{"id":869,"date":"2012-05-28T11:32:34","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T16:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=869"},"modified":"2012-06-04T15:10:43","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T20:10:43","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-odyssey-installation-and-game-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/869\/retro-scan-of-the-week-odyssey-installation-and-game-rules","title":{"rendered":"[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> The Odyssey Manual"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Magnavox<\/a>“We’ve got a lot of space here, Fred, and I’m tired.” [stamps 7 times] “Fixed.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Forty years ago, Magnavox lifted the veil on the world’s first commercial video game console, the Odyssey. Designed to work with a home TV set, the Odyssey blazed a trail that every game console follows today.<\/p>\n

While the Odyssey had first been revealed to the press in April 1972, the Odyssey reached the market at $99.99 (about $548 in today’s dollars) in August of that year.<\/p>\n

Magnavox’s console relied on technology originally developed by Ralph Baer, Bill Harrison, and Bill Rusch<\/a> at Sanders Associates in the mid- to late 1960s. Baer’s invention, together with Atari’s work during the same period<\/a>, founded an industry.<\/p>\n

Even though I’ve been writing about the work of Ralph Baer<\/a> for over five years now, I still am amazed that the commercial video game console is now 40 years old. But 40 years is a long time in technology, and it’s easy to see how we’ve come so far if you keep that time scale in mind.<\/p>\n

By the way — in honor of this anniversary, I recently took apart an Odyssey console for PC World<\/a>. You can read about that adventure in another post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[ From Odyssey Installation and Game Rules, circa 1972, cover ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> Have you ever played an original Magnavox Odyssey console? Describe how you felt about the experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We’ve got a lot of space here, Fred, and I’m tired.” [stamps 7 times] “Fixed.” Forty years ago, Magnavox lifted the veil on the world’s first commercial video game console, the Odyssey. Designed to work with a home TV set, the Odyssey blazed a trail that every game console follows today. While the Odyssey had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,21,27,26,9],"tags":[84,83,85,82,74,73,60,86],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-news-current-events","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-retrogaming","tag-84","tag-anniversaries","tag-instruction-manual","tag-magnavox","tag-magnavox-odyssey","tag-ralph-baer","tag-retro-scan","tag-sanders-associates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}