Games For Your Intellivision Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 I am thinking that I will probably take some advice given here, and auction off the D2K Arcade prototype materials These include the while blank gatefold, the D2K proof gatefold....the original d2k manual with slightly different art that I used to shop for a printer.....the one with the lines around the pages like the Mattel manuals (they had to be ditched to look more professional)....and the original printout test cart sticker...(which is too small) .plus the cart shell example that I stuck the first sticker to.....(it is defective and you have to put it in a machine upside down when the cart is installed in it)......and I think that we will do a programming printout of menu graphics for D1K signed by Carl. That being said, i wanted to let you collector's know about a couple of other 'prototype' stuff I am going to possibly auction. Some of you probably don't know that Carl and I pretty much have been around since the 'beginning'. Carl wrote the very first emulator for the Intellivision.....he used prototype Truckin' and Popeye programs that were taken off of proper Roms by Sean Kelly. You see, back in the 90s, there were no dumps of Intellivision games floating about. I met Carl on usenet, and was amazed at this DOS program he was writing to emulate the Intelliviison.........he was reverse engineering the Intellivision. The only problem was, that he didn't have many games to reverse engineer,....and he didn't have the exec, or graphic rom on the Intellivision. He was looking for a person to get the games, exec and grom into the computer so he could continue his work. That is where I came in. Now, I am no techie.....but I have a very clever friend I asked about it. He said 'it would be trivial'.....so, I asked him to prove it......we went to our local college and found an Osborne book on the GI Chipset......we tore apart one of my Intellivisions....and an Intellivision 2.......stole the cart slot...built a cart dumper..........popped the Exec...Grom....and a bunch of games into the reader.....my friend Scott Nudds, built the software for the cart reader. Within a short time, we delivered the Exec, Grom, Every game, and even the ECS Exec! After that, we built an interface called INTV2PC that worked with his emulator. This allowed us to attach real Intellivision controllers to the PC and play games like baseball using real hand controllers! Eventually, he showed it to Keith Robinson who then ran out and purchased the rights to the Intellivision, started Intellivision Productions, and released Carl's emulator. So, pretty much every rom floating about, came from my Intellivision. I think I have the cart reader somewhere (I don't think it is operational condition right now).....and the motherboards to the two Intellivisions we tore apart......again, not sure if I have them, but I think they are somewhere in the house.....they have some 'historical' significance in the Intellivision world......and the hand wired version of INTV2PC which only two exist....... Perhaps there might be some interest in these items? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Games For Your Intellivision Posted June 21, 2012 Author Share Posted June 21, 2012 Sorry for the double post....my computer locked.....I dont know how that happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 Eventually, he showed it to Keith Robinson who then ran out and purchased the rights to the Intellivision, started Intellivision Productions, and released Carl's emulator. Just the way you worded this sentence made me smile. It sounds like Keith had dollar signs on his eyes. He maybe seen the big picture? Too bad here in 2012 all we get is the same old compilation games and not even remixed games or sequals etc etc....and dont get me started on the Facebook Intellivision Birthday/Funeral page. Oh wait...I went off on some rant! How/Where will you be auctioning them off? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Games For Your Intellivision Posted June 21, 2012 Author Share Posted June 21, 2012 Keith is a shrewd businessman. I have no idea how we will be auctioning off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 Great to hear the back story Willy, and many thanks to you and Carl for all that you've done for our hobby. Much appreciated! I'd definitely be interested in some of those items. I wonder where the second INTVPC controller is.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 Willy, Don't forget the part where you compiled all the knowledge acquired at the time and wrote "De Re Intellivision." Sure, it's an unfinished work at this point, but contains a lot of technical information on device, and serves as a central point of reference. -dZ. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fushek Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 I may... (ignores verbal taunts from wife in the background) be interested in ... (avoids sharp objects thrown from wife in the kitchen) some of those items ... (sidesteps anvil dropped from ceiling) despite the fact that my life may be slightly endangered. And thank you for the dedication to the Intellivision. I just recently started reliving my childhood (can anyone say mid-life crisis?) and I've really enjoyed learning about the extended community here at AA. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Games For Your Intellivision Posted June 21, 2012 Author Share Posted June 21, 2012 Thanks for the kudos. I really just compiled Carl's information. However, Joe Z. has taken it to the next level regarding Intellivision programming information. I really should complete DeRe Intellivision at some point. Put it into Word or in design and make it into a PDF people can print out. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 Thanks for the kudos. I really just compiled Carl's information. However, Joe Z. has taken it to the next level regarding Intellivision programming information. I couldn't have even started without Carl's work. Recalling Newton's famous quote, I've stood on the shoulders of giants. