Though the Odyssey launched in 1972, the world was not exactly clamoring for home video game consoles. The pioneering status of the Odyssey didn’t make up for the fact that its games didn’t really sell the concept – the console was half-way in the analog world and didn’t justify its price of $100 (USD) with all it had packed in. Only once Pong and its many derivatives were widely available did the idea of following up on the Odyssey start to make sense.
While it’s easy to dismiss the Odyssey due to its games, the fact of its existence provided an important precedent. As I covered in my examination of the Odyssey, its most important contribution to technology was less about how it ran games than the RF modulator that was required to play them. In a time before televisions featured plugs for peripheral devices, Ralph Baer’s team developed one of the earliest consumer-grade mechanisms for transferring digital data onto analog television sets.
There’s more evidence of the Odyssey’s influence independent of Pong as well. Several electronics hobbyist magazines printed designs for home video game projects that were clearly more based on the Odyssey than Pong. The first of these, from Popular Electronics dated November 1972, was practically contemporaneous with the release of Odyssey. If we are to limit ourselves to commercial products though, the true birth of the home video game market begins in 1974 after the Pong craze reached its zenith in the United States and the U.K.
We’re going to take a look at the current research into the earliest home video game systems post-dated the Odyssey, which beat the more well-known dedicated consoles to market. Each one of these consoles has an interesting story and helps us unlock the early, interconnected world of the international video game industry.
Overkal (Spain)
Magnavox first entered the European market in 1973 under a partnership with the West German electronics company ITT Schaub-Lorenz. These systems were not altered aside from the packaging and documentation – translated into German and renamed Odysee. Not much seems to have been done with spreading the console over Europe until Magnavox took control back from ITT in late 1974, releasing their custom export version (designated model YE7100).
But into this gap came a curious console from what nobody saw as a major European market at the time: Spain. Credit for most of the research on the Overkal system must go to Martin F. Martorell, whose article Overkal – The History of the Spanish Magnavox Odyssey clone has immensely more detail than I can provide here. In summary, the Overkal is the earliest known console for sale that post-dates the Odyssey – even though the inner electronics are wholly based on it.
The Overkal was designed by Felipe Mor Pérez for the company Inter Electrónica through 1973. Pérez seems to have known about the Odyssey incredibly early, filing for a trademark on “Odyssey” in September 1972 just as it was going on sale in America – and just after Magnavox had filed registration for the Odyssey patents in Spain. This evidence suggests that Magnavox may have been intending to license the design to Inter Electrónica to bypass import restrictions in the country – though there is also evidence (in their later lawsuits) that indicates Magnavox never had a proper sublicensing plan in place for the Odyssey until 1974.
Whatever the case, Pérez created a version of the Odyssey hardware that Inter Electrónica could manufacture in Spain. Its most notable change was exchanging the console’s circuit cards for buttons at the front of the system which could alter the logic present for each game. Martorell’s research indicates that the Overkal was first commercially available between February and April 1974, though at a luxury price of 9,000 ₧ (Spanish pesetas) and never in very high quantities.
Many mysteries still exist about the Overkal, but its mere existence invites so many intriguing possibilities. It makes commercial video games a global story from near their beginning, one driven as much by desire as economic circumstance. How many other stories like that of Pérez might exist, even if less documented? We’re far from the end of the European innovations in this story.
Video Action
To start from the beginning… There was Pong. But Atari could not produce Pong in quantities that the distributors who coveted it were able to buy it from them. So ‘lo, a unit of Pong was sent to the Florida-based Allied Leisure. And such was their disgust at how Pong was built that they built their own Pong – Paddle Battle.
Or at least, that’s part of the story. Allied Leisure could not create the electronic circuit board for Paddle Battle, so they contracted a firm in Elk Grove Village, Illinois: Universal Research Laboratories (URL). Formed by two coin-op engineering veterans with a specialty in solid state technology, URL was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the new video game boom in coin-op. They not only manufactured the circuit boards for Allied Leisure, but they also contracted with other companies looking to get in on the craze – making a mint.
However, in late January 1974, Allied Leisure’s manufacturing plant was destroyed in a fire. As URL’s biggest customer, this was a big blow. Allied’s latest game – the four-player Tennis Tourney – had done great business and stole the market away from Atari; now URL had a large excess of chips and circuit boards. Co-founder of the company, Bill Olliges, thought on his feet. He decided to pivot the company into the manufacturing business, including for new coin-op games developed by URL under the label Electra Games. Their first product would not be an coin-op cabinet though – instead they would attempt to develop a new market segment.
Video Action – model VA-I – contained all the necessities for playing an arcade game, sans coin slot. The circuit board originally used for Tennis Tourney was set inside of a 24 inch wide metal medal box with four potentiometers and a serve button sticking out of the top. Under the consoles were a power switch with accompanying LED along with a knob for the game volume which came out of a speaker attached to the unit.
