Magnavox Odyssey 500

The Magnavox Odyssey 500 Magnavox's high-end companion to the Odyssey 300 and Odyssey 400 systems. It was released onto the market in 1976 at $129.95. The Odyssey 500 has several important improvements over the Odyssey 400. First and foremost, the Odyssey 500 offered color graphics, the first time for an Odyssey console. Another major improvement was that the players on the screen were now real sprites, displaying a tennis player, a hockey player and a squash player instead of the rectangular paddles.

The console has three toggle style switches that would determine the different games, the switches controlled what playfields and sprites were shown on the screen. In addition to the three games, the Odyssey 500 featured a fourth game, Soccer. By using the squash sprite and the hockey playing field, the game was now Soccer, but essentially the same game as the hockey game.

The Odyssey 500's manual acknowledged that the player graphics, being of different sizes, essentially represented different difficulty options. Interestingly, while Magnavox exploited the "mismatching" of players and playfields to market the Odyssey 500 as having a fourth game, the remaining five possible game combinations were not advertised or documented. But it was possible to use a tennis player on a hockey field.

Another feature that the Odyssey 500 offers is automatic serve, on-screen digital scoreing between plays, and a manually adjustable ball speed. Just like the previous Odyssey units, power is delivered via an 9V AC adapter or six "C" cell batteries.