DCEmu Asks - Intelliv ...

DCEmu Asks - Intellivision a History & Whats the greatest Intellivision Game Ever ?

May 26th, 2008, 04:13 Posted By: wraggster

Continuing our network wide feature for just about every console thats emulated and that we own, in time it can be used as a reference point for people to look at what games are the very best on each system

Firstly heres a look at each system and a description to remind you of the history of the console.

Intellivision

Intellivision
Intellivision was released in 1979 by Mattel. It was also released under different names to expand its market. The Intellivision was released in Sears stores as the Super Video Arcade, at Radio Shack as the Tandyvision I, and as the GTE/Sylvania Intellivision.

Intellivision was the main competitor of the Atari 2600. It's graphical capabilities were much better than Atari's console.It was the system to own for playing sports games, but also had a fair amount of action games and strategy games thrown into the mix as well. While Intellivision excelled at graphics and sound, the Atari 2600 was more capable of handling action games due to its superior speed.

So why didn't the Intellivision surpass the Atari 2600 in popularity? For one thing, the Intellivision had little 3rd party software developer support until late in it's life (nowhere near the amount the Atari 2600 had). Also many people did not like the disc controllers, which may have been great for sports games, but made other games difficult to play. Atari also had nailed down almost every popular arcade / movie license they could get their hands on. This left Mattel scrambling for less popular arcade games from Data East and other developers. So what better way to expand your game library then to add your competitor's consoles games! Mattel released a Atari 2600 adapter which gave the Intellivision an even greater library of games.

In 1982, the console would be remodeled (Intellivision II) with a lockout feature that prevented Atari 2600 (and unfortunately some of their own games) from being played. It did however improve the controllers, and added a device that added voice to some games. Also in July of this same year, Mattel approached Bandai to distribute Intellivision in Japan. The Bandai Intellivision retailed for 49,800 yen.

In 1984, the rights to the Intellivision were sold for 16.5 million dollars. The new company called INTV Inc began rumors of the release of the INTV III, or Super Pro System. This redesigned unit was identical to the original console, except that it had a black plastic case with silver plates, and also had a Power LED indicator between the Power and Reset switches. The console was released in 1985, and appeared in Toys R Us, Kiddie City, and mail order catalogs. The console continued to sell into the 1990's with 35 new game titles released. INTV Inc continued to sell out it's stock in 1991, and it eventually became a piece of gaming history.

All in all The Intellivision was an impressive machine that sparked the first real console rivalry in console history. For example, Mattel used television advertisements demonstrating Intellivision graphics outperforming Atari 2600. These rivalries would be duplicated by other companies in later years. Intellivision is also the only 2nd Generation console to have survived the "Videogame Crash of 1984."

FACT: No the stats are not typos...The GI 1600 processor had 16 bit registers, used 16 bit RAM, and has 10 bit instructions. So in an odd way you could call Intellivision a 16 bit system.

In 1987, a new Intellivision model called INTV System IV began to surface. This model would have detachable controllers, and some sort of timing device. It never saw the light of day.

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