These games included World Series Baseball now supporting one or two players , Thunder Castle action role-playing , World Cup Soccer one or two players , and Championship Tennis one or two players.
The first two games were completed at Mattel Electronics but never released, and the last two were completed by a former Mattel Electronics office in France; it had previously been released only in Europe by Dextell Ltd.
The success of these new releases spurred Valeski to buy out Intellivision Inc. To save money, the company's new releases and reprints were produced with thinner boxes, contained no quality controller overlays or, when absolutely necessary, reduced-quality overlays , featured cartridge labels and instructions that were printed in black and white, and often failed to renew licenses, necessitating a name change for the affected titles.
Despite intense competition in the reinvigorated video game market, INTV held its own until , releasing 21 additional games in total, six of which were coded from scratch rather than built off pre-existing code. Super Pro Wresting , and Spiker!
For such a long-lived system line that sold more than three million consoles, the Intellivision's homebrew market is rather weak compared with many of the other prominent video game systems of the era. New hardware has thus far been limited to low production run cartridges that allow loading of ROM images and assist with programming, such as Chad Schell's Intellicart and Cuttle Cart 3.
New game releases appear slowly and have been mostly uninspired, though some of the latest games are starting to make interesting use of the Intellivoice or the three extra sound channels provided by the ECS, as well as better programming techniques. The music keyboard add-on often goes for a little more than the ECS alone.
The Intellivision can be an easy and fun system to collect for with a variety of loose and boxed games readily available for purchase and play on the various systems. Since the Intellivision Keyboard Component had such a limited production run and many were recalled, that particular add-on is among the rarest items for any system. Besides the TV games and official Intellivision emulation compilations released by Intellivision Productions for modern platforms, and select game availability on the computer-based GameTap subscription service, a variety of other unofficial emulators are available that can deliver a good approximation of the real system experience.
These emulators include Bliss , Intv, and Nostalgia, with many also doing a good job of emulating the functionality of the ECS and other add-ons. The Intellivision had new games in development right up to the closure of INTV, with the unfinished classic computer conversion of Choplifter! While dwarfed in popularity and nostalgia by the legendary consoles from Atari and Nintendo, Mattel's Intellivision was a solid contender for its time and home to many impressive and highly playable games, particularly in the sports genre.
The platform's innovative add-ons and associated software make it a desirable target for any serious collector. Sections Close Back. Blogs Close Back. Write for Game Developer. Blog Now. Connect Close Back. Register for a. Get daily Game Developer top stories every morning straight into your inbox. About Us. Advertise With Us. Report An Issue. Subscribe Login. A minimum of 3 characters are required to be typed in the search bar in order to perform a search.
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However, the Xbox version is available for purchase as a downloadable game through Xbox Live Game Marketplace's Xbox Originals service for the Xbox A few licensed Intellivision games are available through the GameTap subscription gaming service. This service includes support for Intellivision titles and allows players to compete against one another for high scores via online leaderboards.
He described Intellivision as "the most mechanically reliable of the systems… The controller used during "many hours of experimentation" worked with perfect consistency. The unit never had overheating problems, nor were loose wires or other connections encountered.
Jeff Rovin lists Intellivision as one of the seven major suppliers of videogames in , and mentions it as "the unchallenged king of graphics", however stating that the controllers can be "difficult to operate", the fact that if a controller breaks the entire unit must be shipped off for repairs since they did not detach at first , and that the overlays "are sometimes so stubborn as to tempt one's patience".
Intellivision Wiki Explore. Wiki Content. Night Stalker. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Edit source History Talk 0. The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in The name Intellivision is a portmanteau of "intelligent television".
Development of the console began in , the same year as the introduction of its main competitor, the Atari Games development started in and continued until when the Intellivision was discontinued.
From to over 3 million Intellivision units were sold. The Intellivision was developed at Mattel in Hawthorne, California along with their Mattel Electronics line of handheld electronic games. Mattel Electronics becoming a subsidiary in Mattel's Design and Development group began investigating a home video game system in It was to have rich graphics and long lasting gameplay to distinguish itself from its competitors.
Mattel identified a new but expensive chipset from National Semiconductor and negotiated better pricing for a simpler design. GI published an updated chipset in their catalog. Graphics were designed by artists at Mattel led by Dave James. Though not the first system to challenge Warner Communications ' Atari , it was the first to pose a serious threat to the market leader. A series of advertisements featuring George Plimpton were produced that demonstrated the superiority of the Intellivision's graphics and sound to those of the Atari , using side-by-side game comparisons.
The other console's games had a blip sound and cruder graphics, while the Intellivision featured a realistic swing sound and striking of the ball, and graphics that suggested a more 3D look. There was also an advertisement comparing the Atari to it, featuring the slogan "I didn't know".
In its first year, Mattel sold out its initial , production run of Intellivision "Master Components". In , over 1 million Intellivision consoles were sold. The Intellivision Master Component was branded and distributed by various companies. The Sears Intellivision also has a modified Exec removing "Mattel Electronics" from the default titlescreen. In Radio Shack marketed the Tandyvision One , [19] similar to the original Intellivision but with the gold plates replaced with more wood trim.
