The Intellivision was the centerpiece of my childhood. We had over 70 games for it and I loved the thing. I first saw it at Gimbals in 1980 right before Christmas. They had 12 machines lined up and I was hooked from the get go. We had 7 kids in the family, so it was big stretch for our parents to get us the thing. But man, what memories! We went through two machines and were still playing the thing years later.
To me as a kid, the intellivision was equally amazing and spooky and mysterious. My first contact with that console was with Dungeons and Dragons Treasure of Tarmin (First person). Later on, I once picked up one console that someone tossed in the trash (with a DnD cartridge!!!!). It worked for 5min then it started to smoke. I will never forget that loss. :( It died on my watch.
One of my friends in the 80s had an Intellivision, and we used to get our "group" of friends over to play "Sea Battle" all the time. It's a 2-player only strategy game, and it's fantastic. I have two Intellivision systems now, one working and one in semi-working condition that I can purge parts from if the working one fails.
Intellivision did have "Shark Shark" & the best port of "Night Stalker", so I'll give them credit for that. Stores usually had the Intellivision & Colecovision side by side each hooked up to a small TV & it was always the Colecovision that everyone wanted to play. Even those that were patiently waiting for a chance to play on the Colecovision would just stand & watch others play, they didn't even want to kill some time on the Intellivision while waiting. That said a lot for Colecovision.
I've owned an Intellivision since the late 90s, but only JUST learned from watching this video the power cord can thread INSIDE the case! It's a bit tedious pushing it in but so much nicer on my shelf sitting between my heavy six 2600 and Colecovision now! Thanks! Love the console, very underrated. Wish I owned one back in the 80s.
I grew up in the 80s and I had friends with Intellivision and Colecovision and even another similar system that I don't remember what it was. These non-Atari systems were fairly common for me to see as a child. I did have a neighbor that had a 2600 as well, but yes these other ones were common, at least for me.
Great video just found your channel I've been gaming since Pong came out owned almost all consoles & home computers and still have them all. While today's consoles are great and have some fantastic games there is just nothing like the old retro systems and their games, there something about them that makes them classic. Keep up the great work 👍🏻.
Yep me too. Started on an Atari pong dedicated console in the 70's and have been gaming since. Thanks, plenty more content coming Tuesdays and Saturdays. Keep an eye out and thanks for watching.
I grew up with the Intellivision II, i remember it said "Made in Hong Kong". The young me abused it, since i didn't knew how to turn it off, i would change cartridges still powered on and just reset it, it did not have a separate on/off switch, you were supposed to press and HOLD the button for it to go off, but I only learned that much later. Thing never failed while my friends owning Ataris frequently broke them. The intellivision II has a power brick, not internal like the original, and the controllers had the 9pin plug so you could unplug them. Funny thing, i never owned any of the games shown in your video. Those did not show the true power of this beast. Just like Atari had Activision, Intellivision had Imagic. Pay attention to Imagic games, those were special, Yeah Blue Rangers also did some nice games too. Games worth mentioning: AD&D (both Cloud Mountain and Treasure of Tarmin), Sea Battle, Motocross (which lets you make your own tracks!) Autoracing, Burgertime, He-Man, Frog Bog, Nightstalker, Sub Hunt; Beauty and the Beast, Tropical Trouble, Microsurgeon, Dracula, Demon Attack, Atlantis (best port); the various other sport games (for some reason the very Baseball shown here was adapted and able to work in the Atari 2600 straight from the Intellivision cartridge). You didn't mention the intellivoice, i didn't own one but i had the Tron Solar Sailor cartridge (someone gave it to me) but without the sound module its mostly unplayable. There was also a polemic, or was it a class action lawsuit? because that very commercial shows a keyboard that was delayed for years. Sure it had low resolution compared to the Colecovision, but the games stopped being simple 5 minute affairs like those from Atari. 30min gaming session per cartridge was normal and many games had great 2 player action, some cooperative. The young me did my first all nighter playing Treasure of Tarmin, this type of game immersion experience you could only have with a (not games console) computer back then. In the Intellivision II storing the controls was easy and would fit neatly both facing you. This was important for example with Microsurgeon you could use the second controller at the same time. I wish i could have kept it, it would probably still work, parent forced me to sell it when i wanted a computer. Considering this was released in 1978, it blow everything away until Coleco in 1982, and well the crash of 1983 but that same year Japan released what would later be called "NES" to sweep the market since America thought video game consoles would not recover, and recover they did, made in Japan 🙂 Did i mention this disc controller has real hardware 16 directions? Its not 4 like an Atari, not even 8, its 16, so software could interpolate and have 32 but i doubt many games did. What other system gave you 16 directions, A B buttons + full keypad? Almost everyone else had only 4 directions and the disc doesn't hurt to use in a prolonged session, and prolonged sessions this console would make you have, unlike the others.
The build quality of the Intellivision is excellent. I especially love the built in transformer and lack of a wall wart. I absolutely hate the wall warts. If you get the Sears version, you can get both the appliance like build quality with the detachable controllers. But the controller was/is terrible. I still have an intellivision and play it too. The disc is just inappropriate and I often find myself playing on an emulator instead so I can just use the directional keys on the KB. Though the disc doesn't bother your hand the way the 2600 stick can, the buttons are another story. Those buttons are painful for the fingers after a while (I ain't 12 anymore) and have zero tactile feedback. You should check out some of the new releases for the Intellivision. Some of them are absolutely outstanding and better than anything released back in the day. I disagree with you about the lack of immersive software back then. There was a ton of it, just mostly not for consoles, but instead, for the 8-bit computers. Infocom made a business of it releasing a bunch of text based adventure games.
humble dude doing solid retrogames reporting without trying to be bombastic or cute. Only have 114 subs. I'm subscribing purely based on principle. keep it up. honestly hope your channel blows up with you eventually making a living with it. God bless
got the intelevision when i was four. my favorite game was B-17 Bomber. remember when i was five my older sister and my father was watching me play it, and when i shot down a nazi plane, i loudly said "i got you, you nazi bastard". their reaction was priceless, because it was the first time that i had ever cussed.
That was a great intro! The only thing that made us cringe a little bit was the Coleco version of Donkey Kong, that is painful to see. The D2K remake shows what the 1979 platform can really do. :)
Lol. I just downloaded the newest demo for Titanic Honour and Glory and had Titanic on my mind while filming this episode. Yeah, sorry brother, a few others have commented likewise about the DK game. I was just comparing apple's to oranges really. The games everybody had to have because they were arcade ports back then. lol...It is a bad game.. No doubt. I tried the D2K, much improved!!
