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Breaking news: Intellivision flashback coming to retail


Rev

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Forgive me, for I write this post for the sole purpose of claiming post #1701 in this topic. Boldly go!

 

$19.81 (or $19.80) does sound like a good deal on an INTV FB. I'm personally not inclined to own two, though. Maybe if you cross-bred your INTV FB with a tribble, you would never have to worry about running out. . . .

 

Quadrotriti-what?

 

onmode-ky

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Forgive me, for I write this post for the sole purpose of claiming post #1701 in this topic. Boldly go!

 

$19.81 (or $19.80) does sound like a good deal on an INTV FB. I'm personally not inclined to own two, though. Maybe if you cross-bred your INTV FB with a tribble, you would never have to worry about running out. . . .

 

Quadrotriti-what?

 

onmode-ky

 

Sneaky Star Trek reference in that post along with that number. I'd love to snap up a spare Intv FB (mostly for extra overlays as well) but the 2 nearby Sam's Club said they don't have it listed in their inventory so either they have it and clearance sale are not listed, they didn't spell flashback right, or they are out.

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I've received the missing overlays so I have a complete set. I wouldn't be buying a second Intellvision Flashback for the overlays. I would buy it for spare controllers. Even if they did sell a set of controllers separately, they would probably go for $20, so to get a whole system for that is really a steal! I guess I have to weigh the odds of the possibility of a second flashback coming out and if it does, would it even have any of the remaining arcade games that are owned by other companies? I'm guessing those odds are slim to none...

Edited by atarifan88
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This was the question I was asking in this thread http://atariage.com/forums/topic/234591-rewiring-flashback-controllers/ Just wanted to know what order the wires would need to go on the board itself?

 

Thanks

 

Forrest

Oh yeah, that's certainly an option. I forgot to post the Flashback matrix connector pictures. Anyway, you just need to de-solder the wires from the Flashback controller 'daughter board', then re-solder them in the correct order.

Keep in mind this would be more of a 'permanent' controller mod, making the controller only work on an original Intellivision console. But if that's your goal, this eliminates the need for any kind of adapter.

attachicon.gifImageUploadedByTapatalk1409103080.379971.jpg

attachicon.gifImageUploadedByTapatalk1409103106.030943.jpg

attachicon.gifImageUploadedByTapatalk1409103153.330520.jpg

attachicon.gifImageUploadedByTapatalk1409103271.197348.jpg

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I ended up getting a second Intellivision Flashback. Now I have the standard and collectors editions. By doing this I am banking on the idea that there may not be a second flashback released. I guess I am in a better position now because if they do not come out with a FB2, then I will have a backup in case my other one goes or the controllers wear out. If they do release a FB2, then I will have the option to sell it and possibly make some money as I paid under $20 for it, so either way I win! But I am personally hoping they come out with another FB unit because the first one is by far the best FB out of all the Atari's that have been released to date as well as the CollecoVision (from what I have read and heard from other people). Sure a cartridge or SD card slot would be nice and so would more arcade games, but we know we aren't going to get it all.

Edited by atarifan88
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  • 3 months later...

I did some more exploring with my Flashback today, using the PDF Manuals provided by this thread. I feel like I have a lot of unresolved feelings about Intellivision and these experiences of trying out the games is bringing them back.

 

At the time the Intellivision system was starting to hit the stores in a big way, I was working at an electronics repair shop as an apprentice fixing car stereos, home audio equipment and similar pieces of gear. The guy who was teaching me was very enthusiastic about Intellivision. I was from an Atari family, with an original 1977 Heavy Sixer (I still have it), but within a year I would be married and moving to another state to attend college, so it wasn't like I was going to be coming up with the 300 bucks to buy one even if I was all psyched about Mattel ushering the future of home computing electronics.

 

I also felt there was a little bit of snootiness coming from the Mattel crowd... ...Intellivision was the Mercedes to Atari's "Chevy" - it was going to grow beyond a mere home video game system and become the center of home computing and entertainment for the enlightened family of the future. I felt a lot of a similar vibe from Apple in 1984 when they introduced Macintosh - the "Computer for the Rest of Us"... ...those of us who have spare cash in the 2015 equivalent of about $10,000. Of course, to be fair, businesses that were buying IBM compatibles around that time were spending between two and five thousand dollars for their systems, and Macintosh was supposed to be a professional computer system (...even though at the time of its release, there wasn't any software to support that usage model)... ...but I digress.

