To view the manual for this game, go here. Pickaxe Pete is similar in many ways to Donkey Kong. You play a miner named Pickaxe Pete, and you start off in the middle of the screen with a pick-axe. There are three doors from which boulders are coming, bouncing down the mine-shafts; every time Pete destroys one of these he gains 3 points, although the axe wears out after a while and disappears. When two boulders collide, they explode, and out comes either a pick-axe which floats to the bottom of...
To read the manual for this game, go here. Munchkin is cartridge number 38 in the official Magnavox/Philips line of games for the Philips Videopac. In North America for the Odyssey² it was called K.C. Munchkin!, an inside reference to then president of Philips Consumer Electronics Kenneth C. Menkin. Designed and programmed by Ed Averett, Munchkin is very heavily based on Namco's 1980 arcade game Pac-Man, but not a direct clone. It was however, similar enough for Atari to sue Philips and force...
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To view the manual for this game, go here. It's you versus the robotic armada of the Merciless Monstroth, a one-eyed tentacled entity bent on conquest. Use your laser base to take out the enemy cannons and the robots, being careful that you shoot them when their barriers don't block you and when they're not shooting at you! Get shot and you lose your laser base, but as long as you have barriers, you can run under one of them and convert it into another laser base to continue the fight. Run out...
To read the manual for this game, go here. The game begins as the skull-like face of Spyruss the Deathless (the Timelord of Chaos, no less!) taunts you (well, only if you had the Voice), and then a bunch of pesky spaceships pops out of a vortex to shoot at you. They shoot at you rather a lot. Fortunately, you can shoot back with reckless abandon, but their ammunition – as you ascend into the higher levels of the game – can track you and even, if you don’t destroy their shots in mid-air,...
To read the manual for this game, go here. You are a frog. Your task is simple: hop across a busy highway, dodging cars and trucks, until you get the to the top of the screen. On the second screen, you stand at the edge of a river, where you must keep yourself from drowning by crossing safely to your grotto at the top of the screen by leaping across the backs of turtles and logs. But watch out for hungry alligators!
To view the manual for this game, go here. Review by William Cassidy for The Next Level ( http://www.the-nextlevel.com/odyssey2/reviews/review.php?gameid=25 ) After the success of K.C. Munchkin!, Philips wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the title character by using him in another game. However, they obviously did not want a repeat of the legal troubles generated by K.C.'s first adventure. So they changed the gameplay to be as different from Pac-Man as possible while still retaining the...
Click here for a manual for this game. Marooned on the ice planet Krybor, the player uses a laser cannon to destroy legions of demons that attack from above. Visually, the demons appear in waves similar to other space-themed shooters, but individually combine from the sides of the screen to the area above the player's cannon. Each wave introduces new weapons with which the demons attack, such as long streaming lasers and laser clusters. Starting in Wave 5, demons also divide into two smaller,...
In the opening screen – the mists of time, so the rulebook tells us – two players pick their characters’ classes. Warriors are sword-wielding strongmen, wizards can cast spells from a distance, phantoms can walk through solid walls (but not lava formations), and changelings can become invisible when they move. The two intrepid adventurers then set forth on a quest to retrieve the ten rings of power from randomly selected dungeons and filled with randomly selected horrors.
To read the manual for this game, go here. Commanding of one of Earth Federation's robot-controlled battle cruisers, the player must protect Earth from an invasion of unidentified flying objects. The ship is equipped with a laser cannon and a force field. The force field energy is drained when the ship's lasers are fired (by pressing the action button). The direction of the lasers is shown by a white dot in the force field, which rotates to aim in the direction the ship is moving. There are...
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Hit the hardwood in one of two sports. Roll your big shiny one down the lanes and try to knock down all the pins in Bowling!, or go for a basket in Basketball! Not possible in Odyssey2 Basketball!: fouls, three-point shots, free throws, most steals…
To view the manual for this game, go here. In Speedway!, one player guides a race car through an endless onslaught of slower-moving traffic, Monaco GP style; colliding with anyone stalls the game for a moment. Two players are required for Spin-Out!, a copycat of Atari’s Sprint 2 coin-op, in which two race cars zip around a convoluted little track in an attempt to be the first one to rack up three laps. Crypto-Logic! lets you type in up to 18 characters on one line, and hit the enter key to...
To view the manual for this game, go here. Q*Bert, a nosey little guy with a propensity for hopping, spends his time hopping around a pyramid of colorful blocks, avoiding Coily the Snake and other assorted purple and red creatures, including a few who operate on a slightly different plane (i.e., they move down the pyramid as if it were rotated one-third). Any green objects and creatures Q*Bert can catch will not hurt him – in fact, the little bouncing green balls will stop time briefly for...