Sales: If you search the atariage forums, current Intellivision owner Tommy Tallarico (I know I know) said INTV sold a little over a million Intellivisions from 1985 to 1990. Also it was verified through Toys R Us that they sold 500,000 INTV 3 in 1985-86 holiday season. So slightly over 4 million Intellivisions in total.
I had two consoles, one for home and one I took to the fire station for play during down time. Most popular at the station was the football game. For my game time, I had the intellivoice module for the B-17 Bomber game. I spent hours on that as you had to wait as the plane flew its mission over Europe. Other favorites include Shark Shark!, Star Strike, Night Stalker, Frogger, Pitfall, and Space Spartans.
My family had the Intellivision my dad got it back in 1979, and we still have it and still works. And are favorite game is Advance D&D. And we had Colecovision as well. 🙂❤
The Intellivision was the first gaming console my family ever owned. It was fantastic; we were a sports loving family, so we had the football and hockey games - I also remember a Tron game IIRC. It was vastly superior to Atari, just as George Plimpton said
Another great video! I never knew anyone that has this one. I actually knew more Bally Astrocade owners (2) than people who had the Intellivision. Great job buddy!
Yeah it's kinda surprising to me that the Intellivision survived the crash, but other well known companies didn't. I cut a lot out of this video due to time restraints. One of the parts I cut out was about how the FTC went after Mattel for not releasing the Keyboard Component and Mattel had to pay a $10,000 a month fine until they released one. And still the console survived the crash. Maybe not Mattel, they sold the division and bailed, but the Intellivision itself did. LOL
@@RetrogamerGenX whoa, I have never heard that before. Pretty cool info! When I was watching I said aloud to myself, "I didn't know the Intellivision had a keyboard!" 😂
I love the Intellivision. Some really great games like Thin Ice, Thunder Castle, AD&D "Cloudy Mountain", Night Stalker, Tron Deadly Disks, Diner and Venture. Certainly the sports titles looked and played much better than their Atari 2600 counterparts but, unfortunately, they were all 2 players only. At least until other version much later in it's lifespan were released. When you could find another participant the Baseball game was great.
I found a couple of crates full of Intellivision games in an apartment my brother rented back in the '90s. There were two Intellivision 2 consoles and a bunch of accessories. Unfortunately, neither worked, and this was before a lot of info was available online for service or DIY repair, not to to mention that the retro game craze hadn't really started, so those stayed at the family home when I left. Wish I still had them now. I have a VCS and most of the game systems my family and I owned from the NES to the Wii, with my wife contributing her Genesis and Saturn.
I think I've played that, if I remember right it was like a first person game walking around a dungeon. Kinda Doomish, looking but with way lower res graphics. LOL
@@RetrogamerGenX This predates Doom a decade (its from 1983). In fact this type of dungeon crawling game did exist but only in computers. You could compare it with the likes Dungeon Master (1987) and Eye if the Beholder (1991). but there were several games like this, just not for game consoles, except this one exception. There was a glitch when you used the Intellivision II vs the Intellivision that let you see monsters behind walls/doors when turning 🙂
Always liked the Colecovision System myself. I miss old Colecovison video game system. My best friend wanted the Intellivision because of the sports games. But he was glad to get Colecovision. God I miss those days!
The first console war. A2600, Magnavox, Intellivision and Colecovision. Was supposed to buy a GE vectrez system but I bought an Atari400 home computer with cassette reader back then and my very first diskdrive ( ah! those black floopy disks) later
Hey glad to see another newcommer to this genre of videos! Please consider lowering the music or using songs that are way less aggressive. It was hard to pay attention to what you were saying over the background music.
Wow, the sound is so annoying on the Intellevision! DKJr, how the theme starts over EVERY single time any other sound happens on screen is just awful! Graphics wise, it definitely does destroy the 2600 though. And those George Plimpton commercials are hilarious! I remember the first one was actually a parody of an old Atari commercial where this kid tries to compare Atari games to other systems, which subsequently do not have the same games. Keep up the great work! You’ll hit 1000 subs real soon!
Thanks... Yeah those commercials had me rolling. Especially the one where he's like I'll try anything, I bet you he would. Lol.. But all jokes aside the intellivision was a better system then the Atari 2600 it just didn't have the following, the marketing, and the game library at the Atari 2600 had.
Awesome bro. Glad you dig the intellivision. If you haven't already gotten the voice module get one really cool to hear the intellivision speak that computerized retro type speech. Nice, CIB games. Always a plus.
The first system that started it all for me was intellivision we where poor but my brothers best friend wasn’t so he gave us his , with like 20 games !! We played it for hours , still have it at moms some where ! Way better than Atari !! Then Nintendo and it was all over 4 me , 40 plus years later still playing games!!
I didn’t know that Pac-Man came out on Intellivision. However, I played the crap out of Lock ‘n’ Chase which I think was a similar but better game anyway. :-)
NFL football was ahead of its time ! I had intellivision, coleco vision, Atari , and the Commodore 64. The intellivision and commodore were better for sports games
Our family had one of these growing up. It wasn't as popular as the Ataris but we enjoyed the hell out of it. The controllers look weird but the disc input was actually a nice feature.
I got this before the atari...those gels that slid in on the controller were kinda crap and the little buttons on the side...were hell..but I loved playing pitfall.
Lol.. That's funny cuz I was an Atari owner and if I knew somebody within the intellivision I would have told them to bring that over. Thanks for watching and your comment!!
2:00 Clean the channel selector switch and you won't have to worry about static on the screen. That is almost certainly the problem. I used to rebuild these things and that was almost always the problem. It happens with all the old consoles with RF out and a channel selector.
I'll give that a go when I start re-capping these older systems I have. Might just bypass it all together if that's the issue. Everything here works on channel 3 anyways.
I had one when I was younger. Shark shark was definitely a good game. It was one of those eat other fish until you get bigger type games. There was a shark that would come around periodically and try to eat you. Eventually if you could avoid the shark and eat smaller fish enough. You would get big enough to eat the shark.
Ah, George Plimpton! 👍Great video! Star Strike was mind-blowing for its time. The transformer being inside the unit was a nice feature. I didn't like the input control at first, but it soon grew on me. E.T. and Atari Pac Man ended my love of the brand, and Intellivision's arcade fidelity was first-rate. (Opening commercial audio plays in only one ear... tip: Whenever I run into monaural audio assets that play only on one side of headphones, I just duplicate the track and just push the sliders to opposite channels.) Subscribed! 🕹
Get the sears tele games super video arcade it the same console but looks different and you can plug the controllers from the console and it have much longer wires it is a far better system I love it thanks for the very awesome video.