 

I'm fascinated by the relationship between the Intellivision CPU and the PDP-11. I'm wondering if Mattel was thinking there would be a bunch of hungry, enthusiastic Computer Science grads with PDP programming experience who would jump in and start churning out more software once Intellivision was firmly established in households across America...

 

The quality of the graphics seems inconsistent across games. I look at games like "Space Armada", "Shark Shark!", and "Astrosmash" and they're not that impressive to me. On the other hand, a lot of the games have graphics that seem more reminiscent of what we'd be seeing on Commodore 64 computers and NES a few years later - Inty games such as "Auto Racing", "B-17 Bomber" and "Motocross".

 

The graphics in "Motocross" in particular, look every bit as good as those found in Nintendo's "Excitebike" - maybe even a little better. But I can't seem to get the controller to be responsive enough to have as enjoyable a game-play experience on the Intellivision compared to playing NES on PC emulation using the keyboard arrow-keys. Is the flaw here in the Flashback implementation? Or was the experience equally frustrating on the real hardware? I never could get used to using my thumbs to control everything on an NES the way I used an Atari joystick or a computer keyboard. For a lot of games in emulation (MAME Asteroids, for example) keyboard button-pushes feel the most natural and similar to how I remember the arcade game controls working.

 

Ultimately, the Intellivision feels to me, like an astonishing level of unrealized potential. If the full keyboard component had become available as originally envisioned, and the system had continued to grow and expand, it does not seem beyond the realm of possibility that it could have eventually been a full Unix system with hard-drive, connected to a real 80-column monitor, and running serious software.

 

But even without the collapse of the home video game market in '83/'84, it would have been a hard-sell for serious computer users to accept an offering from a toy company to go in that direction. I think Exidy faced similar challenges for their "Sorcerer" computer, which from what I can see, seems to have been a solid piece of gear.

 

At the end of the day, I still seem to find it to be more "fun" to play a short list of my favorite Atari 2600 games over-and-over. It may be years of bias, or a mind-set that just "wants" Atari to be the more appealing game system, or it may be the excitement and enthusiasm surrounding the Atari home-brew scene of the past ten years. Sorry for the long post, but these thoughts have been simmering over the past several months...

Edited by almightytodd
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I also felt there was a little bit of snootiness coming from the Mattel crowd... ...Intellivision was the Mercedes to Atari's "Chevy" - it was going to grow beyond a mere home video game system and become the center of home computing and entertainment for the enlightened family of the future. I felt a lot of a similar vibe from Apple in 1984 when they introduced Macintosh - the "Computer for the Rest of Us"... ...those of us who have spare cash in the 2015 equivalent of about $10,000. Of course, to be fair, businesses that were buying IBM compatibles around that time were spending between two and five thousand dollars for their systems, and Macintosh was supposed to be a professional computer system (...even though at the time of its release, there wasn't any software to support that usage model)... ...but I digress.

 

That's where the real computers for the rest of us came in, Commodore's 64 and Amiga 500, both were ahead of their time!

 

:cool:

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I did some more exploring with my Flashback today, using the PDF Manuals provided by this thread. I feel like I have a lot of unresolved feelings about Intellivision and these experiences of trying out the games is bringing them back.

 

At the time the Intellivision system was starting to hit the stores in a big way, I was working at an electronics repair shop as an apprentice fixing car stereos, home audio equipment and similar pieces of gear. The guy who was teaching me was very enthusiastic about Intellivision. I was from an Atari family, with an original 1977 Heavy Sixer (I still have it), but within a year I would be married and moving to another state to attend college, so it wasn't like I was going to be coming up with the 300 bucks to buy one even if I was all psyched about Mattel ushering the future of home computing electronics.

 

I also felt there was a little bit of snootiness coming from the Mattel crowd... ...Intellivision was the Mercedes to Atari's "Chevy" - it was going to grow beyond a mere home video game system and become the center of home computing and entertainment for the enlightened family of the future. I felt a lot of a similar vibe from Apple in 1984 when they introduced Macintosh - the "Computer for the Rest of Us"... ...those of us who have spare cash in the 2015 equivalent of about $10,000. Of course, to be fair, businesses that were buying IBM compatibles around that time were spending between two and five thousand dollars for their systems, and Macintosh was supposed to be a professional computer system (...even though at the time of its release, there wasn't any software to support that usage model)... ...but I digress.

