Overview
In every console war, there's a system that never seems to take the place it deserves. Magnavox's Odyssey² was unfortunate enough to fall behind systems such as the Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision and the Colecovision. Still, it didn't come last - it sold pretty well, and beat consoles such as the revolutionary Vectrex. However, many expected more from the follow-up to the first home console, the Odyssey (although it must be noted, the system sold considerably better in Europe, under the Phillips brand).

The system was launched in 1978 in the USA, and sold reasonably well throughout its life until 1983. The videogame market was on the verge of collapse, which it swiftly did the following year. What market share the Odyssey² had swiftly evaporated, and another system was promptly lost to the ravages of time. Ah well. Plenty more where that came from.

What was unique about the Odyssey² was its built-in keyboard. Unlike every other console's proposed (and rarely released) additions, this was standard on every single Odyssey², and was actually pretty well supported. One could even purchase a guide to programming in Assembly language for the machine, which was a nice touch. All in all, this was the closest any of the machines of this era came to being a crossover games console and computer*.

Technical Specifications
An Intel 8046 running at 2Mhz provided this machine's core. The console was capable of producing 16 colours, of which 4 could be displayed at any one time. Sound was primitive at best, with only one channel available, but it was generally of the same standard as the competition of its time.

Of course, it was this powerful CPU which made this system so special. Easily faster than the ~1Mhz chips used in the 2600 and the Intellivision, the machine pumped out sprites which scrolled smoothly and were better animated than rivals'. The flicker associated with other consoles was absent, too, making you wonder why the crowds were flocking to the technically inferior Atari and Mattel systems.

Accessories
The most well-known accessory for this system has to be "The Voice of Odyssey²", or simply The Voice. This module, which sat next to the console itself, expanded upon the existing sound capabilities and added voice in a similar fashion to the Intellivoice add-on for the Mattel Intellivision. This was another well-supported device, which was superior to similar products due to the Odyssey²'s keyboard. The game "Type & Tell", for example, would sound-out any word the user typed in. (The possibilities for abuse must have been tremendous).

This add-on, oddly, never saw release outside the USA. However, Phillips (who own Magnavox) deigned to release a couple of Europe-exclusive expansions of their own. These were a chess expansion (supposedly because the console lacked the memory to run a chess game by itself), and a module allowing the user to program in Microsoft BASIC.**

*I quite liked programming in BASIC on my Acorn Electron, but that's life for you. Besides, it wasn't a console. Although it played a mean game of Boxer... am I rambling here?

** YES! YES! YES!