Shooting Gallery (game accessory)

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The Shooting Gallery was a 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^[clarify] 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.

[edit] 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.