The Intellivision is a video game console released by Mattel in 1979. Development of the console began in 1978, less than a year after the introduction of its main competitor, the Atari
2600. The word intellivision is a portmanteau of "intelligent television".
Popularity
The Intellivision was developed by Mattel Electronics, a subsidiary of Mattel formed expressly for the development of
electronic games. The console was test marketed in Fresno, California, in 1979 with a total of four games available, and
went nationwide in 1980 with a price tag of US$299 and a pack-in game: Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack.
Though not the first system to challenge Atari (systems from Fairchild Semiconductor, Bally, and
Magnavox were already on the market), it was the first to pose a serious threat to Atari's
dominance. A series of ads featuring George Plimpton were produced which mercilessly
attacked the Atari 2600's lesser capabilities with side-by-side game comparisons.
One of the slogans of the television advertisements stated that Intellivision was "the closest thing to the real thing"; one
example in an advertisement compared golf games - the others had a blip sound and cruder graphics, while Intellivision featured a
realistic swing sound and striking of the ball, and graphics that suggested a more 3D look, although undoubtedly crude when
compared with modern game consoles. There was also an advertisement comparing the Atari 2600
to it, featuring the slogan "I didn't know".
Like Atari, Mattel marketed their console to a number of retailers as a re badged unit. These
models include the Radio Shack Tandyvision, the
GTE-Sylvania Intellivision, and the Sears Super Video Arcade. (The Sears model was a
particular coup for Mattel, as Sears was already selling a rebadged Atari 2600 unit, and in
doing so made a huge contribution to Atari's success.)
In that first year Mattel sold 175,000 Intellivision consoles, and the library grew to 19 games. At this point in time, all
Intellivision games were developed by an outside firm, APh. The company
recognized that what had been seen as a secondary product line might be a big business. Realizing that potential profits are much
greater with first party software, Mattel formed its own in-house software development group.
The original five members of that Intellivision team were manager Gabriel Baum,
Don Daglow, Rick Levine, Mike
Minkoff and John Sohl. Levine and Minkoff (a long-time Mattel Toys veteran) both came over
from the hand-held Mattel games engineering team. To keep these programmers from being hired away by rival Atari, their identity
and work location was kept a closely guarded secret. In public, the programmers were referred to collectively as the
Blue Sky Rangers.
By 1982 sales were soaring. Over two million Intellivision consoles had been sold by the end of
the year, earning Mattel a $100,000,000 profit. This was a big year for Mattel. Third party Atari developers Activision, and Imagic began releasing games for the Intellivision, as did
hardware rivals Atari and ColecoVision. Mattel created M
Network branded games for Atari and Coleco's systems. The most popular titles sold over a million units each. The
Intellivision was also introduced in Japan that year by Bandai.
The original 5-person Mattel game development team had grown to 110 people under now-Vice President Baum, while Daglow led
Intellivision development and top engineer Minkoff directed all work on all other platforms.
Keyboard Component
Almost from day one, the Intellivision's packaging and promotional materials promised that with the addition of a
soon-to-be-available accessory called the "Keyboard Component", the Intellivision -- unlike its primary rival, the Atari 2600
(then known as the Atari VCS) -- could become not just a video-game console, but a fully-functional home computer. Many potential
buyers were excited by the notion -- especially parents, who liked the idea of a machine that could be turned into an educational
tool rather than just play games.
The Keyboard Component, as originally conceived, would have made the Intellivision a pretty decent and reasonably-priced home
computer, at least by 1980 standards. The unit would bring the system's available RAM up to a full 64K (which was quite a lot,
considering that most home computers of the day only shipped with 4K or 16K), and would have provided both a built-in cassette
drive for data storage and a connection for an optional 40-column thermal printer. The cassette drive would be able to provide
both data storage and an audio track simultaneously, allowing for interactive audio recording and playback under computer
control, and a secondary 6502 microprocessor inside the Keyboard Component would be programmed to handle all of these extra
capabilities independantly of the Intellivision's CP1610 CPU. The unit would even provide an extra cartridge slot, allowing the
original Intellivision (a.k.a. the "Master Component") to remain permanently docked with the Keyboard Component while still being
able to play standard game cartridges.
