1979 – 1983retired
1292 Advanced Programmable Video System
“Power pack outside, dignity intact — a graceful exit in 1983.”
“It could only draw dots, but it drew the whole future of gaming first.”
The Magnavox Odyssey was the first commercial home video game console, a black, white, and brown oblong box that hooked up to your television, released in the United States in September 1972. Hardware designed by Ralph H. Baer's small team at Sanders Associates could display exactly three square dots and a line, so players taped plastic overlays on the screen to conjure whole worlds. It came packaged with dice, paper
Magnavox discontinued the Odyssey in 1975, just a few years after its debut, with the light-gun peripheral sold separately and everything else sold as a memory. It left behind an entire industry: every console since descends from that monochrome handful of dots. Quiet, screenless in sound, and counting on paper money to keep score, it started something no successor has finished.
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“Power pack outside, dignity intact — a graceful exit in 1983.”
“Nougat, caramel, deep purple wrapper — it gave Mars a run for its money, then gave up.”
“Named for a lion, drank like a lemon; the savanna was gentler than the sales chart.”