitches or lines like the Atari does when the devs needed to 'borrow' some extra CPU cycles. That and the original Pac Man on the 2600 was a hot mess :P
Thanks Matt for mentioning “Bob’s Retro Electronics Workshop”, my second channel. I take no credit for the design of the two projects you featured, the “GAL-PLA”and the “Dongle test harness”. They are both free to all on line for anyone to use and build at PCB Way! I thank the designers for releasing them as freeware! I just decided to build a few and pass them on to friends and fellow UA-camr’s! Thanks again!
My Brother and I played the Conquest of the World mostly but did not use the board. The cartridge had a mode that would go through all the matches. Jet vs Jet, Jet vs Tank, Jet vs Sub, Tank vs Tank, Tank vs Sub, and Sub vs Sub.
@@retrobitstvThose we’re the most interesting ones for me. I would of loved something like that when I started getting into strategy ga,es and RPG games. They looked really cool.
I remember i played the pacman like game at the house of one of my friends, he got the console for the Epiphany (6 january, in the 80's in Italy we got presents at the Epiphany, not at Christmas, now with globalization is more common childs got presents on 25 dic rather than on 6 jan), btw the console/computer was called Philips Videopac , i clearly remember those joysticks with the star, it was a lot of fun to play those games.
I still have two of these: the one with silver, detachable joysticks and the one with black, fixed ones. Got my first one in 1980. Unfortunately my Voice module died some years ago.
Cool. We had one of these when I was a kid. I was born in 1982 and it was the first game system we had. I remember Alien Invaders and KC Munchkin mainly. There was a word game on there that I liked as well, but can't remember what it was called. I also remember a basketball and tennis game. Thanks for bringing back some long lost memories. :)
I played on this when I was young in the early 90s as my grandfather had acquired one years before, tough of course branded the Philips Videopac G7000, as this was in Europe. @15:25 Those sounds and visuals bring back many memories! (Sadly never experienced those boardgame style games, those look pretty cool)
The only console system I ever had. It was given to me by my brother in law, and I loved it. I particularly liked Pickaxe Pete and their Asteroids knockoff. The game was weird, in that you could only rotate your gun in one direction, so you had to be careful not to miss. My favorite part was the "idle" sequence, which described the enemy craft. Most had names, but one was simply called "drifts randomly." That became my favorite description for some of the cars I encountered on local freeways.
Was my first machine 1979 I was 9 years old the second machine was to be the commodore 64 but that took a few more years. Do like the box art from Europe better I am from the Netherlands so was the Philips G7000 model. Why I didn't go for the Atari 2600 I don't know because Atari was the leading company through advertising etc. I think that Philips came from the Netherlands. The Atari was then called Atari VCS here. Still wasn't a bad machine the joystick I did find jerk too big for small hands and still hurts too square now. I haven't had my machine for 50 years.
I had a Philips G7000 in maybe the early 90s, bought second-hand and it was very 'retro' even then! That UFO game came with it, but under the name Satellite Attack. (I was more impressed than you were.) Also had Blackjack and a few other games. I liked it!
The Odyssey2 was my first game console. I had an earlier model that had detachable joysticks that were silver and had a square cutout for the stick instead of that star-shaped abomination. When I wore out the silver joysticks and only the black ones were available for replacements, my playtime on the Odyssey2 fell off dramatically because I couldn't stand those star sticks.
This was the first computer I ever had when I was a kid. Must have been around 6-7 years old at the time when my parents bought it for us kids as a Christmas present. Remember the box art and the box for the games were different on the European version. Played for hours on end. The games I remember playing the most was Pick Axe Pete and the Pacman clone. Games for the system were really expensive. Couple of years later I moved on to a VIC-20.
Great video - I was hypnotized watching it, much like I’m sure I was playing many of these when I was a kid! I faintly remember getting this system with my dad at the mall Radio Shack. It wasn’t the Atari I wanted but took what I could get! Thanks for showing the games. Seeing some of them again and even hearing the sounds brought back memories of playing the games. I remember loving KC Munchkin, Pick Ax Pete, UFO, Alien Invasion, Baseball and the first car games you showed. Thanks for the video!
I used to play on this machine after school in the local mall where Woodward's (a long departed western Canada based department store) had a machine set up on a kiosk with about a dozen carts chained down to to allow 'prospective buyers' aka geeky kids to try the various games. I felt even then that they were pretty bad but when you dont have your own Atari yet you take what you can get. The game i enjoyed most was a 3d space shooter i dont remember the name of, but was something like a Starship1 ripoff. Great video, and congrats on your 2 scores! esp. that second one with the complete board games! I am sure you could make your costs back and more just reselling Quest for the Rings, though I couldn't make myself do it. ;-)
I had a promo advertisement with all of the Odyssey games listed, and I used to drool over "Quest for the Rings". Never owned it, never even played an Odyssey, but I spent hours fantasizing about that game.
My faves were War of Nerves, Armored Encounter!/Sub Chase!, and Attack of the Timelord. Timelord had digital voice capability if you had an add on, otherwise you'd just hear static when he'd talk. In the Basketball game, there was a glitch where if you get the ball to hit the corner where the backboard post meets the floor, it'll go through and come out the other side of the screen!
