This game fucking sucks... fucking sucks... fucking sucks...
Fuck!
Wow, I just shot down a duck by saying, "Fuck!".
It's like puking on a pile of shit!
I've wasted all my time on this shit.
It want it back. It ruined my life.
Man, fuck this game! Fuck it to hell! Fuck it to oblivion! Fuck it to damnation of mankind!
Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!
The Magnavox Odyssey was released in 1972, making it the world's first home video game console.
So when it comes to going back to the past, you can't go back much more than this.
Look at this thing, looks like a spaceship. What's the top for?
The controllers are even stranger.
You get a reset button and two knobs on the sides, one to move vertical, and one to move horizontal, and then one more to do God knows what.
But tell me, how are you supposed to hold these things? Or do you just put them on a table?
The wires are bulky, and not flexible at all.
They're short, too. If you're sitting on your couch, the wires don't reach.
However, the wire that connects the console to the TV is long as shit.
Alright, I guess you're supposed to play with it on your lap, or on the floor.
Alright, now we're ready to play some Odyssey.
Oh, of course, I forgot one thing. We need a game.
These are the games. Pretty elaborate, right?
The titles are the best part.
Like, what're some of the games you grew up with?
Maybe Wrecking Crew on the NES, or Afterburner on the Sega Master System, or
how about Game #1, on the Odyssey.
There's no power button. When you put the game in, the console starts up.
Pretty efficient, I guess, but half the time, it doesn't work.
Gotta keep fucking around 'till the picture comes in.
And after that, what do you get? Just a dot, or a dash, whatever the fuck you want to call it.
The only thing we need now is someone to play with.
Sorry, but these are 2-player games, so I really don't have much of a choice.
Alright, come on out.
This is the Nerdy Turd.
I cloned him from my own shit.
Alright, Nerdy Turd, you ready to play some Odyssey?
You bet your ass you are.
Alright, where you at - oh, there you are.
There you a-
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Ah!
Let's play hide and seek. Alright, I won't look. Okay, hide somewhere.
You ready? OK.
Alright, are you here? Oh, I was close!
What're you doing?
Oh I get it, it's like taking a shit. Let me try.
Let's both do it, like, go with me, so it's like the shit's getting thinner as it comes out.
Ah! It broke off!
Let's make a popsicle. Yeah! It's a popsicle!
You're raping me, you're raping me!
Let's just go all over. Woooooo, wooooo!
Man, people in 1972 must have been bored out of their minds.
You really gotta use your imagination, because the Odyssey doesn't have sound.
And when you think about it, it doesn't have graphics, either.
Yeah, check out all this stuff the comes with the system.
You have chips, cards, dice, a scoreboard, and most important, the overlays.
This is the substitute for graphics. They come in two different sizes, depending on which kind of screen you have.
The games themselves are all the same thing, just two dots on the screen.
But they're all programmed slightly different.
The instruction manual is absolutely imperative,
because without it, you wouldn't know the right combination, which game and which overlay.
Let's try some Tennis.
You just stick this son of a bitch on the screen here, and you're all set.
Now isn't that exciting?
Yeah, you just got to make all your own sound effects.
You can cheat, too!
If you turn this little knob here, you can steer the ball.
Yeah, that's not fair, is it? We're playing dirty now, motherfucker!
When in a tennis game would the ball ever fly around somebody?
It's surreal, because you can move wherever you want.
It's not like you have to stay on your side of the net.
So, the players have to keep their own rules and their own score.
That's right, the game doesn't even keep score.
It's a fucking free-for-all!
Now let's try this skiing game.
All you do is move the light through the slopes.
And with these controllers, it's harder than it looks.
The only goal is to stay in the lines, and see how fast you can get to the end.
It's up to the other player to keep time.
Now that is what you call a desperate attempt at a video game.
Now we have Simon Says. You just do what the card says, and see who gets there first.
Simon says go to the wrist,
Simon says go to the pet's ear.
Now this is some A-class entertainment.
Look, it's the dog's tongue.
Oh, look, he's got a nuclear boner! Nuclear boner!
