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.
Two robot generals, armies that march where you point them, and a battlefield that rewards the ambush over the charge. War of Nerves! is a 1979 two-player strategy duel hiding inside an early Odyssey 2 cartridge.
The second Master Strategy game turns the board into a world map and the console into referee, banker and battlefield. Conquest of the World is the Odyssey 2’s grand-strategy experiment — slower, richer, and built for a table full of rivals.
A real game board, real tokens, a keyboard overlay — and dungeons generated on screen from what the board reveals. Quest for the Rings! invented the board game / video game hybrid in 1981, and nothing since has quite repeated it.
Spillane the Timelord mocks you from beyond the screen while his weapons rain down in patterns no other Odyssey 2 shooter attempts. Attack of the Timelord! is the system’s most theatrical shooter — and its best voice performance.
You do not shoot the invaders. You are the swarm — a cloud of bees defending the hive against beekeepers and rival swarms, with a screen-clearing zap and The Voice providing the buzz. Killer Bees! is the strangest great game on the Odyssey 2.
No ninjas, no pizza — this 1983 Turtles is a mother turtle rescuing her babies through a beetle-patrolled maze, with The Voice humming the soundtrack. One of the Odyssey 2’s last and loveliest arcade conversions.
Rescue prisoners, mind your momentum, and try not to plough into the planet you are protecting. Freedom Fighters! is the Odyssey 2’s answer to Defender — looser, stranger, and more charming than its reputation suggests.
Your ship sits at the centre of the screen behind a rotating shield while UFOs swarm from every direction. UFO! was the Odyssey 2 game every owner seemed to have — and the one that first let you type your name beside a high score.
Pete swings, boulders bounce, doors open on floors that rearrange themselves — Pick Axe Pete! is the Odyssey 2’s finest platformer and the game a ten-year-old won a pound of gold playing at the 1982 World’s Fair.
It beat the official Pac-Man home port to market by a year, outsold everything else on the Odyssey 2, and then a court order pulled it from shelves. K.C. Munchkin! is still the maze game this system is judged by — because it is genuinely, defiantly better than a clone has any right to be.