This was my first console and played most of the games you listed. I think that Showdown in 2100AD would be more a reference to the 1973 movie named Westworld. The Westworld TV serie from 2016 is a remake of the movie.
When I was making the episode I went looking through old Sears Wish Book catalogs to see if I could find pricing/images for the system and as you said, they weren't there. Sears was already in a relationship with Atari by then selling the rebranded Tele-Games VCS so maybe they didn't want to dilute the market too much 🤷♂️
That was my first console. I had about 6 -7 games for it, and an adapter called "The Voice" . It was basically just a voice that spoke to you and encouraged you while you played. I bet it bugged the heck out of my parents, now that I think about it. lol
Came to learn how to properly play Pick Ax Pete, subbed to watch everything else. Nice meeting you today at Video Nutz today, good luck with your 5200 games search 👍.
Me and my cousin played Showdown 2100 a ton back then. It was so much fun to play the ricochets. We eventually moved on when my parents got me an Intellivision and he had so many more games on the 2600 that we ended up playing it until I got a Coleco Adam and the Super Action Controllers and the football game that worked with it (my thumb still is sore from spinning that wheel to throw bombs downfield)
I had 2 friends that had Odyssey 2s. I loved UFO (an Astroids clone that I felt was easier to control) KC Munchkin & Quest for the Rings. I was always facinated by it as the other console but less known than the Coleco Vision or Intellivision. It was the same later when i had an NES but was facinated by Sega Master System & later the Turbo Grafx-16. I didn't know anyone with a Sega but knew one kid with a TG-16.
We owned one back in the 80s. I remember playing KC Munchkin the most, but I always felt like a second class citizen compared to my friends with the Atari 2600.
Understandable, the Atari had a much bigger library, real arcade ports and licensed titles, and eventually a lot of better games, BUT... KC Munchkin is arguably better than the 2600's original Pac Man release which was pretty awful, so at least there's that :P
Thoroughly enjoyed this trip down memory lane... my family had the Atari VCS while the neighbor had the Odyssey 2, so we compared the systems back when they were new. Our favorite Odyssey 2 game was "Invaders From Hyperspace!" as it was a lot of fun playing co-op. And K. C. Munchkin was a better Pac-Man game than the Atari VCS version!
Definitely follow up on this video get you a voice module and look for more games the Odyssey 2 is a blast and easier to collect for than most consoles
There was also a second edition of this thing with better background graphics. Ours had the brand Philips on it. Same machine. Pick axe pete was my favorite.
Me and my brother were playing Spin-out and the game glitched just as my car touched a wall. My car ended up outside the track, and when I drove outside the screen it would appear on the other side. Fun times!
That Quest for the Rings looks great in the presentation. I like those big box games. Had to look up a bit of a footage for that game and it seems to be somewhat using the computer for the fights and such, but the physical representation looks a lot better than the computer part (as, well, is normal. "Screenshots from various system" on the box, anybody?). But still, pretty awesome find you got there.
Yeah, I had a G7000 when I was really young (back in the early 80s) and I loved it. I had some, at the time anyway, great games like Pickaxe Pete, Alien Invaders (aka Space Monster) , Freedom Fighter, Haunted House (?) ,K.C.Munchkin, K.C.'s Krazy Chase (a particular favourite), Killer Bees!. Air Sea War Battle,, Satellite Attack, and a handful of others. Looking back my mum must have spent a fortune onem the for me - and it would have been diifficult being a single mum in the 70s-80s in the UK - THANKS MUM. I MISS YOU EVERY DAY. 😢
My mom just could not get KC's Krazy Chase. You would steer her character directly into the enemy, every time. Eventually, I turned to her and said, "Mom, all humans are capable of learning!"
I grew up with an Odyssey 2. Showdown, Pickaxe Pete, and Spin out were my favorites. Sadly my console died many years ago. I bought one for $200 a few years back and it was a dud! You absolutely scored big time finding a functional system. $50 is the deal of a lifetime!
This is really strange but my great uncle had an Odyssey 2 and he bought it at a store called Heydlauff's in Chelsea, Mi. Maybe your tagged one came from the same place. My cousins and I loved Showdown 2100 - the ricocheting bullets were a hoot. Bowling was fun also.
Yessssssss Odyssey 2. The only system I ever owned. Break Out was my favorite. KC Munchkin was fun too. Even though everyone else had Pac Man. Thanx for high lighting my one and only system. PS....I still suck at gaming...lol.
Yep, Philips Odyssey (without the 2) was huge in Brazil, mainly because it was released almost an year before the 2600 in 1983. Before that year a law basicaly made impossible to import complete systems, so we had a lot of clones already. I didn't had one, but played a lot in mu cousins' house, and remember playing PopEye with two players, was very fun. So I got one a few years ago, and a multicart, it is very worth owning it.
Had one of these as a kid. I later bought the voice module as well, which wasn’t really worth the price (80 bucks I think) so I returned it. I always insisted the graphics were better than Atari 2600 because there were no flickering sprites. FYI, a third board game about stock trading called “Wall Street Fortune Hunt” also existed, complete with ticker crawl and breaking news stories that affected the stock prices. I had two friends that also had Odysseys (I think I sold them on it). Each of us owned a different board game, as those were pricey at around 50 bucks apiece.
