Bucket Filler (Channel F)

This entry now includes two games: Bucket Filler, a 2 player button pushing game, and Fireman's Pump Test, which is a single player variant.

Bucket Filler

First Released: April 6th 2022
Last Updated: April 7th 2022

2 Player Only game

Bucket Filler is a port of an unreleased game from the Magnavox Odyssey. Originally the Odyssey had planned to have limited amounts of colour - a little like what the Channel F ended up achieving. One of the games that was planned and ultimately dropped when the Odyssey was decided to release in black and white with overlays instead - was a bucket filling game. The idea is that two players pressed their buttons to fill the screen with their colour, and this was turned into a bucket filling concept of filling a bucket or emptying a bucket depending on which player you were.

This simulates my understanding of how the game was intended to work, however I'm basing this on 3rd hand information of what was ultimately a game never released. Apparently this has been on display before, but this is a situation where even the internet does not have a great deal of information about it.

If by some chance you have any actual evidence, footage or first/second hand accounts about how the game was intended to be played, please let me know. Unlike the Odyssey, this assumes the game finishes when one player reaches the other side, to avoid cheating and upsets.

Push the button down to fill your colour into the screen. Keep pressing it down until it fills the screen. Press console button 4 to reset at any time, pulling up on the controller will also reset when one player reaches the other side of the screen.

Fireman's Pump Test

Released 05/04/2025

Celebrating the 3 year anniversary of the Bucket Filler port to the Channel F, this variant represents a single player version, based on information provided from the 16th of May 1967 of a unreleased Magnavox Odyssey game. Like Bucket Filler, Fireman's Pump Test was an early suggested game using colour as a game prop. The console famously was cut down to just black and white before release, so colour games such as these did not actually get released in the end.

For this game, use the controllers pull and push buttons alternatively to pump water and douse the fire. There is no timer or points in-game, its up to you to decide how to select a winner. I would suggest a sand timer or stopwatch! Similar to Bucket Filler, it accepts getting the line to the top as an end game and will reset afterwards. Console button 4 will also do the same result.