I never owned the launch model, I briefly borrowed an INTVII from a friend with lock n chase for a week or so, the same model I own today, well I have an IntelliVision flashback as well.
Yeah not too many people from what I'm hearing and seeing had an Intellivision back in the day. Trying to find them in the wild now, and not ebay, is tough. That reminds me, I have the flashback Intellivision too, I should of used that for the gameplay segment because it has composite out. Oh well, hindsight. I kinda like the look of the INTVII, it just looks so 80's, while the original one was 70's all the way.
Never knew anyone who had an Intelivision and never saw one working. Did have a friend who went on and on about the voice module but he no longer had the system. My family had Atari 2600 and then Colecovision. We never owned a console after that. So I grew up never having played anything from Sega or Nintendo. Weird huh.
I had one.....I had a few games for it...My neighbor gave it to me cuz he felt sorry for me cuz I didnt yet have an N.E.S. system.....I appreciated the thought...but....DAMN...it was a FAR cry from the nintendo.
Oh yeah waayyy different then the NES.. But they're also from different generations and intellivision is generation 2 and the Nintendo's a Generation 3 console. But that was awfully nice of your neighbor to give you a free game console, awesome.
Yes but truly speaking you are comparing a system from 1978 with a system from 1983, so the Colecovision would be a better comparison to the "NES" which was originally a computer that could game and was sold as such in Japan, IMO Colecovision just needed a keyboard/tape/floppy like Nintendo did in Japan, and not bother with the Adam. Yeah, you thought you could only play Super Mario Bros and not make your own programs with it? The thing had actual Basic and keyboard with tape/floppy drive too, that's what the expansion port underside was for, but they didn't release the peripherals, whatever Nintendo of America was thinking. Its literally in its original name: Family Computer (famicom). Ironically the Intellivision was supposed to have a keyboard, etc. too, some drama there.
I would love some new games like Gosub over at ETSY and Intellivania wherever you get that. My system is at my Mom's and I moved away. ☹ It was a TandyVision One from Radio Shack. Oh well.
@@RetrogamerGenX if you dont have one i can send you scans. got some odds and ends too like a mattel electronics tennis visor amd cbs software hats and junk. my mom threw out more shit that my old man brought home than i even wanna think about
@@Teeveepicksures I have read they were planning one before the crash, it would have been the proper continuation unlike the II which was the same thing just cost reduced. IIRC it would have been Motorola 68k based (same CPU used in the Mac). The last thing i saw from Mattel Electronics was a game controller for the NES with a funny resemblance to the disc controller, but just in apperance, it was a 4 direction control with a disc instead of a cross, not like the NES could take advantage of the Intellivision's 16 directions in hardware anyway, its just 4 like the Atari 2600... Oh and there was a glove, lets ignore that 🙂
@@freeculture the pre-clash plan was for Mattel to be almost one entire system ahead of the competition. The I³ even had a synth planned. Mind you, the items photogaphed in the catalog are wood and model paint mock-ups but that was were they were headed.
I have most of one (No controls.) with a few games and the intellavoice. I didn't want to pitch it in case someone might like to have it. I don't know if it even works.
Such an underrated system. The Intellivision completely blocked out the video game crash of '83 for me. I still enjoy Astrosmash, Shark Shark and Tron: Deadly Disks.
Interesting how the sports games can look so better than the Atari 2K cartridges, but arcade ports aren't much better. Maybe they didn't put much effort into the latter? The M-Network sports games for Atari (not shown) look a lot like Intellivision sports, since they were made by the same company.
Having one myself I'd say it was a pretty decent console for the time ,but as soon as Nintendo 1 came out all other consoles were obsolete ..you had to go to a computer to get something with anything better than the Nintendo had like a Commodore 64 which had flight simulator games and things like that
What took me surprise is that, the Mattel Electronics Intellevision video game console; it was connected to a computer keyboard. It was used for doing tax returns, as of for an example. 🖥
We had it. The graphics were far superior to my friends who owned Atari. However, Atari had what I consider "better" games -- even though they sucked: Pac Man, Meteoroids, Space Invaders, etc. However, Intellivision offered similar games, like Astrosmash and Space Hawk. Space Battle (though easy) was pretty awesome for the time. I actually owned Intellivoice, and got the games on clearance at Target. Now THAT was pretty awesome.
There are MUCH better conversions of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr which have been released in the last few years for the Intellivision.There is also a DK 2 game roughly based on a DK2 unofficially released for the arcade cabinets via a new ROM that is also excellent. The homebrew scene for the Intellivision really shows off the hardware. There is a lot of it too. The original library has a lot holding it back. For one, no flickering was allowed by Mattel. I'm pretty sure that rule remained in place for all M-Network 2600 games and all Mattel Intellivision games right through til the end. Secondly, they were stingy with the ROM size and forced programmers to use the exec routines. Both the small size of the ROM and the exec held back the original library a lot. They also had a hard time securing arcade licenses. Overall, I would say the Intellivision comes in 3rd place behind Coleco and Atari. The Colecovision was 3 years newer, so I suppose it's not a fair comparison. But even the 2600 in many ways outshines the Intellivision. Sadly, this has held up today. Even though Intellivision homebrew is, in many cases much better than the original games, the 2600 has benefited from its ability to use co-processors in the cartridge and so the 2600 upped its showing even more. Even without the co-processor, games like aardvark, released on both systems really shine over the Intellivision release.
Game makers were also lazy. They knew they could get away with doing the bare minimum. For instance, look at the graphics for NES games: 10 yard fight (1985?) vs Tecmo Super Bowl (1989?). Both games were made for the same exact hardware, yet the 1985 programmers knew they could sell the game with the bare minimum in shoddy graphics and game play even though the technology allowed for much better graphics and gameplay, which became necessary a few years later (1989) to sell games.
@@markgunther2502 Not necessarily. They have other constraints. Everything from ROM size to budget to time constraints. Also, the NES was better understood by developers in 1989 than it was in 1985.
The Colecovision must have put a huge dent in their sales… didn’t know that they’re was an AY-3-8900 and strange that the AY-3-8910 was a completely different animal. The sound chip used in many game consoles including the Vectrex.
brings back some good times! Hell , this was a GODSEND , compared to Pong , Atarivision , Colecovision ,& another fartblower of the times. This was cool as hell. i knew a rich kid that had one , who i would hang with , just to play on the system.
I grew up in the early 80s. Only one person I knew had a intellivision. I remember playing burgertime, pba bowling, skiing, masters of the universe, donkey Kong, and astrosmash. It was such a change because the Atari 2600 junior was the first system I had because the Nintendo had not come out yet.