Another interesting video - worth a passive watch, but not sure I would want to play the games myself. - I just got a 34" standard def Sony Trinitron which I am loving with MISTer. I am using antoniovillena's SVideo adapter - I was playing MISTer on my LG OLED, but didnt enjoy it. - I did scummvm a bit and started to wonder - what computer cores would work with standard-def? - I dont want to damage my TV so was a bit nervous to try, but playing the original Larry or maniac mansion would be awesome. There are some point-and-click classics on PS1 & Saturn, - not sure if a USB mouse would work with those consoles. There is always so much to explore with MISTer - a "Standard Definition MISTER Super video" would be a nice idea. - ie - whats possible with SD (CRT) beyond the console cores.
I was already a big kid, like 12 or 13 years old, by the time my parents bought the Sears Telegames VCS (later known as the Atari 2600) and was pretty happy with it until I visited a friend's house who had an O2 and couldn't believe how good the graphics and sound it had! Everyone knows how bad Atari Pac Man looked and thought it was as good as it could get until I saw them play KC Munchkins which BLEW away the way the Atari Pac man looked and was much more fun! The O2, first released in 1978, was already at the level Colecovision that was released 5 years later in 1982 so it was definitely ahead of it's time. They say you "can't miss something you never had" but I'd say that's untrue in my case cuz I certainly wanted one and missed it alright.🥺
I used to play at a friend´s house. My favorites were super cobra, Demon Attack and Attack of the Time Lord. I´m a Brazilian, so his machine was a philips branded one. Unlinke Europe, where they were called philips videopac, here it was called Philips Odyssey. Not Odyssey ², just Odyssey.
I was given an Odyssey 2 by a friend of a friend a few years ago, and my kids LOVE cryptologic (16:22). They’re currently 8 and 10 years old, and it just pulls them in for some reason.
The PT Barnum is nearly identical to Circus Atari on the 2600 which I believe was a home port of Circus in the arcade; all are spiritual offspring of Breakout
KC Munchkin was sadly pulled from shelves. Magnavox/Phillips actually won the initial court case but lost the appeal. There was a sequel made called KC's Crazy Chase where instead of dots you chase a caterpillar eatingbits body sections; tail to head. KC also tumbles when moving 7ntil actually eating. These were all to try and differentiate it more from Pacman.
I had one as a kid since my parents wanted a system that was also educational compared to the 2600. Too bad there weren't that many educational titles for it and Atari dominated. I played UFO and KC Munchkin on it quite a bit and would also play cryptologic when the neighborhood friends came over. Think we also had Pick Axe Pete, Thunderball, Computer Golf, Math-a-Magic, Alien Invaders Plus, and Las Vegas Blackjack.
Do you remember the game console that used to require a tv screen cover ? (A large semi transparent screen you put for game borders) - I forget what console that is as I am getting older. it was around 1976 as I recall just do not remember the console. I also used to have a prototype system in the very early 1970's from National semi-conductor (1972 to about 1974). There were not that many of those however - probably 10-20 in the world only available to families of National S. This included the very early games like Brick wall type, and various pongs. It would be fun to see one of those again for nostalgia.
I'm fairly sure it was the original Magavox Odyssey, this machine's predecessor that had the transparent screen overlays. There may have been other machines that used the same "effect" too 😊
@@DefconSix I think you are right - I forget if it had a keyboard (I don't think it did) Odyssey was what I remembered - I never had the 2nd one is why this looked so familiar. Things get a bit fuzzy after about 4 to 5 decades
@@retrobitstv No it was definitely in the 1970's not Vectrex, its screen plastics were much larger and it connected to a TV set. though I did not have the gun addon. I had a console before that one as well but as I pointed out it was a prototype from National Semiconductor it came out about same time as did the Odyssey 1 -Looking online it is similar to the Adversary - Model 370. One I had had around 50 games built in and no game cards. I know I had this well earlier than 1976. Games such as 10 different pongs, 20 or so versions of brick wall, I forget what else. But they were the early type of games.
I think you guys are thinking of the brown colored Magnavox 2100? (I have one despite being no Videopac..) And the Magnavox 2001 was the predessesor of that. Gloryfied pong like versions with tv overlays of games. All before the Odyssey/Videpac era. Now you can look these up! 😊
I remember Christmas morning 1981 my best friend got an Odyssey 2. After playing it for an hour, my 4th grade self said to my friend "this is like Atari for a poor person". Lol
I've got a G7000, it's a great little system. UFO is a fun little game, and of course Pickaxe Pete and KC Munchkin, plenty of others too (and a lot of dross as well).
I figured this out after I recorded the look around inside - the power brick is only an AC transformer so the rectification happens inside the machine. Makes more sense why that's there now :)
I hope you will do playthrough videos for the board game hybrids. It looks like the conquest game is multi-player, while the adventure game is single player?
I would have liked to cover them but the video was already running 10 minutes over by that time. Maybe in a follow-up or even a future livestream... From what I can tell, The Quest For The Rings is a 2 player game with a 3rd person acting as the 'Ring Master' who operates the keyboard to set up the location of the rings and controls the physical tokens, etc. Definitely merits a closer look!
Ooh! A Philips Videopac! Cool! But it's cool, all the North American stuff! And a commercial which sounds like Spock was hired for it. Quite nice artwork too! As far as I remember, the games were just inferior to the VCS with crappy controllers.. So I didn't know anyone who owned one. Nice to see more about it now!