What has baffled researchers over time is the inclusion with the unit of a 12 inch black and white television, which all the advertising emphasized. This undoubtedly increased the price of the unit, which seems to have been around $350 at retail. If this was a system advertised to home users, why would they have included a TV – which most Americans households had?
However, this evaluation misses several important facts about Video Action. Chief among them: The television was detachable. On the back of the system, it was possible to uncouple the provided TV and return it to a regular broadcast-ready system, unlike an arcade monitor. Secondly, the advertising for the Video Action did not emphasize a living room space, but rather for it to be placed “along side the pool table or in the home bar.” There’s plenty of evidence with the later models that this may have also been intended more for hotel lobbies and waiting rooms; the VA-II model included a long coaxial cable to allow the console and the TV to be at a distance.
The high price of the system has led people to presume that the first Video Action was a failure and needed to be hastily updated to lower the price. Olliges however characterized it as a successful start to their business. Sold under the Control Sales label, Video Action was first sold sometime between June and August 1974, establishing URL as more than just a parts supplier for other companies. They would continue the Video Action line for several years (though not without difficulties), making it the second continuous brand in home video games after Magnavox.
Home T.V. Game
Back to Atari, then across the Pond. Atari was eager to expand outside of the U.S. from its earliest days. Though there’s evidence of Computer Space showing up in Italy, video games in Europe was as yet an untapped market. Though Alca Electronics and other imports beat them to the punch, Atari UK did bring Pong to Britain as Wimbledon just in time to meet a quickly overheating demand for video games in the Fair Isles.
Coin-operated games in Britain were most associated with seaside entertainment towns, and in one such town two enterprising businessmen saw the phenomenon of video games taking hold. Brit Richard Fairhurst and Scot Cameron MacSween had both been marketers in various businesses. They joined forces to sell travel cheques and consult with breweries. They felt the latter business dovetailed quite nicely with this new technology of the video game, so they set up a coin-op operator called Videomaster Ltd. to place video games across the country. Reportedly, they became the largest such operator in the U.K.
One day, an engineer named Robin Palmer visited the Videomaster offices. Palmer had managed to create a box-sized version of the bulky ball-and-paddle cabinets he saw at pubs which hooked into a television. It was a remarkable creation, using far fewer integrated circuits than any video game currently on the market (save for the Odyssey, which had none) and could even play multiple games. For near the first time, someone had managed to create a truly affordable home video game system.
After Palmer made a few changes at MacSween and Fairhurst’s request, they agreed to enter the home market with this system with Palmer as a third partner in their enterprise. Under the moniker of The Sales Team, they released the Videomaster Home T.V. Game in October 1974 at the price of £49.95. Though also sold as an electronics kit, the complete system was housed in a sleek aluminum casing. Two detachable controllers were included as part of the system, each with two rotating dials that enabled the paddles to utilize four axis of movement. Though it had no on-screen scoring, it was the first true successor to the technology of the Odyssey yet released.
While Videomaster intended to produce 10,000 of the consoles for 1974, they only wound up selling 4,000 of them. They swept up £80,000 in revenue that year, though they soon had to turn much of that over when they were contacted by a lawyer working for Magnavox. Videomaster became perhaps the first ever licensee for the Odyssey patents in a deal they signed on December 13, 1974. They had to pay $100,000 plus 5 1/2% of net selling price – however in the long term this approval helped shield them from unauthorized consoles stealing their market in later years.
The Videomaster line would continue for several years with models extending into the end of the 1970s. Cameron MacSween would have a longer career involving video games in Europe, helping Sega launch its Master System throughout the continent.
Dixi Ping Pong
The Netherlands has a strong connection to video games through Philips, the grand Dutch electronics conglomerate. While they first became connected through the purchase of Magnavox in 1974 by North American Philips (which at the time was not a subsidiary but a partnered company), Philips itself went on to play a significant (if minor) role for video games in Europe. Their ES 2201 console was the first to introduce a form of psuedo-cartridges in the dedicated era. The Philips Videopac G7000 (the European version of the Magnavox Odyssey2) became popular in several European territories. And much later on, their Philips CD-i system blurred the lines between entertainment device and game console.
However, the story we’re telling here has absolutely nothing to do with Philips – insofar as we know. In August 1974, the Amsterdam company Schrader Electronics began advertising two models of a TV-based game system called Dixi Ping Pong. The system was first displayed at a faire called Firato from August 30 to September 8 and would be on sale sometime thereafter. In some astounding luck, this showing was even filmed and is now available on YouTube thanks to Martin Martorell.
