INTV Best Game of All Times - Round 1 - 22/25 (last Imagics hit again?)

[vprette]

This is a pool to vote the best games ever for Intellivision :-)

There will be several pools of 5 titles each to cover the following categories:

 

- Best game of all time

- Best sport game

- Best shoot'em up

- Best arcade conversion

- Best producer

 

1st AND 2nd classified go to round 2!

 

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Edited April 20, 2014 by vprette

[intvnut]

I loved the unique Nordic/Viking theme Ice Trek had going on. Don't kill the caribou or the wildlife goddess will pwn you. Keep your eye on the goal: Release the aurora borealis!

 

That said, it plays like hell on an emulator, unless you have an interface back to the original controllers. There's just no way to build an ice bridge.

 

Also, as I recall, Ice Trek discovered some bugs in jzIntv's collision detection, which is cool in its own way, I suppose.

[Oscar G.]

Same as Intvnut here. Love Ice Trek. Many people praise Donkey Kong (the arcade version of course) for being the first example of story-telling in video games. Well Ice-Trek is Epic Storytelling then.

 

Imagic's Magic again.

 

My second choice would be Pinball, a fantastic game that I have just recently discovered. Cheers!

[JoeM_Intellivision]

For me definitely Truckin - got as kid and was so impressed with all the nuances of the game - especially the police, gassing up & resting, etc. - never played to its full capabilities and plan to revisit. Liked Pinball when I got and Ice Trek is on my list of games to spend more time on in future. Triple Challenge of course good if you didn't have any of 3 games.

[+thegoldenband]

I wanted to like Ice Trek, but the gameplay just gets way out of hand in later levels, and not in a good way -- it becomes downright unfair, and too frustrating for its own good. It needed significantly more playtesting.

 

I picked Truckin', just for the sheer creativity and ambition of it. My #2 would probably be Pinball, and maybe I should have it at #1, since I enjoy it quite a bit.

[Intellfan]

Truckin for me I used to love driving all over the country and crashing into my friends LOL

[+intvsteve]

Tough one for three of these... Really liked Pinball, Ice Trek and Truckin' a lot. Ultimately my vote goes to Ice Trek, though.

[+cmart604]

Ice Trek for me, still haven't played Truckin very much at all for some reason. I like Pinball but I'm not very good at it.

[JoeM_Intellivision]

Surprised by Ice Trek over Truckin but I had the latter and not the former. Will definitely need to give Ice Trek a go - cmart can I have one of your 77 copies:-)

[+cmart604]

Lol! Do you really not have it now Joe? This is turning into a really good three way battle.

[JoeM_Intellivision]

No I have it - wait let me correct that - my soon to be ex-wife currently has it so can't be sure it wasn't fed to the dogs:-) I don't have on hand though.

[+Lathe26]

... my soon to be ex-wife ...

 

Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.

 

Hope things progressing ok for you.

[JoeM_Intellivision]

Lathe26 - thanks. How much for the T-shirt:-)

[vprette]

I like all the games, but the complexity and excellent package of truckin is a different level compared to a pinball game.... I mean I look at truckin as one of the piece of genius of the time that differentiate inty from other consoles...

 

said so... as a matter of curiosity, I have reported at intellivisionworld that Convoy for Intellivoice was planned for a very similar gameplay.. maybe the reason why it was dismissed... what the meaning for a truckin clone on a console with virtually no clones in the portfolio

Edited April 21, 2014 by vprette

[JoeM_Intellivision]

Vprette, agree with you on Truckin - that is a high quality game! Would've thought it would have received more votes but maybe many didn't have this one - it may have come out slightly before market crash.

[+wongojack]

I'm going to have to re-play these before I make a decision. One vote could tip this. I'm leaning Pinball . . . .

[JoeM_Intellivision]

No wongojack say it is not so:-) Truckin, Truckin.

[+Lathe26]

Lathe26 - thanks. How much for the T-shirt:-)

Costs 1 house, $31K debt, $18K alimony, and 1/2 the possessions.

 

Mind you, it's a very nice T-shirt.

[JoeM_Intellivision]

LMFAO - too damn funny lol:-) I'm literally laughing by myself:-) House - check. $31K+ - check. 1/2 possessions - double check. Alimony - well she made more than me so I got a shot there:-) At least I have a really nice T-shirt to look forward to:-) And thank God I still got my sense of humor.

[+wongojack]

Ok, I spent some time with Ice Trek and Pinball last night. I'll get to Truckin hopefully tonight.

 

Since Ice Trek seems to be winning, I'll discuss my experience with it . . .

 

The first time I'd played Ice Trek was with a friend who had a very small but substantial Intv collection. He really liked the game and wanted me to play it with him. I watched him go through the Caribou level and then on to the Ice Bridge. First impression - It looked REALLY TERRIBLE to me. He had a lot of other games to show me so we switched around a bit and eventually ended up playing S&S for like 7 hours . . .

 

I needed to give Ice Trek another chance, so I read the manual and got ready to give the game a shot. The Verdict: I think this is a case where the whole is actually LESS than the sum of it's parts. I'll say that I REALLY like games with varied gameplay stages. In fact one of my favorite games of all time is Raid Over Moscow (C64) which has a number of different stages that allow you to do very diverse and different gameplay mechanics. Ice Trek reminds me of RoM and other computer games of the era that pulled various stages together into a story. With some imagination these stages do create a nice little story that adds to the enjoyment of the game. In terms of story, I think Ice Trek is a success. The manual is great and it made me want to complete the quest. I liked that the game had an ending, and the ending was an appropriate reward. In that way, ITrek seems to push the gaming boundaries of the era and do something that few other games did - tell a compelling story. However, the actual gameplay experience quickly reduces the enjoyment of being part of that story until you forget about it completely. The Caribou sequence is barely a game, and the Ice Bridge is a monotonous snore-fest. The final sequence is probably the most enjoyable - too bad I have to get through the other two to play it.

