For me, I would agree with some other comments here. Its like going on a treasure hunt trying to find some of these titles and by the time you find out where you can get a title, its sold out.
@BriansManCave As far as I know Inty-Home has been on the Intellivision Home-brew Shit List, since their first release game of Gyruss in 2018, was made by stealing early prototype code from ArtRags Deep Zone release, but with modified title screen and custom box and released as Gyruss, with no attribution to ArtRag. Thus, I think those that were pissed off by Inty-Home's dick move most likely feel subconsciously that an eye for an eye was deserved, hence the Ghost-busters Ultimate Edition.
I was wondering why there's never been a StarTrek game for the Intellivision like for other systems (Atari, Colecovision etc.) Maybe it's because of copyright issues. I think that would be a quite popular homebrew game.
The homebrew community was going strong a year or two ago, amazing titles have been published, Like Pandora incident, Infiltrator,Operation Cloudfire, Star Mercenary and many others great ones, recently it's more quiet, inflation is high , peoples have less money, so they have to be more selective, not everybody is a collector and have the money every CIB out there or even every rom out there , I put my money in the game Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition because it look amazing and I know who's one of the team member that's part of this project and this programmer is always involve in great project and he knows how to be surrounded by great teammates, so maybe the inty community have a slowdown right now but its far from dead, we cannot compare the inty community to the atari community, doing that will be a huge mistake, thanks for the video fellow canadian Brian !
The Intellivision homebrew scene seems to be populated by touchy feely people who cannot accept even a hint of criticism. Additionally, the games are waaayyy overpriced. I do not need a gatefold box. Just sell me a cartridge, overlay, and give me a text only set of instructions and I am ecstatic. Then, do not just make 40 copies that all get gobbled up by the chosen few before anyone else has an opportunity to get a copy.
New to Intellivision myself but I decided to stay away from the homebrew scene due to prices and short availability window. However with Atari acquiring all rights to Intellivision IP and with them reaching out to the Atari homebrew scene (Bob DeCrescenzo in particular) and making new cartridges themselves I'm hoping that these sell well and encourages Atari to dive into the Intellivision scene and work with the homebrew to make new cartridges for some of these out of print games (with the only major hurdle being if the homebrew game is based on an existing IP).
The problem is see is that these things are not advertised beyond a really small community. And it's hard to buy them. Who wants to buy a game by emailing some guy?
in 1980, programmers used to put their disk and some kind of manual in a zip lock bag on a wall for sale. Sadly I was not old enough to see this in australia. At least now you can deal directly with the author, in the old days they were in witness protection it seemed.
What do you know about Jungle Hunt for the Intellivision? Pretty rare from my understanding. I think made by Coleco? What kind of value? Would love to hear more about this cart since there isn't much information online.
Im a new homebrew collector. I've always loved Intellivision, but didn't get back into it till about 2 years ago. I didn't even know there were homebrew games being made for it. So I try getting into it, yet virtually every game I want is sold out immediately, or never comes out at all after being shown by promoters. Its really hard to get into the hobby without the opportunity to actually add to my collection. Although, I saw The Show Must Go On game played by an INtv streamer recently. It was also currently available on the website. I went and purchased one right after seeing the stream. It could be that easy, but the rest of us "no-names" in the community who are just every day fans NEED the opportunity to actually purchase games and know WHEN we can purchase them. I play on og hardware so I need the physical cartridge. I don't have a flashback, and don't think they are available to purchase as far as I know.