@@retrobitstv Very cool! Certainly classier than the Dutch commercials at the time! But then again, our domestic market is tiny, and the north American one is HUGE... But this is the first time I saw a retro channel do this old console, which is really cool! So thanks!!
Was a great game system I owned one also I had a voice module that plugged into the game port but for the life of me I can;t remember what game it was use for.
I would have liked to cover the board games but the video was already running 10 minutes long so I had to draw the line. Maybe in a follow up or future livestream perhaps.
I wanted an Atari, but my older brother insisted we get an Odyssey2 so that is what our parents ended up getting us for Christmas. They went all out and got 'The Voice' module for it as well. The most fun I can remember having with it was making it say curse words and other funny things. Being so young, I had no clue how expensive it and the five or six games they bought with it would have been for them. It reminds me just how lucky I am to have had the childhood they worked so hard to provide for my brother and me. I didn't expect this video to prompt a call to my parents to let them know how much I appreciate them and love them.
I also had one with The Voice. Turkey!
My parents were cheap and never bought us any video games... even though both my brother and I were born in the 70's. Our cousins had an Odyssey 2, but all they had was Baseball! and they never let us play it.
Bless you for that.
God is smiling on you.
@@activelow9297 Sorry that happened to you, brother. You should let your parents know how they cheated you back when you were young and your cousins were A-holes.
1:24 That's the voice of Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek), who was the Magnavox spokesman at the time.
That tracks, since Shatner was pitching the Commodore VIC=20.
My grandfather was a VP at Magnavox, and I remember he had several of the TVs shown in the promo materials, and gave me a prototype Odyssey 2 when I was probably 3 or 4 years old, the Voice accessory, and about 20 prototype cartridges. The cartridges were just black shells with typewriter-written and hand-written labels on them. With the Voice accessory, you could power on the machine with no cartridge plugged in to the voice, type whatever you wanted and it would read out what you said. I remember a shoot-em-up style prototype game that I used to play that used the Voice accessory to "speak" taunts to you while you played. It was a really cool system for its time. I was born in 84, and the Odyssey2 was pretty outdated by the time I was old enough to play with it. We got an NES when I was a kid, and my parents sold the Odyssey at a yard sale because we never played it after getting the NES. Man I wish I still had it! What a blast from the past.
That sounds awesome! Those prototype carts were probably worth something. I wonder if you had any games that were never released. Our mall had a Magnavox store, and they always had a huge selection of Odyssey carts in a glass case that I would drool over.
Spoke taunts to you, eh? Sounds like "Attack of the Timelord" to me :)
@@DaneArcher Yes! That was the one!
@@discopants68 Yeah, I was so young I don't remember all of them by name, but several of them seemed like they were released. I really wish I still had them. One of them needed a physical game board (like with the plastic pieces), but I didn't have the board to go along with it... it didn't look like any of the others shown off in this video. I had no idea how to play it, but I figured out it would speak to you through the Voice when you pressed certain buttons, so I'd just figure out how to make it talk, lol. My sister had some promotional T-shirts for a couple of games with the box art on them.
Great channel with excellent editing and presentation. Thanks for all the great content.
My parents bought me an Oddysey 2 after I broke my arm and couldn't play outside for a while. I absolutely loved it. I remember a game where you flew a helicopter and had to rescue people off the rooftop of a building by lowering them a rope and flying them to a pad on the ground. That was the whole game. It got old after about five minutes, but i remember playing a lot of it.
My grandparents had an Odyssey2 and I played it every summer that I visited them. I have fond memories playing the games with my cousins, and I'd love to own one. I had (and still have) an Intellivision at home.
11:29 chips were copyrighted in 1977 but manufactured in 1982 (8222 = 22nd week of 1982, 8228 = 28th week of 1982).
Ahh, that makes a lot more sense! I was convinced this was an early machine until I learned it was not.
I was born in 1980, and my parents owned an Odyssey 2 before I was born, there's a high likelihood that "Speedway!" is the first video game I ever played. Since that was that was the pack in, we had that, along with "Alien Invaders-Plus", "Computer Golf" and "War of Nerves!". My grandparents also had one and had "UFO!", "K.C. Munchkin", "KC's Crazy Chase" "Blockout! / Breakdown!" and " Armored Encounter! / Subchase!". Had a lot of fun playing Armored Encounter w/ my cousins over there growing up. Been considering picking up an Odyssey 2 since it seems fairly easy to collect for.
Well you're aging like wine bro, christ I was born in 79 and you look 10 years younger.
I had a Philips Videopac G7000 as a kid. My favourites were KC Munchkin (used to spend ages designing my own mazes!) and UFO.
It also came with Cartridge 9, which was supposed to turn it into an actual programmable computer. It took ages to enter a program--and even then it would only do something trivial like add 2 numbers together!
But basically I loved it, and played it endlessly.
My uncle had one of these when I was a kid... I remember loving it. Some pretty cool games.
The Odyessy had the best marketing team. I remember as a kid seeing the box art for Quest for the Rings and wanting so bad, even before I saw the actual game.
I loved this system. We got one in the early 80s and my father and I would play the heck out of "Quest for the Rings." I would also create mazes in KC Munchkin that would pretty much trap the ghosts and I had free range on the dots. I am extremely jealous of your boxed units and I hope to own one again someday.