To read the manual for this game, go here. An action-adventure game for one or two players, set in a haunted house. Make your way up through the floors, avoiding and/or capturing ghosts, eventually escaping through the attic. Choose zero players for a demo.
If you've ever played the arcade game or another home version, you know that Super Cobra is a side-scrolling shooter similar to Scramble, where you control a helicopter that can shoot straight ahead or drop bombs on ground targets. The G7000 version is fairly recognizable, with decent graphics and sound, but plays rather differently. Apparently the developers weren't able to coax the G7000 to replicate the coin-op's continual scrolling -- which is not surprising, considering that no other G7000...
To view the manual for this game, go here. As Popeye, you’re trying to catch Olive Oyl’s falling hearts before they descend to sea level and are lost, while ducking Bluto’s punches at the same time. A can of spinach appears every so often, giving you the opportunity to read the big bully the riot act (comic strip-style, of course).
To view the manual for this game, go here. Armed with a catapult and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of projectiles, your task is to repeatedly and continuously smash your opponent’s castle, his catapult (rendering him harmless for a few seconds), or your opponent himself. Also known as Stone Sling.
To read the manual for this game, go here. In Baseball!, you are, quite simply, one of two teams playing the great American game. If you’re up at bat, your joystick and button control the man at the plate and any players on base. If you’re pitching, your button and joystick control how wild or straight your pitches are, and you also control the outfielders – you can catch a ball on the fly, or pick it up and try to catch the other player away from his bases.
Power Lords (1978)(Philips)(US) Information and review by William Cassidy for The Next Level ( http://www.the-nextlevel.com/odyssey2/reviews/review.php?gameid=38 ) Here it is: the Holy Grail. Power Lords is the absolute rarest game in North America, it's scarce in Brazil, and it was never even released in Europe. So good luck scoring a copy. That's too bad, because it's actually pretty good! It's also fairly unusual. The game is a single-screen space shooter, but unlike most games of that...
As the mama turtle, you trundle around a simple maze, pursued by nasty bugs which are lethal to the touch. You can drop bombs in their path, which will reduce their speed. Your mission is to visit the isolated cul-de-sacs in the maze – which in itself can lead to your turtle getting trapped – to retrieve your eggs and take them to safe houses dotted around the maze. If you visit the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll wind up with not an egg, but a new bug hot on your heels. Getting all...
To read the manual for this game, go here. Get out there and draw! Your cowboy faces off against another player, or the computer, in a fight to see who can draw their gun the fastest – and who can run away the fastest! Also known as Gunfighter.
To read the manual for this game, go here. Classic pigskin comes to sluggish life in this over-complicated video game edition. Despite the Odyssey’s full keyboard, the game forces players to look up plays in the manual and execute them with joystick commands. After that, aside from some minimal control of whoever has the ball, it’s a bit like watching an ant farm. Also known as American Football.
To read the manual for this game, go here. Using the left joystick, you control the movement of your ship within the confines of a screen filled with mines, alien aggressors, and occasional purple “confinement crystals” which you have to catch, because these contain human prisoners of war. The right joystick engages your hyperdrive, enabling you to go zipping along in true Defender style.
To read the manual for this game, go here. The player is a legendary hero of the Earth Federation, and in command of a Centurion star fighter, must defend the galaxy from the Imperial ships attack. From a first person perspective, the player must destroy fifteen enemy ships. A counter at the lower left corner of the screen shows how many ships are left. On the lower right, a counter marking, at the start of the mission, 1000 megajoules of remaining ship power. The ship needs one megajoule per...
To view the manual for this game, go here. The Green Goblin and his henchmen are terrorizing the city once more, and it’s up to Spider-Man to restore order. But the odds are against him: he can only attach his web to the surface of the building, naturally, but the Goblin’s underlings are ready and eager to cut Spidey’s web should it be planted near them. Worse yet, the difficult-to-navigate high voltage tower at the top of the building is riddled with the Goblin’s bombs, and even if...
To read the manual for this game, go here. The constant struggle between cat and dog requires a great deal of concentration. Two players can play, or one player can control the dog while the CPU makes moves as the “Microcat.” Each animal drops a piece into the playing field, trying to line up four pieces horizontally, vertically or diagonally, or trying to keep the other animal from lining up his four pieces. Whoever lines up four pieces first wins the game.
