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Shooting Gallery




The Shooting Gallery was a Light Gun (actually a light rifle) and is regarded as the first commercial light gun ever created for any Arcade or Video Game Console . It was originally created by Ralph Baer , the inventor of the Oddysey 1, in 1967 as part of a prototype gaming unit. The prototype light gun was used as an interface for playing multiple choice games.

's prototype Light Gun .]]
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 Oddysey 1 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.



GAMES

There were four games made that supported the ''Shooting Gallery'', not a small number of titles considering the extremely limited number of games available for the Console . The four games were available on two Cartridges (#9 and #10). Note that these games are colorized only by overlays.


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