What's the Odyssey 400?

Reserved for classic gaming discussions.
Alienblue

What's the Odyssey 400?

Postby Alienblue » January 11th, 2008, 12:32 pm

I was looking around the digitpress classic forum today. There was a thread on a funny "Odyssey 400" poster because the kid looked like satan.

Now, I'm old school, been gaming since the early 80's and am familiar with most obscure systems(Creatavision,APF,Arcadia)
and I know of the odyssey ONE, first vid game system, the O2, the failed O3 and Europes Videopac. BUT I NEVER READ ANYTHING ABOUT AN ODYSSEY 400!

Was this just another PONG clone or was it programmable? I cannot accsess Wiki,Google or any sites that would know (I'm now down to four sites I can get on,including this).
Anyone?



Atarifever1
Posts: 3892
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

What's the Odyssey 400?

Postby Atarifever1 » January 11th, 2008, 1:05 pm

[QUOTE=Alienblue]I was looking around the digitpress classic forum today. There was a thread on a funny "Odyssey 400" poster because the kid looked like satan.

Now, I'm old school, been gaming since the early 80's and am familiar with most obscure systems(Creatavision,APF,Arcadia)
and I know of the odyssey ONE, first vid game system, the O2, the failed O3 and Europes Videopac. BUT I NEVER READ ANYTHING ABOUT AN ODYSSEY 400!

Was this just another PONG clone or was it programmable? I cannot accsess Wiki,Google or any sites that would know (I'm now down to four sites I can get on,including this).
Anyone?


[/QUOTE]

If I have it right, the original Odyssey/pong/clone systems had different games and different names.  Some had guns, some had race games, some had pong variants, etc.  I believe there are several X hundred Odyssey games.  Like Odyssey 100, Odyssey 200, etc.  They are all self contained systems, with different games. 


andrew

What's the Odyssey 400?

Postby andrew » January 11th, 2008, 1:28 pm

Well there's also the 100,200, and magnavox 500. They're all essentially pong units with the 500 allowing for simple hockey play as well.

gleebergloben1
Posts: 687
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

What's the Odyssey 400?

Postby gleebergloben1 » January 11th, 2008, 2:33 pm

odyssey came out with pong games (also tennis and hockey...all three games, of course, were essentially the same), series 100 to 500.
the odyssey 400 didn't have a 3-position skills switch like the 300, but had a 'doubles switch' for team play. 
the odyssey 500 included soccer and color graphics, and had graphics that were a lead-in to the odyssey 2 (and the famous 'generic' man figure).
odyssey 100 came out in 1975, and the 200-500 series came out in 1976.
also, the 100 was red, the 200 and 400 were white, the 300 was gold, and the 500 was black.

alienblue mentioned minor systems (creatavision, APF, and arcadia). i knew about the arcadia and its very short but fascinating history; however, i'm not familiar with creatavision or APF.


andrew

What's the Odyssey 400?

Postby andrew » January 11th, 2008, 3:21 pm

[QUOTE=gleebergloben]odyssey came out with pong games (also tennis and hockey...all three games, of course, were essentially the same), series 100 to 500.
the odyssey 400 didn't have a 3-position skills switch like the 300, but had a 'doubles switch' for team play. 
the odyssey 500 included soccer and color graphics, and had graphics that were a lead-in to the odyssey 2 (and the famous 'generic' man figure).
odyssey 100 came out in 1975, and the 200-500 series came out in 1976.
also, the 100 was red, the 200 and 400 were white, the 300 was gold, and the 500 was black.

alienblue mentioned minor systems (creatavision, APF, and arcadia). i knew about the arcadia and its very short but fascinating history; however, i'm not familiar with creatavision or APF.

[/QUOTE]

Seems like in the 70's and early 80's the majority of companies would add vision to the end of their company name.

Adamant1
Posts: 2088
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

What's the Odyssey 400?

Postby Adamant1 » January 11th, 2008, 3:54 pm

Wait, so is the Odyssey 100 the original Odyssey, or something newer?

gleebergloben1
Posts: 687
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

What's the Odyssey 400?

Postby gleebergloben1 » January 11th, 2008, 5:47 pm

[QUOTE=Adamant]Wait, so is the Odyssey 100 the original Odyssey, or something newer?[/QUOTE]

the odyssey 100 (released in 1975), was different from the first Odyssey ITL200, which was released in 1972.  the odyssey 100 was basically a stripped down version of the original odyssey, and was also cheaper and faster. 

also, one thing that killed the original odyssey was that magnavox and the sales associates kinda implied that it would only work on magnavox TV's, which  really hurt sales. so magnavox made sure to announce that the odyssey 100-500 series could work on any TV set.

Alienblue

What's the Odyssey 400?

Postby Alienblue » January 12th, 2008, 4:19 am

Someone mentioned they didn't hear of Creativision or APF?

Creativision, also known as Dick Smith Wizard video system, came out in Australia and a few other places after Colecovision; It uses the same processor and has a couple dozen CV-ripoff games like POLICE CHASE for Donkey Kong. Some games are good though like MOUSE MAZE. Most interesting, you can insert the keyboard controllers and use them like a real keybaoard for BASIC!

APF was a failed 2600-type system right hyar in da USA. It was expensive and planned to have a computer module(which I THINK did come out); graphics/sound are somewhere between early 2600/INTV.
Only about 12 carts, best of which is INVADERS.

Thanks for the O-400 info!


Return to “Classic Gaming”