@@marccaselle8108 I know right? I had it before the NES craze, while Atari games were simple and quick short affairs, here you had many games with several hours worth of playtime, with the AD&D games topping the list. Suddenly you don't have 5 buttons (its what Atari controls really are, except for the paddles); you have a keypad and ton of strategy (see Sea Battle). You had things like Motocross, you make your own tracks, infinite possibilities. While Excitebike in the nes was the same old, just a few bumps here or there, not a single curve like you could with Motocross. Even if the sprites were a bit more crude, it was the games themselves that shone. There was Autoracing before rc pro am in the nes, top down vs iso but much bigger challenging your opponent was incredible. To have a console from 1978 challenge one from 1983, it makes you think the devs were into something greater than their stupid parent company could ever understand. Well just like Commodore... If the Intellivision III would have come out, Nintendo would probably had a hard time sweeping the (now empty) market in the 80ies. Atari kept producing garbage, their only good stuff was made ironically in 1979 with the 400/800 until their line of computers later. And Colecovision died, but they could have remained if they focused in a single product rather than messing with the Adam, they should have just sold a keyboard and floppy for the console like Nintendo did in Japan.
@@freeculture perhaps...dont think i knew anyone with that one. I DID know a guy who uncle had a Magnavox VHS player/recorder , who paid almost $1000 for it , & it was a top-loader the size of an small suitcase.
Coleco (Connecticut Leather Company!) owned the rights to Donkey Kong for consoles and so made sure everyone else's version was terrible compared to the Coleco version!
Why did you start with Donkey Kong when Coleco intentionally made it suck to sell more ColecoVisions? There were so many great games on Intellivision you could have used instead - like BurgerTime, The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Games, Astrosmash, Night Stalker, etc.
Check out Venture Reloaded for the 2600. It's a Rom hack, but also basically a rewrite of the game. No modern hardware, just a larger ROM. By far the best port of the game. Blows away even the Colecovision version. Even has the screen scaling.
One of the major problems with the intellivision is the built in bios routines (the exec). It's great for fonts, for example. Unlike the 2600, the Intellivision has an alphanumeric font built in. Every 2600 cartridge has to have its own fonts and display routine for generating those fonts. But the EXEC goes further, much further than that. All the routines in the EXEC save cartridge space on each cartridge. But it is slow as all hell. The routines are slow. Intellivision games are usually not 60fps because of that.
The major problem for the Intellivision, from my experience as a kid in the 70's when it came out, was that the games weren't all that fun, and the biggest issue, was that the control pad controllers just plain stank. Nobody I knew had or even wanted one. You could play them at the department stores where they were on display, so it wasn't a mystery.
@@billybatson8657 I don't disagree, though there are some real gems you miss by not having one. Burgertime is a great example. The Intellivision version is outstanding. I also don't disagree about the controllers. IMHO though, the buttons are worse than the disc. TBH, I really don't think the disc is all that bad. But the controller as a whole is uncomfortable. Because the main Intellivision had hard wired controllers, 3rd party controllers weren't very common. Fortunately, I have the Sears Telegames II (which is a near identical clone to the Intellivision (not the Intellivision 2) which has removable controllers.
A very little know fact is that Mattel Intellivision's D-Disc's internal structure, way to function and design were ripped off by Nintendo whom many claim invented the D-Pad when all they did was add the cross on top of the Intellivision's Disc's design and if you adhere a similar thing to any Intellivision's Disc, you end up with an oversized but exact same function _"D-Pad."_ Think it's BS? Watch any Intellivision's and NES' controllers teardown video and watch the evidence. Same case with SEGA ripping off Atari's controller design and even control software thus why their controllers work with Atari consoles.
I had Atari 2600 as a kid and my next console after that was the NES. But I did have Pac-Man for my Atari and what amazed med seeing Pac-Man here on the Intellevision is that it was way better for one and two it was even made by Atari. Why couldn't Atari have made Pac-Man for the Atari as they did for Intellevision. Because Pac-Man for the Atari sucks in comparison just seeing it on the Intellevision and comparing it to Atari.
I don't think that's a good comparison. Maybe the C64? or more correctly the PC for its 16bit processor. I do remember reading that talking to this CPU involved 10bit instructions, so its quite unique. They marketed as a computer but didn't deliver the keyboard in time.
The Intellivision was the centerpiece of my childhood. We had over 70 games for it and I loved the thing. I first saw it at Gimbals in 1980 right before Christmas. They had 12 machines lined up and I was hooked from the get go. We had 7 kids in the family, so it was big stretch for our parents to get us the thing. But man, what memories! We went through two machines and were still playing the thing years later.
To me as a kid, the intellivision was equally amazing and spooky and mysterious. My first contact with that console was with Dungeons and Dragons Treasure of Tarmin (First person). Later on, I once picked up one console that someone tossed in the trash (with a DnD cartridge!!!!). It worked for 5min then it started to smoke. I will never forget that loss. :( It died on my watch.
My favorite game on Intellevision was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - Treaure of Tarmin.
One of my friends in the 80s had an Intellivision, and we used to get our "group" of friends over to play "Sea Battle" all the time. It's a 2-player only strategy game, and it's fantastic. I have two Intellivision systems now, one working and one in semi-working condition that I can purge parts from if the working one fails.
Sea Battle was my favourite. I also have 2 Intellivisions
i loved sea battle! one of my favorites.
Intellivision did have "Shark Shark" & the best port of "Night Stalker", so I'll give them credit for that. Stores usually had the Intellivision & Colecovision side by side each hooked up to a small TV & it was always the Colecovision that everyone wanted to play. Even those that were patiently waiting for a chance to play on the Colecovision would just stand & watch others play, they didn't even want to kill some time on the Intellivision while waiting. That said a lot for Colecovision.
I've owned an Intellivision since the late 90s, but only JUST learned from watching this video the power cord can thread INSIDE the case! It's a bit tedious pushing it in but so much nicer on my shelf sitting between my heavy six 2600 and Colecovision now! Thanks! Love the console, very underrated. Wish I owned one back in the 80s.
I grew up in the 80s and I had friends with Intellivision and Colecovision and even another similar system that I don't remember what it was. These non-Atari systems were fairly common for me to see as a child. I did have a neighbor that had a 2600 as well, but yes these other ones were common, at least for me.
Great video just found your channel I've been gaming since Pong came out owned almost all consoles & home computers and still have them all.
While today's consoles are great and have some fantastic games there is just nothing like the old retro systems and their games, there something about them that makes them classic.
Keep up the great work 👍🏻.
Yep me too. Started on an Atari pong dedicated console in the 70's and have been gaming since. Thanks, plenty more content coming Tuesdays and Saturdays. Keep an eye out and thanks for watching.