I really don't understand the concept of 'we're only going to make games of a certain size that was around back in the day' It's such a dumb stance to take. Mattel, Coleco, Atari et all all increased their cartridge size over the years. Atari went from 2k ROMs to 16k . That's 8 times the size of the original. Not using other hardware upgrades maybe makes sense, but not just refusing to increasing the ROM size. It's not 1983 and a 4k ROM is no cheaper than a 32k ROM or probably even a 128k or 256k ROM. I think we need to insist on a free demo version at minimum. Just refuse to buy any game where you cannot download a demo. I think the people making the homebrew need to stop limiting their runs. If nothing else, you can set up a queue where 25 (or whatever number you like) have to sell before they get made. I'm a game player, not a collector. I don't want to compete with collectors on price. Ideally, home brewers will also offer a cheaper cart only option. I have no desire to pay 30+ extra Dollars for a game because it has a box and instruction manual. Constantly moving the cartridge in and out of the box, to play the game, will cause a lot of wear on the box anyway.
I agree with not limiting the amount made, it works for collectability but it also keeps it out of the hands of people who actually want to play the game!
I've been considering doing a video on this as well. Solid thoughts. There are a bunch of issues with the Intellivision homebrew community that really need to be sorted out, but the only way that'll happen is if different parties work together.
This is bang on. The price limits me. I did buy Napoleonic Wars. I also spent money on the Ghostbusters Special Edition only to find out there is a Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition. Ugh!
Someone needs to start a publishing house. Devs can submit games to be published. I see this as win for all. The publisher can choose what makes it and what doesn't. Quality goes up. Dev gets a secure platform to sell on, plus the possibility of making larger runs of games, or indefinite runs of games. Buyers get a secure platform to purchase from. With all this, cost should come down. Possibilities are endless.
The problem with Intellivision homebrew is the combination of a niche product and an aggressively insular community. From discussions I’ve seen, creators want to get paid for homebrews beyond covering the cost of limited distribution physical copies. It’s a bad business model. When the roms are released, they tend to be on the pricey side (for what they are) and it’s often fairly hit and miss whether they’ll work via emulation, so you can be stuck needing original hardware and flash cards. It’s hardly surprising that demand is going down. How many people are getting tired of seeing videos about cool homebrew games they’ll never get to play? Release physical copies. Cover your costs. Make the rom available for free. Grow community. Not complicated.
@@BriansManCave That's why I say recover the cost on a limited run then make the time available for free. If selling them, make the roms cheap. £10-£20 for a refund m that may or may not work in emulation is off-putting.
You mentioned "cost" of making an Intellivision game. Not sure what you would need for Intellivision but is it possible to cannibalize old cheap Intellivision cartridges for the boards an shells? Atari Age made copies of my 2600 games and they look fantastic for custom made cartridges. I test them with my Harmony cartridge on my 2600 Jr. but for the final product Atari Age gets the job done for that one. When I make NES games however, I bought up a bunch of copies of stuff like Ice Hockey and 10 Yard Fight just to get cheap NROM 256 boards out of them. (32K Program, 8K Graphics). There is even a way to convert an NROM128 board into an NROM256 board by severing a connection and soldering a wire to a different pin. (I've done it. Nice alternative when you can't find any more copies of Ice Hockey to tear apart). I desolder the chips from the boards, use a GQ 4x4 EPROM programmer to write my work to 27C256 chips and solder them back in. Take a hair drier or space heater to heat up the label to take it off and clean up with alcohol. I have someone else print my labels. For NES it seemed like a cheaper solution in the long run. I think someone was charging like $55 or more to make a custom NES game. Took a bit to get all my equipment but now I also have the ability to do other systems. (NES, Genesis, Super Nintendo...) Not sure what is involved with what is needed to make boards or what epromss would work for Intellivision. Just throwing it out there as a possible option. I think I could do Colecovision with some custom newer board someone made.
There are a few people who have boards and shells or you can reuse an old game for the shell. For some larger games you might require a JLP board which are not easy to come by. Mainly the cost I was referring to is all the other factors like paying the programmer, graphics person, sound, box, manual and overlay artists. Then there is the printing costs, it adds up 😁
Old Intellivision games can be used for their shells, but it isn't cost effective. New shells can be produced cheaper than it costs to buy an old Intellivision game to steal its shell. The circuit board from an old Intellivision game is utterly useless to make new games. New Intellivision games require new circuit boards that have custom hardware on them to be able to operate. Hence, new Intellivison carts are far more expensive to produce than an Atari or Coleco game where a lot of the materials can be recycled and replaced with a low cost eprom. It's not a matter of dropping an eprom on to an old Intellivision circuit board. There is more to it than that.
what blows my mind about the INTV homebrew community is the outright copywrite infringement of intellectual property that goes on, seems to not be an isolated case either.