 

I'm fascinated by the relationship between the Intellivision CPU and the PDP-11. I'm wondering if Mattel was thinking there would be a bunch of hungry, enthusiastic Computer Science grads with PDP programming experience who would jump in and start churning out more software once Intellivision was firmly established in households across America...

 

The quality of the graphics seems inconsistent across games. I look at games like "Space Armada", "Shark Shark!", and "Astrosmash" and they're not that impressive to me. On the other hand, a lot of the games have graphics that seem more reminiscent of what we'd be seeing on Commodore 64 computers and NES a few years later - Inty games such as "Auto Racing", "B-17 Bomber" and "Motocross".

 

The graphics in "Motocross" in particular, look every bit as good as those found in Nintendo's "Excitebike" - maybe even a little better. But I can't seem to get the controller to be responsive enough to have as enjoyable a game-play experience on the Intellivision compared to playing NES on PC emulation using the keyboard arrow-keys. Is the flaw here in the Flashback implementation? Or was the experience equally frustrating on the real hardware? I never could get used to using my thumbs to control everything on an NES the way I used an Atari joystick or a computer keyboard. For a lot of games in emulation (MAME Asteroids, for example) keyboard button-pushes feel the most natural and similar to how I remember the arcade game controls working.

 

Ultimately, the Intellivision feels to me, like an astonishing level of unrealized potential. If the full keyboard component had become available as originally envisioned, and the system had continued to grow and expand, it does not seem beyond the realm of possibility that it could have eventually been a full Unix system with hard-drive, connected to a real 80-column monitor, and running serious software.

 

But even without the collapse of the home video game market in '83/'84, it would have been a hard-sell for serious computer users to accept an offering from a toy company to go in that direction. I think Exidy faced similar challenges for their "Sorcerer" computer, which from what I can see, seems to have been a solid piece of gear.

 

At the end of the day, I still seem to find it to be more "fun" to play a short list of my favorite Atari 2600 games over-and-over. It may be years of bias, or a mind-set that just "wants" Atari to be the more appealing game system, or it may be the excitement and enthusiasm surrounding the Atari home-brew scene of the past ten years. Sorry for the long post, but these thoughts have been simmering over the past several months...

Agree with some points and disagree with others. Now we know that CP1600 was very,very good and could have be more that a game console, 16 bits in 70's ! it could be went very far... but that's another story. The keyboard existed but there is the keyboard history and we all know that things didn't went well to this side. Regarding the controllers I will tell you something, that's one of the most unfair items in general judge. I grew up with Intellivision and, boy I was 9 years old, and nothing felt more powerful that those controller in my hands. I don't mean the ergonomics which are a little bit bad, the FB very cleverly used a rubber button that it's all that I asked those times, but the response and directions that it can go I didn't find in any console. I don't have a FB unit so I can tell you about its response, I use the real thing and in games with "the running man", like Tron series or Soccer, the motion is astonishing ! I mean 16 , real 16 directions ! and it's for real. Ask Dz-Jay, revolutionika or any other programmer here and they will confirm you this. And I don't have how to prove it yet but in games that doesn't need 16 directions , like some X-Y axis only, beamrider for example, the flow of the object is totally smooth, the impression is that the 16 directions are somehow compressed to form only the four needed but the flow from the disc to the object is amazing ! My cousins had atari-2600, everyone else in my neighboorhood had atari, I was the only one with that weird videogame in the entire district and I always found my games far more difficult and interesting than Atari even at the same titles, e.g Pitfall. And like I said to an "old guy" from a CG forum : If a 9 yrs old boy can easily control this thing or he is a genius (which I wasn't) or the problem it's somewhere else (yourself for example). So I think is really more bias. I don't like to play Intv in computer because of that, the flow is completely different and in fact I never adapted to play console games in computer because of ...Intellivision. It gave me such a strong mark that I miss the real controllers of any console if I play the PC keybrd. I have a Sega genesis and a Ouya and besides the great ergonomics of their controllers the response are still not good to me, it's incredibel how I still prefer that little phone over them. Don't take me wrong but It's just my opinion too and kind explain the way I fell about my console. Rgds..

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