Seems a bit odd posting about Intellisivision on the AtariAge blog, but it's one of the things I also collect.

What started my collecting of Atari (again) was the Intellivision. I never owned one when I was a kid and to be honest, I didn't know anyone that actually had one as well. I did see them in the stores and usually played the demo games. NASL Soccer was very impressive to me at the time with its 3D-like view and a scrolling playfield. There were a lot of things about the Intellivision that seemed more impressive to me at the time; the graphics, the advanced gameplay and the titles were more original.

My then-girlfriend (and now my wife) mentioned that she had an Intellivision when she was a kid and spent many hours playing it. I figured I'd surprise her and get her a system and some of the games she liked. At the time there wasn't much of a retro market here in Toronto so had to buy one off eBay from someone in the States. She was happy and I actually got into it as well; Utopia was a game I really liked, as well us playing Snafu and me watching her play D&D. I kept buying games here and there, and after a while ended buying some games for myself. This eventually triggered my third phase of Atari collecting but that's a story for another blog entry.

Over the years I ended getting a second console because the pads on the first one were so bad, ab\nd we basically just use one console. One of these I may see if I can fix or replace those joysticks, but for now I'll just leave it as it is.

Dreadnought Factor is one of my favourite games on all platforms. I had thought of this concept when I was a kid even before I knew about this game and this is so well executed. In a way it's like Empire Strikes Back but much better.

Burgertime on the Intellivision is a brilliant game as well. The game play and flow is just perfect, I prefer this version even over the arcade which is something very rare.

As mentioned Utopia is a great game that I enjoy and the precursor to many of the simulation games in the early 90s (along with Little Computer People on the C64). I really playing it and just takes some effort to convince my wife to play a round and can never ever drop a rebel on her island.

Pac-Man has a surprisingly good version on the Intellivision, AtariSoft did a very good job on this console. We also play Lock'n'Chase quite a bit although I wish I had a joystick.

I also ended up finding a good deal on the Speech Module with three CIB games for it on eBay. It was a very good and fair deal, and was surprised that no one had snatched it up. I also remember buying a bunch of Atari manuals from this person at a good price. Unfortunately just never really got into it other than hearing the digitized speech from the module just to try it out.

The Activision game without a label in the picture is Happy Trails. Just spend 20 minutes playing it after plugging it in. Pretty fun game.
I don't actively look for Intellivision games anymore. I think Beauty and the Beast was the last cartridge I bought at a retro store and while I quite like it, I just haven't spent a lot of time looking around for more games. Dracula was a lemon and haven't been able to get it to work even after cleaning it. I'd like to get Locomotion one day but as it stands, I think this will be it for a while.