Schrader Electronica was owned by one Leo Schrader, whose name is also on the patent for Dixi Ping Pong. Both models of the console – the Maxi and Mini – have considerably more chips in them than the Videomaster system, if still not as much as a typical coin-operated game. There is only one game available and one potentiometer per controller, however the speed of the ball can be adjusted and each controller has a “wind” effect button that functions like the english control on the Odyssey.
We currently know little about why Schrader decided to make this console. Dixi Ping Pong was initially offered only through direct order for 598ƒ (Dutch gilders) in November 1974. Eventually it achieved a minor retail presence before its discontinuation some time in 1976. It’s equally unclear why Schrader did not extend the business like many of their contemporaries – though we know that Magnavox was aware of their console and Schrader never received an official license. It’s yet another subtle mark on history left by The Netherlands.
Ping-O-Tronic
What initially seems like the oddest company to get into the early dedicated console market, Zanussi was an Italian creator of home appliances best known for ovens and refrigerators. This early foray into powered devices led them in the 1960s to create the brand Sèleco which manufactured televisions for the local Italian market. This expertise in electronics allowed them to create a rather robust development department, which was given the task of creating a video game system in 1974.
Head the project was Dino Masili, who mostly had experience creating video cameras for industrial applications at Sèleco. Having read magazines about the video game craze in the United States, he began tinkering at his home on a design for a ball and paddle game. He presented this to Sèleco as a product that could put them ahead of the likes of Philips in the technology space. The project was overseen by Marino Zanier, with engineers Horst Hillberger, Lorenzo Plos, and Luigi Ret assisting in the final design.
The console was positioned as their major Holiday 1974 item, releasing in November of 1974 as Ping-O-Tronic for around 80,000₤ (Italian lire) – largely available in outlets that sold televisions. As was typical for Italian electronics, a special emphasis was put on its case design with a special orange outer casing and two stylish hand controllers featuring both a knob and a button for each side. Features included the ability to change the size of the paddles, alter the ball speed, and select three game modes (though one is a non-interactive ball bouncing mode).
According to Masili, the original Ping-O-Tronic sold at least 70,000 units in all – making it likely the best-selling console introduced in 1974. The success once again drew the eye of Magnavox, who were able to force Zanussi to sign a royalty arrangement on April 21, 1975. This thereafter cleared Sèleco to release a light gun peripheral for the console at the end of the year, the Gun-O-Tronic, and allowed them to develop follow-up consoles. Magnavox even later utilized Ping-O-Tronic’s ergonomic controller design in their Odyssey 4305 model, built into a television set.
Italy remained a small market for home consoles and Sèleco’s initial plan to export the console to other countries in Europe never came to fruition. However, the influence may have been rather immense. Masili says that he originally had the idea to consolidate the logic of the Ping-O-Tronic onto a single chip and pitched it to General Instruments, who supplied much of Sèleco’s integrated circuit inventory. In his telling, he directly assisted the engineers of the famous “Pong-on-a-chip” AY-3-8500 project in Scotland in exchange for a brief window of exclusivity for Sèleco on their Play-O-Tronic system. While this isn’t currently verified (Masili claims GI broke their agreement) it would be a fitting cap to the European console story as the scrappy pioneers who wound up shaping the global industry – if only for a brief time.
1974’s consoles were distributed widely, driven by many different social forces and environments. The hardware engineers behind these systems were all experiencing a revolution in technology: The mass affordability of integrated circuits which began in the mid 1960s. Through different approaches and aims, all of them happened to release something in the same 12 month period that became part of the grandest global entertainment phenomenon. None of these consoles were particularly mass market as later ones would be – selling at most in the tens of thousands to upper class families in singular regions of the world.
If anything, these consoles prove that ingenuity can (and does) come from anywhere. There was no obvious path to creating home consoles, even in the U.S., so nothing about these consoles can be taken for granted. The world of early video games is endlessly fascinating and it’s more interconnected than you may at first think.
Big thanks to the TTL/Discrete game preservation group at Gaming Alexandria who have been dedicated to digging up all available info on this oft-forgot period of history. My gratitude to Sczther, Martin Martorell, Dilweed, Nathaniel Lockhart as well as NoxyMe and MrPong for allowing use of their console photos for demonstration. Thanks to Kevin Bunch for sharing the photos he took of Ralph Baer’s collection at the Library of Congress. Additional thanks to Bill Olliges who spoke with me about his career before his death.
Other Sources:
Eglin, Roger. “Big Shots with a Small Screen.” Sunday Times, June 26, 1977, p. 63.
Cinemazero. “Ping·o·tronic: La Prima Console Italiana Della Storia” Con Mattia Filigoi e Dino Masili [GAMEZERO]. 2026. 43:13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPqCpNc_LM0.
“License Agreements With Third Parties Providing for Payment of Running Royalties Only.” Magnavox Co., 1979. (Spreadsheet)