1971 – Getting The Licensing Ball Rolling
A preliminary agreement was signed off between the two companies. Once that was in place, we turned our Brown Box and all our design data over to Magnavox engineers in Fort Wayne so that they could get started on a prototype for what was to become their first Odyssey (ITL-200) TV game in 1972. Note that the term „video game“ had not been coined yet!
Bill Harrison and I made several trips to Fort Wayne during 1971. Over the course of the next six months, we visited there repeatedly to help with technical and marketing decisions. During both a March and a June visit, Bill spent most of his time with George Kent and other Magnavox engineers assigned to the project. I worked mostly with Bob Fritsche, who had become Magnavox‘ Odyssey program manager. Our concern was to define all the games that the machine should play; what the colored overlays should be like (Magnavox having decided in their corporate wisdom to leave out our color circuitry, so as to save some money!). We debated which games were to be included with the basic Odyssey product, and which were to be set aside for after market sale … and on and on.
The circuitry we had designed into the Brown Box was essentially copied with a few exceptions: As I’ve mentioned, color backgrounds were thrown out in favor of the plastic screen overlays – not a good decision! The sixteen game selection switches on our Brown Box were replaced with plug-in programming cards (an excellent decision!) and some new games were added.
Prototype development at Magnavox was completed in the fall of 1971.
A number of hand assembled units were sent to Magnavox‘ captive dealers around the country. The response was phenomenal: „The best thing to come down the pike in years!“ was the general consensus. The consumer electronics press carried articles about an upcoming „mystery product“ from Magnavox. There was much speculation in the trade press just what that „mystery product“ might be.