The entire concept of the Nerd can be summed up in the first lines of the AVGN theme song — “He’s gonna bring you back to the past.” Well, you can only go so far with the realm of gaming and in this episode James goes back about as far as you can, to 1972 and the Magnavox Odyssey.
It’s a system generally considered to be the first home game console. I don’t disagree with this status at all — there wasn’t anything like it before, and following it the industry would grow from “Pong” consoles in the 70’s on to the Atari VCS and the like dominating in the 80’s — it certainly sparked a consumer awareness of interactive electronic games.
The Odyssey, however, was almost more like a board game in many regards than a video game as we think of it — the device really just had some basic logic to run the games, display a few lines and a dot on screen, and the players did the rest, including put overlays on the TV as the console lacked any real “graphics.” It was simple, but it was different, and it worked.
Sure, it’s strange by today’s standards, with numbered game cards, no real rules to the actions you can take, and a lack of scoring, sound.. .anything. The console is really just used as a means to an end, as part of the game, rather than the game itself.
James spends this episode as the Nerd going over many of the games available with the console, focusing on how quaint everything is. It’s so basic, but it works — it’s familiar in a very primitive way to most gamers.
That isn’t to say he doesn’t complain — the system, at this stage, is unreliable, and every game basically requires 2 players. To alleviate the need of someone else to be with him, he introduces… and I can’t believe I’m discussing this, the “Nerdy Turd.” Yep. A game playing piece of fecal matter. If you thought “Shit Pickle” was bad, this one ups it. In reality, of course, the role of playing the games with James was done by Mike Matei.
James really spends time expressing the nature of playing games on the system, appreciating them for what they are but being very honest about how almost desperate the games feel. Some are insanely intricate, rivaling more complex board games, while others are quite straightforward and more like what we would expect. It’s rather amazing how much is going on here, but also impressive as a concept on a whole.
At the end, James touches on one more game for the system – Shooting Gallery. A game which uses a light gun which looks like an actual rifle. After discussing some history of “toys that look like guns” James excitedly goes to play it, only to destroy is TV in the process. Why he didn’t actually play the game I don’t know — perhaps he didn’t have the game card to do with it? Whatever case, the episode ends with Nerdy Turd mocking him.
Final Rating: 4.0/5
This definitely goes down as a favorite episode of the series. When it premiered I was incredibly excited, as I have a major soft spot for the pre-NES era consoles and game history. While the episode doesn’t focus as much on the history of the Odyssey as it could (it’s far more of a typical episode in that regard) it still gives a nice insight onto the origins of gaming — you can see the establishment of some basic principles of video game design even here and I think James, at the time, presented the system itself pretty well.
It should be noted his system seems to have been adjusted slightly to show the two “paddles” at different sizes – a simple tweak in the hardware. It’s also worth noting James plays the games on the “old” TV he used early on in the series, which happens to be the same old TV he first played NES on back when he was a child. Kind of fitting, honestly.