Magnavox, creator of many Odyssey systems of the "pong" era, decided in 1978 to compete in the cartridge-based console market. The Odyssey2's various capabilities don't quite match up to the Atari VCS--it is slower, has a lower resolution, and has only one voice for sound versus two in the VCS. But Magnavox pushed the Odyssey2's full keyboard, and its ads proclaimed "The Keyboard is the Key." This appealed to a few players, but the arcade licenses of the other systems drew far more supporters. Magnavox also released a voice module to enhance the Odyssey2 gaming experience.
The Odyssey2 was released in Europe as the Phillips Videopac. The picture here shows the BASIC programming expansion unit on top of the Videopac unit.
There were very few third-party games released for the Odyssey2, mostly from Parker Brothers and Imagic. Those released paled in comparison to even the Atari 2600 versions, making other third party developers not too enthusiastic about the machine.
Dennis Brown, dgbrown (at) pixesthesia (dot) com, creator and maintainer. E-Mail me with corrections and additions. All contents copyright 2006, Dennis Brown. All trademarks are properties of their respective companies.
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