Shooting Gallery (game accessory)

For other uses, see Shooting gallery (disambiguation).

The Shooting Gallery was a rifle light gun and is regarded as the first commercial light gun ever created for any video game console. It was originally created by Ralph Baer, the inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey, in 1968 as part of a prototype gaming unit. The prototype light gun was used as an interface for playing multiple choice games.

This prototype design was later developed into the Shooting Gallery for the Magnavox Odyssey. The console had a special port built into it for this peripheral. The Shooting Gallery allowed playing four additional games. This simple shotgun-inspired light gun would only detect light, and not necessarily what particular target, which thus allowed the player to cheat by shooting any light source, e.g. a light bulb. Since no scores were displayed on the TV screen for any Odyssey game, cheating was somewhat irrelevant. A rumor circulated that the Shooting Gallery rifle would only work with a Magnavox TV set. Although wrong, this hurt sales and only 20,000 or so were sold.

This was also the first involvement of Nintendo in video games. According to Martin Picard in the International Journal of Computer Game Research: "in 1971, Nintendo had -- even before the marketing of the first home console in the United States -- an alliance with the American pioneer Magnavox to develop and produce optoelectronic guns for the Odyssey (released in 1972), since it was similar to what Nintendo was able to offer in the Japanese toy market in 1970s".

Games

There were four games made that supported the Shooting Gallery, not a small number of titles relative to the extremely limited total number of games available for the console. The four games were available on two cards (#9 and #10). Note that these games are colorized only by translucent plastic screen overlays.

See also

• Magnavox Odyssey
• Magnavox Odyssey The online Odyssey museum

References

• The story of the Magnavox Odyssey
• Magnavox Odyssey FAQ