This was my first video game purchase. I was 25 years old and bought the machine back in 1978 from Hechts dept store. I applied for my first credit card to purchase the Odyssey 2. My wife at the time fussed at me for wasting money, but I didn't care, I loved playing (at that time) all the cool games. I'm not sure now, but I think it came with a word scramble game.
We were an O2 family.
No flicker and KC Munchkin rocks.
If you get The Voice module, KCs Krazy Chase is (IMHO) the best game on the system. Good without The Voice, but Awesome with it
That's a good point! The video is flicker free and doesn't suffer from any glitches or lines like the Atari does when the devs needed to 'borrow' some extra CPU cycles. That and the original Pac Man on the 2600 was a hot mess :P
Thanks Matt for mentioning “Bob’s Retro Electronics Workshop”, my second channel. I take no credit for the design of the two projects you featured, the “GAL-PLA”and the “Dongle test harness”. They are both free to all on line for anyone to use and build at PCB Way! I thank the designers for releasing them as freeware! I just decided to build a few and pass them on to friends and fellow UA-camr’s!
Thanks again!
That was fascinating. Some of the boardgame hybrids are super ambitious!
I hope to take a closer look at the board games in the future. Stop by the next time you're in town and we'll do a livestream playthrough :)
My Brother and I played the Conquest of the World mostly but did not use the board. The cartridge had a mode that would go through all the matches. Jet vs Jet, Jet vs Tank, Jet vs Sub, Tank vs Tank, Tank vs Sub, and Sub vs Sub.
@@jasonfabrick9308 That sounds fun!
@@retrobitstvThose we’re the most interesting ones for me. I would of loved something like that when I started getting into strategy ga,es and RPG games. They looked really cool.
I remember i played the pacman like game at the house of one of my friends, he got the console for the Epiphany (6 january, in the 80's in Italy we got presents at the Epiphany, not at Christmas, now with globalization is more common childs got presents on 25 dic rather than on 6 jan), btw the console/computer was called Philips Videopac , i clearly remember those joysticks with the star, it was a lot of fun to play those games.
KC Munchkin
I still have two of these: the one with silver, detachable joysticks and the one with black, fixed ones. Got my first one in 1980. Unfortunately my Voice module died some years ago.
Cool. We had one of these when I was a kid. I was born in 1982 and it was the first game system we had. I remember Alien Invaders and KC Munchkin mainly. There was a word game on there that I liked as well, but can't remember what it was called. I also remember a basketball and tennis game. Thanks for bringing back some long lost memories. :)
Great video. Used to love playing money shines on this machine, even after I had an nes.
I played on this when I was young in the early 90s as my grandfather had acquired one years before, tough of course branded the Philips Videopac G7000, as this was in Europe. @15:25 Those sounds and visuals bring back many memories! (Sadly never experienced those boardgame style games, those look pretty cool)
The only console system I ever had. It was given to me by my brother in law, and I loved it. I particularly liked Pickaxe Pete and their Asteroids knockoff. The game was weird, in that you could only rotate your gun in one direction, so you had to be careful not to miss. My favorite part was the "idle" sequence, which described the enemy craft. Most had names, but one was simply called "drifts randomly." That became my favorite description for some of the cars I encountered on local freeways.
Love the explosive graphics. The Odyssey2 logo, particularly on the cartridges, is reminiscent both of an explosion and of traces on a PCB.
Was my first machine 1979 I was 9 years old the second machine was to be the commodore 64 but that took a few more years.
Do like the box art from Europe better I am from the Netherlands so was the Philips G7000 model.
Why I didn't go for the Atari 2600 I don't know because Atari was the leading company through advertising etc. I think that Philips came from the Netherlands.
The Atari was then called Atari VCS here.
Still wasn't a bad machine the joystick I did find jerk too big for small hands and still hurts too square now.
I haven't had my machine for 50 years.
I had a Philips G7000 in maybe the early 90s, bought second-hand and it was very 'retro' even then! That UFO game came with it, but under the name Satellite Attack. (I was more impressed than you were.) Also had Blackjack and a few other games. I liked it!
The Odyssey2 was my first game console. I had an earlier model that had detachable joysticks that were silver and had a square cutout for the stick instead of that star-shaped abomination. When I wore out the silver joysticks and only the black ones were available for replacements, my playtime on the Odyssey2 fell off dramatically because I couldn't stand those star sticks.
This was the first computer I ever had when I was a kid. Must have been around 6-7 years old at the time when my parents bought it for us kids as a Christmas present. Remember the box art and the box for the games were different on the European version. Played for hours on end. The games I remember playing the most was Pick Axe Pete and the Pacman clone. Games for the system were really expensive. Couple of years later I moved on to a VIC-20.
@26:40 Pick Axe Pete came out same year as Miner 2049er, wonder if there is some cross-inspiration at play?
For sure! Miner 2049er was also inspired by Donkey Kong at least according to Wikipedia.
Great video - I was hypnotized watching it, much like I’m sure I was playing many of these when I was a kid!
I faintly remember getting this system with my dad at the mall Radio Shack. It wasn’t the Atari I wanted but took what I could get!
Thanks for showing the games. Seeing some of them again and even hearing the sounds brought back memories of playing the games.