Excellent video, your production deserves more subs...So I added a +1. I particularly like your use of synthwave and synthwave type backgrounds.
You said everyone around you played Atari 2600, 5200, and 7800 until the NES came out. But the 7800 didn’t come out until after the NES.
Thanks for this video...keep making stuff! I want to see your channel succeed!
Plenty more content coming up. Keep an eye out.
Frog bog is my absolute favorite game even to this day. Always super fun to play with friends
I grew up with the Intellivision II, i remember it said "Made in Hong Kong". The young me abused it, since i didn't knew how to turn it off, i would change cartridges still powered on and just reset it, it did not have a separate on/off switch, you were supposed to press and HOLD the button for it to go off, but I only learned that much later. Thing never failed while my friends owning Ataris frequently broke them. The intellivision II has a power brick, not internal like the original, and the controllers had the 9pin plug so you could unplug them. Funny thing, i never owned any of the games shown in your video. Those did not show the true power of this beast. Just like Atari had Activision, Intellivision had Imagic. Pay attention to Imagic games, those were special, Yeah Blue Rangers also did some nice games too. Games worth mentioning: AD&D (both Cloud Mountain and Treasure of Tarmin), Sea Battle, Motocross (which lets you make your own tracks!) Autoracing, Burgertime, He-Man, Frog Bog, Nightstalker, Sub Hunt; Beauty and the Beast, Tropical Trouble, Microsurgeon, Dracula, Demon Attack, Atlantis (best port); the various other sport games (for some reason the very Baseball shown here was adapted and able to work in the Atari 2600 straight from the Intellivision cartridge). You didn't mention the intellivoice, i didn't own one but i had the Tron Solar Sailor cartridge (someone gave it to me) but without the sound module its mostly unplayable. There was also a polemic, or was it a class action lawsuit? because that very commercial shows a keyboard that was delayed for years. Sure it had low resolution compared to the Colecovision, but the games stopped being simple 5 minute affairs like those from Atari. 30min gaming session per cartridge was normal and many games had great 2 player action, some cooperative. The young me did my first all nighter playing Treasure of Tarmin, this type of game immersion experience you could only have with a (not games console) computer back then. In the Intellivision II storing the controls was easy and would fit neatly both facing you. This was important for example with Microsurgeon you could use the second controller at the same time. I wish i could have kept it, it would probably still work, parent forced me to sell it when i wanted a computer. Considering this was released in 1978, it blow everything away until Coleco in 1982, and well the crash of 1983 but that same year Japan released what would later be called "NES" to sweep the market since America thought video game consoles would not recover, and recover they did, made in Japan 🙂
Did i mention this disc controller has real hardware 16 directions? Its not 4 like an Atari, not even 8, its 16, so software could interpolate and have 32 but i doubt many games did. What other system gave you 16 directions, A B buttons + full keypad? Almost everyone else had only 4 directions and the disc doesn't hurt to use in a prolonged session, and prolonged sessions this console would make you have, unlike the others.
The build quality of the Intellivision is excellent. I especially love the built in transformer and lack of a wall wart. I absolutely hate the wall warts. If you get the Sears version, you can get both the appliance like build quality with the detachable controllers.
But the controller was/is terrible. I still have an intellivision and play it too. The disc is just inappropriate and I often find myself playing on an emulator instead so I can just use the directional keys on the KB. Though the disc doesn't bother your hand the way the 2600 stick can, the buttons are another story. Those buttons are painful for the fingers after a while (I ain't 12 anymore) and have zero tactile feedback.
You should check out some of the new releases for the Intellivision. Some of them are absolutely outstanding and better than anything released back in the day.
I disagree with you about the lack of immersive software back then. There was a ton of it, just mostly not for consoles, but instead, for the 8-bit computers. Infocom made a business of it releasing a bunch of text based adventure games.
had one as a kid had some awesome games.
humble dude doing solid retrogames reporting without trying to be bombastic or cute. Only have 114 subs. I'm subscribing purely based on principle. keep it up. honestly hope your channel blows up with you eventually making a living with it. God bless
Thanks.. I appreciate your sub and your honesty. Plenty more content coming up. It's people like you that support this channel and keep me doing this.
+ one more sub. Me!
got the intelevision when i was four. my favorite game was B-17 Bomber. remember when i was five my older sister and my father was watching me play it, and when i shot down a nazi plane, i loudly said "i got you, you nazi bastard". their reaction was priceless, because it was the first time that i had ever cussed.
No you didn’t.
That was a great intro! The only thing that made us cringe a little bit was the Coleco version of Donkey Kong, that is painful to see. The D2K remake shows what the 1979 platform can really do. :)
Lol. I just downloaded the newest demo for Titanic Honour and Glory and had Titanic on my mind while filming this episode. Yeah, sorry brother, a few others have commented likewise about the DK game. I was just comparing apple's to oranges really. The games everybody had to have because they were arcade ports back then. lol...It is a bad game.. No doubt. I tried the D2K, much improved!!
wonderful console, the best of its generation. I still own (and play !) one today, it has wonderful games, way ahead of competition !
Sales: If you search the atariage forums, current Intellivision owner Tommy Tallarico (I know I know) said INTV sold a little over a million Intellivisions from 1985 to 1990. Also it was verified through Toys R Us that they sold 500,000 INTV 3 in 1985-86 holiday season. So slightly over 4 million Intellivisions in total.
Good video, the Intellivision is one of my lesser used systems but I do love Snafu
Snafu was great very cool music.
My favorite retro console, hands down...
I had two consoles, one for home and one I took to the fire station for play during down time. Most popular at the station was the football game. For my game time, I had the intellivoice module for the B-17 Bomber game. I spent hours on that as you had to wait as the plane flew its mission over Europe. Other favorites include Shark Shark!, Star Strike, Night Stalker, Frogger, Pitfall, and Space Spartans.
My family had the Intellivision my dad got it back in 1979, and we still have it and still works. And are favorite game is Advance D&D. And we had Colecovision as well. 🙂❤
The Intellivision was the first gaming console my family ever owned. It was fantastic; we were a sports loving family, so we had the football and hockey games - I also remember a Tron game IIRC. It was vastly superior to Atari, just as George Plimpton said
Another great video! I never knew anyone that has this one. I actually knew more Bally Astrocade owners (2) than people who had the Intellivision. Great job buddy!
