The Odyssey² is the cartridge console launched by Magnavox in the United States in 1978. It was distributed in Europe by Philips, Magnavox's parent company, as the Videopac G7000 — and under other names depending on the country: Jopac in France, Radiola Jet 25, Schneider Videopac. Europe is where it enjoyed its greatest success, remaining for several years the main alternative to the Atari 2600.
Its signature is the 48-key membrane keyboard built into the case. It is not only used to type text: many games use it to pick a mode, a variant or an action, and the console was marketed on the claim that it could also be used to program and to learn. The video generator embeds a hardwired character set, which explains the identical typeface from one game to the next.
The library, some hundred titles strong, mixes action games and board games, often supplied with a real cardboard board to place in front of the screen: K.C. Munchkin!, Pick Axe Pete!, Killer Bees!, the Quest for the Rings series. K.C. Munchkin! famously earned Philips a high-profile lawsuit from Atari over its resemblance to Pac-Man, a case Philips lost on appeal.
A speech synthesis module, The Voice, and a compatible successor, the Videopac+ G7400 able to display high-resolution backgrounds behind the sprites, completed the range before the machine disappeared in the mid-1980s.
The Videopac+ G7400 is a separate system in Recalbox, with its own roms folder and its own BIOS files: see the Videopac+ G7400 page.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro o2em | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
A single emulator is offered on this system: o2em, available on every board, including RPi3 and RPi Zero 2. It supports CRT output. Netplay and softpatching are not available with this core.
RetroAchievements are available on this system; light guns are not supported. A controller is mandatory, and a keyboard is essential: the console's built-in keyboard is reproduced by the USB or Bluetooth keyboard connected to your Recalbox.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
o2rom.bin |
Magnavox Odyssey² BIOS (mandatory) | 562d5ebf9e030a40d6fabfc2f33139fd | o2em |
c52.bin |
European Videopac C52 / G7000 BIOS (mandatory) | f1071cdb0b6b10dde94d3bc8a6146387 | o2em |
Place your BIOS files like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/o2em/
├── o2rom.bin
└── c52.bin
Both files are mandatory. The
g7400.binandjopac.binBIOS files, which go into the same folder, do not belong to this system but to the Videopac+ G7400.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/o2em/
Supported extensions: .bin .zip .7z
The standard extension is .bin, the one used by No-Intro romsets. .zip and .7z archives are read directly: leave them compressed.
The roms folder really is named
o2em, after the emulator, notodyssey2norvideopac.