Unfortunately, while the Keyboard Component was an impressively ambitious piece of engineering for its time, it had some
reliability problems and was far too expensive to produce and sell economically. Originally slated to be available in
1981, the Keyboard Component was repeatedly delayed as the engineers tried to find ways to overcome the reliability issues --
and, more importantly, bring the manufacturing costs down.
The Keyboard Component's repeated delays became so notorious around Mattel headquarters that comedian Jay Leno, when performing at Mattel's 1981 Christmas party, got his biggest laugh of the evening with the line:
"You know what the three big lies are, don't you? 'The check is in the mail,' 'I'll still respect you in the morning,' and 'The
Keyboard will be out in the spring.'"[1]
Complaints from consumers who had chosen to buy the Intellivision specifically on the promise of a "Coming Soon!"
personal-computer upgrade that looked as if it would never materialize eventually caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who started investigating Mattel Electronics for fraud and
false advertising. Mattel tried to claim that the Keyboard Component was a real product that was still being test-marketed, and
even released a small number of Keyboard Components to a handful of retail stores (as well as via mail-order to any customers who
complained loudly enough) along with a handful of software titles in order to support this claim. The FTC was not impressed, and
eventually ordered Mattel Electronics to pay a $10,000/day fine until the promised computer upgrade was in full retail
distribution. Mattel Electronics was forced to go to "plan B", and in the fall of 1982 the Keyboard Component was officially
cancelled and the Entertainment Computer System (ECS) module offered up in its place.
While approximately four thousand Keyboard Components were manufactured before the system was cancelled and recalled, it is
not clear how many of them actually found their way into the hands of Intellivision customers. Today, very few of them are known
to still exist; when the Keyboard Component was officially cancelled, part of Mattel's settlement with the FTC involved offering
to buy back all of the existing Keyboard Components from dissatisfied customers. Any customer who opted to keep theirs was
required to sign a waiver indicating their understanding that no more software would be written for the system and which absolved
Intellivision of any future responsibility for technical support.[2] Several of the units were later diverted to in-house use when it was discovered that, with a few
minor modifications, a Keyboard Component could be used as an Intellivision software-development system in place of the original
hand-built development boards.
The Keyboard Component debacle was ranked as #11 on GameSpy's 25 Dumbest Moments in
Gaming.[3]
Entertainment Computer System (ECS)
Concerned that the Keyboard Component division would never be able to produce a sellable product, in mid-1981 Mattel
Electronics set up a competing internal engineering team whose mission, ostensibly, was to produce a low-cost add-on called the
BASIC Development System, or BDS, to be sold as an inexpensive educational device to introduce kids to the concepts of computer
programming. Only a few peple within Mattel knew the team's real mission: to either fix the Keyboard Component, or replace
it.
The rival engineering group (who had to keep the project's real purpose a closely-guarded secret among themselves, fearing
that if David "Papa Intellivision" Chandler, the head of the Keyboard Component team, found out about it he would use his
influence at Mattel, Inc. to get the project killed) eventually came up with a much less expensive alternative. Originally dubbed
the Lucky (from LUCKI: Low User-Cost Keyboard Interface), it lacked many of the sophisticated features envisioned for the
original Keyboard Component. Gone, for example, was the full 64K of RAM and the secondary 6502 CPU; instead, the ECS offered a
mere 2K RAM expansion (not all of which was actually available to the user), a built-in BASIC that was somewhat functional, if
idiosyncratic and occasionally buggy, plus a much-simplified cassette and thermal-printer interface.
Still, it fulfilled the original promises -- turn the Intellivision into a computer, make it possible to write programs and
store them to tape, and interface with a printer -- well enough to allow Mattel to claim that they had delivered the promised
computer upgrade and get the FTC off Mattel's back. It even offered, via an additional AY-3-8910 sound chip inside the ECS module
and an optional 49-key Music Synthesizer keyboard, the possibility of turning the Intellivision into a multi-voice synthesizer
which could be used to play or learn music.
