Originally developped for MS-DOS, Odyemu will run fine under Windows NT/2K/XP and later using DosBox.

Remember 1972, when Magnavox released Odyssey, the most exciting video game system ?

Now you can play again with a virtual Odyssey on your PC using this Odyssey emulator.


Why making an Odyssey emulator ?

Because Paul Robson and David Winter decided to revive the Odyssey and let you discover the very first video game system, or just revive some nice moments of your life if you were there when the video game industry just started 25 years ago.

Both David and Paul have been involved in emulation since 1996. David is a video game historian, and Paul is a talented programer who also knows how to reverse-engineer a system. They wanted to design an emulator for the Odyssey. If this idea stayed in their mind for years, this was due to the only missing thing until they found it: the Odyssey schematic, which allowed them to to study the design and make a free emulator.


How is it possible to make an Odyssey emulator ?

Although digital, Odyssey does not use a computer running a software to produce the games. Odyssey uses several circuits which communicate between themselves with digital signals. Some circuits were not relevant in the development of the emulator because they only concerned the generation of the video signals. Some others were necessary to produce the games, and those ones were emulated. The emulator reproduces the operation of those parts, thus giving the impression of playing with a real Odyssey on a PC.


What does the emulator offer ?

The Odyssey is so basic that its electronic system requires the use of numerous accessories to play most of the games: carton cards, plastic chips, dice, overlays, etc.

The system is completely emulated. The rifle extension is also emulated through the mouse, thus allowing to play the rifle games.

All the cartridges are implemented, including the unreleased #11 and very rare #12. The emulator reads the configuration the cartridges and acts on all the internal parts of the Odyssey as if it was a real one. This means that all of the 26 Odyssey games are emulated, but most of their accessories are missing.

All the accessories are not implemented yet, because a lot of artwork is required to implement them. Moreover, additional (and eventually complex) software to manage those accessories is required. For now, the overlays are usable, and two of them are implemented: Tennis and Football. Since the overlays were not mandatory to use the system, the emulator can play the games with or without them.

A last detail: the controllers of the odyssey use three knobs: two for the motion of the player and one to control the english. Since the english level cannot be seen on the screen, the level is shown using two little spots on the extremities of the players.


Current development status:

The emulator is still in early development stage and requires quite a lot of work to be complete. For now, the only games which don't require missing accessories are Tennis, Table Tennis, Volleyball and Football (partial). Still, you can enjoy playing Tennis with or without the overlay.

Also, please do not report that Tennis does not work correctly. The emulation has been compared to the operation of a real Odyssey. What you see on your screen is almost identical to the real thing.

Tennis, played with the overlay

 


Tennis, played without the overlay

 


Volleyball, played without the overlay

 


Football, played with the overlay

 

 

Windows NT / 2K / XP / Vista users will have to download the DosBox emulator in order to emulate a PC under MS-DOS to run the emulator properly.

Download Odyemu
(please read the documentaiton before reporting problems)


Artwork contributions needed:

Additional artwork is obviously needed to improve the emulator. If you want to contribute, your only rules to respect are the following: your artwork must look exactly like the original Odyssey stuff, and you should supply your artwork in large definition so that we can eventually resize it. We are aware that the actual 320x200 resolution is insufficient, but the sections requiring artwork will use higher resolutions.


What we need:

Game overlays must be added. Basically, this consists in scanning them, refining them and make them available for the emulator. Don't forget that the emulator comes with the BMPTORLE.EXE utility, so you can try your own bitmaps.

We need to add a nice graphic Odyssey accessory manager in order to manipulate the Odyssey objects (plastic chips, paper cards, dice, etc...). Some games cannot be played without them. Since we can't use real accessories, we will implement them graphically. This will require that these accessories be pictured and/or scanned, and then converted to bitmaps. This interface will have a retro look adapted to the early 1970s video games style, and will include photos of original Odyssey material.

We need a nice front-end too. As a matter of fact, most of the Odyssey cartridges allow playing several games, and only the rules and accessories of those games change. The front-end will allow accessing to the original documentation of the games and will show thumbnails or small animations of those games. Since we can't display the whole manual of the games, the front-end will briefly explain the selected game so that the user knows how to play.

We will of course add a small section describing the story of the Odyssey. Users will then go to our site to get more information.