|
 ClassicGaming.com's Museum
Mattel
Intellivision - 1980-1984
(Also known as the INTV -
1985-1991)
Also marketed as the
INTV Super Pro System, Sears Super Video Arcade, Sylvania
Intellivision, Tandyvision I
"INTELLIVISION: Intelligent
Television"
System History
 After successful test marketing
in 1979, Mattel Electronics released its Intellivision
system nationwide in late 1980. Armed with twelve games,
better graphics and sound than its competitors, and the
promise to release a compatible keyboard that would turn the
system into a home computer ("Play games and balance your
checkbook!"), Mattel set its sights on taking down the
"invincible" Atari
2600. They got off to a good start, selling out the first
production run of 200,000 Intellivision units quickly.
Mattel also released the system under different names to
expand its market. The Intellivision was released in Sears
stores as the Super Video Arcade, at Radio Shack as the
Tandyvision I, and as the GTE/Sylvania
Intellivision.
Many people bought an Intellivision with plans to turn it
into a home computer when the keyboard was released. There was
a huge marketing campaign behind this (one-third of the back
of the Intellivision box was dedicated to the "Under
Development" keyboard), but months and then years passed
without the keyboard being released. Actually, it was released
in a few test markets in late '81, but the price was too high
and the initial reaction poor. So in 1982, Mattel scrapped
plans for the infamous keyboard, but later (due to government
pressure), they had to make a computer add-on anyway (see
below).
Mattel tried some new things in 1982, releasing a
voice-synthesis module called Intellivoice that made
sound and speech an integral part of gameplay when used with
compatible cartridges. Intellivision also released the
Intellivision II console which was described as
"smaller and lighter than the original, yet with the same
powerful 16-bit microprocessor." The Intellivision II was
designed for a few reasons: to lower the production cost, make
repairs easier (for example, it replaced the hard-wired
controllers with removable ones), make expansion easier (for
the upcoming 2600 adapter and other accessories), and to
prevent Coleco's Intellivision games from working on the
system. Yes, Mattel actually put in a subroutine to prevent
the Intellivision II from playing its competitor's games. This
subroutine also prevented one of Mattel's own games from
working as well. When this was discovered, Mattel claimed it
was the fault of the competitors' software. This change also
led to a slight timing error in some games with sound effects.
Competitors soon found a way to bypass this subroutine, to get
their future games to work.
In 1983, Mattel introduced the Intellivision III at
CES (Consumer Electronics Show). Heralding it as their "next
generation" system, the Intellivision III was supposed to
feature a built-in Intellivoice, higher resolution, unlimited
colors, faster sprites and higher sprite capabilities, six
channel sound, remote controlled joysticks, four controller
ports, more ROM and RAM, and be compatible with all
Intellivision and Aquarius titles (the Aquarius was an
unsuccessful 1983 Mattel home computer later dubbed "a system
for the '70s" due to its obsolescence). Later, Mattel
announced they were killing the Intellivision III and
including most of its features into their long-awaited
computer expansion, now known as the Entertainment Computer
System. Mattel didn't publicly mention their top secret
Intellivision IV project, which was a totally
incompatible console system with all new technology.
The Entertainment Computer System (ECS) promised a
keyboard, 64K of RAM (with RAM expansion modules), a music
synthesizer, a data recorder, a 40-column thermal printer, and
an adapter which would allow you to play Atari 2600 games on
your Intellivision. The RAM expansion modules, data recorder,
and thermal printer were never released and the music
synthesizer had only one software title. While the 2600
adapter was a nice feature, the ColecoVision
already had one. It was too little, too late.
Despite Mattel's awful marketing, the Intellivision sold
over 3 million units.
In January 1984, as the video game market crumbled, T.E.
Valeski, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales at
Mattel Electronics, along with a group of investors, purchased
the assets, trademarks, patents, and all other rights to the
Intellivision for $16.5 million. They formed a new company,
Intellivision Inc., which was later renamed INTV Corp. In the
fall of 1985, the INTV System III (so as not to be
confused with the Intellivision III, the system was sometimes
sold as the Super Pro System) appeared at Toys 'R Us,
Kiddie City, and in a mail order catalog sent to owners of the
original Intellivision directly from INTV. The new console was
of the same general design as the original Intellivision,
except that it was black with aluminum trim. Several new games
accompanied the release of the new system, and in 1985 INTV
registered over $6 million in sales worldwide. INTV had indeed
revived the Intellivision, and continued to market games and
repair services through the mail with great success. Between
1985 and 1990 over 35 new games were released, bringing the
Intellivision's game library to a total of 125 titles.
In 1987, the INTV System IV was shown at the January
CES. The new system sported detachable controllers and many
other minor improvements. It was never released. In 1988, INTV
reintroduced the computer keyboard adapter through their mail
order catalog on a limited-quantity basis. Obviously this
didn't suddenly cause NES owners
to run to INTV. In 1990, INTV finally discontinued retail
sales of their games and equipment and sold them only through
mail order, partly due to agreements with Nintendo and Sega to
become a software vendor for the NES, Game Boy, and Genesis
(the company released only one NES title, Monster Truck
Rally). In 1991, INTV sold out its stock of Intellivision
games and consoles, and the company, along with the
Intellivision, faded away. The company went bankrupt later
that year, but had managed to sell three million systems
during its run—no small accomplishment in the face of
Nintendo's market dominance.
