Intellivision's Deathiversary Celebrated, Mourned

Thanks to the Miami Herald for its article discussing the celebrating of an important classic gaming anniversary, as "...earlier this month, dozens of Blue Sky Rangers met at their former haunt, the aging Malibu Castle Park in Redondo Beach, a miniature-golf park and arcade near their former Hawthorne office. It was in memory of the 20th anniversary of the day [the Intellivision employees] lost their jobs." The article continues by detailing the history of Intellivision up to the present day, with the NPD noting "U.S. sales of classic games reached $58 million last year, up from $40 million the year before", with releases such as a previously covered Intellivision compilation. The president of the current Intellivision also mentions: "Someday... the company might release a new title of its own, something easy to play and probably set in the 1980s."

Comments

eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

$58M worth of classic games sold? whos buying these things? just go to the local pawn shop and get the games and console for less than half the price of the new port!

Re:eh?

[teddiesmooth]

I agree. Plus, it's not the same playing it in an emulated form. When BSR released the Intellipack back in the late 90s with four games per pack, it was nice to relive that nostaliga, but you don't get the horribly shaped paddles with it, nor the oversized system with the abnormally long RF converter cable, or get frustrated because your games won't start after the first few tries. I still love my Intellivision and I play it occasionally just to relive my early gaming days. *sigh*

Re:eh?

[Ayaress]

In a lot of cases, it's not that easy anymore. If you can find a functional Chrono Trigger cartridge anywhere, you'll end up paying a goood $50 to $80 for it. You can get the Playstation port for $15 if you're lucky. CT isn't even an extreme case. I bid $80 for a Star Ocean SFC cartridge, but the thing ended up going for $260. The original games are becomming collector's items, while the remakes and ports are bargain-bin junk.

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually got Chrono Trigger as part of that FF Chronicles set for the Playstation 1 the other day. I got it at Best Buy and it was only around $20 or so for that and Final Fantasy IV in the same package. If you want it, might as well shop around or hurry.

I could also just use ZSNES and emulate Chrono Trigger on my PC, but I will play it on my PS2 for the additions of cutscenes and so forth.

Re:eh?

[Stormwatch]

I've heard the PS version of Chrono Trigger has audio problems and severe loading times...

Re:eh?

[Ayaress]

Load times, yes. Neckbreaking go-and-get-lunch load times. There has to be some problem with the game, because the loadtimes are considerably worse than FFVII, despite the drastically lower amount of data that needs to be loaded. The audio isn't so much problematic as it is MIDI-fied. It's the same way with the PS version of FFVI. The music doesn't sound as nice as it did on the SNES.

so in another 17 years?

[BFedRec]

will all the dotcommers get back together for a romp down memory lane in a few years? All those pets.com employees probably want to catch up on old times.

Seriously, I used to work for amazon.com and got laid off when they shut down the Atlanta facility and I wouldn't mind getting together with a few of the old co-workers... but I think that 20 years might be a bit of a long way off for this sort of thing. Then again I guess what we were doing wasn't as missed or as innovative as the classic video game people.

CharlesP

The good days of INTV

[teddiesmooth]

Ah, reminiscing about playing Space Hawk, Bomb Squad, and Burgertime, and Astrosmash. Those games were great. Bomb Squad is still my favorite. The voices alone are enough to make you nervous. The music changes when you cut a wrong wire or solder the wrong part into place. You only get 15 minutes (in normal difficulty, I think) to fix so many circuit boards and figure out the code to disarm the bomb.

Hopefully these guys will start a new company and make games as great as they used to. If they could remake Bomb Squad with an action-movie feel to it that would be awesome. Maybe keep the old gameplay in place as the main character cuts wires and replaces parts as another teammate helps with another set of hands. All this set in the 80s would be awesome, with the soundtrack responding to every cut! Nerve-wracking!

Re:The good days of INTV

[JFMulder]

Yeah, Space Hawk was really great. My favorites were Astromash and Armada. I didn't own the voice extension though. Did it sound good?

Re:The good days of INTV

[teddiesmooth]

The voice module was pretty decent, although I don't think it was too successful, as only three games were released for it: Bomb Squad, Space Spartans, B-17 Bomber.

The voices were quite comical, especially in Bomb Squad. The villian (whom you cannot see) occasionally says "They'll be looking for us" or laugh maniacally, there would be someone else telling you how much time you have left (usually after every 3 minutes), and your helper had a few expressions:

"The code! The code, figure out the code!"
"Cut this one first, this second, this third... etc"
"WRONG PART!"
"Good going!"
and as the bomb nears explsion "Oh noooooo!"

At the time, it was a cool concept and one could understand the voices quite well. For an old system, it was really cool to hear voices in a video game and the quality was decent for computer generated voices (although if I remember correctly the voices were modeled after a couple of the programmers).

Re:The good days of INTV

[SpudB0y]

I think there was a talking Tron game as well.

My favorite was the synthesized southern accents in B-17. "That was aaawwwn Taarget!

Re:The good days of INTV

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Tron: Solar Sailor used the voice module also. Nothing will beat the synthesized Southern drawl from B-17 however.

Re:The good days of INTV

[p24t]

Heh... my cell phone says "Hello Commander, computer reporting" when it fires up.

Games based on classic 80s movies

[foidulus]

Why not combine movie/tv/games nostalgia?
Make new games based on old concepts but with new graphics/mechanics. I mean, who wouldn't want to play a 3d game based on M*A*S*H(much better than the hilariously inept Atari 2600 game) or ET, or countless other 80's franchises that have been thrown by the wayside. I mean, come on, if you can make a game based on the matrix, the least you can do is give Fred Savage a voiceover part in the reality sim based on the Wonder Years.(He needs the work!)
Oh well, I guess if you really want classic gaming with a new twist there is always homestarrunner.

Some real greats...

[inkless1]

My parents came home with an intellivision when I was a kid. Gaming must be in my genes, because my dad would spend hours trying to beat Night Hunter (a mathematical impossibility for those who havent played)

Ours died years ago, but I picked up a new on eBay. Had a nostalgia weekend with some friends and found out that one of my college buddies used to keep stats and names of the players on his Intellivision Baseball team. To show he wasn't joking, he proceeded to simply school me proper on the game.

Possibly one of the great games was Sea Battle though, which combined strategy and units in a way unseen in games (except for perhaps it's contempory Utopia) and wouldn't really be seen again until games like Herzog and the RTS genre.

Or the massive dungeon crawl Treasure of Tarmin - another game that I think stands unbeaten.

Great system. Great games.

Then it won't be authentic

[Jahf]

quote: "something easy to play and probably set in the 1980s."

If it is "easy to play" it will NOT be reminiscent of the Intellivision :)

Baseball Game

[phlack]

The baseball game that came out for the computer module (not the original computer module that had limited distribution, but the scaled back one) also made use of the IntelliVoice. It wasn't mandatory to use it, but did make the game slightly more interesting.