The Magnavox Odyssey %26ndash; as you no doubt know, being crack videogame historians and all %26ndash; was the first dedicated home games console, released in 1972, three whole years before Atari started making Pong consoles. It's pretty damned inconsiderate, then, of homebrew developer Atari2600land, to release a brand new game for the system now, instead of on the 40th anniversary of the machine's launch next year. However, the fact remains that in 2011, you could spend $25 on some cut-price Wii games, or you could spend it on Dodgeball, a game for a system that's been out of production since 1975.
Dodgeball's content ought to be fairly self-evident, coming as it does from the age when games did exactly what they said and not a damn thing more. The game, says its creator, releases later this year and was made out of %26ldquo;love [for] weird, early video game systems, and you can't get any earlier than the original Odyssey.%26rdquo; Which, if you're moving in the wrong circles, could easily get a fight started, but we're not the wrong circles. So bypreordering the game from Atari2600land's pageyou can have your very own copy, which yes, really requires an Odyssey to play.
Short of actually buying one of those room-sized computers they built Spacewar! on, it's hard to imagine a purchase with more retro cred than this. Atari2600land promises that if the game does well %26ndash; and %26ldquo;if I find a new idea for a game%26rdquo; %26ndash; Dodgeball may not be the last Odyssey game yet. Well, hell, ifnew movies can get VHS release, why shouldn't (really, really) old platforms get games too? What's the retrogaming-est thing you ever bought?
Jul 11, 2011
Source:GameSetWatch
