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Intellivision 25-In-1 TV Game Debuts
Thanks to the Gaming-Age forum regulars for pointing to an MCV UK article showing a forthcoming Intellivision-licensed 'TV game', similar in style to the 10-in-1 Atari joystick we covered a few months back. This joystick (looking nothing like the original Intellivision controller - will there be problems with a lack of buttons?), will be launching in the UK next month. Choices will include joysticks with both 10-in-1 and 25-in-1 flavors of officially licensed, built-in Intellivision games, and according to the article, "..titles include Star Strike, Night Stalker, Space Armada, Astrosmash, Sub Hunt, Thundercastle and Pinball, amongst others."
As a once pround owner of an Intellivision back in better times, I remember thinking 'why did I not get a Atari 2600 like anybody else' after a while.
Everybody said it had an edge over the Atari on the tech side. Still, nobody else bought it. I loved the system, but had to envy those VCS 2600 cart swapping folks at school.
Years later, this reminds me of things like VHS and Video 2000 VCR systems here in Europe.
Besides, nothing could beat Sub Hunt in my book back then.
May the better one win...
Intellivision Lives has the entire history of the console, official CDs with the roms and bundled PC/Mac emulators, and several games available for free download. The site is maintained by some of the original Intellivision developers.
Thank god! that controller must have been the worst thing ever developed. I never had an intellivision (my friend did) but more importantly I never 'wanted' one and it was because of two things
1) The colecovision, better games and an atari emulator
2) That controller!
Come on, Smurfs, you know you want it!!!
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Yet another
news site
or web
page that
has a very
narrow width
in which the
words fit into.
I mean seriously!
They don't
even have the
remaining 80%
of the page
filled with
ads or anything.
It is COMPLETELY
empty. WTF! Wait,
no ads! Maybe
that's a good
thing!
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
...right past Union Square heading toward the west side, and I walked past a electronics/crap shop that was selling a combo pack with one controller and a light gun in it--the controllor itself plugged into the tv. The listing of games must have been around 200+. I'm sure none of them were legally licensed, but they seemed to be the real deal. Looked like Nintendo 8-bit era stuff, like Contra, maybe Mike Tyson's punch-out, that sort of stuff? Anyways...if you're in the neighborhood...
What? No Counter-Strike?
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
Maybe next they'll make a 10-in-1 Nintendo game pad that you have to blow into to start up...
when, in 1986??
according to intellivisionlives.com, sega and nintendo had NOTHING to do with its eventual crushing. If anyone, mattel beat the pee out of it with the colecovision.
free online diet tracking.
It would be interesting to see a unit like this come with some simple card reader (similar to the GBA eCard reader) so that new games could be written for the platform. I mean, at $20 people will buy it. Downloads would be printed and scanned in. I realize this is mostly a geek thing, but the interest to me is that this is a very small and constrained system and that by itself makes it interesting to program for.
Besides, I soon had an Atari, the all powerful Atari 800 computer!!! (In some ways I had a really great childhood.)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
http://www.classicgaming.com/features/articles/int cont/
This says it all!
"There simply are no moral absolutes in a complex world" --Milo Bloom
I wonder if you will need a huge addon just to do the robot sounding voice effects from the b-52 bomber game.
I really loved my old intellivision back in the day.. I bought it for next to nothing at a garage sale with all of the games still in boxes with all of the overlays..
Stupid me, I threw all of the boxes away to save space. I never really understood why they did the controllers like they did though, the overlays were a pain to keep track of, and most games only used directions and a couple of buttons for other stuff.. Atari really was a better system in terms of useability.
1) The colecovision, better games and an atari emulator
The INTV did indeed have an "atari emulator" as well... look around on eBay and I'm sure you'll find a few of them.
And I completely agree about the controllers. I'd play my INTV much more often if it had normal joysticks. There's also the fact that the stupid spiral phone cords on them don't reach very far, so you almost have to hold the system in your lap. The only system with worse controllers in my opinion was the 5200... mostly because those things broke if you looked at them funny.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
Not to say that the chosen games are particularly bad, but there are much better games than those to be found on the INTV... such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, AD&D Treasure of Tarmin (Which actually had a 3D perspective similar to Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder!), Burger Time, Lock 'n' Chase, Frog Bog, Dragonfire, and Demon Attack.
But I guess inclusion of most of those is unlikely due to licensing problems. They would need to pay to use the AD&D name... Dragonfire and Demon Attack were Imagic games, and I think Activision owns the rights to them now.
Maybe I'm wrong and they'll include these ones too... but I would imagine that Burger Time and Lock 'n' Chase would be much more attractive to customers than Space Armada, so why wouldn't they mention them? It's too bad really... because of these licensing problems, we'd be stuck with a device that could have been quite a bit better. At least I still have a real INTV.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
I never had an Intellivision, but my cousin did, so I played quite a bit. In the early 90s or so, a friend of mine was going through his attic and found his Intellivision, so we plugged it in and played Major League Baseball. The game was atrocious--there are no fly balls, so you can't catch the ball to make an out, but they did have home runs. The outfielders moved in unison. After playing for a few minutes, we went back to playing Baseball Stars for the Super Nintendo.
The nostalgia value is neat, such as hearing the Intellivision say "Yer Out" but it wears out quickly. And anyone who didn't play the game growing up (People under 28 years old or so) will not care about this ancient history.