Odyssey 2 Reviews M-O

Like many Odyssey 2 titles, this release packages two completely-unrelated programs on one cartridge. The first game, Math-a-Magic!, may sound like a mystical journey into a numeric wonderland, but it's just a bare-bones arithmetic drill program. Answering ten questions correctly makes a little tune play. Advanced levels offer two to three digit numbers.

The package description accurately describes the game as "an electronic arithmetic teacher" but its "fun to practice" claim is kind of a stretch. It's hard to imagine a kid playing Math-a-Magic on a voluntary basis.

Considering it's an early release, I want to forgive the lack of bells and whistles, but when you consider calculators were common in 1978, you'd think Magnavox could have aimed a little higher. At least it makes good use of the keyboard.

The second game called Echo! is an adaptation of the handheld game Simon, a device that challenges you to memorize progressively longer sequences of lights and tones. Instead of a disc with four quadrants, Echo! has the digits 1-4 lighting up the screen. It sounds cheesy but it actually makes the game a lot easier. I was able to reach a high score in the mid-30s, which I'm not sure I could accomplish with Simon. You also get three chances, making it more forgiving than most "copycat" games.

Math-a-Magic is perfectly functional but pales in comparison to similar games like Electric Company: Math Fun (Intellivision, 1979). I suppose you could say Echo salvages the "gaming" aspect of the cart. My kid was engaged for a while, but eventually arrived at the conclusion "This game is not fun." © Copyright 2026 The Video Game Critic.

Mean Santa for the Odyssey 2 makes a good first impression with large multicolored sprites, smooth animation, and a scenic city skyline. Compared to its Atari 2600 cousin this Mean Santa is slower but a little more involved. On the first screen you steer Santa around on a sled guided by a purple mule. I like the look of those dark skyscrapers but the idea of avoiding chunks of frozen precipitation doesn't make much sense.

Except for the trees scrolling across the bottom of the screen you might not realize Santa was moving. If you have the voice synthesizer equipped you're treated to a "human beatbox" rendition of Jingle Bells. By the end of a stanza a house appears on the lower right, and you land on it to advance to the second screen.

Now the challenge is to navigate Santa through a maze while collecting holiday items like dolls, cookies, toy planes, and candy canes. If you touch the edge of the maze you're transported back to the center of the screen. Most of the time it's annoying, but sometimes it's a good strategy as it can prevent you from having to backtrack. The Odyssey 2 controller is responsive but its springy feel makes it hard to turn with precision. At least you can run by holding in the button, which turns out to be a real time-saver.

The scoring system is unusual. The goal is to visit 16 houses in the shortest amount of time, but that can take a while! By the time you reach the 13th house or so the game starts to feel a little tedious. Voice effects include a creepy chuckle when Santa lands on a roof and "that's easy" whenever he snags an item. There's no such thing as a quick game of Mean Santa on the Odyssey 2 but around the holidays at least I consider it time well spent. © Copyright 2017 The Video Game Critic.

A few friends of mine recently had their collective minds blown when I popped in this cartridge and the screen displayed "GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR VGCRITIC". Wow! As if that's not enough, the instructions are personalized as well! The opening screen plays a hauntingly sad rendition of David Bowie's Space Oddity, which is without a doubt the best music you'll ever hear on the Odyssey 2. The game itself is perplexing to say the least.

Mission Impossible is a puzzle/strategy title played on a grid. Your white ship enters the screen from the left, followed by two red "bounty hunters". The ships move in predictable patterns along the grid but you can alter their direction by placing green X's at intersections. Special items randomly begin to appear and the idea is to divert the ships towards certain objects and away from others. The rules are pretty complicated and the instructions are confusing. You definitely want to grab those red "energizer crystals" which allow your ship to hunt the hunters. Unfortunately you spend a lot of time directing traffic while waiting for these crystals to appear.