In the fall of 1982, the LUCKI -- now renamed the Entertainment Computer
System, or ECS -- was presented at the annual sales meeting, officially ending the ill-fated Keyboard Component project. A
new advertising campaign was hastily rushed onto the air in time for the 1982 Christmas season, promising once again that a
home-computer upgrade was just around the corner, and the ECS itself was shown to the public at the January 1983 Consumer
Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. A few months later, the ECS hit the market, and the FTC agreed to drop the $10K/day
fines.
Unfortunately, by the time the ECS made its retail debut, an internal shake-up at the top levels of Mattel Electronics'
management had caused the company's focus to shift away from hardware add-ons in favor of software, and the ECS received very
little further marketing push. Further hardware developments, including a planned Program Expander that would have added
another 16K of RAM and a more sophisticated, fully-featured Extended-BASIC to the system, were halted, and in the end less than a
dozen software titles were released for the ECS.
Intellivoice
In 1982 Mattel introduced a new peripheral for the
Intellivision: The Intellivoice, a voice
synthesis device which produced speech when used with certain games. The Intellivoice was innovative in two respects: not
only was this capability unique to the Intellivision system at the time (although Magnavox soon rolled out a similar device for
the Odyssey2), but the speech-supporting games written for Intellivoice actually made
the speech an integral part of the gameplay.
Unfortunately, the amount of speech that could be compressed into a 4K or 8K ROM cartridge was limited, and the system did not
sell as well as Mattel had hoped; while the initial orders were as high as 300,000 units for the Intellivoice module and its
initial game-cartridge offerings, interest in future titles dropped rapidly until the fourth and last Intellivoice title,
Tron: Solar Sailer, sold a mere 90,000 units. A fifth game, a children's title
called Magic Carousel, was shelved, and in August 1983 the Intellivoice system was quietly phased out.
The four titles available for the Intellivoice system, in order of their release, were:
A fifth title, Intellivision World Series Major League
Baseball, developed as part of the Entertainment Computer System series, also supports the Intellivoice if both the
ECS and Intellivoice are connected simultaneously. Unlike the Intellivoice-specific games, however, World Series Major League
Baseball is also playable without the Intellivoice module (but not without the ECS.)
An International Intellivoice unit, with support for Italian, French, and Spanish versions of the Intellivoice games, was also
planned and developed, and at least two prototypes are known to have been built. Appropriately-translated versions of
Space Spartans were actually developed and produced, but neither they nor the
International Intellivoice unit were ever released.
Intellivision II
In addition to the ECS module, 1983 also saw the introduction of a redesigned model, called the Intellivision II (featuring
detachable controllers and sleeker case), the System Changer (which played Atari 2600 games on the Intellivision II), and a music keyboard add-on for the ECS.
Like the ECS, Intellivision II was designed first and foremost to be inexpensive to manufacture. Among other things, the
raised bubble keypad of the original hand controller was replaced by a flat membrane
keyboard surface. Many Intellivision games had been designed for users to play by feeling the buttons without looking
down, and many games were far less playable on Intellivision II.
Mattel also changed the Intellivision II's internal ROM program (called the EXEC) in an attempt to lock out unlicensed 3rd
party titles. To make room for the lock-out code while retaining compatibility with existing titles, some portions of the EXEC
code were moved in a way that changed their timing. While most games were unaffected, a couple of the more popular titles,
Shark! Shark!, and Space Spartans, had certain sound effects that the
Intellivision II reproduced differently than intended, although the games remained playable. Electric Company Word Fun did
not run at all and INTV's later release Super Pro Football has minor display glitches at the start, both due to the
modified EXEC.[4] Mattel's attempt to lock out competitors'
software titles was only temporarily successful, as the 3rd-party game manufacturers quickly figured out how to get around
it.
