Anyone remember these REALLY obscure devices?

[MikeSittnick]

1. Emerson Arcadia
   
2. Bally Astrocade
   
3. Odyssey³
   

[E-Day]

I've heard of the Odyssey, but not Odyssey³. I'll assume all of those are well before my time.

[KiwiArcader]

I've heard of all of them and I think most have even been emulated in MESS or individual emulators ... the Bally Astrocade and Arcadia have ... not sure of the Odyssey 3 though ....

[Thor]

I never knew there was an Odyssey 3.

[KiwiArcader]

Yeah ... there are Odyssey and Odyssey 2 emulators but I haven't seen a v3 in my emu trawling .....

[MikeSittnick]

The Odyssey³ was a VERY bad idea.

Oh, it was capable of decent graphics, and everything, but the unit was badly messed up by the desire to make the machine backwards compatible with the Odyssey². In some cases, they made with very detailed, but non-functioning backgrounds, combined with the same little monochrome block men found in O² games.

Oddly, the games that Magnavox's parent company, North American Philips made for the Colecovision, were exceptional. War Room is fast playing, strategic and a little bit funny, all at the same time. That was not bad for a game based on all-out international nuclear war. Much more fun than the more polished but much more tedious War Games from Coleco.

I had read about the Emerson Arcadia, but never got my mitts on one. That unit was better than the 2600 and Intellivision in graphics, but inferior to Colecovision and the 5200. Emerson tried making a proprietary no frills game player at an aggressive price. They jumped in at the wrong time into a VERY crowded market, and found no room.

The Bally Astrocade was ahead of its time, but had awful marketing and distribution (as did GCE for their excellent Vectrex machine.) They heavily promoted the Z-Grass computer keyboard add on, which was years delayed, and too late to do any good.

I sought out various players, but these were three I never got to use first hand (I did SEE an Emerson Arcadia in the offices of Pumpkin Press/Video Games Magazine.)

[MadPlanet]

Yeah ... there are Odyssey and Odyssey 2 emulators but I haven't seen a v3 in my emu trawling .....

O2EM will run "O3" games as long as you have a G7400 bios. Never played a real G7400 though so I can't speak to the accuracy