Videopac Collection 1

To my knowledge, this is the ONLY rerelease of any Odyssey 2/Videopac games out there. Even sweeter is the fact that they are the Plus versions from Europe (when applicable) that have extra detailed backgrounds! No Voice enhancements, but that's what I expected beforehand. What you get is a barebones emulator that has, by far, the most boring and mundane UI I have EVER seen. Ever. All it shows are menu options written in white text on a black backdrop and... that's it. No achievements, trading cards, points shop, manuals, boxart, or anything really. In summary, WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET. Now, that's not to say the emulation is poor or lackluster. It is quite the opposite. The menu feels very responsive and games play as well as expected. Additionally, they have the difficulty switches in the menus so you don't have to mess around with various numbers try to get the gamemode you want. After digging around the game files, I discovered that this is literally just a Libretro (RetroArch) port using the O2EM core with the roms and the G7400 bios loose in a folder. Honestly, this was a huge bonus for me and I just play them all through RetroArch now (with Voice enhancements ena…

Videopac Collection 1 is a set of 10 video games from the 2nd generation. It's nice to see that in 2024 I could get some rarely covered Philips Videopac games for my Steam library. Compared to today's titles, these retro games have a short playtime, but sometimes it is nice to appreciate their simplicity and how their design was adjusted to the technology of their time. The Philips consoles (G7000 and G7400) had many more games, and some titles like Alpine Skiing!, Cosmic Conflict, Monkeyshines!, Pickaxe Pete, Race/Spinout are missing from Collection 1, so I hope that one day we'll see a Collection 2. Collection 1 opens the emulator in a window, and you can choose the game from a menu. Games load instantly and run smoothly as expected. You can press Esc anytime to pause the game and view options. The keyboard remapping menu lists all buttons, including letter keys from the G7000's keyboard, which means you can type text, such as your name in '4 in 1 Row'. Here's how the devs can make a collection like this more interesting: Create a custom menu that features box art or sceenshot/gameplay animation for each game for easier preview Include simple intructions or the manuals for each…

Neat little collection of old games. I grew up on the Atari 5200 (with the 2600 adapter) and only heard of the Magnavox Odyssey consoles in more recent years. Although I didn't have any nostalgia for these games in particular, they felt very much like they could have been at home on the 2600. My personal favorites were, well.. probably all of the non-sports ones. - Killer Bees was top-notch. I felt like a real jerk buzzing around and stinging everyone to death. The stinging sound effects also sounded really familiar.. now that I compare the two they're not actually the same, but it reminded me of the Tommy Gun button on the Pocket Terminator - Air-Sea War/Battle (what a title) was a lot of fun once I realized what I was supposed to be doing. I got pretty precise with my bombs by the end - I dominated with a score of 99 in Freedom Fighters's evading mode (although I'm sure anyone playing in the 70s/80s would have laughed at that score. Actually, maybe anyone else playing in 2025 would too) - I honestly want to come back and play Connect 4 (ahem, 4 in 1 Row) against my kids - Battlefield seemed pretty neat but my dudes kept getting stuck in trees - Nightmare was a little lame - I…

I have played so many of these kind of games and this one is the Oldest game collection of them all. Unfortunately this one loses points for being to Boring.