The Game: Armed with a catapult and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of projectiles (sorry, Python fans, no cows!), your task is to repeatedly and continuously smash your opponent’s castle, his catapult (rendering him harmless for a few seconds), or your opponent himself (much the same effect; a new enemy soldier enters the fray after a few seconds). (North American Philips, 1982)
Memories: Possibly the best two-player Odyssey2 game there ever was, Smithereens! was exceedingly simple, and simply some of the best fun to be had on this game system.
Part of the real beauty of Smithereens! was some of the best use of the Voice of Odyssey voice synthesizer. The Voice created the whistling “falling bomb” sound that accompanied incoming projectiles, and would emit a kind of odd bubbling sound if you accidentally misfired your missile into the moat between the two castles. And numerous amusing phrase were uttered in a hilariously calm, game-show-announcer voice (the same voice as heard in K.C.’s Krazy Chase:
- “All clear. Open fire!”
- “C’mon, turkey, hit it!”
- “Mercy, mercy.”
- “Hurry! Attack, turkey!”
- “A-las!”
- “Help!”
- “You did it!”
Smithereens! is a great party game, one of the best, and it’s a game completely unique to the Odyssey2. Very rarely do I have company that manages to avoid a few rounds of this game, and very rarely does anyone not love it.
Phosphor Dot Fossils bonus!
Thanks to Phosphor Dot Fossils reader Scott Bolderson, you can now get a glimpse of the North American Phillips “sell sheet” for Smithereens! as distributed to retailers, trying to entice them to order plenty of copies of the game. The ad copy here is a little less hyperbole than the average Odyssey2 back-of-the-box blurb and focus more on game features and sales points than anything. Click on the thumbnails below for a full-sized scan of both sides of the sheet.
