Sales started out well (it sold over 330,000 units worldwide), but fell after people incorrectly assumed the Odyssey only worked on Magnavox TVs (which in turn was because they were told such by Magnavox salespeople). Magnavox filed suit, and would continue to file suits against console and arcade game manufacturers for the next 10 years, because Odyssey designer Ralph Baer had patented the idea of a video game console. One of the tennis games gave Nolan Bushnell the idea for Pong. Each controller has three knobs, controlling the horizontal and vertical positions of their squares, and the "english" to put on the ball. Plastic screen overlays provide color and background graphics. It was designed for ball-and-paddle games, and it draws three squares and a vertical line to represent the four basic elements of such games: Two players, a ball, and a net or wall. Individual transistors, diodes, resistors, and capacitors are wired together to build logic modules. The Odyssey is 1950s technology, known as discrete circuits. And it was the first to have a light gun, but you don't aim the gun at any part of the screen, you just aim it at the screen (or any other light source). It was also the first cartridge-based console, but there's a catch: The cartridges don't contain games, they just rearrange the circuitry inside the console to vary the game. The Odyssey was released in April 1972 for $100, and was the first home console of any kind, predating Pong.
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