When they finally do appear you need to react quickly, but the mushy controls won't do you any favors. The scoring system is confusing too. When I lost my last ship the final stanza of Space Oddity kicked in to the message "CAN YOU HEAR ME MAJOR VGCRITIC?" I loved the intro and ending of Mission Impossible, but never quite managed to wrap my brain around the game in the middle. © Copyright 2017 The Video Game Critic.

It's a scientific fact that adding monkeys to any video game will make it ten times better. It's like wrapping food in bacon! Monkeyshines is an oddly compelling platformer designed with two-player coop in mind. The excellent manual incorporates pictures of infra-red monkeys, which is probably worth a letter grade in and of itself. The instructions boast of trillions of random maze combinations, prompting my friend Scott to remark, "We're going to be playing this for a while!"

The idea is to tag as many monkeys as you can. Seems easy enough, but once tagged, a primate will turn red with anger. If the agitated monkey manages to vigorously rub himself against you, it's game over. After a while the monkey reverts back to his natural, non-pissed-off orange color. The four monkeys in this game really steal the show with their wacky antics. They swing around poles, hang upside down, and seem to be having a great time in general.

The manual would have you thinking the randomized platforms were the eighth wonder of the world. I hate to break it to the programmer, but they all look pretty much the same! Game variations include moving mazes (no thanks I'm trying to quit) and invisible mazes (aww hell no). Scott and I steered clear of the "bananas mode" because the instructions clearly stated it was "for professionals only". You can keep the extra variations; the basic game is all you need. Monkeyshines is an entertaining little title that provides the best coop action I've seen for the system. © Copyright 2014 The Video Game Critic.

Obviously inspired by Electronic Art's Archon (Atari XE, 1983) and taking its name from that cheesy Styx song, Mr. Roboto delivers some of the most entertaining two-player action you'll experience on any classic console, much less the Odyssey 2. Each player controls a set of robots on a grid, protecting their respective "CPU". The CPUs resemble a monitor with Matrix-inspired green characters moving down them - nice touch!

The game itself is a superb combination of strategy and reflexes. Players take turns moving their robots one square at a time, and can also inject "viruses" into opposing robots to slow or weaken them. When two robots attempt to occupy the same square, they are transported to a "combat screen" where both run around shooting at each other while avoiding star-shaped "power surges". The last robot standing wins the square. Should a robot reach the opponent's CPU, he must then navigate a totally new screen with shifting "firewalls" and firing cannons (controlled by your opponent).

For an Odyssey 2 title, this is remarkably sophisticated, but it's the audio that really steals the show. The "voice" prompts you during each turn, and during battles, it shouts funny lines like "Mercy, run!" and "Owww stop!" To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this derivative title, but my friends could not get enough of it. The contests are not only highly competitive, but often border on hilarious.

Mr Roboto even offers an options screen and a solid single-player mode with respectable AI. Simply put, if you own an Odyssey 2 and don't own this cartridge, there's something wrong with you. IMPORTANT NOTE: Although everyone loves this game, I had to dock Mr. Roboto a half-grade due to some technical issues which may or may not be limited to my system. The cartridge is very temperamental when used with the voice module. It has to be inserted a certain way, and is prone to locking up during games. © Copyright 2006 The Video Game Critic.

Finally - a game that lives up to its name! This weak title was never released in the USA, probably because it's so absolutely, positively horrible. You control a guy situated at the bottom of a big box that's supposed to symbolize a house. The object is to reach the "escape hatch" at the top while avoiding wandering ghosts and "lightning balls". "What's a good horror game without lightning balls?", I say sarcastically.

Your character doesn't look so bad, rendered in three colors. The ghosts look decent, but the hollow "house" negates any potential for strategy. The ghosts move side-to-side in predictable patterns, and I was able to elude them indefinitely by simply moving diagonally in alternating directions. The controls and collision detection are flaky, and the game is so unpolished it often appears to be broken.

