Magnavox odyssey 200 value11/14/2023 ![]() ![]() When the gun’s trigger was pressed, it instantly flashed a beam of light (光線銃 roughly means “ray gun”, but the toy guns were commonly referred to as Nintendo beam guns). Nintendo also sold targets separately that worked in conjunction with the guns. In 1970, Nintendo began selling 光線銃 SP (Kôsenjû SP), a pair of toy guns, a pistol and a rifle, that used a light-dependent resistor that was manufactured by Sharp. Fortunately, Magnavox found a Japanese toy company that was already manufacturing and selling light rifles. They could have contracted Marx, but Marx would only have been able to provide toy rifles without any internal circuitry. The actual prototype lightgun – Courtesy: The SmithsonianĬloseup of the rifle prototype shows the Marx nameĪfter Magnavox licensed the rights to what would become the Odyssey, they searched for a company that could manufacture the light guns for them. The team quickly stripped the toy rifle and added circuitry to it that would let it recognize objects on a TV screen and a cord to attach it to the console prototype. This prototype was actually built from a toy rifle that had been sold by the American toy company, Marx, which a member of Baer’s team had purchased at a nearby toy store. ![]() While Ralph Baer was building videogame console prototypes, he also built a prototype for a light-rifle that could be used to shoot at on-screen targets. In Game Over, all David Sheff wrote was that “Magnavox, for one, sold the rights to its Odyssey system to Nintendo.” However, Sheff didn’t offer any explanation to the hows and whys that this came to be, which made it very easy to see why Smith had his skepticism about the statement.Īctually, Nintendo did have a major part in the Odyssey story. But then how did Jolieb obtain its Odysseys to sell? Were they imported directly from Magnavox, or did Nintendo actually import them and then sell them to Jolieb? And how did Nintendo, a manufacturer of toys, get to partner with Magnavox in the first place in order to get these distribution rights? In the case of the Odyssey, little is known about this mysterious Jolieb, aside from that it was located in Tokyo’s Minato Ward, which leads me to believe that it was a retailer. It is not clear if the data in the distributor column is actually a distributor or a retailer or even a manufacturer. Unfortunately, the information in this spreadsheet is not consistent. Regrettably, a copy of this paper has not yet come to light, at least not in the West. Finally, there was a note that said that the source to this information was from the Japanese newspaper, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, dated April, 17, 1975. Other pertinent information included a distributor’s name, Jolieb Co., Ltd, and a price, ¥58,000 ($200). At the top of the list was the Odyssey, which according to the spreadsheet, had been released by April 17, 1975. He came across an obscure Japanese Odyssey fan site that featured a spreadsheet, which listed the release dates of early Japanese consoles. To his credit Smith did not stand behind his initial beliefs and did some additional research. I countered that I believed that Nintendo imported an American (domestic) version of the console, so there was no way to tell them apart from those consoles that were sold in the United States. Smith’s contention was that no Odysseys have ever been found in Japanese boxes or with Japanese instructions. Shortly after the book’s publication, this was disputed by noted videogame historian, Alexander Smith, who said that although this information had been briefly mentioned in David Sheff’s 1993 history of Nintendo, Game Over, it simply wasn’t true. The book stated that Nintendo had imported the first videogame console, the Magnavox Odyssey, into Japan. From Old School Gamer Magazine – January 2018Ī question had arisen regarding whether a statement in my book, Phoenix IV: The History of the Videogame Industry, was correct or not.
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