Magnavox Odyssey

The Magnavox Odyssey, released in the United States in 1972, is where home video gaming starts. Its hardware came out of Ralph Baer's team at Sanders Associates, and it could only draw a few white dots and a line, with no sound and no color. Players stuck translucent plastic overlays onto the TV screen to turn those dots into tennis courts, haunted houses and hockey rinks. The two boxy controllers with their knobs plugged straight into the console.