Apparently, there are occasionally opportunities to "catch" the ghosts, but the rules of the game are confusing. Nightmare looks and plays more like an ill-conceived, half-baked project. You'd have to be pretty hard-up for entertainment to derive any sort of enjoyment from this crap. © Copyright 2005 The Video Game Critic.

Back in the 1980s every publisher was trying to devise a game that everyone in the family could enjoy. It would have to be fun for adults, accessible to kids, and educational as a bonus. Well, Nimble Numbers Ned attempts to attain that noble goal, employing The Voice as its ringmaster. In fact, parts of the game are unplayable without it.

Our hero's name was originally short for "Number Education Dialogue", but Magnavox wisely ditched that idea at the last minute. Anyway the primary "action mode" is a bare-bones platformer with elements of Donkey Kong (Colecovision, 1982) and Jungle Hunt (Atari 2600, 1982). Ned is trying to jump between numbered stones in a creek while dodging what the manual refers to as "barrels of fun".

But first you need to answer a series of questions. The more correct answers you provide, the more time you're awarded to traverse all 100 stones. It's really no great feat when you consider there's no concept of lives and getting hit by a barrel only delays you briefly.

Is it fun? Not really, but Ned's jumping animation is quite good and the controls are adequate. The Voice harangues you nonstop with pointless babble like "Amazing!", "Come on!" and "Danger!" He'll say you're "All clear!" even when that's not the case. Other times he'll maniacally laugh or growl "Arrr" like a pirate.

One way to earn chances is to play Name the Shapes, which is as basic as it gets. The Odyssey 2 renders a bunch of items onscreen, one of them flashes, and the voice asks questions like "Is this a triangle?" You press YES or NO on the keyboard to enter your answer. In a feat of shoddy programming, it might ask the same question twice in a row, prompting my kid to shout "You just asked that!"

Even for young kids Name the Shapes is pathetically easy. The library of shapes is tiny but includes the obligatory "person" shape that exists in every Odyssey 2 title. The "circle" looks more like a hot dog bun! The manual claims shape recognition is the keystone of primary math but after playing this I am unconvinced.

But wait, there's more! Multiplication Runthrough does a decent job of breaking down math problems into smaller steps For example, it gives you 637 x 4 and has you do 600 x 4, 30 x 4, and 7 x 4 in separate steps.

The overly-ambitious Function Machine poses questions like "If seven times the number plus five is 677, what is eight times the number plus six?" I guess it's trying to teach algebra without using variables, but its wordy approach is sure to befuddle the youngsters. And everyone else.

Nimble Numbers Ned has its heart in the right place but can't quite stick the landing. While it claims to be for grades 1-9, it targets only the extreme ends of that spectrum, with very little in between. The Voice doesn't do much to endear itself to the player, demanding "WHICH DRILL?" on startup. Oh well, at least it says "Thank you!" when you win. © Copyright 2026 The Video Game Critic.

Nobody ever gets tired of Lunar Lander games... said no one ever. Out of the World is designed for head-to-head action as each player must gently land a falling capsule and then dock with a mothership moving across the top of the screen. You have a limited fuel supply so you can't mess around.

The action begins with both landers falling fast, so the first time you play your lander will crash before you even know what's going on. Even when you know how to play each game only lasts a few seconds. The act of pressing the correct keyboard buttons to restart a game can take longer than the game itself - and is about as much fun.

The second half of this cartridge, Helicopter Rescue, feels like a tech demo. You control a blocky green helicopter trying to rescue as many people as you can in two minutes. You simply methodically pick up people from a building and drop them off. I will admit the helicopter is impressively large for 1979, and there's even a subtle 3D-ish rotation effect.

Unfortunately the gameplay is slight. No matter how efficient you are it's pretty much impossible to rescue more than six people in the time allotted. Out of this World/Helicopter Rescue isn't exactly a winning combination, but at least you won't waste much time coming to that conclusion. © Copyright 2021 The Video Game Critic.