The Magnavox Odyssey was the first commercial home video game console
voxodyssey.com
voxodyssey.com
My first computer came five years later. It was a Commodore PET 2001 followed by a Vic-20. I had saved up $832 from working odd jobs - shoe shine boy, fixing bicycles, newspaper route (in a bad neighborhood), and saving my allowance. I always thank my Dad to this day for buying the Odyssey when I know there were days we didn't have anything in the refrigerator before this time. My Mom and Dad also bought us two sets of encyclopedias on a payment plan. It was the renaissance of my family's way towards getting out of poverty. When our top floor Brooklyn apartment burned down, amazingly the outward facing bindings of the encyclopedias were pitch black, and the end books, but the whole set survived the fire which was in the center of the apartment. My brother and I used those encyclopedias all through high school, and into university. He was the first to graduate in my immediate family. Good memories.
Late '70s, and my interest in space is met with the encyclopedia's entry on the moon: "Someday, man may go to the moon."
I did paintings conservation for over 3 years, and I developed sensitivities to the benzene family like toluene and xylene; a whiff would give me an instant migraine, and I usually didn't get headaches much at all. All new construction, even the so-called 'green' techniques, has a lot more VOCs or other compounds that gas out, deteriorate, and otherwise create a by-product, which is why I liked my old drafty house. I lost some energy efficiency, but always had significant air exchange and all the glues had gassed off decades ago. New construction lead to Radon becoming more of an issue as a result of airtight basements and living spaces for the sake of energy efficiency. My old house was on top of glacial moraine, so Radon is something to be concerned about, but if it doesn't accumulate in concentration it is not as much an issue. That and simply caulking cracks and holes in your basement to keep it from entering in quantity is the other thing you can do. Also the drafty house ensured it never accumulated upstairs. The fix for newer homes was to put a vent to the outside the basement after caulking, sort of mini-chimney of stainless steel tube. And the fact is that it is the decay of uranium to radium to radon that releases alpha and beta particles, and gamma rays. Radon has a half-life of 3.8 days compared with uranium-238 of 4.5 billion years!
All of this reminds me of why I loved Wood Allen's movie Sleeper when I saw it with my Dad in 1973 (yeah, I know a 9-year-old shouldn't have seen such a movie, it was PG, and ratings had been less than a decade old). In short, a man is woken up 200 years later in 2173 in a dystopian future with a police state. In short, the scientists are perplexed by his request for wheat germ, tiger's milk, and something else. When they tell him all his friends are dead, he says, "But they ate organic rice!". We learn that steak, cream pies, and deep fat are good for you. Cigarettes have also been found to be very healthy! Hilarious movie! Now I have to see if I can find it!
EDIT: Found this link all about book smells. There's even a perfume for it! https://www.compoundchem.com/2014/06/01/newoldbooksmell/
PS: Don't tell California; they'll ban printed books or put labels all over the cover ;)
In addition to the overlays, it came with dice, money, poker chips, and some other board game components you used in conjunction with the video game itself. I'm guessing everyone promptly lost all of this, which would make a complete system even more rare.
Magnavox didn't sell many of these, but made their real money patenting everything and then suing Atari and anyone else making a video game system attaching to a TV.
Almost all the games were some sort of Pong variant, but what you could do with a plastic overlay and some imagination are quite impressive.
Edit: Just found an image of the same one https://i.redd.it/kzvv4pq6f1h21.jpg
The Vic-20 was a joy to tinker around until I got the basics (ha) of it, but the Odyssey, without games, overlays or even controllers, remained a baffling puzzle for many years.
I always wanted to get my hands on a C-64, but somehow never saw one. Guess people loved theirs.
Wipeout “1972”: https://voxodyssey.com/magnavox-odyssey/wipeout
(love the masked square that results in a trail-like sprite)
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--0yx2OhN5dA/Tgg7mjflyKI/AAAAAAAAAB...
Man, those joysticks were something. I remember my favorite games were one that was probably intended to feel like shooting at TIE fighters with a quad cannon turret on the Millennium Falcon (the sprites even looked about as close to TIE fighters as they could get, without getting sued) and the basketball game. I think I played whatever version or port of Space Invaders the console had quite a bit, too. I vaguely remember some carts that used the built-in keyboard for more than just mode selecting, but can't recall what they were.
Cosmic conflict.
The website voxodyssey is named after this console there is a story behind this if you are interested if not I leave you in peace friends
The Magnavox Odyssey -- is it still fun today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2908370 - Aug 2011 (17 comments)
tl;dr: no.
Never tried the first, but I still have my Odyssey^2 with nearly all the games. Only games I remember playing are Breakout and Alien Invaders[1], because those were the only fun ones. The box packaging and art for Conquest of the World[2] was seriously cool though. No clue how the game was meant to be played.
Looking at this list, it's probably "The Great Wall Street Fortune Hunt":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magnavox_Odyssey²_game...
A friend had the Odyssey 2 and the graphics seemed better than the 2600, although looking at the screenshots now not by much.
I've thought about that when I walk into one of kids rooms and they're playing some super realistic game.
:D