@@BriansManCave lol well it's not up to the publisher you need to buy rights for it to be legal. I'm sure the owners of the IP would have issues with it, its also lazy and from what I can tell is nothing more than a money grab from alot of these homebrew devs. Making a game called ghostbusters and selling it with the logo is pure copyright infringement.
@@theretrobro When I showed Boulder Dash at a local retro store upon its release, some guy said to me 'First Star is going to sue you!'. I laughed and said 'I highly doubt my co-publisher is going to sue me!'. When I offered a retro game magazine review Intellivision 'Defender of the Crown' (fully legal and licensed), they replied 'We don't review homebrew!''. I guess they assumed that it was an illegal game. Sure, there's a lot of IP infringing stuff, but not everything is.
Good video, Brian. Perhaps your best. This certainly feels much different than 2-3 years ago. Roms are pirated left and right, and CIBs are going through a saturation phase. When it comes to the CIB part, I am convinced it falls on the publishers to protect collectors and only box what REALLY is worth boxing. It must feel unfair and frustrating for collectors to have to buy shovelware after shovelware to keep up with their collections. All this means publishers may need to make fewer releases, and that should be ok. It also means programmers will have to hear "NO" more often than before. Which should also be ok. On the part of programmers, a denial should trigger self reflection. Instead of defensiveness, the best response is to push yourself to do better going forward. Getting published should feel like an achievement, an honor. I think that's been lost a little.
I guess buying games and thinking they are an investment is silly. Buy games to play and enjoy, we all know the only games that got to great prices are ones that were cancelled and some snuck out, or the publisher released only a handful. the programmer is in control now, not the corporation, so like Whisky, only good stuff should be released
@@Shawnsteroz when I started making new Intellivision games, some people would ask before they purchased "How many did you make?" and usually when I said " As many as sell..." they would get a scowl on their face and take a pass. Sorry, I'm not making collectibles for speculators to 'invest' in. I'm making games for people to play and enjoy and to make an income. My model has NOT been based on limited runs. However, shovelware is putting that model at risk.
@@BriansManCave I can't wait to see what you come up with! You were the guy that inspired me to start making my first Intellivision game. You are an inspiration to me because of your passion and skill with Intellivision programming and I know you will be able to make something truly special!
An original game is not necessarily a playable game. I've been working on one which has some original elements and is very playable but it's for PC. There's some info about it on the AtariAge site (you may have seen it), as I was looking for someone to program it for me for the Intellivision.
For me, I would agree with some other comments here. Its like going on a treasure hunt trying to find some of these titles and by the time you find out where you can get a title, its sold out.
@BriansManCave As far as I know Inty-Home has been on the Intellivision Home-brew Shit List, since their first release game of Gyruss in 2018, was made by stealing early prototype code from ArtRags Deep Zone release, but with modified title screen and custom box and released as Gyruss, with no attribution to ArtRag. Thus, I think those that were pissed off by Inty-Home's dick move most likely feel subconsciously that an eye for an eye was deserved, hence the Ghost-busters Ultimate Edition.
Looking forward to buying a signed copy 😎
I was wondering why there's never been a StarTrek game for the Intellivision like for other systems (Atari, Colecovision etc.) Maybe it's because of copyright issues. I think that would be a quite popular homebrew game.
It’s possible, one might have been made but then rebranded to something else!
