How was having an Intellivision like? (I never had one but the games look very original)

[Blarneo]

Ha! I found this adapter for a Jaguar controller to use on INTV, CV & 5200.

[squirrelgotdead]

2 hours ago, nick3092 said:

And when a game was programmed with the disc in mind (like Burgertime, you can smoothly roll the disc and climb ladders like no other controller), it felt great.

Yes, Intellivision BurgerTime was the best. It was always just too clunky on other systems. I never put it on the controller, but there is probably something to that.

 

As to the main question of this thread, I don't really recall what it felt like to have an Intellivision. . .I was probably only about 9 by the time our family system died. But I do remember getting up really early to be able to play it before the older siblings got to it.

 

I struggled with some more complex games like B-17 Bomber and Bomb Squad, mostly because I was so young. But I remember playing games like Buzz Bombers, BurgerTime, Bump N Jump, Maze-A-Tron, Masters of the Universe, Skiing. . .more than I do playing Nintendo games.

 

Unrelated, but something that is on my wish list for the new system (not to go off topic too much here), but Horse Racing was a popular game, and still is:

 

I never had the Horse Racing game, but I had a friend that owned a bar that was also an arcade, and they had a giant screen game with a huge brass rail where multiple players could sit. You created and trained a horse by first choosing its parentage and it was stored on a removable card that you could keep and plug in later at any time to continue its career. I haven't seen horse-racing as a listed or suggested game/title as of yet, but would love something similar with an 8-player option.

[SegaSnatcher]

13 minutes ago, Blarneo said:

Ha! I found this adapter for a Jaguar controller to use on INTV, CV & 5200.

LOL,  might actually be a decent alternative.

[Swami]

25 minutes ago, Blarneo said:

Ha! I found this adapter for a Jaguar controller to use on INTV, CV & 5200.

Massively rare, unfortunately.

[Shawn]

The controller sucks and the games where below par compared to their equals on the 2600 and Colecovision available at the same time.

[IntyFanMatt]

27 minutes ago, Shawn said:

The controller sucks and the games where below par compared to their equals on the 2600 and Colecovision available at the same time.

In your opinion. Many people feel the complete opposite way.  Most will say the games were much better than 2600 games, especially in graphics and complexity.  They were much more interesting in my opinion. A game like BurgerTime blew Atari out of the water, it was perfect on Intellivision and the controller was great with it.  If you grew up playing the system, you loved the controller. It all depends on what you prefer and what you’re used to.  Your opinion will be in the extreme minority in this forum, that’s for sure. 

Edited September 6, 2019 by IntyFanMatt

[+fdr4prez]

2 hours ago, Blarneo said:

It was the first system that pauses games. It's nothing today, but was a big deal back then.

Not quite true. 

 

The Channel F is the first system with a pause button, but it was on the console itself.  The controller cables were not terribly long, so it was in easy reach. 

 

Intellivision is the first system to have a pause via the controller. 

[jaybird3rd]

23 minutes ago, Shawn said:

The controller sucks and the games where below par compared to their equals on the 2600 and Colecovision available at the same time.

Is it really necessary for you to keep chiming in on Intellivision discussions to say that the controllers suck, the games suck, nobody remembers it, nobody will buy it, etc.?  You've done it here and in Tommy Tallarico's Q&A thread, and I don't see what it accomplishes except to deliberately stir up drama, which is the last thing we need.

[IntyFanMatt]

8 minutes ago, jaybird3rd said:

Is it really necessary for you to keep chiming in on Intellivision discussions to say that the controllers suck, the games suck, nobody remembers it, nobody will buy it, etc.?  You've done it here and in Tommy Tallarico's Q&A thread, and I don't see what it accomplishes except to deliberately stir up drama, which is the last thing we need.

Agreed jaybird, the guy has an obvious problem and gets off on posting troll comments. He has no clue how to share opinions in a constructive way.  Just click “report” in the top right to report his posts and let the mods handle it.

Edit: I see you are a mod. Lol.

Edited September 6, 2019 by IntyFanMatt

[jaybird3rd]

2 minutes ago, IntyFanMatt said:

Just click “report” in the top right to report his posts and let the mods handle it. 

That's why I'm here.

[IntyFanMatt]

Just now, jaybird3rd said:

That's why I'm here.

Yeah I just edited my comment and noticed you were a mod lol. Maybe his posts should just be deleted. He doesn’t serve any purpose here. 

[jaybird3rd]

I don't like kicking people out of threads or deleting posts unless I have no other choice, but I'll do it if I have to.

