From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
In America it was the third console. In Europe, as the Philips Videopac G7000, it was a market leader with its own numbering, its own exclusives and, in 1983, a successor machine. The European half of the Odyssey 2 story is bigger than you think.
Three big boxes, three game boards, one idea decades ahead of its time: let the tabletop hold the map and the television hold the maths. Inside the Master Strategy Series — Quest for the Rings!, Conquest of the World and The Great Wall Street Fortune Hunt.
Shoot the letters in order, spell the word, hear it spoken. Sid the Spellbinder! turns The Voice module into a teacher and a spelling drill into an arcade game — and it might be the most likeable educational cartridge of its era.
Launch the ball, nudge nothing, and watch gravity negotiate with a field of pegs. Pachinko! is the Odyssey 2’s cheerful surrender to chance — part pinball, part lottery, and a small lesson in how much fun a bounce can carry.
Adam Power, a volcano fortress, a laser-eyed villain and one of the rarest North American cartridges on the system. Power Lords is the Odyssey 2’s licensed finale — a strange, tough action game that collectors chase and players should too.
The sequel the lawyers made necessary: K.C. returns to hunt a segmented Dratapillar through the maze, trees and all, while The Voice shouts encouragement and alarm. K.C.’s Krazy Chase! is the rare forced sequel that finds a game of its own.
Chase the monkeys, tag them before the timer turns, and watch the hunted become the hunters. Monkeyshines! is a bright, frantic game of tag across a three-storey playfield — one of the Odyssey 2’s most purely joyful cartridges.
Two gunfighters, a stand of trees for cover, and bullets that can be steered after they leave the barrel. Showdown in 2100 A.D. turns the western duel into one of the Odyssey 2’s finest two-player cartridges.
A starfield, a crosshair, and enemy ships sliding across your gunsights — Cosmic Conflict! put Odyssey 2 players inside the cockpit in 1978, in one of the earliest first-person space games on a home console.
The Odyssey 2’s 1978 answer to Space Invaders adds a armoured mothership, a wandering monster and a cannon you must protect as much as pilot. Alien Invaders—Plus! is the most honest kind of launch game: familiar, competent, and just different enough.