Yeah it's kinda surprising to me that the Intellivision survived the crash, but other well known companies didn't. I cut a lot out of this video due to time restraints. One of the parts I cut out was about how the FTC went after Mattel for not releasing the Keyboard Component and Mattel had to pay a $10,000 a month fine until they released one. And still the console survived the crash. Maybe not Mattel, they sold the division and bailed, but the Intellivision itself did. LOL
@@RetrogamerGenX whoa, I have never heard that before. Pretty cool info! When I was watching I said aloud to myself, "I didn't know the Intellivision had a keyboard!" 😂
Nicely documented :)
This was so much fun when it came out
I love the Intellivision. Some really great games like Thin Ice, Thunder Castle, AD&D "Cloudy Mountain", Night Stalker, Tron Deadly Disks, Diner and Venture. Certainly the sports titles looked and played much better than their Atari 2600 counterparts but, unfortunately, they were all 2 players only. At least until other version much later in it's lifespan were released. When you could find another participant the Baseball game was great.
I found a couple of crates full of Intellivision games in an apartment my brother rented back in the '90s. There were two Intellivision 2 consoles and a bunch of accessories. Unfortunately, neither worked, and this was before a lot of info was available online for service or DIY repair, not to to mention that the retro game craze hadn't really started, so those stayed at the family home when I left.
Wish I still had them now. I have a VCS and most of the game systems my family and I owned from the NES to the Wii, with my wife contributing her Genesis and Saturn.
Awesome video can't wait for my Amico to show up and...oh wait....
LMFAO!!! Right!! Will it ever happen?? I ordered mine months ago, kinda worried at this point.
I remember having an intellivision growing up and playing Advanced D&D Treasure of Tarmen. I couldn't tell you how many hours I played that game.
I think I've played that, if I remember right it was like a first person game walking around a dungeon. Kinda Doomish, looking but with way lower res graphics. LOL
@@RetrogamerGenX This predates Doom a decade (its from 1983). In fact this type of dungeon crawling game did exist but only in computers. You could compare it with the likes Dungeon Master (1987) and Eye if the Beholder (1991). but there were several games like this, just not for game consoles, except this one exception. There was a glitch when you used the Intellivision II vs the Intellivision that let you see monsters behind walls/doors when turning 🙂
Always liked the Colecovision System myself. I miss old Colecovison video game system. My best friend wanted the Intellivision because of the sports games. But he was glad to get Colecovision. God I miss those days!
This is the best channel I’ve found in years. Absolutely phenomenal!
Thanks bro..
I forgot i have one of these until now
You need the voice module and B17 Bomber. "Flak!" "That was....close."
Great video, lots of information. The background music makes it hard to hear what you're saying sometimes, though.
The first console war. A2600, Magnavox, Intellivision and Colecovision. Was supposed to buy a GE vectrez system but I bought an Atari400 home computer with cassette reader back then and my very first diskdrive ( ah! those black floopy disks) later
I miss my old Vectrex, should of never sold it...
@@RetrogamerGenX One day... but I think you would buy a Pitrex too. and some new acetate sheets. Vectrex is unkillable :)
Hey glad to see another newcommer to this genre of videos! Please consider lowering the music or using songs that are way less aggressive. It was hard to pay attention to what you were saying over the background music.
Wow, the sound is so annoying on the Intellevision! DKJr, how the theme starts over EVERY single time any other sound happens on screen is just awful! Graphics wise, it definitely does destroy the 2600 though. And those George Plimpton commercials are hilarious! I remember the first one was actually a parody of an old Atari commercial where this kid tries to compare Atari games to other systems, which subsequently do not have the same games. Keep up the great work! You’ll hit 1000 subs real soon!
Thanks... Yeah those commercials had me rolling. Especially the one where he's like I'll try anything, I bet you he would. Lol.. But all jokes aside the intellivision was a better system then the Atari 2600 it just didn't have the following, the marketing, and the game library at the Atari 2600 had.
Last year I bought an intellivision and some CIB games with the birthday money I received.
I still love playing intellivision today. 🙂
Awesome bro. Glad you dig the intellivision. If you haven't already gotten the voice module get one really cool to hear the intellivision speak that computerized retro type speech. Nice, CIB games. Always a plus.
Nice video. Brings back memories of a time as a kid wishing we had one. That's what kids do. 😁🤛
The first system that started it all for me was intellivision we where poor but my brothers best friend wasn’t so he gave us his , with like 20 games !! We played it for hours , still have it at moms some where ! Way better than Atari !! Then Nintendo and it was all over 4 me , 40 plus years later still playing games!!
I didn’t know that Pac-Man came out on Intellivision. However, I played the crap out of Lock ‘n’ Chase which I think was a similar but better game anyway. :-)
NFL football was ahead of its time ! I had intellivision, coleco vision, Atari , and the Commodore 64. The intellivision and commodore were better for sports games
Our family had one of these growing up. It wasn't as popular as the Ataris but we enjoyed the hell out of it. The controllers look weird but the disc input was actually a nice feature.
Three Words: Tron. Deadly. Discs.
I also had the Coleco ADAM computer system.
Awesome bro.. You should check out my video on the Colecovision if you haven't.th-cam.com/video/wOwxTbWSMDI/w-d-xo.html
I got this before the atari...those gels that slid in on the controller were kinda crap and the little buttons on the side...were hell..but I loved playing pitfall.
I had to take my Atari with me to to my niece and nephew's house when I came over. They asked me to because they had an Intellivision.
Lol.. That's funny cuz I was an Atari owner and if I knew somebody within the intellivision I would have told them to bring that over. Thanks for watching and your comment!!
@@RetrogamerGenX Yeah. In hindsight the Intellivision had better specs than the Atari. Dunno why their games sucked so much though...
you really should have showcased games that were exclusive to the intellivision :)
2:00 Clean the channel selector switch and you won't have to worry about static on the screen. That is almost certainly the problem. I used to rebuild these things and that was almost always the problem. It happens with all the old consoles with RF out and a channel selector.
I'll give that a go when I start re-capping these older systems I have. Might just bypass it all together if that's the issue. Everything here works on channel 3 anyways.
What's up with the missing power switch cover on the Silvana an INTV System 3 Intellivisions?
Hilarious intro.
I had one when I was younger. Shark shark was definitely a good game. It was one of those eat other fish until you get bigger type games. There was a shark that would come around periodically and try to eat you. Eventually if you could avoid the shark and eat smaller fish enough. You would get big enough to eat the shark.
Ah, George Plimpton! 👍Great video! Star Strike was mind-blowing for its time. The transformer being inside the unit was a nice feature. I didn't like the input control at first, but it soon grew on me. E.T. and Atari Pac Man ended my love of the brand, and Intellivision's arcade fidelity was first-rate. (Opening commercial audio plays in only one ear... tip: Whenever I run into monaural audio assets that play only on one side of headphones, I just duplicate the track and just push the sliders to opposite channels.) Subscribed! 🕹
Loved Star Strike as well
Personally I have a hard time finding enjoyment from playing pre NES systems. But I enjoy watching videos on them.