[IntyFanMatt]

1 minute ago, jaybird3rd said:

I don't like kicking people out of threads or deleting posts unless I have no other choice, but I'll do it if I have to.

Understood. Thanks for being here. Have a good night!

[SegaSnatcher]

2 hours ago, Shawn said:

The controller sucks and the games where below par compared to their equals on the 2600 and Colecovision available at the same time.

Colecovision definitely is a console I can still get into.  I play it on the regular on my Mega SG.  Lots of fun games and a really active homebrew scene.  I can 100% be wrong on this, but it doesn't seem like there is a big homebrew scene for INTV.  Maybe this is one of the big reasons Colecovision has a bigger community in general.  Doing some research the INTV might have actually outsold the Colecovision, unless the numbers I found count those plug n play INTV systems. 

Edited September 6, 2019 by SegaSnatcher

[mr_me]

30 minutes ago, SegaSnatcher said:

Colecovision definitely is a console I can still get into.  I play it on the regular on my Mega SG.  Lots of fun games and a really active homebrew scene.  I can 100% be wrong on this, but it doesn't seem like there is a big homebrew scene for INTV.  Maybe this is one of the big reasons Colecovision has a bigger community in general.  Doing some research the INTV might have actually outsold the Colecovision, unless the numbers I found count those plug n play INTV systems. 

A lot of the colecovision homebrew cartridges are ported code of msx and sg-1000 games and not exactly homebrew.  According to Collectorvision the intellivision collector market is bigger than colecovision; and you can compare forum activity on atariage.  Intellivision outsold colecovision about 3:2 in the 1980s (not including plugnplays). 

 

Edit:

I wouldn't say they directly competed with eachother much, colecovision was new in 1982 and Intellivision was old by 1983.

 

There's definitely something wrong with the noise generator in that fpga intellivision.

Edited September 6, 2019 by mr_me

[SegaSnatcher]

Oh I forgot to add,  there is a new INTV core for MiSTer FPGA platform.  Its still early in development, but it already plays a good handful of games already.  

Here it is in action.   
 

Also, Kevtris has a completed INTV core at the ready as well, with Intellivoice to boot.  Hopefully he'll release that on NT Mini or some future Analogue device. 

Edited September 6, 2019 by SegaSnatcher

[Flojomojo]

The crash was an awesome time to be a young teenager. I got a lot of my Atari and Intellivision games from Kay-Bee as well. In retrospect it was a junky toy store, doomed to fail, but we loved it anyway. 

[BydoEmpire]

My family's first console was an Intellivision around '81.  It was *great*!  The controllers were not an issue at all. They just were what they were and we played the games and loved them.  My dad would even play basketball, baseball, horse racing and poker & blackjack with us.  I don't think he played a video game since.  My sister played it a bit as well, but not as much as my brother and I.   Every Christmas and birthday gift list for the next few years included Intellivision games. Our neighbors had a 2600 and I liked that, too, but back then we looked at it as "cool, more, different video games" not "mine's better than yours" or vice versa.

 

The games were *incredible*.  There was something for everyone, and a lot of ground-breaking stuff.   Some of my favorites back then were

AD&D: Cloudy Mountain (still in my top 5 games of all time)

Astrosmash (I was amazed my brother could play late into the night, pause with the 1/9 trick, and restart in the morning).

Auto Racing (exploring off-road was so fun)

Utopia (oh noooo, a hurricaaanneee!)

Dracula (fun single- or two-player)

AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin (way ahead of its time)

Demon Attack (I liked Space Armada, but Demon Attack took it to another level)

Night Stalker (gets pretty tense later one, although eventually I'd revert to the hide&shoot strategy with every gun)

Burger Time (great arcade port)

Frogger (great arcade port)

 

 

[Blarneo]

12 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

Not quite true. 

 

The Channel F is the first system with a pause button, but it was on the console itself.  The controller cables were not terribly long, so it was in easy reach. 

 

Intellivision is the first system to have a pause via the controller. 

Seriously though. Few of us ever heard of the Channel F or the Arcadia 2001, RCA whatchacallit and other also-rans in the early 80s. We had 3 dominant companies and Magnavox. I never saw a Commavid or Apollo game at any store. Only in magazines.

[+fdr4prez]

57 minutes ago, Blarneo said:

Seriously though. Few of us ever heard of the Channel F or the Arcadia 2001, RCA whatchacallit and other also-rans in the early 80s. We had 3 dominant companies and Magnavox. I never saw a Commavid or Apollo game at any store. Only in magazines.