I remember loving KC Munchkin, Pick Ax Pete, UFO, Alien Invasion, Baseball and the first car games you showed.
Thanks for the video!
Another great video. Good job!
I used to play on this machine after school in the local mall where Woodward's (a long departed western Canada based department store) had a machine set up on a kiosk with about a dozen carts chained down to to allow 'prospective buyers' aka geeky kids to try the various games. I felt even then that they were pretty bad but when you dont have your own Atari yet you take what you can get.
The game i enjoyed most was a 3d space shooter i dont remember the name of, but was something like a Starship1 ripoff. Great video, and congrats on your 2 scores! esp. that second one with the complete board games! I am sure you could make your costs back and more just reselling Quest for the Rings, though I couldn't make myself do it. ;-)
I had a promo advertisement with all of the Odyssey games listed, and I used to drool over "Quest for the Rings". Never owned it, never even played an Odyssey, but I spent hours fantasizing about that game.
My faves were War of Nerves, Armored Encounter!/Sub Chase!, and Attack of the Timelord. Timelord had digital voice capability if you had an add on, otherwise you'd just hear static when he'd talk. In the Basketball game, there was a glitch where if you get the ball to hit the corner where the backboard post meets the floor, it'll go through and come out the other side of the screen!
Fantastic video. This console is one of the Crown Jewels of my console collection. I’ve also created quite a bit of content around it as well.
This was my first console and played most of the games you listed. I think that Showdown in 2100AD would be more a reference to the 1973 movie named Westworld. The Westworld TV serie from 2016 is a remake of the movie.
The Sears and JC Penny at the local mall didn’t carry them, but a smaller department store here called Goldblatt’s did.
When I was making the episode I went looking through old Sears Wish Book catalogs to see if I could find pricing/images for the system and as you said, they weren't there. Sears was already in a relationship with Atari by then selling the rebranded Tele-Games VCS so maybe they didn't want to dilute the market too much 🤷♂️
That was my first console. I had about 6 -7 games for it, and an adapter called "The Voice" . It was basically just a voice that spoke to you and encouraged you while you played. I bet it bugged the heck out of my parents, now that I think about it. lol
Came to learn how to properly play Pick Ax Pete, subbed to watch everything else. Nice meeting you today at Video Nutz today, good luck with your 5200 games search 👍.
Nice meeting you as well!
I spent many hours playing Pick Ax Pete. By far my favorite game when I was a kid.
Me and my cousin played Showdown 2100 a ton back then. It was so much fun to play the ricochets. We eventually moved on when my parents got me an Intellivision and he had so many more games on the 2600 that we ended up playing it until I got a Coleco Adam and the Super Action Controllers and the football game that worked with it (my thumb still is sore from spinning that wheel to throw bombs downfield)
My first and only console system before the Commodore 64 came out. Still have it and nearly all the games.
I had 2 friends that had Odyssey 2s. I loved UFO (an Astroids clone that I felt was easier to control) KC Munchkin & Quest for the Rings.
I was always facinated by it as the other console but less known than the Coleco Vision or Intellivision. It was the same later when i had an NES but was facinated by Sega Master System & later the Turbo Grafx-16. I didn't know anyone with a Sega but knew one kid with a TG-16.
I love that lad, a three month warranty.
This was my first gameconsole, i loved the game with 2 cowboys trying to shoot each other😂
We owned one back in the 80s. I remember playing KC Munchkin the most, but I always felt like a second class citizen compared to my friends with the Atari 2600.
Understandable, the Atari had a much bigger library, real arcade ports and licensed titles, and eventually a lot of better games, BUT... KC Munchkin is arguably better than the 2600's original Pac Man release which was pretty awful, so at least there's that :P
Thoroughly enjoyed this trip down memory lane... my family had the Atari VCS while the neighbor had the Odyssey 2, so we compared the systems back when they were new. Our favorite Odyssey 2 game was "Invaders From Hyperspace!" as it was a lot of fun playing co-op. And K. C. Munchkin was a better Pac-Man game than the Atari VCS version!
24:00 That's an awesome manual for the time
Definitely follow up on this video get you a voice module and look for more games the Odyssey 2 is a blast and easier to collect for than most consoles
There was also a second edition of this thing with better background graphics. Ours had the brand Philips on it. Same machine. Pick axe pete was my favorite.
Me and my brother were playing Spin-out and the game glitched just as my car touched a wall. My car ended up outside the track, and when I drove outside the screen it would appear on the other side. Fun times!
That Quest for the Rings looks great in the presentation. I like those big box games. Had to look up a bit of a footage for that game and it seems to be somewhat using the computer for the fights and such, but the physical representation looks a lot better than the computer part (as, well, is normal. "Screenshots from various system" on the box, anybody?). But still, pretty awesome find you got there.
Thank you for such a comprehensive video, top notch work.
The date codes are 1982. The copyrights are 1977.
For $85 you got a great deal, especially with the master strategy games included!
Yeah, I had a G7000 when I was really young (back in the early 80s) and I loved it.
I had some, at the time anyway, great games like Pickaxe Pete, Alien Invaders (aka Space Monster) , Freedom Fighter, Haunted House (?) ,K.C.Munchkin, K.C.'s Krazy Chase (a particular favourite), Killer Bees!. Air Sea War Battle,, Satellite Attack, and a handful of others.
