The First Two TV Consoles – Mangavox’s Odyssey & Atari’s PONG

This weekend marks the 20th anniversary for the Sega Mega Drive in the US market and, because of this, we’ve gained some inspiration to write about the first two gaming consoles.

Gaming consoles, alongside computers, have come a very long way since their first introduction and this article will pay respects to that.

So let us start off with, yes – there were consoles in 1972!

The first console

The first video console was created in 1972, and it was called the Odyssey. The Odyssey was created by a company called Magnavox, a company run by Ralph Baer, and it was awarded the nickname ‘Brown Box’.

The Odyssey was an analog console which was powered by batteries. The console lacked good graphics, controller response and also sound. All of the games were stored on a cartridge which did not contain any components, instead it had a series of jumpers between pins. It was said that these jumpers could interconnect different logic, thus creating the signals for the game.

The Odyssey only worked on two TV sizes, where it was only supported in black and white. However you could buy a plastic cover that would convert it to ‘colour’ graphics.

Despite the lack of support, this was the first console and it was revolutionary. It featured a load of games that included the first ever shooting game, and the first ever ‘gun for the tv’.

List of games:

Analogic	Fun Zoo	Prehistoric Safari	States
Baseball	Handball	Roulette	Submarine
Basketball	Haunted House	Shooting Gallery &	Table Tennis
Brain Wave	Hockey	Shootout	Tennis
Cat & Mouse	Invasion	Simon Says	Volleyball
Dogfight	Interplanetary Voyage	Ski	Win
Football	Percepts	Soccer	Wipeout

The Odyssey rival – Atari’s PONG

Three years later, enter Nolan Bushnell – the founder to Atari and the PONG game. It was said that Nolan was so intrigued by the simple tennis game from Magnavox that he decided to create his own version of the game. Of course he received a lawyers letter, along with other treats from Magnavox as apparently it was a copy.

However despite the legal problems Atari, who had now employed engineer Allan Alcorn – the original PONG designer, continued to create their new game that would feature sound and on-screen scoring. The case never went to court, where Magnavox landed up offering Atari exclusive rights for around $700,00 US. All ‘clone’ PONG games after this would have to pay royalties to Atari. Oh and, by the way, there were loads of clone games.

This console also had a price tag of $100 US and only after a year, in 1976, Atari was sold to Warner Communications for around $30 million US. The sale allowed for the company to fund their new PONG C-100 console, which soon became a household name.

After these two consoles came a plethora of units, where Magnavox lead the market for a large amount of years due to their consoles being able to play a wide array of games.

From 1972 to 1980 Magnavox released 9 different consoles to the public, all of which were based on the original Odyssey.

Atari only released six units where half of these were based on single games such as Pinball or PONG.

By the year 1980 there were a load of different console firms in the race to ‘the best unit’. Technology’s growth rate fast took a huge leap due to the amount of competition.

It’s crazy to think how in 2009 we only really have three main console firms, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.

So doesn’t this just remind you of your first TV game set? Well, let us know what you think in the comment section below.

Credits to Martin Goldberg and Electronic Entertainment Museum (E2M) for the images.