 

Regarding the gameplay, I like the idea that you must avoid doing harm to the Caribou, but that means there really isn't much to do in that sequence. The prospect of making the Ice Bridge HARDER is indeed something to avoid, so at least there is a risk/reward payoff here. The Ice Bridge sequence just isn't fun for me. I appreciate the 16 direction control and after a while, I think I got the hang of pulling in the ice to the bridge. Shooting unwanted ice floes with my torch was harder however, and I ended up having to wait for them to make contact with the bridge before being able to hit them reliably. This just slowed down an already slow sequence, and I eventually just quit the game after I got to this sequence again on level 2. I think I'd played more than an hour at that point with much of the action being me throwing that hook. The final section seems like it had the right difficulty although I imagine with only one of the towers remaining that it would be tough to time your shots around the flying enemies on the higher difficulty levels.

 

So my feeling here is that the idea and creativity that went into this game is an A+. The unique gameplay and the variety of gaming scenarios is also very good, and I like the "quest" feeling where you are covering distance and actually finishing something. However, the actual gameplay is so tedious and uninteresting to me that I can't see myself actually wanting to experience this adventure again. If you put that all together it MIGHT be an average or even an above average game for some people, but in this case I think that the prospect of something that transcends the generation combined with gameplay that is just boring nets out to a point where I lose any kind of interest I had in the story after reading the manual. The game is actually worth less than the sum of its parts.

[JoeM_Intellivision]

Thanks for detailed description. I assume ending you describe is for stage 3 and it just repeats itself? Or is there a "true" ending to game if you get through 3 boards a number of times? Thanks. Joe.

[+wongojack]

Thanks for detailed description. I assume ending you describe is for stage 3 and it just repeats itself? Or is there a "true" ending to game if you get through 3 boards a number of times? Thanks. Joe.

It repeated for me and the manual indicates it repeats as well. There is reference to 6 starting skill levels and the manual indicates a specific change in difficulty at level 10, but it does not seem to indicate if there is a final difficulty level. My guess is the game repeats forever.

 

I played some Truckin' and some Pinball tonight. For Truckin' I basically read the manual and figured out what was going on then did the "test drive" suggested in the manual. I'll have to play a bit more before actually voting to get more of a feel for the cargo game.

 

Regarding Pinball - this is a really great Pinball game. It has lane rollovers, jets, drop targets, a spinner, and even kickers that you can activate by hitting the ball in a sort of under playfield tunnel. There is also the opportunity to advance the ball to 2 entirely different playfields. Don't like pushing the lower side buttons for your flippers? Don't worry because you can use the left keypad column for the left flipper and the right column for the right flipper. When I play pinball, I like to pick a specific goal and go after it. What is really great about this game is that there is a true variety of goals to go for, and if you finish those, you can move on to one of the other playfields. I like everything about this game, and I know I'll be playing it trying to master all the scoring goals for years to come. The difficulty seems about right and balanced like an actual pinball table would be. That is to say fairly challenging and you'll play some entire games quickly without hitting any of your goals. That's ok though because actual pinball is very much like that. Sometimes it rolls the way you want and sometimes it doesn't. One additional thing to like about this game is that the manual actually tells you how the scoring works and how to achieve the table goals. The guys who right the docs for Pinball FX2 could learn something here about how to tell the player the rules of the table.

[JoeM_Intellivision]

Thanks for update - agreed that pinball was a very fun game - haven't played in a while but will definitely revisit.

[+wongojack]

Ok, I gave some more time to Truckin' It is a better game than I thought it would be - mostly because it actually works. You can either play a game variation where you see how fast you can drive to specific cities or you can try to make as much money as possible by driving loads of cargo between designated cities. The keypad works well to give you various options to scroll through your routes and cargo and the map isn't so complicated that you can't figure out where to go. You will want to find an online copy of the map before trying to play though.

 

I think that with a bit of play the game would feel "mastered" very quickly. It would require an experienced player to play against for this to actually feel like a complete game. Otherwise competing against yourself is less enjoyable than other high score challenges as the action required to drive the truck never changes or gets more/less difficult. The limited amount and types of cargo also dampens the complexity of the strategy element of the game as there is always a "best" choice for cargo that will earn you the most money.

 

This is a good game and it works like the original concept likely intended. Unlike Ice Trek, I think it delivers on it's promise and creates a unique and enjoyable gameplay experience. However, I don't think the game really has much depth once you get the basics under control.

 

I've never played Triple Challenge, but if the chess game in it is the same as USCF Chess (which is good) then I'd rank this group like this

1) Pinball

2) Truckin

3) Triple Challenge

4) Ice Trek

[+wongojack]

I'm playing a lot of Intellivision during this tournament, but I keep coming back to Pinball. Here's a tip about the controls. I've found that I like holding the controller sideways with the disc on the right. This way I can control the left and right flippers with my thumbs on the #1 and Enter keys. It's much more comfortable than the side buttons. However, this makes the "nudge" a bit harder as you can't be touching the keypad and the disc at the same time (if you want the disc to work). I've found it difficult to use the nudge effectively no matter how I hold the controller. Just like real pinball it is an advanced move based on the actual table situation.