Magnavox Odyssey vs. Xbox 360

I've been off the DDad grid for a bit. One reason is that as my 40th birthday recently approached, and realizing that no one was getting me an Xbox360, I decided to drive over to the nearby Costco and pick one up myself.

It was a "premium SKU" which means it has two wireless controllers, a headset, the hard drive, and a copy of Project Gotham Racer 3.

For me this was a major upgrade. Now when I say major I don't mean Major Nelson, but just major. Basically, the last gaming console I owned was an Odyssey. Yeah, an Odyssey. That was back in like 1973 when I was seven.

So things have moved along a bit in the past thirty-three years.

The big difference that stood out for me compared to the Odyssey was the graphics quality. The 360 is running games at 1080i, whereas the Odyssey was actually an analog video output to your TV via an antenna hookup. In addition you used plastic overlays on your TV screen with the Odyssey, whereas the 360 has component video-in that scales nicely on my 56" HD DLP.

Sound was also dramatically improved from the Odyssey's tinny single speaker to a full Dolby Digital; 5.1 surround sound with a strong powered sub channel.

The controllers on the 360 are way better. My main gripe with the Odyssey controllers was that they had a huge cable that ran from the box to the controller. You had to site pretty close to the TV and console to play and if you yanked the controller the whole box would fall over and the game card would get knocked out.

The 360 has no such problems. These controllers are wireless and provide a wide range of control from all the way across the room.

Games on DVD for the 360 are much easier to deal with than the game cards for the Odyssey. The Odyssey cards were actually like keys that told the Odyssey what game to play - they didn't include any content like the detailed renderings on PGR3.

Another major drawback for the Odyssey was the lack of online features like XBox Live. Your "gamercard" was a piece of cardboard you stuck in the spokes of your banana-seat bike. Although you could chat with a friend on your corded phone while you played (neck strain), that was about as close as you could get.

That being said, the Odyssey was $100 and I paid about $500 for the 360. You could argue that with inflation and improved game-play that the Xbox360 was a better deal than the Odyssey, but in fact my Dad paid for the Odyssey for my brother and I so neither of us were actually out of pocket.

Now I have the best of both worlds. I can toggle inputs on my HD set between the 360 and my Media Center PC running the Odyssey emulator.