Odyssey [Model ITL 200]

The world's first commercial home video game console. It was first demonstrated in April 1972 and released in August of that year, predating the Atari Pong home consoles by three years.

Sales of the console were hurt by poor marketing by Magnavox retail stores, in addition to many consumers being led to believe that the Odyssey would work only on Magnavox televisions. For that reason, most later Pong games had an explanation on their box saying "Works on any television set, black and white or color".

Magnavox settled a court case against Atari, Inc. for patent infringement in Atari's design of Pong, as it resembled the tennis game for the Odyssey. Over the next decade, Magnavox sued other big companies such as Coleco, Mattel, Seeburg, Activision and either won or settled every suit.

In 1985, Nintendo sued Magnavox and tried to invalidate Baer's patents by saying that the first video game was William Higinbotham's Tennis for Two game built in 1958. The court ruled that this game did not use video signals and could not qualify as a video game. As a result, Nintendo lost the suit and continued paying royalties to Sanders Associates.

Baer went on to invent the classic electronic game Simon for Mattel in 1978. Magnavox later released several other scaled down Pong-like consoles based under the Odyssey name (which did not use cartridges or game cards), and at one point a truly programmable, cartridge based console, the Odyssey², in 1978.

Games by cartridge number:
1. Table Tennis
2. Ski, Simon Says, Fun Zoo, Percepts
3. Tennis, Analogic, Baseball, Hockey, Football (passing and kicking), Soccer (1)
4. Cat and Mouse, Football (running), Haunted House, Invasion (1)
5. Submarine, Invasion (2), Soccer (2), Wipeout
6. Roulette, States, Invasion (3)
7. Volleyball
8. Basketball, Handball
9. Shootout, Dogfight, Prehistoric Safari
10. Shooting Gallery
12. Interplanetary Voyage

Cartridge 11 was meant for Basketball but this was cancelled and the game went to cartridge 8. The games on carts 9 and 10 required the lightgun rifle to play. The Soccer game was only playable on some export versions of the Odyssey usually replacing the Football game.