I told my wife as I was opening the latest box of Odyssey^2 games, "It would be better if I could say, 'I was only 12 games away from having the complete, regular US released set of arcade cabs.'"



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For the last year or so I've been putting effort into getting a complete set of Odyssey^2 games. It's not a huge effort, but I am having fun. Most of my general game collecting revolves around the fun of "The Hunt" and seeing what I can get for about $1 per item on average. The O^2 collecting has become a sort of subset of the regular acquiring of games.

Why the Odyssey? I'm not sure. Because I have one? I think it's mostly because it is cheap, probably one of the least costly systems to get a complete set for. And maybe because it is sort of an esoteric thing to do. It's always fun to tell people I have an O^2 system, and they are like, "what?"

There isn't anything wrong with the random person I meet not knowing what the O^2 is. I think it would be weird if 4 out of 5 people started making jokes about carts with handles and asking how the price of "The Voice" module was tracking. What I have found in my search for O^2 games is something much weirder, much more dark and sinister....

Now that I have you hooked for at least one more paragraph: Most of my buying for this system has been on the ol' ebay. There just isn't a big market for these games, remember the part about them being cheap? So unlike the rest of my collection, must of the O^2 stuff is from online. It's sort of funny, my wife and I just use one ebay account and over the last 12 years or so we've had it, there have been 9 purchases. 5 of those 9 were Odyssey items.

I've put the "dark and sinister" part off for a paragraph now. Is that a writing flaw?

Making the rounds of the used game stores in my state is something I do from time to time. For general game buying they are mostly priced out of my range, I go for the $1 average, right? But since a faint effort is being put in to some specific collecting, I am willing to spend more. Anyways, used game stores....there are a few around here which actually carry Odyssey stuff. Not too many, 3 I know of always have some stuff, a couple more sometimes have it in.

Regardless of the game store I go into, I always ask if they have any Odyssey^2 stuff. I don't expect most of them to have any, and if the person looks under 20 I don't expect them to know what crazy thing I am talking about. But I do expect someone that looks like they have pasted their mid 30's and has been a long time employee of a store which sells things like Atari and Intellivision games to at least have heard of the Odyssey. This is not the case. Two stores in particular that had Odyssey stuff in their display case didn't know what it was when asked. I have had to point it out to them. And remember, I am not talking about some random gamer, or even an employee at a large chain game store. These are places that specialize in old games and regularly have O^2 stuff.

At one store I asked the guy if he had any Odyssey stuff and he says, "what?" I describe it. He says, "no, we don't have any." I say, "You have an Odyssey Pong machine right here (right in front of him.)" He comes around the counter to look at it from the front..."I didn't know we had that, what is it?" I further inquire about O^2 games specifically, he says, "no, we don't have any, we mostly sell 360 and PS3 games." That may be true, but this store is filled, literally, floor-to-ceiling, with very neat, tightly packed NES, SNES, Genesis, Boxed Atari, Coleco, Master System games. Thousands of games before 1995 are there. Hundreds before '84. I decide to look around, sure enough, at the other end of the counter, Odyssey^2 stuff! It turned out to be nothing I needed, but there is was.

I don't want to sound like this is upsetting to me, I really do find it pretty funny. Also, this just confirms my wish to collect something so esoteric or obscure, I can get that, "what?" response from most everyone.

There is another odd thing I've found. Um, don't tell anyone though. If the word get out, it's more work for everyone around here. The common thinking is there are 49 regularly released, US, original O^2 carts with one more obvious variant, which brings it up to 50 different carts. If you look at the Collection Checklist here on RFGen, you can see them, along with some of the "homebrews." Now remember, don't tell, but I have seen, and have, some label variants. For example look at the bottom of the label on Type & Tell! above and look at the one here: http://www.rfgeneration.c...009-S-00460-A&type=gs

Oh, and one more thing. I bet you are wondering what 3/4ths of a complete O^2 game collection would look like if some of them were loose and some boxed and then all stuffed into one small shelf....

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