Eric Cartman: I'm gonna be on Intellivision...I'm gonna be on Intellivision!
Get the sears tele games super video arcade it the same console but looks different and you can plug the controllers from the console and it have much longer wires it is a far better system I love it thanks for the very awesome video.
I might have to get one one day if I can find one. Thanks for watching!!
I never owned the launch model, I briefly borrowed an INTVII from a friend with lock n chase for a week or so, the same model I own today, well I have an IntelliVision flashback as well.
Yeah not too many people from what I'm hearing and seeing had an Intellivision back in the day. Trying to find them in the wild now, and not ebay, is tough. That reminds me, I have the flashback Intellivision too, I should of used that for the gameplay segment because it has composite out. Oh well, hindsight. I kinda like the look of the INTVII, it just looks so 80's, while the original one was 70's all the way.
Never knew anyone who had an Intelivision and never saw one working. Did have a friend who went on and on about the voice module but he no longer had the system. My family had Atari 2600 and then Colecovision. We never owned a console after that. So I grew up never having played anything from Sega or Nintendo. Weird huh.
I had one.....I had a few games for it...My neighbor gave it to me cuz he felt sorry for me cuz I didnt yet have an N.E.S. system.....I appreciated the thought...but....DAMN...it was a FAR cry from the nintendo.
Oh yeah waayyy different then the NES.. But they're also from different generations and intellivision is generation 2 and the Nintendo's a Generation 3 console. But that was awfully nice of your neighbor to give you a free game console, awesome.
Yes but truly speaking you are comparing a system from 1978 with a system from 1983, so the Colecovision would be a better comparison to the "NES" which was originally a computer that could game and was sold as such in Japan, IMO Colecovision just needed a keyboard/tape/floppy like Nintendo did in Japan, and not bother with the Adam. Yeah, you thought you could only play Super Mario Bros and not make your own programs with it? The thing had actual Basic and keyboard with tape/floppy drive too, that's what the expansion port underside was for, but they didn't release the peripherals, whatever Nintendo of America was thinking. Its literally in its original name: Family Computer (famicom). Ironically the Intellivision was supposed to have a keyboard, etc. too, some drama there.
Great video!
Thanks!!
I would love some new games like Gosub over at ETSY and Intellivania wherever you get that. My system is at my Mom's and I moved away. ☹ It was a TandyVision One from Radio Shack. Oh well.
ive got an Intellivision 3 brochure kicking around somewhere
Right on!!
@@RetrogamerGenX if you dont have one i can send you scans. got some odds and ends too like a mattel electronics tennis visor amd cbs software hats and junk. my mom threw out more shit that my old man brought home than i even wanna think about
@@Teeveepicksures I have read they were planning one before the crash, it would have been the proper continuation unlike the II which was the same thing just cost reduced. IIRC it would have been Motorola 68k based (same CPU used in the Mac).
The last thing i saw from Mattel Electronics was a game controller for the NES with a funny resemblance to the disc controller, but just in apperance, it was a 4 direction control with a disc instead of a cross, not like the NES could take advantage of the Intellivision's 16 directions in hardware anyway, its just 4 like the Atari 2600... Oh and there was a glove, lets ignore that 🙂
@@freeculture the pre-clash plan was for Mattel to be almost one entire system ahead of the competition. The I³ even had a synth planned. Mind you, the items photogaphed in the catalog are wood and model paint mock-ups but that was were they were headed.
I have most of one (No controls.) with a few games and the intellavoice. I didn't want to pitch it in case someone might like to have it. I don't know if it even works.
Such an underrated system. The Intellivision completely blocked out the video game crash of '83 for me. I still enjoy Astrosmash, Shark Shark and Tron: Deadly Disks.
I loved that system growing up. I would always check it out in K-mart. Then one day my dad got me that system .
I had an Intelevision II .Burger Time was the best port. Didn't these games come with a plastic overlay for the number pad on the controllers?
There was supposed to be a new console, the Amico, but it keeps getting delayed
Notification Squad! :)
Thanks for clicking the bell, subbing, watching, and your support!!
Interesting how the sports games can look so better than the Atari 2K cartridges, but arcade ports aren't much better. Maybe they didn't put much effort into the latter? The M-Network sports games for Atari (not shown) look a lot like Intellivision sports, since they were made by the same company.
Having one myself I'd say it was a pretty decent console for the time ,but as soon as Nintendo 1 came out all other consoles were obsolete ..you had to go to a computer to get something with anything better than the Nintendo had like a Commodore 64 which had flight simulator games and things like that
What took me surprise is that, the Mattel Electronics Intellevision video game console; it was connected to a computer keyboard. It was used for doing tax returns, as of for an example. 🖥
When is my Intellivision Amico pre order going to be shipped to me?
Interestingly enough I had some locals with the Intelivision
Having had the 2600 I can say I’m impressed with their Pac-Man 😀
We had it. The graphics were far superior to my friends who owned Atari. However, Atari had what I consider "better" games -- even though they sucked: Pac Man, Meteoroids, Space Invaders, etc. However, Intellivision offered similar games, like Astrosmash and Space Hawk. Space Battle (though easy) was pretty awesome for the time.
I actually owned Intellivoice, and got the games on clearance at Target. Now THAT was pretty awesome.
I had no idea there was a keyboard
toen was gamen nog leuk.nu zijn die spellen veel te realisties.of hoe je dat ook schrijft.😀
There are MUCH better conversions of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr which have been released in the last few years for the Intellivision.There is also a DK 2 game roughly based on a DK2 unofficially released for the arcade cabinets via a new ROM that is also excellent.
The homebrew scene for the Intellivision really shows off the hardware. There is a lot of it too. The original library has a lot holding it back. For one, no flickering was allowed by Mattel. I'm pretty sure that rule remained in place for all M-Network 2600 games and all Mattel Intellivision games right through til the end. Secondly, they were stingy with the ROM size and forced programmers to use the exec routines. Both the small size of the ROM and the exec held back the original library a lot. They also had a hard time securing arcade licenses.
Overall, I would say the Intellivision comes in 3rd place behind Coleco and Atari. The Colecovision was 3 years newer, so I suppose it's not a fair comparison. But even the 2600 in many ways outshines the Intellivision. Sadly, this has held up today. Even though Intellivision homebrew is, in many cases much better than the original games, the 2600 has benefited from its ability to use co-processors in the cartridge and so the 2600 upped its showing even more. Even without the co-processor, games like aardvark, released on both systems really shine over the Intellivision release.
