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Intellivision's Deathiversary Celebrated, Mourned

Posted by simoniker on from the made-up-words dept.

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."

4 of 19 comments (clear)

  1. The good days of INTV by teddiesmooth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

    1. Re:The good days of INTV by teddiesmooth · · Score: 4, Informative

      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).

  2. Games based on classic 80s movies by foidulus · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  3. Some real greats... by inkless1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.