Intellivision Lives!
 Even after 10 years of retail
sales, the Intellivision refused to die. The rights to the
system eventually found their way into the hands of the Blue Sky
Rangers (a group of former Mattel programmers), who have
erected a massive Web site to the system, its software, its
history, and its programmers.
Inspired by the high degree of fan support, some Blue Sky
Rangers formed Intellivision Productions, Inc. in 1995. Then,
following a wait that had Intellivision fans forlornly staring
at their PC monitors, the new company released Intellivision
Lives!, a CD-ROM compilation of 75 emulated
Intellivision games for PC or Mac. In addition to the games —
some of which were prototypes never available before — the CD
is filled with video clips, images, Easter eggs, and more.
Then, through an agreement with Activision,
Intellivision Productions came out with Intellivision
Classics for the Playstation, which contained 30 games in
addition to interviews with original Intellivision designers.
The Intellivision Lives! CD was a godsend to
Intellivision fans and rekindled interest in the system. Division
Software released the INTV2PC Hand Controller Interface, a
hardware device which allows actual Intellivision controllers
to operate on a PC. Chad Schell offers the Intellicart, "a device which connects to your
computer's serial port to allow you to download Intellivision
ROM images and play them on your actual Intellivision." Intvprog is a mailing list for people
interested in Intellivision programming and the technical
aspects of the console. The fan following of this system has a
strong Internet presence and is well-linked; go to one
Intellivision site and you'll easily spend hours checking out
all the other sites you find.
Games
The Intellivision had some popular games, like Major
League Baseball, Astrosmash, and Night
Stalker, but a large percentage of Intellivision's game
library consisted of sports or traditional card and board
games. While Intellivision excelled at graphics and sound, the
Atari 2600 was more capable of handling action games due to
its superior speed.
Many of the original Intellivision games were programmed by
college students as part of their computer programming
curriculum.
One problem with a lot of Intellivision games (especially
sports games) is that they were for two players only. This was
(and still is) pretty unusual.
Five Must See Intellivision Games
1. Utopia
Don Daglow's Utopia is the father of all real-time
strategy games. Often referred to as "Civilization .5," Utopia
puts you in charge of an island civilization. Many games, from
Civ to Sim City to Starcraft, are spawned
from this groundbreaking simulation.
You and your opponent each have an
island to rule. Points are accumulated based on the welfare
of your island people. You can choose to be a benevolent
ruler or an aggressive dictator. Your people need food,
housing, and industry for clothing and other essentials.
What you cannot manage are natural disasters. A single
hurricane could wipe out your crops, sink your fishing
fleet, destroy all the homes and factories you've built.
Rebels may automatically appear should the welfare of the
people drop. They could attack. Classic dilemmas in a game
that is sure to become an absorbing classic in its own
right.
- Utopia Catalog
Description
2. Astrosmash
Critics claimed that the Intellivision couldn't handle
action games. Astrosmash proved them wrong. This
insanely popular space shooter was conceived when a game
called Meteor!, an Asteroids clone, didn't fill
up an entire cartridge. The extra room was used to create a
variation of the game called Avalanche!. At the last
minute, Mattel's lawyers killed Meteor!, because it was
too similar to Asteroids and they didn't want a
lawsuit. So programmer John Sohl simply put a branch around
the opening screen menu straight into the Avalanche!
variation. This was done to prevent introducing bugs, since
Meteor! and Avalanche! shared the same graphics
and sounds. The game was released under the name
Astrosmash. It sold over a million copies, and
eventually replaced Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack as
the pack-in game.
In 1982, Mattel held the "$100,000 Astrosmash Shootoff,"
spawned from its 1981 "Intellivision VideoChallenge
Tournaments" in Washington D.C., Baltimore, New York,
Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles. Since the publicity
from the VideoChallenges was so good, Mattel's marketing
department decided to go national with the idea.
From March to August, Intellivision owners were invited to
send photographs of their TV screens showing their high score
in Astrosmash. Just for entering, they would receive an
Astrosmash Shootoff patch. It was announced that 16 regional
high-scorers would be flown to Houston to compete for eight
cash prizes. Over 13,000 people entered, and it quickly became
obvious that there was a problem. First, because of a scoring
bug, many of the pictures showed scores made up of seemingly
random ASCII characters. Scores had to be deciphered with an
ASCII table. Also, no one in marketing realized that
Astrosmash, like many Intellivision games, can be
played at slower speeds simply by starting the game by
pressing 1, 2, or 3 instead of the disc. There was no way of
telling who had legitimately obtained a high score and who had
played at the easiest speed. There were reports of competitors
who literally played for days at the slowest speed, pausing
the game (pressing 1 and 9 simultaneously) to sleep or go to
school. So to make things fair, Mattel Electronics wound up
flying 73 entrants to Houston for an all-expenses-paid
weekend, on September 11 & 12, 1982. There, the entrants
competed in 1 hour of timed play. In the end, 18-year-old
Manuel Rodriguez of Stockton, California won the $25,000 top
prize with a score of 835,180.
