Odyssey²



"The excitement of a game. The mind of a computer."

The Odyssey² (known as Videopac in most of Europe, and simply Odyssey in Brazil) is a video game console made by Magnavox (a subsidiary of Dutch electronics giant Philips) as a follow-up to the first generation Odyssey.

This system enjoyed some success mainly in Europe and Brazil, where it arrived before the Atari 2600 juggernaut. But it still failed due to a number of issues. First, the hardware was quite limited, compared to the more flexible 2600. Also, the console was big and clunky, having a huge keyboard that served no real purpose. And worse, a bizarre case of bad management: as their engineers ran out of ideas, the higher-ups at Philips assumed that video games were a doomed fad. But one lone developer kept making game after game after game, and all sold very well. So the company could not abandon the market, but they would not support the system properly either. By the time the crash of '83 happened, it was pretty much dead anyway.

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