I spent a good portion of my elementary school years pining for a Nintendo Entertainment System. My parents really couldn't afford one (or didn't want me to have one). My dad always had random computers around, so I did my best with things like the TI-99 or whatever archaic thing I could find.
One day I was randomly going through our shed - which was filled to the brim with total junk - and found a box that was the Magnavox Odyssey (can't recall the model). Like most people, I had no idea what this was, but still wondered why my dad didn't mention anything about this when I whined about not having a Nintendo.
So I bring it inside. It kind of looks like an Atari, pretty archaic by my young and inexperienced eyes. It has a few games. Wikipedia suggests they were multiple cartridges, but I don't remember that.
Upon firing it up (I remember it needed batteries), I was astonished at how ... capable it was. It wasn't an NES, but given I had never heard of it and it seemed better than the 2600 in several ways, this was a total surprise.
Within a year I had my NES, in a classic Christmas Story-esque "what's that over there" move my dad liked to pull. But I can't imagine too many other systems of the time tiding me over beyond the mysterious and shockingly decent Odyssey.
If yours didn't have cartridges, it was probably one of the more standard home models that had 'built in' games. My family had an Odyssey 300 (similarly, I don't know who bought it or how it arrived). It featured tennis (aka pong), smash (aka squash or wallball), and hockey with 3 difficulty levels and two paddle wheels built into the console. Does this look familiar? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey_series#Odyssey...
I've got a similar Christmas Story-esque story about getting ghe SNES… my dad said "there's no more Nintendos coming into this house!" Turns out that meant they had already bought it. And yes, I've already put the same exact thing into motion with my kid and the Xbox One.
But .. why would you give your kid a machine they can't do anything with but consume content? Wouldn't something like a Kano be a better gift for a kid these days? The XBox generation have very little clue about computers, alas ..
The Kano might be more like getting a set of Lego bricks, back in the day, instead of the (S)NES. Your parent's peers might have said the exact same thing about 'consuming content' reagrding the Nintendo!
One day I was randomly going through our shed - which was filled to the brim with total junk - and found a box that was the Magnavox Odyssey (can't recall the model). Like most people, I had no idea what this was, but still wondered why my dad didn't mention anything about this when I whined about not having a Nintendo.
So I bring it inside. It kind of looks like an Atari, pretty archaic by my young and inexperienced eyes. It has a few games. Wikipedia suggests they were multiple cartridges, but I don't remember that.
Upon firing it up (I remember it needed batteries), I was astonished at how ... capable it was. It wasn't an NES, but given I had never heard of it and it seemed better than the 2600 in several ways, this was a total surprise.
Within a year I had my NES, in a classic Christmas Story-esque "what's that over there" move my dad liked to pull. But I can't imagine too many other systems of the time tiding me over beyond the mysterious and shockingly decent Odyssey.