Atari 2600 Magicard and Odyssey 2 Computer Intro

I am fascinated by attempts to demonstrate programming on the old videogame consoles. These programming tools were limited and primitive by today's standards, but they were pioneering efforts.

The VCS magicard was made by CommaVid and is super-rare.


http://www.racketboy.com/retro/atari/rarest-and-most-valuable-atari-2600-games
http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-magicard_12094.html
https://atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=281

On the Odyssey2, there was Computer Intro.

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/odyssey2/db/game.php?gameid=12

I like this forum post about Computer Intro:

"Another exclusive for the Odyssey^2 is Computer Intro; a cart that, along with its manual, teaches its user the fundamentals of assembler and machine language programming. Say what you want about the Odyssey^2's games, sound, graphics or exclaimation-point-driven-advertising, but Computer Intro deserves nothing but respect. We're not just talking about a well-written manual, this is a programming environment that lets the user enter and run their own programs with up to 100 lines of code!"

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/87/entry-3065-computer-intro-odyssey2-1979/

Reading the manual is interesting:

http://www.ozyr.com/o2/o2comput.html