Who Created INTV's Controller & Control Disc? Any resources on it?

[4cade]

I think today's retrogamers largely are unaware or disinterested in how big a thing it was when Intellivision introduced it's controller. Are there any resources about it's creation and creator? Does anyone know why the controller for the Bandai Super Vision 8000 which came out the same year) has identical controllers? Bandai later was the JP distributor for the INTV - did they copy INTV's controller? Or vice versa? 

[mr_me]

https://papaintellivision.com/usp4246452.php

Here's a patent related to the controller.  Inventor listed as Dave Chandler with a filing date of Jan 5 1979.  Work began in 1977 and something was shown privately to the industry in January 1978.

Edited May 26, 2023 by mr_me

[4cade]

16 minutes ago, mr_me said:

https://papaintellivision.com/usp4246452.php

Here's a patent related to the controller.  Inventor listed as Dave Chandler with a filing date of Jan 5 1979.  Work began in 1977 and something was shown privately to the industry in January 1978.

Oh man that is awesome! Thank you so much! Man, not sure I've ever heard of him. It'd be a real shame if he's no longer around and was never interviewed. 

[mr_me]

https://papaintellivision.com/obituary.php

[4cade]

thank you, Mr. Me. man that is too bad. OMG - that's HIS website? Is someone maintaining that, or saved on the way back machine? Man, I'd hate to see that go away, there's some interesting stuff there. so disappointing how many information black holes there are in 2nd gen console history. We know so much about Yokoi the designer of the NES controller we probably know what kind of toilet paper he used, while people like Dave Chandler fade to obscurity.

[First Spear]

On 5/25/2023 at 9:04 PM, 4cade said:

Oh man that is awesome! Thank you so much! Man, not sure I've ever heard of him. It'd be a real shame if he's no longer around and was never interviewed. 

His son-in law maintains the actual website on behalf of his estate. There is an version of the PDF scans that were OCR'd by the Archival Catalog Division of Intv Prime, and linked-to on their FAQ page (https://www.intvprime.com/intellivision-faq/). I understand that the exec board at Intv Prime also asked Internet Archive to capture all of their links for posterity. Check it out!

 

 

 

 

[Walter Ives]

On 5/25/2023 at 4:00 PM, 4cade said:

Who Created INTV's Controller & Control Disc? Any resources on it?

The idea that a Mattel video game would come with a controller that had both a telephone keypad and a 16-direction disc that used a Gray code traces back to 1976, long before Chandler was hired. It was Chang who assigned Chandler the task to make that happen. The hand controller housing, including the plastic/spring design of the wheel part of that controller, were designed by the same in-house industrial designers who designed the master component housing. Cliff Perry identified a Massachusetts company named Chomerics that produced mylar switch panels, and Chandler and Perry worked with one of its field applications engineers to come up with a manufacturable design that could be folded to fit into the hand controller housing. When this effort got to the point of coming up with the conductor pattern, Chandler started playing around with it. In the process, he had a flash of insight as to how to lay out a pattern that could encode the keypad, wheel and action keys into eight bits without resorting to key scanning—this is why his name is the sole one on the patent. It's a very clever design, fully laid out in the patent application referenced above. It's worth the effort of tracing out the layout yourself.

 

As clever as it is, the design has drawbacks. For one, as all Intellivision fans know, you can't use the keypad and the wheel at the same time. Not being at all a game person, Chandler envisioned the controller as being used in keypad mode for intellectual cartridges and in wheel plus action key mode for action cartridges and so didn't recognize this as a problem. More insidious, however, is the fact that valid codes require multiple contacts to be made, which is a problem because they are not made simultaneously in comparison to the speed of the electronics that reads them. This leads to problems like the Black Holes of Space Hawk. The fix is one reason EXEC games have a reputation for being sluggish.

 

The fundamental design of the hand controllers was settled on in 1977, well before GI delivered STIC emulators to Mattel. When the early programmers discovered the drawbacks in 1978 they screamed bloody murder. Didn't do any good. While Chang, a mechanical engineer by training, appreciated the problem and argued for a re-design, which would have required changes to the tooling. Rochlis, who had promised product in time for Christmas of 1978, and Krakauer, riding herd on the budget, vetoed the change. As it turned out, there was plenty of time in the schedule: it took Chomerics the rest of 1978 to get the kinks out of the mylar design and GI all of 1979 to learn how to make reliable chip sets.

 

WJI

[4cade]

11 hours ago, Walter Ives said:

The idea that a Mattel video game would come with a controller that had both a telephone keypad and a 16-direction disc that used a Gray code traces back to 1976, long before Chandler was hired. It was Chang who assigned Chandler the task to

Wow, Walter - thank you for that awesome info! Some follow-ups - who is Chang? Also, you say the controller design was settled in 1977; so are we to assume that there could be no influence from the Interton VC-4000 (which also had a vertically oriented controller with a keypad)? I had thought that might be the case, but apparently not from your timeline. Can you explain to me what the design flaw actually is that precludes using the control disc and keypad buttons simultaneously? 