Game makers were also lazy. They knew they could get away with doing the bare minimum. For instance, look at the graphics for NES games: 10 yard fight (1985?) vs Tecmo Super Bowl (1989?). Both games were made for the same exact hardware, yet the 1985 programmers knew they could sell the game with the bare minimum in shoddy graphics and game play even though the technology allowed for much better graphics and gameplay, which became necessary a few years later (1989) to sell games.
@@markgunther2502 Not necessarily. They have other constraints. Everything from ROM size to budget to time constraints. Also, the NES was better understood by developers in 1989 than it was in 1985.
@@tarstarkusz Dumm. Reread my comment. No hardware changed. Same system.
@@markgunther2502 No, I read your comment and I didn't invoke any hardware changes. Tech is not the only thing that can impact a game's development.
The Colecovision must have put a huge dent in their sales… didn’t know that they’re was an AY-3-8900 and strange that the AY-3-8910 was a completely different animal. The sound chip used in many game consoles including the Vectrex.
1:29 You could've at least made the mono audio for both ears ...
brings back some good times! Hell , this was a GODSEND , compared to Pong , Atarivision , Colecovision ,& another fartblower of the times. This was cool as hell. i knew a rich kid that had one , who i would hang with , just to play on the system.
Awesome you knew somebody with one. We were stuck in atari purgatory. Lol
I grew up in the early 80s. Only one person I knew had a intellivision.
I remember playing burgertime, pba bowling, skiing, masters of the universe, donkey Kong, and astrosmash.
It was such a change because the Atari 2600 junior was the first system I had because the Nintendo had not come out yet.
@@marccaselle8108 I know right? I had it before the NES craze, while Atari games were simple and quick short affairs, here you had many games with several hours worth of playtime, with the AD&D games topping the list. Suddenly you don't have 5 buttons (its what Atari controls really are, except for the paddles); you have a keypad and ton of strategy (see Sea Battle). You had things like Motocross, you make your own tracks, infinite possibilities. While Excitebike in the nes was the same old, just a few bumps here or there, not a single curve like you could with Motocross. Even if the sprites were a bit more crude, it was the games themselves that shone. There was Autoracing before rc pro am in the nes, top down vs iso but much bigger challenging your opponent was incredible. To have a console from 1978 challenge one from 1983, it makes you think the devs were into something greater than their stupid parent company could ever understand. Well just like Commodore... If the Intellivision III would have come out, Nintendo would probably had a hard time sweeping the (now empty) market in the 80ies. Atari kept producing garbage, their only good stuff was made ironically in 1979 with the 400/800 until their line of computers later. And Colecovision died, but they could have remained if they focused in a single product rather than messing with the Adam, they should have just sold a keyboard and floppy for the console like Nintendo did in Japan.
"Another fartblower from the times"? Hmm maybe the Odyssey 2 from Magnavox?
@@freeculture perhaps...dont think i knew anyone with that one. I DID know a guy who uncle had a Magnavox VHS player/recorder , who paid almost $1000 for it , & it was a top-loader the size of an small suitcase.
I would listen to George Plimpton.
And people say the Genesis controller is awkward.
Coleco (Connecticut Leather Company!) owned the rights to Donkey Kong for consoles and so made sure everyone else's version was terrible compared to the Coleco version!
Why did you start with Donkey Kong when Coleco intentionally made it suck to sell more ColecoVisions? There were so many great games on Intellivision you could have used instead - like BurgerTime, The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Games, Astrosmash, Night Stalker, etc.
George Plimpton rules.
SALUTE INTELLIVISION ME AND MY BROTHERS PLAYED FOR HRS
Check out Venture Reloaded for the 2600. It's a Rom hack, but also basically a rewrite of the game. No modern hardware, just a larger ROM. By far the best port of the game. Blows away even the Colecovision version. Even has the screen scaling.
Thanks I'll check it out. Sounds awesome.
One of the major problems with the intellivision is the built in bios routines (the exec). It's great for fonts, for example. Unlike the 2600, the Intellivision has an alphanumeric font built in. Every 2600 cartridge has to have its own fonts and display routine for generating those fonts.
But the EXEC goes further, much further than that. All the routines in the EXEC save cartridge space on each cartridge. But it is slow as all hell. The routines are slow. Intellivision games are usually not 60fps because of that.
The major problem for the Intellivision, from my experience as a kid in the 70's when it came out, was that the games weren't all that fun, and the biggest issue, was that the control pad controllers just plain stank. Nobody I knew had or even wanted one. You could play them at the department stores where they were on display, so it wasn't a mystery.
@@billybatson8657 I don't disagree, though there are some real gems you miss by not having one. Burgertime is a great example. The Intellivision version is outstanding.
I also don't disagree about the controllers. IMHO though, the buttons are worse than the disc. TBH, I really don't think the disc is all that bad. But the controller as a whole is uncomfortable. Because the main Intellivision had hard wired controllers, 3rd party controllers weren't very common. Fortunately, I have the Sears Telegames II (which is a near identical clone to the Intellivision (not the Intellivision 2) which has removable controllers.
I saw something about amoco
I was always disappointed that Intellivision lost to Atari.
As bad as the Atari 2600, the only decent machines in the early 80s were the Colecovision and Vectrex.
Hey I remember that thing. Those num pads suck
Back in those days when a computer were supposed to change your life.
A very little know fact is that Mattel Intellivision's D-Disc's internal structure, way to function and design were ripped off by Nintendo whom many claim invented the D-Pad when all they did was add the cross on top of the Intellivision's Disc's design and if you adhere a similar thing to any Intellivision's Disc, you end up with an oversized but exact same function _"D-Pad."_
Think it's BS? Watch any Intellivision's and NES' controllers teardown video and watch the evidence.
Same case with SEGA ripping off Atari's controller design and even control software thus why their controllers work with Atari consoles.
I had Atari 2600 as a kid and my next console after that was the NES. But I did have Pac-Man for my Atari and what amazed med seeing Pac-Man here on the Intellevision is that it was way better for one and two it was even made by Atari. Why couldn't Atari have made Pac-Man for the Atari as they did for Intellevision. Because Pac-Man for the Atari sucks in comparison just seeing it on the Intellevision and comparing it to Atari.
SNAFFU ,anybody remember ?
If it is Mattell it smells.
So the Intellivision was like a TRS-80, but dedicated to video games...
I don't think that's a good comparison. Maybe the C64? or more correctly the PC for its 16bit processor. I do remember reading that talking to this CPU involved 10bit instructions, so its quite unique. They marketed as a computer but didn't deliver the keyboard in time.