To read the manual for this game, go here. You control a solitary swarm of “good” bees, trailed by a couple of handy ray guns on the same vertical axis. The game starts out with a bunch of dim-witted Beebots bumbling around the screen, which you can sting with your bee swarm until the ‘bots slow down and finally expire, marked by a rather grim little tombstone! This probably sounds easy enough, but there are killer bees from outer space emerging from hives around the edge of the play...
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To read the manual for this game, go here. It’s all the thrills of pinball, minus approximately 75% of the excitement! Use your joystick to control the plunger tension and launch your ball into play. Use the action button to pop the flippers, keeping your ball on the field and out of trouble. The bumpers and spinner score big points… well, relatively speaking. Also known as Flipper Game.
In Tutankham, the player takes on the role of an explorer who is searching through a maze-like Egyptian tomb, hunting treasures while fighting off various enemy creatures.
Background & review by William Cassidy, for The Next Level ( http://www.the-nextlevel.com/odyssey2/reviews/review.php?gameid=36 ) Pinball! is an engineering prototype that sat, forgotten, in Ralph Baer's basement for about 20 years before it was finally recovered. Thirty cartridge copies were produced, with labels specially made and autographed by Baer, and sold for $25 apiece at Classic Gaming Expo 2000. The significance of this game cannot be understood without first understanding the...
To read the manual for this game, go here. Hostile spacecraft are bombing the underwater paradise of Atlantis from above. Manning two cannons, you can knock the attacking ships out of the sky – or try to hit them at close range if they dive to bombing altitutde. When all of Atlantis’ landmarks have been wiped out, the game is over.
To view the manual for this game, go here. This authentic electronic simulation of world class championship skiing is so realistic you can hear your skis cut through the powder as you traverse the slopes! It's all here! The Slalom - the Giant Slalom - and the soaring downhill races! It's you against other skiiers and a computerized timer that clocks you to 1/10th of a second! The excitement is endless - the computer generates over 195,000 different runs! Also known as Skiing.
To read the manual for this game, go here. You control an acrobat on a moving see-saw, launching your fellow acrobat into the air to pop balloons and defy gravity in an act that would’ve done old Barnum proud! But what goes up must come down, and your airborne acrobat, if he doesn’t bounce upward upon impact with more balloons, will plummet at alarming speed. You have to catch him with the empty end of the see-saw, thus catapulting the other acrobat into a fresh round of inflatable...
To view the manual for this game, go here. An elaborate game of tag, only the simian players have an advantage; human players, when tagged, must be “un-tagged” by the other player to return to the game.
To read the manual for this game, go here. A nine hole, par 36, electronic golf course for one to four players. Realistic electronic golfers hit long drives and fairway shots! They pitch and chip up to the green! Suddenly - the screen changes automatically to show a close-up of the green itself. Putt out - then go on to a new hole with a different layout and challenge! This is a remarkably complete electronic simulation. You really walk the course and have true control over back-swing, distance...
You’re alone in a maze filled with armed, hostile robots who only have one mission – to kill you. If you even so much as touch the walls, you’ll wind up dead. You’re a little bit faster than the robots, and you have human instinct on your side… but even that won’t help you when SmileyBot, a deceptively friendly and completely indestructible smiley face, appears to destroy you if you linger too long in any one part of the maze. The object of the game? Try to stay alive however long...
To read the manual for this game, go here. In this bizarre and uniquely Odyssey2 take on Atari’s Breakout, you battle either the computer or a second player in your attempts to blast through a wall – or repair it. You take alternating turns with your opponent; one round, you’re playing the game the more traditional way and controlling the paddle at the bottom of the screen, trying to bounce the ball toward four layers of colorful blocks. But in the next round, you’re controlling the...
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To read the manual for this game, go here. War is pixellated, blocky hell on the Odyssey2! In Armored Encounter, two combatants in tanks circumnavigate a maze peppered with land mines, searching for the optimum spot from which to blow each other to kingdom come. In Sub Chase, a bomber plane and a submarine, both maneuverable in their own way, try to take each other out without blasting any non-combatant boats routinely running between them (darn that civilian shipping!). In both games, the...
To read the manual for this game, go here. The players are in the Battle Control Central at the heart of the United Planets Interstellar Galactic Empire. From there, they monitor the activity of the twin solar systems of Terien and Lorien, forty-three billion light years away. Their mission is to control to protect the planets of those solar systems from the invasion fleet with the remote controlled battle cruisers. They'll control their ships with the joystick and fire lasers with the action...
Turtles (1983)(Philips)(EU)
You type! It talks! And occasionally you have to throw the damnedest misspellings at it to get it to say the simplest words. And despite the back of the box claiming that it “plays fun games,” it’s much more likely that it’ll just make some fun (and weird) sounds.
