Question about controller compatibility

[townparkradio]

Hi folks, I'm a recent new Intellivision owner. Won a lot on Ebay which came with an Intellivision II, along with 8 games; 3 of them are two player only. The downside was that it only came with one controller. I was surfing around the web, and came up with this page: http://4jays.net/store//page86.html

 

Does anyone know which, if any, of the controllers listed on this page would work for an Intellivision II? I sent an email off to the owner of the site about two weeks ago asking the same question and no response. I want to order and get a few games as well but.. well.. don't want to order the wrong things.

 

Mmm.. oh yeah! I also know Donkey Kong (...and nothing of value was lost) and Venture (that's a shame) won't work on the Intellivision II. Any others I should be aware of?

 

Again, thanks for your time.

[Tinman]

Ok, I'm going from memory here, because my Intellivisions are all in the attic in storage right now, thanks to my wife's demand that I de-clutter the den where they had been...

 

The INTV II, INTV III, and Sears consoles all used similar controller ports that physically resemble the Atari 2600 joystick ports (although the Atari joysticks are NOT compatible). So, for your INTV II, the controllers for the INTV III or the Sears box should work. However, as I recall (and I'm sure you can confirm this on your console), the plugs on the INTV II controllers are bent 90 degrees to allow them to sit flush into the top of the console. I believe that the INTV III and Sears controllers do not have a similar bent and therefore those controllers will not fit into the INTV II console for storage. Also, the Sears console was beige-cream and the INTV III black (I think), so the controllers for those systems will not look like the white-ish INTV II controllers. So, from a style standpoint, they won't look right, but they will work for playing games.

 

The original INTV I console used hardwired controllers, so I imagine that the replacement controllers being sold on the site to which you linked probably have bare wires instead of a plug and are meant to be soldered into the console. Unless you want to crack open your INTV II and do some wiring, you probably don't want those.

 

I hope this helps!

[townparkradio]

Thank you very kindly. No, I'm not at all concerned about storage. Secondary question, despite the name of the website here.

 

How...exactly.. did the 2600 beat this thing? Alright, a rhetorical question, just saying. It's awesome! The games are so in depth and complex. I mean I do love my Atari, I still have mine in working order and last played it Christmas Day with my wife... but the Intellivision is a lot more cerebral. I can't believe I used to make fun of my cousins for having this 28 years ago.

[Tinman]

Thank you very kindly. No, I'm not at all concerned about storage. Secondary question, despite the name of the website here.

 

How...exactly.. did the 2600 beat this thing? Alright, a rhetorical question, just saying. It's awesome! The games are so in depth and complex. I mean I do love my Atari, I still have mine in working order and last played it Christmas Day with my wife... but the Intellivision is a lot more cerebral. I can't believe I used to make fun of my cousins for having this 28 years ago.

 

Just a quick update to my original response. I am not positive that the INTV III controllers were, in fact, removable, and I cannot find anything online that says either way. So, just to be safe, if you buy any controllers, you'll probably want to stick to INTV II or Sears, unless someone else can weigh in here with better info.

 

 

As for the 2600, as a kid I was an Atari guy all the way, but several of my friends had Intellivisions, so we all played both quite a bit. In my opinion, while the INTV games had superior sound and graphics and were usually more complex, the Atari games were just more fun. Maybe it was the simplicity of the system which forced the game designers to focus less on graphics and more on game play. Or maybe it was just because the Atari was so much cheaper. And that may have led more people to buy it which led to more developers making games for it, which improved the odds of more fun games being made for it...

 

 

I can say that as time passed, I never even considered buying a Colecovision or a Nintendo, and although I have bought and do own more recent video game systems, I've never enjoyed any of them quite as much as my original Atari and the Intellivision.

[+cmart604]

Mmm.. oh yeah! I also know Donkey Kong (...and nothing of value was lost) and Venture (that's a shame) won't work on the Intellivision II. Any others I should be aware of?

 

 

If memory serves...I think Mouse Trap is also incompatible with the INTV 2, although I'm pretty sure the CBS versions of all three games work.... ...foggy memory...

 

That said, welcome to our vibrant INTV community (I'm going to have to keep coming up with variations of that welcome it seems ). This is a great place to discuss everything INTV (also obviously many other classic systems).

 

As for games you may want to check out the marketplace as you can usually find pretty good deals from fellow AA members, and/or post a list of what you're looking for and you just might find someone here has it.

[townparkradio]

Mmm.. oh yeah! I also know Donkey Kong (...and nothing of value was lost) and Venture (that's a shame) won't work on the Intellivision II. Any others I should be aware of?

 

 

If memory serves...I think Mouse Trap is also incompatible with the INTV 2, although I'm pretty sure the CBS versions of all three games work.... ...foggy memory...

 

That said, welcome to our vibrant INTV community (I'm going to have to keep coming up with variations of that welcome it seems ). This is a great place to discuss everything INTV (also obviously many other classic systems).

 

As for games you may want to check out the marketplace as you can usually find pretty good deals from fellow AA members, and/or post a list of what you're looking for and you just might find someone here has it.

 

At this juncture I'm mostly interested in Activision, Atarisoft, Imagic, the first DnD game.. and.. well.. the Tron games, heh. Basically the things you can't find on the "Lives" collections. Though I also wanna find a Triple Action. the biplanes game really brought my wife and I together, and I want to find a real copy to relive on real hardware what made me decide to marry her on the PS2 emulation. Time to look in the marketplace posts, eh?

Edited December 29, 2010 by townparkradio