--- title: Philips Videopac G7000 categories: - Consoles params: name: Videopac G7000 image: /media/museum/photos/philips_g7000_3s.jpg logo: /media/museum/logos/philips_videopac_g7000_logo.gif company: /companies/philips company_name: Philips tabs: - photos - hardware - emulators - links photos: - title: G7000 subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/philips_g7000_3.jpg - title: TOP VIEW subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/philips_g7000_2.jpg - title: FRONT subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/philips_g7000_4.jpg - title: BOX subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/philips_g7000_box.jpg hardware: - title: VOCAL SYNTHESIZER subtitle: '' text: |- Extract from [The Odyssey² Homepage](http://www.classicgaming.com/o2home/index.asp) : The Voice of Odyssey² was released in 1982, and allows the console to emit realistic voices and sound effects. It is silver, the same color as the console, and fits snugly into the cartridge port. Once installed, an Odyssey² with a Voice looks like a single unit, not two things hooked together. The Voice has a self-contained speaker (the voices do not come out of the television), with a volume control. Regular cartridges will play normally through the Voice unit. Voice modules are uncommon, and every Odyssey² collector wants one, making them somewhat valuable. There is no European version of The Voice. In Brazil, a Voice module was announced but never released (see below). image: /media/museum/hardware/magnavox_odyssey2_thevoice_1.jpg - title: MOUNTED ON THE SYSTEM subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/hardware/magnavox_odyssey2_thevoice_mounted.jpg emulators: - title: Odyssey² Home Page - Emulation Ressource url: http://www.classicgaming.com/o2home/media/emulation.asp platform: Other platform text: This excellent Odyssey² website has a very detailed page about Videopac/Odyssey² emulation - title: M.E.S.S. url: http://www.mess.org platform: Multiplatform text: MESS can emulate the Odyssey² - title: O2EM url: http://o2em.sourceforge.net/ platform: Multiplatform text: Excellent emulator which can play Odyssey²/Videopac as well as Videopac+ games ! links: - title: Classic Consoles Center url: http://dieterkoenig.at/ccc/ text: Excellent site with a lot of interesting info. Very complete Videopac software page too. - title: Odyssey 2000 url: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/3226/ody2000.html text: Brazilian website dedicated to videopac, with brazilian box art scans - title: Odyssey² FAQ url: http://www.digitpress.com/faq/odyssey2.txt text: Interesting info - title: Odyssey² Home Page url: http://www.the-nextlevel.com/odyssey2/ text: Best Odyssey²/Videopac website ! Everything you wanted to know / see is here ! - title: Retro Gaming url: http://home.wanadoo.nl/naninck/retro/index2.htm text: This site explains how to replace your faulty Videopac power switch ! - title: www.videopac.org url: http://www.videopac.org/ text: Excellent site ! Everything Videopac is here ! comments: - author: paul (ireland) date: Sunday 7th October 2012 text: pdillon82@yahoo.com G7000 for sale with lots games - author: Paul (Ireland) date: Sunday 7th October 2012 text: Have G7000 with lots games for sale e-mail myself.Paul - author: Andy MacLarty (UK) date: Saturday 22nd November 2008 text: |- The Philips G7000 also provided assembly programming via the purchase of a program card although the actual input of your own code was rather long-winded and often ended in a complete reset being required. It came complete with two extremely hard-wearing (self centring) joysticks. I owned one of the first ones and loved it for its excellent defender and asteroids gamepacks.\ The game $ion was very limited, but the prices were reasonable and the unit itself was reliable.\ Audio was via the television speaker not an internal speaker. - author: robert (mr_yeahman) (Earth) date: Thursday 31st January 2008 text: |- The system lacks of ports, the two joysticks and the tv-output is stuck on the system.\ Also, the system don´t have any powerswitch, I use to unplug the jacket everytime I´m not playing this console.\ My console is manufactured 1981, I think.. - author: Adam (Neo-Tokyo) date: Tuesday 18th April 2006 text: The Videopac system also had a music-composer cartridge, where you could compose music and see notes on the screen. The music-composer cartridge was mostly sold with an extra organ-keyboard, so you could make music with the Videopac System! (and that in 1979...) - author: Morten Slott Hansen (Earth) date: Thursday 30th June 2005 text: I remeber having one when I was about 7-8 years old (I was born 1975). There were lots of fun games such as a pacman ripoff where you had to eat a work :-) But worth mentioning is the chess game which cast almost twice as much as the console itself due to a onboard CPU (or something like that) in the chess game cartridge - talk about early dual cpu :-) Then there was the infamouse games of "lord of the rings" and "world war" where a keyboard overlay was used to further enhance the gaming experience - that was pretty cool for someone my age!!! related: - /museum/brandt-electronique-ordinateur-de-jeu-jo7400-jopac - /museum/continental-edison-saba-ordinateur-video-jeu-jo-1450-jopac - /museum/magnavox-odyssey2 - /museum/philips-videopac-c52 - /museum/philips-videopac-g7200 - /museum/siera-g7000 oc_id: 1080 source: url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230331200759/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1080 date: '2023-03-31' --- Magnavox (which merged with Philips in 1974) released the [Odyssey²](/museum/magnavox-odyssey2/) in 1978 to compete with brand new cartridge based video game systems like the [Atari VCS](/museum/atari-vcs-2600/), [RCA Studio II](/museum/rca-studio-ii/) or [Fair-Child Electronics Channel-F](/museum/fairchild-channel-f/). The Videopac G7000 is the european version of the Magnavox Odyssey². It was sold by Philips and was only available in Europe. Other brands (related to Philips) sold the same system in Europe too : Radiola JET 25, Schneider G7000, [Siera G7000](/museum/siera-g7000/) and [Philips C52](/museum/philips-videopac-c52/) (only available in France). The system is powered by an Intel 8048 microcontroller and a Video Display Controller (VDC) generating all audio & video. This VDC, which is a custom Intel IC, can generate 4 different types of graphic objects: a background grid, single characters, quad characters (made of 4 single characters) and sprites. A maximum of 4 independent sprites can be displayed. There are monochrome and of 8 x 8 pixels in size. Of course the VDC can detect sprite collisions. The G7000 has 64 pre-defined characters (letters and graphic symbols) in memory. Up to 12 foreground characters can be displayed from this internal character set. Many games (especially early ones) used a lot those pre-defined characters: man walking, right arrow, slopes, tree, ships, plane and a ball. The flat membrane keyboard of the G7000 was a major selling point. It was meant to be used for game selection, educational games, programming, entering its name for hi-scores,etc. Apart from the game selection, it was hardly used. The Philips G7000 also provided assembly programming via the purchase of a program card although the actual input of your own code was rather long-winded and often ended in a complete reset being required... Though not as popular as the [Atari VCS](/museum/atari-vcs-2600/), or later [Mattel Intellivision](/museum/mattel-electronics-intellivision/) in the USA, the Videopac systems did very well in Europe where it was marketed by several different brands (Philips, Radiola, Schneider, Brandt, Siera, etc.). An enhanced system with high resolution background graphics was released a bit later as the **Philips G7400**.
We need more info about this console ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.