Looking back my mum must have spent a fortune onem the for me - and it would have been diifficult being a single mum in the 70s-80s in the UK - THANKS MUM. I MISS YOU EVERY DAY.
😢
My mom just could not get KC's Krazy Chase. You would steer her character directly into the enemy, every time. Eventually, I turned to her and said, "Mom, all humans are capable of learning!"
I grew up with an Odyssey 2. Showdown, Pickaxe Pete, and Spin out were my favorites. Sadly my console died many years ago. I bought one for $200 a few years back and it was a dud! You absolutely scored big time finding a functional system. $50 is the deal of a lifetime!
We had an Odyssey 2 and our cousins did too. We loooooooooved playing Pick Axe Pete and KC Munchkin.
considering its age, the box (first one) is still pretty cool and nice to have.
This is really strange but my great uncle had an Odyssey 2 and he bought it at a store called Heydlauff's in Chelsea, Mi. Maybe your tagged one came from the same place. My cousins and I loved Showdown 2100 - the ricocheting bullets were a hoot. Bowling was fun also.
THIS...^...was my 1st videogame console. Which left me wanting a colecovision, lol.
Yessssssss Odyssey 2. The only system I ever owned. Break Out was my favorite. KC Munchkin was fun too. Even though everyone else had Pac Man. Thanx for high lighting my one and only system. PS....I still suck at gaming...lol.
my dad bought my mom an odyssey 2 and that's what we were playing while all our friends were stomping goombas
Yep, Philips Odyssey (without the 2) was huge in Brazil, mainly because it was released almost an year before the 2600 in 1983. Before that year a law basicaly made impossible to import complete systems, so we had a lot of clones already.
I didn't had one, but played a lot in mu cousins' house, and remember playing PopEye with two players, was very fun. So I got one a few years ago, and a multicart, it is very worth owning it.
Had one of these as a kid. I later bought the voice module as well, which wasn’t really worth the price (80 bucks I think) so I returned it. I always insisted the graphics were better than Atari 2600 because there were no flickering sprites. FYI, a third board game about stock trading called “Wall Street Fortune Hunt” also existed, complete with ticker crawl and breaking news stories that affected the stock prices. I had two friends that also had Odysseys (I think I sold them on it). Each of us owned a different board game, as those were pricey at around 50 bucks apiece.
Play a lot of Odyssey here in Brazil. See if you can find Attack of the Timelord! It was really fun.
Pick Axe Pete was so much fun I miss my Odyssey 2
Another interesting video - worth a passive watch, but not sure I would want to play the games myself. - I just got a 34" standard def Sony Trinitron which I am loving with MISTer. I am using antoniovillena's SVideo adapter - I was playing MISTer on my LG OLED, but didnt enjoy it. - I did scummvm a bit and started to wonder - what computer cores would work with standard-def? - I dont want to damage my TV so was a bit nervous to try, but playing the original Larry or maniac mansion would be awesome. There are some point-and-click classics on PS1 & Saturn, - not sure if a USB mouse would work with those consoles. There is always so much to explore with MISTer - a "Standard Definition MISTER Super video" would be a nice idea. - ie - whats possible with SD (CRT) beyond the console cores.
I was already a big kid, like 12 or 13 years old, by the time my parents bought the Sears Telegames VCS (later known as the Atari 2600) and was pretty happy with it until I visited a friend's house who had an O2 and couldn't believe how good the graphics and sound it had! Everyone knows how bad Atari Pac Man looked and thought it was as good as it could get until I saw them play KC Munchkins which BLEW away the way the Atari Pac man looked and was much more fun! The O2, first released in 1978, was already at the level Colecovision that was released 5 years later in 1982 so it was definitely ahead of it's time. They say you "can't miss something you never had" but I'd say that's untrue in my case cuz I certainly wanted one and missed it alright.🥺
So many awesome games to this consol!
The cowboy game was likely based on the movie Westworld, starring Yul Brenner.
I used to play at a friend´s house. My favorites were super cobra, Demon Attack and Attack of the Time Lord. I´m a Brazilian, so his machine was a philips branded one. Unlinke Europe, where they were called philips videopac, here it was called Philips Odyssey. Not Odyssey ², just Odyssey.
I had one of these. My favourite game was a catapult game where two players had to destroy the other players tower.
Smithereens!
@@LajitasRain is that its name?
@@kirishima638 Yes.
@@LajitasRain thank you
Quest for the Rings, hands down my fav .
I was given an Odyssey 2 by a friend of a friend a few years ago, and my kids LOVE cryptologic (16:22). They’re currently 8 and 10 years old, and it just pulls them in for some reason.
Haha, that's awesome! I guess I am just unable to fully get my head into the mindset of a kid anymore, alas...
Cryptologic was very popular with me and my nephews and nieces back in the day.
Have fun being confused by "Pachinko!" as I was as a 4 year old in '82.
The PT Barnum is nearly identical to Circus Atari on the 2600 which I believe was a home port of Circus in the arcade; all are spiritual offspring of Breakout
I remember visiting a friend of my fathers who has one. The graphics blew away the Ataris, but I seem recto recall that it was very expensive.
KC Munchkin was sadly pulled from shelves. Magnavox/Phillips actually won the initial court case but lost the appeal.