The homebrew community was going strong a year or two ago, amazing titles have been published, Like Pandora incident, Infiltrator,Operation Cloudfire, Star Mercenary and many others great ones, recently it's more quiet, inflation is high , peoples have less money, so they have to be more selective, not everybody is a collector and have the money every CIB out there or even every rom out there , I put my money in the game Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition because it look amazing and I know who's one of the team member that's part of this project and this programmer is always involve in great project and he knows how to be surrounded by great teammates, so maybe the inty community have a slowdown right now but its far from dead, we cannot compare the inty community to the atari community, doing that will be a huge mistake, thanks for the video fellow canadian Brian !
Yeah there has been a lot of games being released so I can see that it would be hard for people to keep buying
The Intellivision homebrew scene seems to be populated by touchy feely people who cannot accept even a hint of criticism. Additionally, the games are waaayyy overpriced. I do not need a gatefold box. Just sell me a cartridge, overlay, and give me a text only set of instructions and I am ecstatic. Then, do not just make 40 copies that all get gobbled up by the chosen few before anyone else has an opportunity to get a copy.
For sure ! I prefer the games be available for all. Perhaps just have a small batch that have different artwork for the collectors!
4:22 Didn't that happen with Gyruss too? I think there was a big fight about it. One had the music and the other didn't or something?
New to Intellivision myself but I decided to stay away from the homebrew scene due to prices and short availability window. However with Atari acquiring all rights to Intellivision IP and with them reaching out to the Atari homebrew scene (Bob DeCrescenzo in particular) and making new cartridges themselves I'm hoping that these sell well and encourages Atari to dive into the Intellivision scene and work with the homebrew to make new cartridges for some of these out of print games (with the only major hurdle being if the homebrew game is based on an existing IP).
Yeah price will always be a deterrent, but not all game producers make their games limited. Some are always available for sale!
Yeah, I'm sure developing games for the Intellivision is a highly niche' market. It's got to be tough to see a return.
The problem is see is that these things are not advertised beyond a really small community. And it's hard to buy them. Who wants to buy a game by emailing some guy?
in 1980, programmers used to put their disk and some kind of manual in a zip lock bag on a wall for sale. Sadly I was not old enough to see this in australia. At least now you can deal directly with the author, in the old days they were in witness protection it seemed.
Cost cutting measures I assume, some don’t want to invest in a website
@@BriansManCave an 'anonymous' release with a website....yeah, that makes sense.
@@CarbonatedLithium That too! 😅
What do you know about Jungle Hunt for the Intellivision? Pretty rare from my understanding. I think made by Coleco? What kind of value? Would love to hear more about this cart since there isn't much information online.
I believe it was only sold to an intellivision club. Not sure if that club even exists anymore but yeah its expensive if you can find one.
Im a new homebrew collector. I've always loved Intellivision, but didn't get back into it till about 2 years ago. I didn't even know there were homebrew games being made for it. So I try getting into it, yet virtually every game I want is sold out immediately, or never comes out at all after being shown by promoters. Its really hard to get into the hobby without the opportunity to actually add to my collection. Although, I saw The Show Must Go On game played by an INtv streamer recently. It was also currently available on the website. I went and purchased one right after seeing the stream. It could be that easy, but the rest of us "no-names" in the community who are just every day fans NEED the opportunity to actually purchase games and know WHEN we can purchase them. I play on og hardware so I need the physical cartridge. I don't have a flashback, and don't think they are available to purchase as far as I know.
I agree, I like when they are all available. I am hoping Intellivision Revolution will get more of my games up for sale soon!
I really don't understand the concept of 'we're only going to make games of a certain size that was around back in the day' It's such a dumb stance to take. Mattel, Coleco, Atari et all all increased their cartridge size over the years. Atari went from 2k ROMs to 16k . That's 8 times the size of the original. Not using other hardware upgrades maybe makes sense, but not just refusing to increasing the ROM size.
It's not 1983 and a 4k ROM is no cheaper than a 32k ROM or probably even a 128k or 256k ROM.