"A graviteasing space race! / A daring lifesaving mission!" Released in Brazil as "Acoplagem!/Resgate!" Two games, the first of which is is a lander-style two player race, the second an unbelievably repetitive mission in piloting a helicopter to rescue someone on a building. Possibly the worst Odyssey2 games ever. Box art: http://gamesdbase.com/Media/SYSTEM/Magnavox_Odyssey_2/Box/big/Out_of_this_World_-_1983_-_Philips.jpg Scathing review:...
Red Baron (19xx)(-)(EU) An unreleased prototype of a cockpit-view air battle game. Precious little information is available.
Frogger (1983)(Parker Brothers)(BR)
After a time travel, the players are trapped in the Land of Keynesium, in 231,000 A.D. The Keynesians are deeply interested in the 20th Century economic life, and they build more than a trillion different mazes populated by robots representing the economic factors of that time. Starting with $500,000, the players must turn it into a million so they can return for their time, or else be doomed to roam the Keynesian mazes forever! In this game, the players play against the Keynesian robots in...
To read the manual for this game, go here. Hockey!: Realistic speed skating and fast off-the-wall action on electronic ice! Soccer!: A computerized version of the fastest growing college sport in the U.S. Also known as Electronic Ice Hockey / Electronic Soccer.
Play the classic game of Chess on the Odyssey 2. Since the Odyssey 2 didn't have enough RAM and computing power for a chess program, Philips shipped this cartridge with an add-on computer module that sits on top of the Odyssey 2. The Internet Archive has a copy of the service manual for this module.
To read the manual for this game, go here. You’re piloting a balloon-toting brat around an amusement park. Ride the rides! Slide down the slide! Crawl under the trees and play! But watch out for that balloon – the thing is vital to your survival! Don’t let it get popped against the trees, or the rides, or the walls of the amusement park. Worse yet, a cloud may appear at the side of the screen and blow your balloon away, forcing you to run after it and catch it before it collides with...
To read the manual for this game, go here. You’ve gotta have balls if you’re going to play this game – lots of ‘em. Multicolored ones too. The game is pool, and you use the joystick to rotate your stick around the cue ball, trying to angle for the perfect shot. Whatever you do, don’t sink the cue ball! Includes versions of Eight Ball (be the first player to sink your black ball) and Rotation (sink the most balls of any colour). Released as "Bilhar!" in Brazil. Also known as...
In probably the weakest of the Master Series games – Odyssey games which included overcomplicated board game elements, a la Quest For The Rings – you control one of the world’s superpowers, attempting to gain as much influence as possible through political and economic means and, where necessary, warfare.
To read the manual for this game, go here. You pays your money, you takes your chances. Pull the lever (or, in this case, the joystick) and try to get the fruit to line up. If you succeed, you’re in good shape; if you don’t, well, you’re out some more change. Also known as Las Vegas.
To read the manual for this game, go here. A computerized tournament soccer table—complete with invisible electronic lightning rods for super fast play action! Also known as Electronic Table Football.
To read the manual for this game, go here. "Pachinko! is a little like pinball, and a little like... Well, it is just different. Based on the Japanese gambling game, but with the gambling element more or less removed from the game -- we guess you could bet a friend on who would win -- you send your ball flying and hope it goes bouncing through different buckets on the way down. The first player to get 100 points wins this addictive game!" - says...
To read the manual for this game, go here. You’re the commander of a small squad of robots, and your opponent – be it a second player or the computer – is commanding a similar platoon o’ droids. Your job is to avoid the enemy’s robots while you wait for your robots to reach the enemy commander. Of course, the enemy’s robots could reach you first, but that’s another story. The only control you have over your robots is to press the action button and call them toward you. The robots...
Two keyboard overlays are available for this game: One here and another here. To view the manual for this game, go here.
The CSV Video-Traffic Games Edition of the G7000 was given to primary schools in a small region of West Germany. The package consisted of a G7000 and two special games -- Verkehrsspiele 1 and Verkehrsspiele 2 -- that were used to teach children how to behave on the street. The console set is nothing more than a repackaging of a regular Philips G7000. The package comes with a special "Video-Traffic Games" sticker affixed to the TV screen depicted by the box art. It contains a regular...
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To read the manual for this game, go here. Computer Intro contains a programming environment that lets users enter and run their own programs with up to 100 lines of code. Use Computer Intro along with its 107 page manual to learn the fundamentals of assembler and machine language programming. Also known as Computer Programmer.
