On 2/16/2000, I received an e-mail from Troy Lukkarila, who claimed to have some prototypes created by Probe 2000, the name under which Odyssey was to market games for other systems such as the ColecoVision. It turns out Troy's father was an engineer at Magnavox and worked on Odyssey products dating from the first "Odyssey 1" console through the never released Odyssey3 Command Center. Troy still has a bunch of stuff from Odyssey/Probe 2000, including at least two prototypes that had never been discovered before – Creatures and Caverns and Power Lords for the ColecoVision.

Within a few weeks, Troy sent the ColecoVision prototypes of Power Lords and Lord of the Dungeon (Creatures and Caverns later became known by this name) to Sean Kelly of Digital Press for archiving. Power Lords was successfully copied and was made available in a special-edition cartridge at Classic Gaming Expo 2000, with a full-color label.

Lord of the Dungeon turned out to be the only known ColecoVision game to use on-board RAM. Apparently, this was part of a save-game system. (Would this make LotD the first ever cartridge-based game to have a save system?) Because of its unusual nature, the game required custom circuit boards that would not fit into standard ColecoVision cases. Some functioning circuit boards were sold at Classic Gaming Expo 2000.

Troy described the games in detail in his e-mails to me, so I've included them here, along with part of my responses to give context. Please keep in mind that Creatures and Caverns is the same game as Lord of the Dungeon while you're reading. I think I speak for the whole classic gaming community when I say "Thank you!" to Troy!

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From: Troy Lukkarila
To: William Cassidy
Subject: Odyssey 3
Date: 2/16/00

I haven't run into too many people who would be impressed by this, but I guess my day has come!

I own an Odyssey 3 and I own the game Flashpoint. It was a great game at the time. MANY things moving on the screen at once. Gave the real Robotron a run for its money. This is the only game I am aware of for the O^3 that was not backwards compatible with the O^2.

Also, I noted on your web sight that there has never been a prototype of the Probe 2000 games Power Lords and Creatures and Caverns for Colecovision. I own both of those games. I don't believe Power Lords was really finished because I never could figure out the point after you killed the big snake, but I will say that big moving snake was cool.

Creatures and Caverns was complete as far as I could tell. It was an RPG game and had a STACK of documentation with it. Pity it was never released because there was obviously much work behind it. Another interesting thing was that the cartridge had a battery backup allowing you to have your games saved. The game quit working altogether when the battery died.

As for Pink Panther, I was never able to get my hands on that one.

I also own the prototype of the American version of Killer Bees for the O^3.

If anybody is interested in reading the ROMS for these games, I do have them available.

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From: Troy Lukkarila
To: William Cassidy
Subject: Re: Odyssey 3
Date: 2/17/00

I have this stuff because my dad was one of the engineers for Magnavox and even worked on the Odyssey 1, 2 & 3.

For those real nostalgia buffs, the original Odyssey was a pre-pong cartridge based system that used painted cellophane overlays that stuck to your TV screen, which provided the detailed graphics. The system could generate nothing more than very large white blocks. There was a cat and mouse game, a roulette game and a few others... this was a long time ago. Unfortunately the overlays kind of rotted away over the years... too bad because they belong in a video game museum.

I have pretty much everything for the O^2 that was produced by Magnavox. Pretty much everything that was developed for the system by Magnavox (at least in the states) made it to the market so I don't have anything out of the ordinary except some prototype joysticks that would eventually be used for the O^3.

I have two Odyssey 3 prototypes. The only difference that I can see in the two are the joystick ports. One has a connection similar to a phone jack.

The Odyssey 3 had the best graphics of anything I had seen at the time. Unfortunately, these new abilities were only used to spruce up the look of the old games, with the exception of Flashpoint.

Other cool things about the O^3:

• The joysticks fit in the console allowing you to play Flashpoint with both Joysticks, just like Robotron
• It had an expansion slot on the back. The prototype voice module, which I still have, fit in the expansion slot rather than the cartridge slot.
• It had a "real" keyboard.
• When you powered off the system, it continued to send a signal, preventing loud static on the TV.
• The joysticks were better.

I had no idea until yesterday that an Odyssey 2 emulator existed. I tried it out and it worked near perfect. I also had no idea that Parker Bros. had made a Q-bert and Frogger for the system. What a surprise to me after all these years!

I don't know anything about burning ROMS and I don't want to invest a lot of time & money into the project. If you know somebody in the Jacksonville, FL who would like to burns the ROMS, that would be easiest. Also, I would consider mailing these items for the price of postage and the assurance that I could get them back. That is:

Odyssey 3 prototypes
Odyssey 3 cartridges
Colecovision Probe 2000 cartridges

Sincerely,
Troy

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From: Troy Lukkarila
To: William Cassidy
Subject: Re: Odyssey 3
Date: 2/21/00

For years, I have always kept a bedroom devoted to "classic" video game systems, but things have changed for me lately. At the moment, I am in a period of transition... I've been renovating a house. Right now I am living in a small apartment with my girlfriend. Most everything I own has been put in a storage unit. The "Video Game Museum" was among the first to go into the storage unit. I expect to be getting into the house by the end of next month.

What I'm trying to say is that in the 15 or so years I've owned this stuff, this is the worst possible timing to have found people actually interested in it.

I'll see what I can do about getting it out in the near future, but it has literally a ton of stuff in front of it.

Regards,
Troy