Competition and market crash
- See also: Video game crash of 1983
Amid the flurry of new hardware, there was trouble for the Intellivision. New game systems (ColecoVision, Emerson Arcadia 2001, Atari 5200, and Vectrex, all in 1982) were
further subdividing the market, and the video game crash began
to put pressure on the entire industry. The Intellivision team rushed to finish a major new round of games, including
Burger Time and the ultra-secret 3D glasses game
Hover Force. Although Burger Time was a popular game on the Intellivision and was programmed by
Blue Sky Ranger Ray Kaestner in record time, the five-month manufacturing cycle meant that the
game did not appear until the late spring of 1983, after the video game crash had severely damaged game sales.
In the spring of 1983, Mattel went from aggressively hiring game programmers to laying them
off within a two-week period. By August there were massive layoffs, and the price of the Intellivision II (which launched
at $150 earlier that year) was lowered to $69. Mattel Electronics posted a $300 million loss. Early in 1984, the division was
closed - the first high-profile victim of the crash.
Intellivision game sales continued when a liquidator purchased all rights to the
Intellivision and its software from Mattel, as well as all remaining inventory. After much of the existing software inventory had
been sold, former Mattel Marketing executive Terry Valeski bought all rights to Intellivision and
started a new venture. The new company, INTV Corp., continued to sell old stock via retail and mail order. When the old stock of
Intellivision II consoles ran out, they introduced a new console dubbed INTV III. This unit was
actually a cosmetic re badge of the original Intellivision console (this unit was later renamed the Super Pro System.) In addition to manufacturing new consoles, INTV Corp. also continued to develop new games,
releasing a few new titles each year. Eventually, the system was discontinued in 1991.
Intellivision games became readily available again when Keith Robinson, an early Intellivision programmer responsible for the
game TRON Solar Sailer purchased the software rights and founded a new company, Intellivision Productions. As a result,
games originally designed for the Intellivision are available on PCs and modern-day consoles including the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Nintendo
GameCube in the Intellivision Lives! package. A newer version of the
Intellivision Lives! game is in development for the Nintendo DS, and a small number
of licensed Intellivision games are available through the GameTap subscription gaming service.
Also, several LCD handheld and direct-to-TV games have been released in recent years.
Reviews and game guides
Ken Uston published Ken Uston's Guide to Buying and Beating the Home Video
Games in 1982 as a guide to potential purchasers of console systems/cartridges, as well as a brief strategy guide to
each cartridge then in existence. He described Intellivision as "the most mechanically reliable of the systems...The controller
(used during "many hours of experimentation") worked with perfect consistency. The unit never had overheating problems, nor were
loose wires or other connections encountered." However, Uston rated the controls and control system as "below average" and the
worst of the consoles he tested (including Atari 2600, Magnavox Odyssey², Astrovision and Fairchild Channel F).[5]
Statistics
- More than 6 million Intellivision consoles were sold during its 12 year run. [citation needed]
- There were a total of 125 Intellivision games released during the initial run; the Intellivision Lives! project has
suggested new games may be offered in the 21st Century.[6]
Innovations
- Intellivision was the first 16-bit game console, though some people have mistakenly referred
to it as a 10-bit system because the CPU's instruction set and game cartridges
are 10 bits wide. A 10-bit chunk of data is called a "decle". The registers in the
microprocessor, where the mathematical logic is processed, were 16 bits wide.
- The Intellivision was also the first system to feature downloadable games (though without a storage device the games vanished
once the machine was turned off). In 1981, General Instrument (manufacturer of the
Intellivision's CPU) teamed up with Mattel to roll out the PlayCable, a device that allowed
the downloading of Intellivision games via cable TV.
- Intellivision was the first game console to provide real-time human and robot voices in the middle of gameplay, courtesy of
the IntelliVoice module. (Although Magnavox's voice module for the Odyssey² wasn't far
behind.) The voice chip used by both machines, the SP0256 Orator, was developed jointly by Mattel and General
Instrument.[7]
- Intellivision was the first console to feature a controller with a directional pad that allowed 16 directions. The
disc-shaped pad allowed players to control action without lifting the thumb (using motions similar to those used upon the Apple
iPod clickwheel) and was considered by many Intellivision users to be a useful and novel--even revolutionary--innovation.