There was a sequel made called KC's Crazy Chase where instead of dots you chase a caterpillar eatingbits body sections; tail to head. KC also tumbles when moving 7ntil actually eating. These were all to try and differentiate it more from Pacman.
This would have been popular at the big parties of the day.
I had one as a kid since my parents wanted a system that was also educational compared to the 2600. Too bad there weren't that many educational titles for it and Atari dominated. I played UFO and KC Munchkin on it quite a bit and would also play cryptologic when the neighborhood friends came over. Think we also had Pick Axe Pete, Thunderball, Computer Golf, Math-a-Magic, Alien Invaders Plus, and Las Vegas Blackjack.
Do you remember the game console that used to require a tv screen cover ? (A large semi transparent screen you put for game borders) - I forget what console that is as I am getting older. it was around 1976 as I recall just do not remember the console.
I also used to have a prototype system in the very early 1970's from National semi-conductor (1972 to about 1974). There were not that many of those however - probably 10-20 in the world only available to families of National S. This included the very early games like Brick wall type, and various pongs. It would be fun to see one of those again for nostalgia.
I'm fairly sure it was the original Magavox Odyssey, this machine's predecessor that had the transparent screen overlays. There may have been other machines that used the same "effect" too 😊
@@DefconSix I think you are right - I forget if it had a keyboard (I don't think it did) Odyssey was what I remembered - I never had the 2nd one is why this looked so familiar. Things get a bit fuzzy after about 4 to 5 decades
I believe the Vectrex also used overlays for its games since otherwise they'd just be black and white.
@@retrobitstv No it was definitely in the 1970's not Vectrex, its screen plastics were much larger and it connected to a TV set. though I did not have the gun addon. I had a console before that one as well but as I pointed out it was a prototype from National Semiconductor it came out about same time as did the Odyssey 1 -Looking online it is similar to the Adversary - Model 370. One I had had around 50 games built in and no game cards. I know I had this well earlier than 1976. Games such as 10 different pongs, 20 or so versions of brick wall, I forget what else. But they were the early type of games.
I think you guys are thinking of the brown colored Magnavox 2100? (I have one despite being no Videopac..)
And the Magnavox 2001 was the predessesor of that.
Gloryfied pong like versions with tv overlays of games. All before the Odyssey/Videpac era.
Now you can look these up! 😊
My family had an Odyssey 2 when I was little. I think my mother brought this because the Atari wasn't available at the store.
I loved the intellivision and the Coleco.
I remember Christmas morning 1981 my best friend got an Odyssey 2. After playing it for an hour, my 4th grade self said to my friend "this is like Atari for a poor person". Lol
🤣
Sound like Leonard Nimoy narrating the Odyssey commercial.
This was called Philips videopac g7000 in europe - i had one when i was a boy..
Pick-axe Pete was my favourite game!
I remember my first game: K. C.'s Krazy Chase!
On my french brand Philips VIDEOPAC C52, it was 'Super Glouton'....
Miam Miam (= Yummi Yummi) ;-)
I've got a G7000, it's a great little system. UFO is a fun little game, and of course Pickaxe Pete and KC Munchkin, plenty of others too (and a lot of dross as well).
That's my fav retroshow
Ngl, that is one gigantic behemoth of a smoothing capacitor 😂😂😂
I figured this out after I recorded the look around inside - the power brick is only an AC transformer so the rectification happens inside the machine. Makes more sense why that's there now :)
I still have one at home
I hope you will do playthrough videos for the board game hybrids. It looks like the conquest game is multi-player, while the adventure game is single player?
I would have liked to cover them but the video was already running 10 minutes over by that time. Maybe in a follow-up or even a future livestream... From what I can tell, The Quest For The Rings is a 2 player game with a 3rd person acting as the 'Ring Master' who operates the keyboard to set up the location of the rings and controls the physical tokens, etc. Definitely merits a closer look!
When the hard wired joysticks fail you can hard wire and Atari one in. I had to do that when I wore out the 1st player one with Smithereens.
I have 2 videopac g7000 systems, one has the controllers wired directly to the system and one with 9 pin joystick connector like the c64.
Ooh! A Philips Videopac! Cool! But it's cool, all the North American stuff! And a commercial which sounds like Spock was hired for it. Quite nice artwork too! As far as I remember, the games were just inferior to the VCS with crappy controllers.. So I didn't know anyone who owned one. Nice to see more about it now!
Leonard Nimoy did indeed voice that commercial :)
@@retrobitstv Very cool! Certainly classier than the Dutch commercials at the time! But then again, our domestic market is tiny, and the north American one is HUGE...
But this is the first time I saw a retro channel do this old console, which is really cool!
So thanks!!
I had an Odyssey 2 in the 80s in Brazil before replacing it with an Atari 2600
Was a great game system I owned one also I had a voice module that plugged into the game port but for the life of me I can;t remember what game it was use for.
We had one of these, We got Quest for the Rings one christmas in the 80s. Monkeyshines was pretty fun. KC Munchkin was vastly superior to Pacman.
I wouldn't mind a follow-up video showing the two sports games and two board games, though it may be a short video and/or boring.
I would have liked to cover the board games but the video was already running 10 minutes long so I had to draw the line. Maybe in a follow up or future livestream perhaps.
I had the philips videopac, same thing i guess. Naming / branding was different in eu prob.