To read the manual for this game, go here. Place your bets, ditch some cards, or play with the ones you’ve got. The computer offers the usual enticements – double down and insurance – but the odds are firmly in favor of the house. There’s no limit on how big your bet is, so you’re even free to bet an ante that’ll have you screaming “uncle!” if you lose. Also known as Blackjack.
What happens when the Dreaded Dratapillar Of Venus makes a guest appearance? It means that a spelling bee is imminent! A friendly voice warns you to look out for a “monster attack,” and after dispatching all of the segments of the worm-like invader, you’re asked to correctly spell three words using the Odyssey2 keyboard. Once you’ve correctly spelled those three words, another monster attack occurs, with the Dratapillar moving faster in each successive level; the game continues until it...
Super Bee (1983)(Philips)(EU)
Robot City (19xx)(Philips)(EU)
To read the manual for this game, go here.
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To read the manual for this game, go here. The object of Neutron Star is to save two rows of "satellites" or "space stations" from meteorites by either blasting them (which yields no points) or grabbing them and dropping them into a very nearby neutron star, which is actually a singularity (better known as a "black hole").
To read the manual for this game, go here. An electronic simulation so real you can even spike a shot! Also known as Electronic Volleyball.
Shark Hunter (19xx)(Philips)(EU)
To read the manual for this game, go here. Two titles are available in this cart: Depth Charge is a single-player BattleShip variant. The player controls a cannon in a top-down view trying to destroy 7 submarines hidden in the area of water shown on screen. The area is a 8x8 grid, and the player controls a white cross-hair over it with the joystick. Pressing the action button will shoot the cannon. If a submarine is hidden in that particular area, a blue square will appear, marking it. If there...
European release of Showdown in 2100 A.D.! Get out there and draw! Your cowboy faces off against another player, or the computer, in a fight to see who can draw their gun the fastest – and who can run away the fastest!
To read the manual for this game, go here. Interpol is a game for two players, one controls two spies (red characters) and the other controls two police officers (blue characters). The spies are in possession of secret information and must try to leave the country with them, by air or by sea. The police officers have to stop their plan. The airport and the port are blocked by the police, and individuals interested in traveling must present a code which only the police knows.
Martians are attacking the Earth and planning to destroy all life in it. A Martian space ship is orbiting the earth and a big laser cannon is being built on Earth and it is the player's mission to hold the Martian threat until the laser cannon is complete. To do so, the SIDO (Space Intruder Defense Organisation) infiltrated a fighting probe inside the Martian spaceship. In Martian Threat, the player controls a fighting probe with the joystick. The lack of gravity will make the probe keep moving...
To view the manual for this game, go here. A one player maze game published and developed by Philips in 1983.
To view the manual for this game, go here. Purporting to be based on the ancient Chinese game of Go, Dynasty! is actually more of a variation of Othello. The same strategies apply, and can be played with two players, one against the computer, or – for those who are feeling a little bit lazy – the computer vs. itself. Also known as Samurai.
Nightfighter is a combat flight simulator. The player controls a fighter plane on a night mission, and his task is to take off, destroy the target, avoid enemy attack and return to base. The history of this title is unclear. As far as we can tell it was never officially released during the original lifetime of the Odyssey 2, but was distributed by Retrogenesis in 2010. There are multiple Brazilian and European prototypes, of which this is one. A little more information here:...
To read the manual for this game, go here. Math-A-Magic! is essentially electronic flash cards, while Echo! is a slightly watered down version of the classic electronic game Simon. Also known as Mathematician / Echo.
To read the manual for this game, go here. This cart has two minigames: "The Juggler" - A chap wandering along the bottom of the screen must catch balls descending from a maze. Involves no actual juggling. "Tic-Tac-Toe" (lit. "Old Woman's Game") - A two-player version of the classic.
To read the manual for this game, go here. Shoot clay pigeons from the comfort of your Magnavox Odyssey 2.
The CSV Video-Traffic Games Edition of the G7000 was given to primary schools in a small region of West Germany. The package consisted of a G7000 and two special games -- Verkehrsspiele 1 and Verkehrsspiele 2 -- that were used to teach children how to behave on the street. The console set is nothing more than a repackaging of a regular Philips G7000. The package comes with a special "Video-Traffic Games" sticker affixed to the TV screen depicted by the box art. It contains a regular...
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The Magnavox Odyssey², known in Europe as the Philips Videopac G7000, in Brazil as the Philips Odyssey, in the United States as the Magnavox Odyssey² and the Philips Odyssey², and also by many other names, is a video game console released in 1978.
