Intelivision 3 and 4 -- what might have been?

[SoulBlazer]

As a history major, I admit that 'what if's' are fascinating to me. I love thinking about what might have been. Often times you can clearly see how a major event in history all hinged on the smallest thing, such as a choice someone made, a piece of luck, or something not happening at the right time.

 

Video game history is especily interesting to me, especily the so-called 'golden age' of 1979-1984 and the crash and the effects of it. I recently just said over in the Coleco forum that I think if that crash hadn't occured -- and Coleco hadn't stupidly gone ahead witht he Adam -- that the Colecovision would have been supported (and probaly upgraded) all through the rest of the 80's. Eariler consoles were supported for longer then modern systems. INTV kept the Intelivsion going with new games until 1990, and Atari kept the 2600 going until 1992.

 

It's interesting to think about what would happened to both Coleco and Mattel if the crash hadn't occured and they continued to support and sell their systems through the rest of the 80's. I still think Nintendo would have released the NES in North America, but what about Sega with the SMS? Or Atari with the 7800?

 

Before the crash happened Mattel had plans to bring out new two successor systems to the Intelivision -- the Intelivision 3 which was susposed to be a minor upgrade (but fell victim to the kitchen sink syndrone) that would keep Mattell's video game division going until the release of the Intelivsion 4, which Mattel planned to last through the 80's.

 

Sad to say, we know very little about the Intelivsion 4 and how powerfull it would have been, how it would compare to the Coleco, the NES, the C64, and other popular systems, a release date, price point, anything. At least we have more info on the Intelivision 3, but a lot of that is speculation also.

 

What do you think about these 'ghost' systems? Has anything more about them then what is on the Blue Sky Rangers website turned up? Could they have compared well to other late 80's systems, and kept Mattel going?

 

Here's the links to the pages on the Blue Sky Rangers website about the Intelivision 3 and 4:

 

http://www.intellivi...elli3_tech.html

 

http://www.intellivi...elli4_tech.html

Edited April 24, 2012 by SoulBlazer

[+cmart604]

I believe the Papa Intellivison website should give you more info on both systems (Rev will probably beat me to it, I think his website has links too)

 

http://papaintellivision.com/

Edited April 24, 2012 by cmart604