In Japan Intellivisions were branded by Bandai in , [20] and in Brazil there were Digimed and Digiplay Intellivisions manufactured by Sharp in It provides two benefits: reusable code that can effectively make a 4K cartridge an 8K game, and a software framework for new programmers to develop games more easily and quickly.
It also allows other programmers to more easily review and continue another's project. Under the supervision of David Rolfe APh and graphics supplied by Mattel artist Dave James, APh was able to quickly create the Intellivision launch title library using mostly summer students. Intellivision games that leverage the Exec run at a 20 Hz frame rate instead of the 60 Hz frame rate for which the Intellivision was designed.
Using the Exec framework is optional, but almost all Intellivision games released by Mattel Electronics are 20 Hz. The limited ROM space also meant there was no room for computer artificial intelligence and many early games required two players. Initially, all Intellivision games were programmed by the outside firm, APh Technological Consulting , [13] with 19 cartridges produced before Christmas Once the Intellivision project became successful, software development would be brought in-house.
Mattel formed its own software development group and began hiring programmers. Levine and Minkoff, a long-time Mattel Toys veteran, both came over from the hand-held Mattel games engineering team. During Mattel hired programmers as fast it could. Early in Mattel Electronics relocated from Mattel headquarters to an unused industrial building. Office renovation work happened as new staff moved in. To keep these programmers from being hired away by rival Atari , their identity and work location was kept a closely guarded secret.
In public, the programmers were referred to collectively as the Blue Sky Rangers. Most of the early games were based on traditional concepts such as sports and other games, with an emphasis on realism and depth of play allowed by the technology of the day. The Intellivision was not marketed as a toy and as such the games were not pick-up-and-play like arcade style games e. Sea Battle, B Bomber. Reading the instructions was often a prerequisite to play. Every cartridge produced by Mattel Electronics included two plastic controller "overlays" to help navigate the 12 keypad buttons, although not every game made use of the keypad.
The network concept was dropped in , as were the convenient gate-fold style boxes for storing the cartridge, instructions, and overlays. Starting in programmers looking for credit and royalties on sales began leaving both APh and Mattel Electronics.
They joined Activision , Imagic , and Atari to create Intellivision games for third party publishers. Mattel Electronics' team of programmers was diverse in experience and talent, proving to be an advantage. As competitors were often depending on licensing well known trademarks to sell video games, Mattel would have to focus on original ideas. Don Daglow was a key early programmer at Mattel and became director of Intellivision game development.
Daglow created Utopia , a precursor to the sim genre and, with Eddie Dombrower, the ground breaking sports simulation World Series Major League Baseball. From the beginning, Intellivision's packaging and promotional materials as well as television commercials, promised the addition of a soon-to-be-available accessory called the "Keyboard Component". The Intellivision was designed as a modular home computer. The Master Component could be purchased as a stand-alone video game system and the Keyboard Component could be added, providing the computer keyboard and tape drive.
Not meant to be a hobbyist or business computer, the Intellivision home computer was meant to run pre-programmed software and bring "data flow" Videotex into the home. The Keyboard Component added an 8-bit processor making the Intellivision a dual processor computer. It had 16K bit shared RAM that could load and execute both Intellivision CP and program code from tape; a large amount as typical cartridges of the day were 4K.
The cassettes have two tracks of digital data and two tracks of analog audio completely controlled by the computer. They were nearly a decade ahead of the game on processing capability. The bit built-in ROM however, was used for storage. The sound was delivered through three sound channels and provided a much clearer sound output than competitors. The company actually used many advertisements like these to call out its competitor Atari.
The advertisements showed the distinctly better features of the Intellivision console. The features mainly focused on were: realism, sound, and ease of play. Another aspect that made Intellivision far ahead of its time was PlayCable. PlayCable allowed an online connection through cable television system operators that would let subscribers download games onto their Intellivision system for a monthly fee.
PlayCable, although very familiar to our now popular online networks from Playstation and Xbox, actually failed because the technology at the time was just too expensive for the average household.
Where many say Intellivision lost to Atari was the lack of games available to the Intellivision system. To follow other titles like Asteroids and Missile Command joined in on the Atari home console. If you understand the popularity of these arcade game titles, you understand why Intellivision was already fighting a losing battle. While many flocked to the console to check out the amazing features that beat out Atari, it was a short-lived excitement.
To this day, opinions are still just as heated when it comes to which was actually the better gaming console, but in terms of popularity, we would have to declare Atari VCS as the obvious winner. Check out TechRaptor.
Released in as a part of the third generation of video games, the Intellivision II was dubbed a huge downgrade in comparison to the prior system. In order to reduce manufacturing costs, the game console was noticeably more compact, produced with plastic materials instead of rubber, and included changes to the sound chip that produced a poorer quality of sound in some game titles.
Meanwhile, in order to reduce third party influence on Intellivision, Mattel introduced a new ROM system on the Intellivision II that would block third-party games from companies like Coleco from playing on the Intellivision system. By the end of , all factors included in the third generation wave, Mattel sees a loss of over million dollars.
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