However, the ergonomics of the "action" buttons on the side of the controller were poor, and the disc-pad was perceived by
potential buyers as unfamiliar. Along with cost, this was one of the factors in making the Intellivision less popular than the
Atari 2600. However, it is interesting to note that the method of controlling movement on the Intellivision (with the thumb) is
emulated in many subsequent video game controllers. The joystick-style controller, as seen on the VCS, has not been widely
emulated on later consoles. A third-party joystick attachment was available by around 1984 (although not at all widespread), that
was installed by opening the controller and fitting the paddle over the disc. A flange around the hollow plastic conical joystick
held it in securely when the controller's upper cover was replaced; and a much easier joystick control was the result. The
Joystick was about three inches in height; it could not be gripped by the entire hand.
- The Intellivision was also the first game console (and the first home computer, as well) to offer a musical synthesizer
keyboard. The Music Synthesizer keyboard was designed as a secondary add-on for the ECS, and was intended to lead to a series of
music-oriented software titles for both educational and entertainment purposes, but only one title -- Melody Blaster --
was ever released.
- A collection of Intellivision games was reproduced onto a PlayStation game, titled
Intellivision Classic Games.
Screenshots
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Q*Bert
Parker Brothers (1983)
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August 2007.
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Technical specifications
- General Instrument CP1610 16-bit microprocessor CPU running at 894.886
kHz (i.e., slightly less than 1 MHz)
- 1352 bytes of RAM:
- 240 × 8-bit Scratchpad Memory
- 352 × 16-bit (704 bytes) System Memory
- 512 × 8-bit Graphics RAM
- 7168 bytes of ROM:
- 4096 × 10-bit (5120 bytes) Executive ROM
- 2048 × 8-bit Graphics ROM
- 160 pixels wide by 196 pixels high (5×2 TV pixels make one Intellivision pixel)
- 16 color palette, all of which can be on the screen at once
- 8 sprites. Hardware supports the following features per-sprite:
- Size selection: 8×8 or 8×16
- Stretching: Horizontal (1×, 2×) and vertical (1×, 2×, 4× or 8×)
- Mirroring: Horizontal and vertical
- Collision detection: Sprite to sprite, sprite to background, and sprite to screen border
- Priority: Selects whether sprite appears in front of or behind background.
- 3 channel sound, with 1 noise generator (audio chip: GI AY-3-8910)
Game controller specs
- Twelve-button numeric keypad (0–9, Clear, and Enter)
- "Four" side-located "action buttons" (where the top two are actually electronically the same, giving three distinct
buttons)
- "Directional Disk", capable of detecting 16 directions of movement
- "Overlays" that would slide into place as an extra layer on the keypad to show game-specific key functions
The Intellivision console could detect the user pressing either the directional disk or a number on the keypad, but not both
at the same time on the same controller. Some action games, such as Tron Deadly Discs
and Night Stalker, used the disk to move and the numeric keypad to fire
weapons, meaning players had to stop running momentarily in order to fire. However, since these games would accept input from
either controller, players could avoid this disadvantage by holding one controller in each hand, with one hand operating one
controller's directional disk, and with the other hand operating the numeric keypad on the other controller. This allowed
continuous running while firing.
Fans of the game console recall that an overuse injury was possible when playing for extended
periods of time due to the pressure needed to use the keypad and especially the side buttons. This was a phenomenon similar to
BlackBerry Thumb today. The problem was worsened significantly when the cost-reduced
Intellivision II changed from solid rubber side buttons to plastic ones with a hollow center, leaving a rectangular imprint on
players' thumbs and causing pain after even short periods of play. The change was apparently made to fractionally reduce the
materials cost of the units, and was never play-tested for usability due to the rush to bring the system to market in the early
days of the Video game crash of 1983.
References
See also
External links
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