[+DZ-Jay]

12 minutes ago, 4cade said:

Can you explain to me what the design flaw actually is that precludes using the control disc and keypad buttons simultaneously? 

The disc and action buttons use distinct signals from the 8 available.  The keypad overlaps some of its signals with the action buttons, and others with the disc; which means that if either are pressed simultaneously with the keypad, you are not able to tell them apart unambiguously.

 

It is a "flaw" from a programmer's perspective because it precludes the use of all input combinations during game-play.  However, it was by design.  Like Mr. Ives stated, Chandler was not a gamer, so he didn't think this limitation was significant, and he felt that it should be sufficient to support either run-and-shoot controllers, or data entry, even if not at the same time.

 

    dZ.
 

[majors]

On 5/25/2023 at 7:00 PM, 4cade said:

Does anyone know why the controller for the Bandai Super Vision 8000 which came out the same year) has identical controllers? 

 

   I wouldn't say the Supervision pad is identical, just similar. It's thicker, only one "action" button and 8-way disc. There is what seems to be space for an overlay, but I've never heard or seen such. I think the whole 9-key was a fad that a few consoles companys pulled(legacy?) from the earlier pong-type console, which used a 9-key to pick game modes (like the TV-Jack 5000, also Bandai). I'm sure there is a write up somewhere of the history of number pads on controllers used on gaming systems.

[mr_me]

I'd look at the internals of the Super Vision 8000 to see if it uses a similar folded mylar circuit switch design.

 

The numeric keypad was for educational cartridges, gambling cartridges, and anything else that would use numeric input.  At the time, the Intellivision would have typically been the only computer in the home.  Once home computers became more common there was less need for numeric keypads on game systems.

Edited May 30, 2023 by mr_me

[4cade]

3 hours ago, mr_me said:

I'd look at the internals of the Super Vision 8000 to see if it uses a similar folded mylar circuit switch design.

Yeah, I've tried. It's really rare, couldn't find any "repair" videos on YT, or any websites/pics elsewhere. Really bugs me when there's an unanswered question just barely out of grasp. Elsewhere on the site I saw a repair thread for the Arcadia; that mylar looks similar. Unfortunately I can't see a good picture of the balljoint pivot for the disc; I'm gonna post there and ask. 

[4cade]

4 hours ago, majors said:

 

   I wouldn't say the Supervision pad is identical, just similar. It's thicker, only one "action" button and 8-way disc. There is what seems to be space for an overlay, but I've never heard or seen such. I think the whole 9-key was a fad that a few consoles companys pulled(legacy?) from the earlier pong-type console, which used a 9-key to pick game modes (like the TV-Jack 5000, also Bandai). I'm sure there is a write up somewhere of the history of number pads on controllers used on gaming systems.

Ah, thx - I didn't know about the thickness/buttons. Certainly looks uncannily similar for a coincidence. According to others that have posted in this thread, Bandai prob couldn't have had any impact on INTV's keypad, because it was an early part of the controller design and was pretty much finalized in 1977 (for an originally intended 1978 release); I'm not aware of any keypads before that; Interton would've been about that time, i think that was 77 or 78

[mr_me]

1 hour ago, 4cade said:

Yeah, I've tried. It's really rare, couldn't find any "repair" videos on YT, or any websites/pics elsewhere. Really bugs me when there's an unanswered question just barely out of grasp. Elsewhere on the site I saw a repair thread for the Arcadia; that mylar looks similar. Unfortunately I can't see a good picture of the balljoint pivot for the disc; I'm gonna post there and ask. 

The Arcadia 2001 came out several years after.  The controller hardware is very similar to Intellivision including the disc, except the signalling is different.  It has ten wires to handle eight directions and twelve buttons total.

Edited May 30, 2023 by mr_me

[majors]

On 5/30/2023 at 9:01 AM, mr_me said:

I'd look at the internals of the Super Vision 8000 to see if it uses a similar folded mylar circuit switch design.

 

   Here are some pics with a Sears INTV controller for comparison. No mylar, just bread'n butter betty basic PCB, seemingly completely directly wired. 

[First Spear]

On 5/29/2023 at 7:16 PM, 4cade said:

Wow, Walter - thank you for that awesome info! Some follow-ups - who is Chang? Also, you say the controller design was settled in 1977; so are we to assume that there could be no influence from the Interton VC-4000 (which also had a vertically oriented controller with a keypad)? I had thought that might be the case, but apparently not from your timeline. Can you explain to me what the design flaw actually is that precludes using the control disc and keypad buttons simultaneously? 

https://www.intvprime.com/intellivision-faq/intellivision-faq-section-4-0-people/#4.1: Who is Richard Chang

 

4.1: Who is Richard Chang?

Richard Chang was the head of Mattel Toys Design and Development Department. He was intrigued by the possibility of having Mattel produce video games in 1975. He hired Glenn Hightower to define the system that would later become the Mattel Intellivision.

