Nintendo And The Magnavox Odyssey

[Magmavision2000]

So this all started when I was doing research for an entry for my blog, I somehow found myself on a German forum thread (Thank God for Google Translate or else I wouldn't have been able to read it) documenting Pong consoles, when I found this post:

Now, I know this isn't an uncommon thing, Epoch actually imported like 10,000 Heavy Sixers and sold them in Japan in 1977, but we're talking about Nintendo, arguably one of the most popular and successful gaming companies of all time.                                                                                                                                                                      So like any normal person, I made a status update asking if anyone knew about it. AA user Bluejay replied saying he did a little research and did find some articles stating that this happened, but I still didn't know anything about the light gun. So I went deep into google (about 3-4 pages) and found an article that mentioned it:http://odysim.blogspot.com/2015/09/nintendo-and-magnavox.html?m=1

 

In the article, it says Magnavox was looking for a toy manufacturer to make the plastic for their light gun. Somehow, they got ahold of Nintendo (probably at a toy fair) and they agreed to make the plastic. Now Nintendo was pretty clever, instead of making a brand new mold, they used an existing mold for one of their toy guns made by the late Gunpei Yokoi. This is why if you open up an Odyssey light gun, there's a bunch empty space near the stock (that was the battery compartment for the Nintendo toy gun). 

 

To my knowledge, no examples of Japanese Magnavox Odyssey are known to exist (There is however, a flyer that is shown in the article), but I hope to be mistaken.

Edited July 21, 2020 by Magmavision2000

[slydc]

Hi Magmavision2000,

 

Indeed, as of today (August 31, 2020) there is officially no example of the Nintendo Odyssey (game console, box, accessories, etc) but Nintendo did made the gun

for Magnavox. There is a few web sites that also talks about it and in 2-3 days, i'll have x2 Nintendo Rifle SP to really compare with the Magnavox Rifle, so watch the

OdySim blog in the following weeks.

 

There was an Odyssey that was sold on Ebay indicating it was coming from Japan (Ebay #113233003466 in October 2018) and had three pictures, but seeing these

pictures, it looked like an ordinary U.S. Magnavox Odyssey with a photocopy of the manual. The seller was asking $4,711.03 in US dollars. Pretty hefty sum to pay

for an imported US Odyssey with photocopied manual =(

 

About the flyer, Leonard Herman contacted me saying the flyer is from the Nanyang Radio Co. of Singapore and not from Nintendo Japan. That was my goof

on that part but the pictures are so tiny, hard to see. My bad on this, sorry!