Astrosmash also pioneered another concept: most
games get harder and faster at higher levels, but in
Astrosmash, as you start to lose lives, the game gets
easier again. Then the game is never too easy or too hard,
making it extremely addictive and possible for even a beginner
to play a single game for over an hour. This concept was later
used by Sega in many of their Genesis
games (in a slightly different manner) and referred to as
"Dynamic Play Adjustment."
3. Night Stalker
A great game in which you run around at night, shooting
robots and avoiding bats and spiders. One of the
Intellivision's best games and ported to the Aquarius, and to
the Atari 2600 (as Dark Cavern).
 4. Burgertime
Pretty much Intellivision's only big name, high-quality
arcade port. Atari had locked up most arcade licenses, but
Mattel got lucky and delivered a nearly perfect conversion.
The game also has an interesting story behind it; see its listing
on the BSR page.
5. Major League Baseball
The best selling Intellivision game of all time, MLB
was used in ads to show how its graphics totally blew away
Atari's. The Intellivision was well known for its great sports
games, and MLB was one of its best.
Accessories
Intellivision controllers were quite unusual: they were
hardwired into the unit (at least, with the Intellivision I),
had a 12-key numeric keypad, two fire buttons located on each
side, and a control disc that detected 16 positions. While
this control was revolutionary for its time (great for
controlling sports games), many people didn't like them. Third
parties tried releasing add-ons to help make control more
joystick-like, but none of them caught on. 
The aforementioned Intellivoice module attached to the
cartridge port and played special voice-enhanced games. There
were five Intellivoice games: Space Spartans, B-17
Bomber, Bomb Squad, Major League Baseball
and Tron Solar Sailer. The ads promised "Video games
that actually talk to you. Male and Female voices react to
changing game situations immediately, are calm or excited,
give you strategy tips, cheer you up or egg you on. (Regular
Intellivision cartridges may be used in the Intellivoice unit
and will give you game play without voice, as if they were
plugged directly into the Master Component.) These are not
fuzzy simulations, but voices complete with expression,
produced by the ability of Intellivoice to duplicate realistic
human speech electronically." Actually, the voices didn't
sound that realistic at all, probably because each game
cartridge could only hold 4 to 8K of voice data. Words had to
be digitized at the lowest possible sampling rate at which
they could be understood, and even after doing that, they
really couldn't fit many voices onto a cartridge. After the
Intellivoice bombed, Mattel shelved a completed Intellivoice
children's game (Magic
Carousel), and gave up on it. Mattel did promise to
integrate the Intellivoice with the Intellivision III, but it
was never released. A restyled Intellivoice, designed to match
the Intellivision II, appeared in the January 1983 Mattel
Electronics catalog, but it's just a carved and painted block
of wood. Prototypes of an International Intellivoice module
that supported French, German, and Italian were built, but
never released. Plans were made to produce voice versions of
all Intellivoice games for the ColecoVision, but Mattel
Electronics was shut down before anything happened.
The Music Synthesizer, an add-on for the ECS, was a full
49-key piano style keyboard. It had 6-note polyphony (meaning
you could play 6 notes at once), and plugged into the
controller ports of the Entertainment Computer System. The
only software that supported it was its pack-in, Melody
Blaster, a sort of musical Astrosmash.
In 1983, Mattel released the System Changer, its
Atari 2600 adapter for use with the Intellivision II
(Intellivision I owners had to get a ROM upgrade to use it).
It supported both 2600 and Intellivision controllers. Many
people wondered how the Intellivision's processor could
emulate an Atari 2600. It didn't. The System Changer was
basically a 2600 clone that used the Intellivision for its
power supply and RF modulator. 
Probably the most interesting accessory for the
Intellivision was PlayCable, an adapter that plugged
into the cartridge port. For $4.95, the cable company would
transmit PlayCable subscribers 20 Intellivision games a month.
All you did was select the game you wanted to play from a
menu, and the game would download into the adapter's RAM where
it could be played. Every month, the games would be rotated or
changed, and users would receive new instruction books and
overlays for each new game in the mail. It was discontinued in
1983 and the adapters were returned to Mattel, despite being
pretty popular in the areas that offered it. Also, the adapter
wasn't capable of playing some of the newer, larger games due
to insufficient memory, so that was a factor as well. As an
interesting sidenote, two guys figured out how to turn the
PlayCable into an Intellivision development system by hooking
up a personal computer to a PlayCable and messing around.
These two guys eventually figured out how to write their own
games and contacted Mattel. To prevent the pair from competing
with Mattel (because Mattel was worried that they would expose
secrets and make it too easy for small companies to get into
the Intellivision-compatible business), Mattel hired them to
program the Intellivision Bump 'N' Jump arcade
port.
Emulation
The Blue Sky Rangers own all rights to the Intellivision
and their Intellivision Lives! CD is where to get
INTVEM, the premiere Intellivision emulator. The BSR have also
released a few games to the public domain. You can find them
in the Intellivision
section of The Vault.
Links
|
