Intellivision - Imagic and Activision

[AtariLeaf]

Since I picked up those rare Intellivision games a couple days ago, I've been looking into the Intellivision catalog a little more and was quite surprised at how many games Activision, and especially Imagic, made for the Intellivision that never were ported to the 2600.

 

Activision

 

Happy Trails

Dreadnaught Factor (5200 & XL/XE got it)

Worm Whomper

 

Imagic

 

Beauty and the Beast

Dracula

Ice Trek

Microsurgeon

Nova Blast

Safe Cracker

Swords and Serpents

Tropical Trouble

Truckin

White Water

 

Anyone know the story or reason behind why the 2600 missed out on a lot of these titles? Now, yes the opposite could be argued - many Atari games from Activision and Imagic never made it to the Intellivision but considering how popular the 2600 was, it seems a strange decision. And it wasn't that they were saving them for the other platforms since as I mentioned, Dreadnaught Factor was the only title of this bunch to make it to the 5200.

 

Was the crash a big part of this? Even if the crash or the atmosphere in the gaming industry leading up to it made developers wary, it still wouldn't explain why the intellivision got them as exclusives.

 

Just curious, does anyone know?

[+Psionic]

Lots of reasons, including the fact that several of those games would be very difficult if not impossible to pull off on the 2600. From the perspective of progress and innovation, the idea was to develop games for the latest gaming platforms (INTV, CV, A8, C64 and so on) and take advantage of their graphical and other technical capabilites, not to keep releasing stuff for the underpowered VCS. The only reason why we saw so many 2600 games in the first place (both originals and ports) is because most companies put profits before innovation, whereas those two companies were less prone to doing that. They may have indeed planned 2600 ports of some of these titles, and in cases where an Intellivision title could be faithfully ported to the VCS, it usually was (as Activision did with Beamrider).

 

The decision not to port over those particular titles could be for technical reasons, the fact that some or all of them were poor sellers, or simply the fact that the demand for new 2600 titles dropped very sharply over 1983-84.

[AtariLeaf]

Those reasons make sense and are logical. I wondered if perhaps some of those titles would have taxed the 2600 too much. Thanks for the reply

[+Psionic]

Just thought I'd add that there were several more Activision titles planned for the Intellivision that never saw the light of day (Cloud Nine, League of Light, Robot Rubble, Rocket Ball, Termite & Towerquest). These games were all reputedly cancelled when Activision stopped all Intellivision support in late 1983. Several of them were restarted on other platforms (ColecoVision & Commodore 64) but those versions, if ever completed, were never released either.

[BydoEmpire]

Former Intellivision programmers were either some of the first Imagic employees or co-founded the company. Keith Robinson touched on that at CGE 2010, although I'm not 100% clear on the exact history of Imagic. But they seemed to have had more Inty people early on than other 3rd parties of the era.

[Animan]

I also think Imagic believed that ports of there games to other systems shouldn't just be a straight port, but be a unique game that takes advantage of the systems strengths and weaknesses. This idea went well with the idea of all the Imagic exclusives.

 

Example: The Intellivision version of Atlantis added new gameplay elements such as the crosshair and multiple times of the day, while the Odyssey2 version had only two cannons, but did have a "smart bomb" which could be activated once per round.

[AtariLeaf]

I also think Imagic believed that ports of there games to other systems shouldn't just be a straight port, but be a unique game that takes advantage of the systems strengths and weaknesses. This idea went well with the idea of all the Imagic exclusives.

 

Example: The Intellivision version of Atlantis added new gameplay elements such as the crosshair and multiple times of the day, while the Odyssey2 version had only two cannons, but did have a "smart bomb" which could be activated once per round.

 

I really like the Intellivision port, especially the UFO that you can launch to shoot the enemy ships and the fact that your guns don't just shoot at a stationary angle but you can use the crosshairs to move around the screen. There's a pretty good review of it