• Source Links:

   

• forums.atariage.com/topic/316565-intellivision-history/#comment-5207816

 

 

[mr_me]

8 hours ago, First Spear said:

https://www.intvprime.com/intellivision-faq/intellivision-faq-section-4-0-people/#4.1: Who is Richard Chang

 

4.1: Who is Richard Chang?

Richard Chang was the head of Mattel Toys Design and Development Department. He was intrigued by the possibility of having Mattel produce video games in 1975. He hired Glenn Hightower to define the system that would later become the Mattel Intellivision.

• Source Links:

   

• forums.atariage.com/topic/316565-intellivision-history/#comment-5207816

 

 

That source doesn't say Chang (Mattel) hired Hightower (APh) to define the system.  It says APh was asked to give a demonstration, doesn't say who asked.  It says in December 1975 APh prepared a proof of concept demo with tile based graphics and a couple of sprites.  It says Maine and Harrower (General Instrument) developed the Intellivision graphics system independent of APh.  It only claims that the APh demo influenced Mattel's decision to go with GI.  However, Mattel did initially select a chip set from National Semiconductor.  Later, Mattel did hire APh to program the Intellivision software.

[mr_me]

23 hours ago, majors said:

 

   Here are some pics with a Sears INTV controller for comparison. No mylar, just bread'n butter betty basic PCB, seemingly completely directly wired. 

Thanks for doing that.  While it looks like an Intellivision disc from the outside, the inside is more like a Nintendo dpad.  And it predates Nintendo's 1982 Donkey Kong handheld be several years.

Edited June 7, 2023 by mr_me

[4cade]

On 6/6/2023 at 6:56 AM, majors said:

 

   Here are some pics with a Sears INTV controller for comparison. No mylar, just bread'n butter betty basic PCB, seemingly completely directly wired. 

 

Whoa, Majors - I've never seen that before!! I must know more - that looks like a traditional d-pad like Nintendo would do. So was the Sears a standard 8-way d-pad? Do you know what year the Sears first came out? Man I cannot believe this, this is huge.

[4cade]

On 6/7/2023 at 6:23 AM, mr_me said:

Thanks for doing that.  While it looks like an Intellivision disc from the outside, the inside is more like a Nintendo dpad.  And it predates Nintendo's 1982 Donkey Kong handheld be several years.

Exactly, Mr Me - I've been researching d-pad history for my YouTube channel - personally, I think it's ridiculous to exclude INTV from the history of d-pads; yeah, it didn't do it like Nintendo, but it's still a pad shape used for directional control. Of course, I've been ridiculed for it by the Nintendo stands who refuse to acknowledge that Gunpei didn't invent everything. Well this changes everything. Well, not completely - I found another d-pad that predates the Game + Watch on a Tomy handheld. But this is fascinating to learn. Do you know what year the Sears first came out?

[+fdr4prez]

1 hour ago, 4cade said:

Whoa, Majors - I've never seen that before!! I must know more - that looks like a traditional d-pad like Nintendo would do. So was the Sears a standard 8-way d-pad? Do you know what year the Sears first came out? Man I cannot believe this, this is huge.

No, please read all the posts carefully in the correct order.

 

those internal controller pictures are of the Super Vision 8000 controller.

 

The sears controller is the one on the left (the thinner one)

[4cade]

50 minutes ago, fdr4prez said:

No, please read all the posts carefully in the correct order.

 

those internal controller pictures are of the Super Vision 8000 controller.

 

The sears controller is the one on the left (the thinner one)

Thank you for the correction; so those internals were the Bandai? Gosh, you're right I did totally misread that - thank you for the correction! Very interesting to see that Bandai used the same ball joint pivot that INT used (and Nintendo would later use). Man this thread has been a wealth of info, thx again FDR!

[4cade]

On 6/6/2023 at 6:56 AM, majors said:

 

   Here are some pics with a Sears INTV controller for comparison. No mylar, just bread'n butter betty basic PCB, seemingly completely directly wired. 

Hey, Majors - I've you're reading the new posts, you've seen that I misread your post - wow that was the Bandai controller? Did you just open your up to take those pics for me? That is so cool, even though I misread it and thought it was the Sears controller, that is a huge bit of info for me, I'd given up on seeing the internals of the Bandai - thank you so much!

[mr_me]

13 hours ago, 4cade said:

Exactly, Mr Me - I've been researching d-pad history for my YouTube channel - personally, I think it's ridiculous to exclude INTV from the history of d-pads; yeah, it didn't do it like Nintendo, but it's still a pad shape used for directional control. Of course, I've been ridiculed for it by the Nintendo stands who refuse to acknowledge that Gunpei didn't invent everything. Well this changes everything. Well, not completely - I found another d-pad that predates the Game + Watch on a Tomy handheld. But this is fascinating to learn. Do you know what year the Sears first came out?

What Tomy handheld is that?

[4cade]

11 hours ago, mr_me said:

What Tomy handheld is that?

Tron VFD! And it even has tactile orientation, before the 'cross' d-pad