Philips Videopac + G7400
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Philips Videopac + G7400 was a video game console released in limited quantities in 1983, and only in Europe; an American release as the Odyssey³ Command Center was planned but never occurred. The G7400 was the successor to the Philips Videopac G7000, the European counterpart to the American Magnavox Odyssey². The system had 16 KB of both RAM and ROM and featured excellently tailored background and foreground graphics.
The G7400 could play three types of games: all normal G7000 games, special G7000 games with additional high-res background graphics that would appear only when played on the G7400, and G7400-only games with high-res sprites and backgrounds.
Contents |
[edit] Odyssey³
There were plans to release the G7400 in the United States as the Odyssey³ and later as the Odyssey³ Command Center; the system was demonstrated at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show and some prototypes have been found. The Odyssey³ was never released, mostly because company executives concluded that it was not technologically advanced enough to compete in the marketplace. Also, the video game crash of 1983 ended all lingering hopes for a release.
The Odyssey³ was to feature a real mechanical keyboard, unlike the membrane keyboard found in the G7400 and Odyssey², as well as a built-in joystick holder for dual-joystick games. Prototypes for a 300 baud modem and a speech synthesizer are known to have been made, and a laserdisc interface was planned to allow even more advanced games.
[edit] Specifications
- CPU: Intel 8048, 1.79 MHz
- RAM: 16 KB
- ROM: 16 KB
- Display: 256x192x16
- Audio: 1 channel, 8 sounds
- Input / Output: RF modulator, joystick port(s), cartridge port
- Expansion
[edit] Emulation
The emulator O2EM allows G7400 games to be played on modern computers.
