Magnavox Odyssey

In January 1971, Magnavox signed a preliminary deal with Sanders and began work on turning the Brown Box into a marketable product. Magnavox redesigned the casing for the machine and briefly renamed it the Skill-O-Vision before settling on the Odyssey.


Donovan, Tristan. Replay: The History of Video Games (p. 22). Yellow Ant. Kindle Edition.

The Brown Box’s collection of seven games was built up to 12 titles including the maze-chase game Cat & Mouse, an educational title called States! and the Ping-Pong game developed back in 1967. The rifle game that convinced Sanders to keep the project alive became the sold-separately Shooting Gallery add-on for the Odyssey. Magnavox then decided to add paper money, playing cards and poker chips to enhance the games and plastic overlays that attached to the TV screen to make up for the Odyssey’s primitive visuals. And with so much packed in with the game console, the $19.95 price tag Baer originally hoped for became $99.95. Baer was appalled: “I saw the box and out comes 10,000 playing cards, paper money and all this crap. I just knew nobody’s ever going to use this stuff.”

Donovan, Tristan. Replay: The History of Video Games (p. 22). Yellow Ant. Kindle Edition.

Magnavox Odyssey (1972) and its overlays.


Accessories that were included with the Magnavox Odyssey gaming console.