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Mueller Jr Posted June 22, 2012 Share Posted June 22, 2012 Thanks for the kudos. I really just compiled Carl's information. However, Joe Z. has taken it to the next level regarding Intellivision programming information. I couldn't have even started without Carl's work. Recalling Newton's famous quote, I've stood on the shoulders of giants. :-) And you took that big mess I offered everyone and made it practical. Really, I just write so that I myself can understand it, I don't really have the patience that you have to write really thorough documentation. We wouldn't have as many developers writing for Intellivision as we do now, that's for sure. I still remember after receiving my first two dumps – Truckin' and Popeye. I ran Truckin' through my disassembler and was very excited to see a JSR R5 followed by a string of characters… "TRUCKIN'". My disassembler was working! I was so excited I could hardly sleep that night. Fortunately, the game writes directly to the hardware rather than using the EXEC (which I did not have!), so I pretty much reverse engineered all the Intellivision hardware from that game. It was so thorough, in fact, that when I did get the EXEC, I just dropped it in and everything worked. Very good times. Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Mueller Jr Posted June 22, 2012 Share Posted June 22, 2012 Just an example of some of the things we might auction off (from my side). Whenever I do my coding, I usually do it with pencil and paper. I usually try many variations of code, and I find it easier to collect my thoughts this way. So I have literally stacks and stacks of paper with program code, arrows diagramming the program flow, etc. some of them get so meticulous, they start to look like something I would call "art". And of course, they have some historical value for Intellivision enthusiasts. :-) I know I have some very interesting notes from Intellivision for GameBoy, as well. I kept a spiral of graph paper and did all kinds of drawings trying to get things straight in my head when I had to program pixel perfect collision detection on the Z80…! (And later, on the 6502.) I'll try to scan some more. Of course these would be signed, and the money would go towards future projects. :-) Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted June 22, 2012 Share Posted June 22, 2012 Thanks for the kudos. I really just compiled Carl's information. However, Joe Z. has taken it to the next level regarding Intellivision programming information. I couldn't have even started without Carl's work. Recalling Newton's famous quote, I've stood on the shoulders of giants. :-) And you took that big mess I offered everyone and made it practical. Really, I just write so that I myself can understand it, I don't really have the patience that you have to write really thorough documentation. We wouldn't have as many developers writing for Intellivision as we do now, that's for sure. Some time, long, long ago, I discovered I have a passion for trying to explain things. My wife and friends know this all too well, since they don't necessarily have a passion for being explained to about the things I enjoy explaining. I still remember after receiving my first two dumps – Truckin' and Popeye. I ran Truckin' through my disassembler and was very excited to see a JSR R5 followed by a string of characters… "TRUCKIN'". My disassembler was working! I was so excited I could hardly sleep that night. Fortunately, the game writes directly to the hardware rather than using the EXEC (which I did not have!), so I pretty much reverse engineered all the Intellivision hardware from that game. It was so thorough, in fact, that when I did get the EXEC, I just dropped it in and everything worked. Very good times. Carl I know that thrill of "drop it in, and it just works." Even if it's only just "mostly working." I remember when Frank and I reverse engineered the Intellivoice. He dumped the ROM and with the bits in hand and a few clues from the data sheet, we started pulling it apart. He managed to discover the "jump" opcode, and before long had mapped out the entry points. I wired up an Intellivoice to my PC via my cart dumper (which, incidentally, was an expanded version of Scott Nudds' design documented in De Re Intellivision -- like I said, shoulders of giants!). I interfaced the cart dumper to jzIntv, and could play voice games in the emulator and watch the data and handshaking with the real thing. From that info, I was able to write some short programs to let me download arbitrary data and see what happened. That's when the gasoline hit the fire. Several noisy days of piping bit strings through the Intellivoice and watching waveforms on my crappy 3rd-hand oscilloscope later, I had pretty much the whole opcode space worked out. The real thrilling moment though was when I started putting those same bit-strings through my nascent emulation, and by and large it worked! There were bugs, broken samples and stuff. But, once I got past "Mattel Electronic Presents..." I was practically dancing in the streets. I imagine you had a similar rush as you figured out the bits and pieces of the STIC and got your first glimpse of Truckin' in your emulator. Like the Intellivoice, I imagine you started with no documentation at all for the STIC, aside from a rather oblique data sheet if you even had that. At least, that's the only official documentation I've ever seen for it. And lets face it, there's some wacky bits in the STIC. :-) At any rate, there's a chance none of us would be here discussing the finer points of Intellivision programming if we all hadn't pitched our bits and pieces in and shared them with each other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted June 22, 2012 Share Posted June 22, 2012 (edited) I'm the tallest then, for I'm standing on top of all your shoulders! And I humbly praise all the blood, sweat, and tears that you guys put into your research and work, that resulted in a simple, mostly self-taught programmer such as I, in being able to dream himself game maker. -dZ. Edited June 22, 2012 by DZ-Jay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Mueller Jr Posted June 22, 2012 Share Posted June 22, 