She's giving birth to a solar baby. Here it comes!
It's time for football, and all I can say about this one is that
for the first football game on a home video game console,
it's fucking horrible!
There's a board, a football marker, and pages of instructions to explain it all.
You gotta do all kinds of math, calculate the wind and shit.
So, to hell with that!
Hockey. This one's more fun. You just try to drive the puck into the opponent's net.
If you keep tapping the reset button, you can change direction.
Anything goes in this game.
Gotta keep it away from the net! Keep it away from the - ugh! You bastard!
This one's called Analogic.
Yeah, that sounds fun, it's like the logic of your ass.
It's supposed to take place in outer space.
You each start on your own planet. I guess, maybe Uranus and Myanus.
The idea is to get to the other player's planet by following a pattern of numbers.
You figure out the patterns by adding the numbers of the last player's move into some fucking math equation.
It might sound like a complete waste of time, but that's because it is.
Cat and Mouse. In this game one player's the cat, and the other player's the mouse.
The cat tries to catch the mouse, and the mouse tries to get to the hole.
The blue squares are supposed to be furniture, so you're supposed to have to go around.
But there's nothing preventing you from passing through, so naturally, both players are gonna end up cheating.
Besides, why can't the furniture look like furniture, and the hole look like a hole?
Instead, they're visual representations of what they may have looked like if this game had graphics.
But it's an overlay! Draw some fucking furniture!
Next is Haunted House, the first horror game.
You're a detective going around picking up clues.
The second player draws the cards telling you what clue to get.
Also, the second player is hiding as the ghost.
Oh, there you are!
No matter how many times I've read the instructions, I just don't get it.
Submarine. Player two has to follow a squiggly line, and dodge torpedoes fired by player one.
But the torpedo never seems to go in the direction that it should.
And whether or not player one is supposed to move, I can't even say.
It's just, you know,
Yeah.
States. Okay, this one's just a name-that-state game.
You draw a card, you move the cursor on the state.
But what about the little states? How are you supposed to point at them?
I guess you could just point with your finger.
This doesn't need to be a video game in any way.
I also love how the instructions tells you that Alaska and Hawaii aren't really down there.
Hey, Nerdy Turd, did you know that Hawaii isn't really south of Texas?
Last game, Roulette.
For this one, you get out the roulette board, you get out the chips, and you play roulette.
The wheel is the overlay.
Whoever spins the wheel just closes their eyes, moves the cursor all over the place, and then you just look where it landed.
If it goes off the wheel, which is does often, you line it up to the nearest number.
But most of the time it goes off the screen, so you're never sure where it landed.
If you want to play roulette without blowing money on the casinos,
then get yourself a roulette mat and a wheel.
A wheel and a ball is all you need.
Not a sheet of plastic with a glowing square on your TV screen.
In conclusion, it just...
...yeah, you said it.
"Primitive" isn't even the word. It barely qualifies as a video game.
Master Shake would say "It's like if I want to play Tetris, I'd draw it in a flip book and animate it!"
You might as well be playing with rocks.
But to be fair, the Odyssey lived up to its name. An odyssey being a long and eventful journey.
It truly was, for the first video game console, we went skiing, played tennis, went around the world, went to the casinos,
went to outer space, submarines, cats and mice, and a haunted house.
But there's one thing that makes it badass, check this out.
This is the Odyssey Gun.
But let's talk about guns.
You're all familiar with the Nintendo Zapper, right?
Originally, it was gray, but later they changed it to orange.
It's pretty clear that video game and toy manufacturers have become more sensitive.
They don't want to give kids something that looks like a gun.
Remember Megatron? He transformed into a gun.
But later, they gave that orange tip at the end,
and then, he didn't even change into a gun at all.
So now, let's see what the Odyssey Gun looks like.
Well... the Odyssey doesn't fuck around!
I mean, this is what you call a gun!
I mean, look at it, it's a gun! It's a fucking rifle!
I mean, they could never get away with this nowadays!
You could never, ever...
It just blows my mind that there could exist a video game console that has a gun like this!
Let's try it out!
[crash]