I think we need to insist on a free demo version at minimum. Just refuse to buy any game where you cannot download a demo.
I think the people making the homebrew need to stop limiting their runs. If nothing else, you can set up a queue where 25 (or whatever number you like) have to sell before they get made. I'm a game player, not a collector. I don't want to compete with collectors on price.
Ideally, home brewers will also offer a cheaper cart only option. I have no desire to pay 30+ extra Dollars for a game because it has a box and instruction manual. Constantly moving the cartridge in and out of the box, to play the game, will cause a lot of wear on the box anyway.
I agree with not limiting the amount made, it works for collectability but it also keeps it out of the hands of people who actually want to play the game!
I’m looking forward to watching this in the morning…. 😎
I've been considering doing a video on this as well. Solid thoughts. There are a bunch of issues with the Intellivision homebrew community that really need to be sorted out, but the only way that'll happen is if different parties work together.
Agree! We are not a large community, so we need to work with each other!
This is bang on. The price limits me. I did buy Napoleonic Wars. I also spent money on the Ghostbusters Special Edition only to find out there is a Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition. Ugh!
Someone needs to start a publishing house. Devs can submit games to be published. I see this as win for all. The publisher can choose what makes it and what doesn't. Quality goes up. Dev gets a secure platform to sell on, plus the possibility of making larger runs of games, or indefinite runs of games. Buyers get a secure platform to purchase from. With all this, cost should come down. Possibilities are endless.
The problem with Intellivision homebrew is the combination of a niche product and an aggressively insular community.
From discussions I’ve seen, creators want to get paid for homebrews beyond covering the cost of limited distribution physical copies. It’s a bad business model.
When the roms are released, they tend to be on the pricey side (for what they are) and it’s often fairly hit and miss whether they’ll work via emulation, so you can be stuck needing original hardware and flash cards.
It’s hardly surprising that demand is going down.
How many people are getting tired of seeing videos about cool homebrew games they’ll never get to play?
Release physical copies. Cover your costs. Make the rom available for free. Grow community. Not complicated.
I am not a fan of the limited copies model but I know that it would be costly for some to keep all games available.
@@BriansManCave That's why I say recover the cost on a limited run then make the time available for free.
If selling them, make the roms cheap. £10-£20 for a refund m that may or may not work in emulation is off-putting.
You mentioned "cost" of making an Intellivision game. Not sure what you would need for Intellivision but is it possible to cannibalize old cheap Intellivision cartridges for the boards an shells? Atari Age made copies of my 2600 games and they look fantastic for custom made cartridges. I test them with my Harmony cartridge on my 2600 Jr. but for the final product Atari Age gets the job done for that one. When I make NES games however, I bought up a bunch of copies of stuff like Ice Hockey and 10 Yard Fight just to get cheap NROM 256 boards out of them. (32K Program, 8K Graphics). There is even a way to convert an NROM128 board into an NROM256 board by severing a connection and soldering a wire to a different pin. (I've done it. Nice alternative when you can't find any more copies of Ice Hockey to tear apart). I desolder the chips from the boards, use a GQ 4x4 EPROM programmer to write my work to 27C256 chips and solder them back in. Take a hair drier or space heater to heat up the label to take it off and clean up with alcohol. I have someone else print my labels. For NES it seemed like a cheaper solution in the long run. I think someone was charging like $55 or more to make a custom NES game. Took a bit to get all my equipment but now I also have the ability to do other systems. (NES, Genesis, Super Nintendo...) Not sure what is involved with what is needed to make boards or what epromss would work for Intellivision. Just throwing it out there as a possible option. I think I could do Colecovision with some custom newer board someone made.