2012 Joe, I started with absolutely NO documentation whatsoever. The only thing I was able to obtain, after much effort, was the documentation in an old Osborne book. So I had the CP1610 instruction set, not even fully documented. (There were many surprises, like finding out the Carry flag is inverted for arithmetic instructions, and that right shifts and swaps put bit #7 into the Sign flag). So yes, it took sometime to figure out what all the bits meant. (The fact that the background color bits were jumbled around, took some time to figure out.) But it was quite thrilling. To be able to load up my emulator and see it actually paint the background correctly for the game… It was incredible. I remember I had the emulator setup for split screen. The Intellivision screen on the left, and on the right a readout of all the instructions it was running (slowly). So I could watch it blow through the instructions and very slowly construct the screen. IT WAS AMAZING… and thrilling, to know I was creating something that had never been done before. This was mostly in 1995, although I had actually started on the assembler/disassembler probably 1993-1994. Unfortunately I became quite ill, and stopped working on it. If I hadn't, it might have been finished even earlier. But then the Blue Sky Rangers's website didn't even go up until mid-1995, if I recall correctly. Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted June 23, 2012 Share Posted June 23, 2012 While I'm certainly interested in the items being mentioned, even better is hearing the stories about the history of our favourite console. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Games For Your Intellivision Posted June 23, 2012 Author Share Posted June 23, 2012 Yeah, I feel like putting my hand up at Classic Gaming Expo and saying 'Excuse me, but do you want to hear the story of what happened between INTV Corp. and Intellivision Productions? I think that I was accused of stealing the Exec source at one of these forums, although I don't think that my name was specifically mentioned. lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted June 23, 2012 Share Posted June 23, 2012 Yeah, I feel like putting my hand up at Classic Gaming Expo and saying 'Excuse me, but do you want to hear the story of what happened between INTV Corp. and Intellivision Productions? I think that I was accused of stealing the Exec source at one of these forums, although I don't think that my name was specifically mentioned. lol Lol! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DZ-Jay Posted June 23, 2012 Share Posted June 23, 2012 Yeah, I feel like putting my hand up at Classic Gaming Expo and saying 'Excuse me, but do you want to hear the story of what happened between INTV Corp. and Intellivision Productions? I think that I was accused of stealing the Exec source at one of these forums, although I don't think that my name was specifically mentioned. lol Who's INTV Corp.? Isn't that Keith? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Games For Your Intellivision Posted June 23, 2012 Author Share Posted June 23, 2012 (edited) INTV Corporation was the company that took over from Intellivision, Inc. who took over from Mattel when they got out of the business. They released all the 'Super Pro' games, plus the silver 'Super Pro' System III. They went bankrupt some time in 1990, and the rights laid in limbo for 5 or 6 years, until Keith came along and bought the rights with an investment from Ultimatte.....eventually he bought out his investors and owns the company now. Edited June 23, 2012 by Games For Your Intellivision Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted June 23, 2012 Share Posted June 23, 2012 INTV Corporation was the company that took over from Intellivision, Inc. who took over from Mattel when they got out of the business. They released all the 'Super Pro' games, plus the silver 'Super Pro' System III. They went bankrupt some time in 1990, and the rights laid in limbo for 5 or 6 years, until Keith came along and bought the rights with an investment from Ultimatte.....eventually he bought out his investors and owns the company now. Did Keith not work for/with INTV Corp? Didn't he design some of the artwork for Body Slam?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Games For Your Intellivision Posted June 23, 2012 Author Share Posted June 23, 2012 Yeah, I think he did some artwork for them, but was simply an employee. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted June 23, 2012 Share Posted June 23, 2012 Yeah, I think he did some artwork for them, but was simply an employee. That's what I thought. I seem to remember him describing it almost like contract work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghsqb Posted June 23, 2012 Share Posted June 23, 2012 INTV Corporation was the company that took over from Intellivision, Inc. who took over from Mattel when they got out of the business. They released all the 'Super Pro' games, plus the silver 'Super Pro' System III. They went bankrupt some time in 1990, and the rights laid in limbo for 5 or 6 years, until Keith came along and bought the rights with an investment from Ultimatte.....eventually he bought out his investors and owns the company now. Cmart and I were discussing this...what do you think (or maybe you know?) Keith paid for the rights? In your opinion, what would they be worth today? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted July 16, 2012 Share Posted July 16, 2012 Any updates on the planned auctions? Willy? Carl? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev Posted July 16, 2012 Share Posted July 16, 2012 Hey, I have some prototype items i may auction off as well, they are from the IntellivisionRevolution.com website i have. The items I will be selling to you for very high prices consist of a few sheets of notebook paper with some scribbles on them along the lines of: make a cool intellivision website, submit url, intellivision,honey get off the computer and pay attention to me... Im starting the bidding at around 100.00 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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