No worries, I am just laying it out there.

 

As a kid in the mid-to-late '70s I found an odd box buried in my parent's closet.  I say to myself "what is this box that says Channel F?"  I can't believe that it was just sitting in there.

 

Once we got our Intellivision, the Channel F was placed back into their closet.  And the fact that one controller didn't work helped seal its fate.  

 

Fast forward to a few years ago, after my father passed away, my older brother was cleaning out father's closet and asked me if I wanted this box labeled "Channel F"

 

I was quite surprised that it had been sitting in there since 1980-ish.  

 

I have since fixed the broken controller and purchased the multi-cart.  Now I need to fix the garbled video output.

[Keatah]

I had a VCS at the same time I had an INTY. The choice between them was simple. VCS=action and INTY=strategy.  At times when we weren't playing either system we had endless discussions of which was the better one.

 

I also believe that the controller design was form over function in that it had to meet a certain profile/thickness.

[Flojomojo]

My first game machine was a secondhand Odyssey 2, which to the parents, had a reputation for being slightly more sophisticated because of the keyboard. (Not!)

 

The Intellivision was the first game system I bought for myself, found on special and carried home on my bike. My mother was pissed that I had a "whole other thing" because she knew I'd be collecting games for it. 

 

I didn't actually have an Atari until a bit later, when I scored a broken one at a yard sale and a smart friend replaced the sound chip. 

 

@Keatahis right about the general genres -- fast action and arcade games were on Atari. But the unique, complex, slower paced stuff was on Intellivision.

 

Some other notables for me:

- Microsurgeon (nothing like it)

- Dreadnaught Factor (little you against the giant Star Destroyer thing)

- Star Strike (in retrospect, it was shite, but it had a nice vanishing point effect)

- Space Hawk (not good, but you could play for a long time, which was fun for me at a certain stage of life)

- Beauty & The Beast (Donkey Kong like)

- Venture (imperfect port, but like Burgertime, I like it better than the original)

- Sub Hunt (don't know why I dug this one so much, but I think it's more fun than Space Spartans or Space Battle)

- Both D&D games (just cos they rock)

- Tower of Doom (much later)

 

 

[+Lathe26]

21 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

...

However, I have never played the system, so I wanted to ask you guys... how was having an Intellivision like? Were the games as fun as they look? What were your favorite games? Was the controller as bad as they say? I remember reading that you can not press a directional button AND another button simultaneously... is that true?

 

My Intellivision experience as a kid was slightly different than most folks here.  We didn't have an Intellivision in our house (only pre-2600 systems like pong and Stunt Cycle) nor did any friends have one.  However, my grandfather who lived ~1 hour away bought one to play with his neighbors (growing up, I thought he bought it for entertaining the grandkids).  So I got to play it  every few months with my brother who was a year younger.

 

To answer your questions:

 

Yes, it was fun.  We'd play it for hours.  Sometimes I would get a blister on top of thumb knuckle from pressing the side buttons too hard for too long (I was overdoing it).  Different games were different levels of fun.  Here's my assessments.  Astrosmash was great.  Space Armada was good for short sessions.  Space Hawk... I wanted to love it and put time into it but it's only ok.  Baseball, Football, and Hockey were great as long as the person you were playing against was fun (like most 2 player games).

 

The original controllers were fine.  Part of the bad rap they get is from the Intellivision II controllers.  Compared to the original controllers, the Intellivision II controllers have sharper edges (hand can get sore after a while), stiffer side buttons (fingertips get sore), and the numeric keypad is flat instead of having raised bubbles you can easily feel.  Also, it didn't help that the original Intellivision's controllers were hardwired into the console so they were difficult to change to a new 3rd party model for folks that wanted to upgrade.  The Sears Intellivision and Intellivision II were easily replacable, but by that point only 1 company bothered making a replacement controller... which was worse than the Intellivision II controllers.  Consoles back then were still a mix of hardwired or replacable controllers.  For comparison, the ColecoVision's original controllers get a bad rap too, but since they were easily replacable with better ones, folks  understandably complain less about them.

[Intymike]

16 hours ago, Shawn said:

The controller sucks and the games where below par compared to their equals on the 2600 and Colecovision available at the same time.

hush hush, back under the bridge little troll! It's bed time for you!

[Keatah]

17 hours ago, Shawn said:

The controller sucks and the games where below par compared to their equals on the 2600 and Colecovision available at the same time.

Stop being an ignorant imbecile. You know nothing of Intellivision.