There are a few people who have boards and shells or you can reuse an old game for the shell. For some larger games you might require a JLP board which are not easy to come by. Mainly the cost I was referring to is all the other factors like paying the programmer, graphics person, sound, box, manual and overlay artists. Then there is the printing costs, it adds up 😁
Old Intellivision games can be used for their shells, but it isn't cost effective. New shells can be produced cheaper than it costs to buy an old Intellivision game to steal its shell. The circuit board from an old Intellivision game is utterly useless to make new games. New Intellivision games require new circuit boards that have custom hardware on them to be able to operate. Hence, new Intellivison carts are far more expensive to produce than an Atari or Coleco game where a lot of the materials can be recycled and replaced with a low cost eprom. It's not a matter of dropping an eprom on to an old Intellivision circuit board. There is more to it than that.
what blows my mind about the INTV homebrew community is the outright copywrite infringement of intellectual property that goes on, seems to not be an isolated case either.
Some publishers don’t mind, but some like Elektronite will only publish games that they got permission from the IP holder.
@@BriansManCave lol well it's not up to the publisher you need to buy rights for it to be legal. I'm sure the owners of the IP would have issues with it, its also lazy and from what I can tell is nothing more than a money grab from alot of these homebrew devs. Making a game called ghostbusters and selling it with the logo is pure copyright infringement.
@@theretrobro When I showed Boulder Dash at a local retro store upon its release, some guy said to me 'First Star is going to sue you!'. I laughed and said 'I highly doubt my co-publisher is going to sue me!'. When I offered a retro game magazine review Intellivision 'Defender of the Crown' (fully legal and licensed), they replied 'We don't review homebrew!''. I guess they assumed that it was an illegal game. Sure, there's a lot of IP infringing stuff, but not everything is.
@@CarbonatedLithium yes naturally, if you pay the rights for the license then ofcourse its not infringing. that goes without saying really.
Copyright.
Good video, Brian. Perhaps your best.
This certainly feels much different than 2-3 years ago.
Roms are pirated left and right, and CIBs are going through a saturation phase.
When it comes to the CIB part, I am convinced it falls on the publishers to protect collectors and only box what REALLY is worth boxing.
It must feel unfair and frustrating for collectors to have to buy shovelware after shovelware to keep up with their collections.
All this means publishers may need to make fewer releases, and that should be ok.
It also means programmers will have to hear "NO" more often than before. Which should also be ok.
On the part of programmers, a denial should trigger self reflection. Instead of defensiveness, the best response is to push yourself to do better going forward.
Getting published should feel like an achievement, an honor.
I think that's been lost a little.
Nice perspective! My only thing is that programmers should want their games to be played! I would rather have my games be available 😁
Very good comment!
I guess buying games and thinking they are an investment is silly. Buy games to play and enjoy, we all know the only games that got to great prices are ones that were cancelled and some snuck out, or the publisher released only a handful. the programmer is in control now, not the corporation, so like Whisky, only good stuff should be released
@@BriansManCavewell but that part is easy! Just release it as a free rom and you will see thousands of downloads. The problem is when games get boxed.
@@Shawnsteroz when I started making new Intellivision games, some people would ask before they purchased "How many did you make?" and usually when I said " As many as sell..." they would get a scowl on their face and take a pass. Sorry, I'm not making collectibles for speculators to 'invest' in. I'm making games for people to play and enjoy and to make an income. My model has NOT been based on limited runs. However, shovelware is putting that model at risk.
Too small a community. It's not like the 2600 homebrew scene which is thriving
I hope to make an Atari game at some point 👍
@@BriansManCave that would be awesome. You do great work on the intellivision
We are smaller yes, but we do have a great community. 😎
One of my issues is that many of the homebrews are ports of already existing games. I would plop down more money on games that are original.
That is my goal! To come up with an original game.
@@BriansManCave I can't wait to see what you come up with! You were the guy that inspired me to start making my first Intellivision game.
You are an inspiration to me because of your passion and skill with Intellivision programming and I know you will be able to make something truly special!
An original game is not necessarily a playable game. I've been working on one which has some original elements and is very playable but it's for PC. There's some info about it on the AtariAge site (you may have seen it), as I was looking for someone to program it for me for the Intellivision.