Intellivision Memories

[IntellivisionDude]

Share your childhood Intellivision memories. Playing games, buying games. etc. Feel free to share pictures. let's not forget our memories. I'm constantly reliving these.

 

I will start off with memories i had of seeing Intellivision games in stores. I have told most of this before but always worth repeating. I was actually in the middle of replying to the test market thread while i was typing this but thought, let's make it a separate thread. I have a lot more stories to tell and add in the future. Let's try and keep this bumped once in a while.

 

 

All but one of the games i owned was purchased by my mother. The only game i ever bought myself was a copy of i think NHL Hockey i bought off a kid for $2, It was some friend of one of my cousins. It was the first time and only time i knew someone besides me who owned an Intellivision. I think he let me borrow Horse Racing but without a manual or overlays i never understood it.

 

 

 

A few of the games my mother bought me came from Odd Lots. The games were behind a glass case but i remember a lot of them being cheap like around $10 or so. I'm sure a lot of my red boxed Mattel games came from there.

 

I also have a memory of getting a game or 2 from some clothing store (similar to TJ Max and wouldn't be surprised if it was). They had Intellivision and 2600 games on some shelf at the front of the store. Unfortunately a game she bought me there ended up being a mistake. It was the box for Intellivision Baseball, but the cartridge ended up being M Network Baseball for the 2600. Oops lol

 

Also have a memory of quite a few times going up and down the isle at Meijer's. That was where i remember seeing the Coleco games that said they wouldn't work on my Intellivision II. I cannot recall if any of the games my mother got me came from there. But there is a chance the Imagic games i owned came from there. That may have been where my mother bought the system itself. There is a really good chance i seen the ECS and or the Music Synthesizer there. But of course my memory is foggy.

 

I cannot recall any Intellivision memories from K-Marts but we shopped there on almost a weekly basis, so i must of seen them.

 

i also don't remember what i seen in Radio Shack but our mall had one so i know i must of went in there and looked all the time. I just mainly remember being fascinated by the early computers that Radio Shack and K-Mart had. That is where i learned "10 Print" by watching another customer do it.

 

I will add Montgomery Wards to the list of "I can't remember." But like the others we went there all the time.

 

I have memories of going into the toy stores that were in the 2 local malls. One may have been Circus World and the other may have been Kay Bee. But the only memories i have of those places was my mother buying me those table top/handheld Tomytronic games. They must of had Intellivision games, they must of. lol

 

I have 1 memory and 1 memory only of seeing the Sears games at Sears and for some reason i keep thinking some of the games were in baggies. But not sure if that is a bad memory or not. Man i can't remember sh*t.

 

I know one city over had a Service Merchandise, but once again i can't recall if this was after the Intellivision. We had a lot of the catalogs. I remember looking at those for hours and hours dreaming.

 

And last but not least, after all those stores were not selling the games anymore, all the later games i got came from Toys R Us.

And once again i have a memory that i am not sure about that one of the games came in a baggie. I keep thinking it was either Centipede or Mission X. But some of my best memories were getting all the epic INTV games Like Diner, Thunder Castle, Body Slam, Slam Dunk, etc.

I remember seeing the INTV III. I remember seeing replacement controllers for my model 2 which i regret not buying. Also remember this is where i got those joystick add-ons that clamped on top of the controllers. And of course the fatal memory of after the controllers wore out and didn't work anymore, my mother drove me to Toys R Us only to find out they no longer sold Intellivision stuff. That was the end of era. That was probably around 90 or 91. It would be 20 years before i had the chance to own one again. I did own the Intellivision Classics game for the PS1, but that didn't satisfy me and i don't think i was still ready for nostalgia. (Maybe if it had Burgertime). I do not regret the games and systems i owned after my Intellivision died and was sold off at a garage sale. I missed it, but for the longest time, i moved on without looking back. That 20 year break was probably for the best since i appreciate the system so much more now.

 

Oh sorry you can wake up now.

Edited June 22, 2014 by IntellivisionDude

[IntellivisionDude]

Is that Grizzly Adams on TV? I can't tell. lol

 

 

 

[Uzumaki]

The first time I played Intellivision was at my relative's house. My brother and I had Atari but we were surprised to see different game system and complicated looking controller and spent a lot of the free time playing it. We enjoyed Snafu and games like Tropical Trouble stumped us. I can remember the very first time with Cloudy Mountain game. When I figured out the controller, it became a very fun game to play with nothing like it on Atari (all random maze)

[Intellfan]

I bought my Intellivision in 1981 with my own money 239 bucks i think. I bought two games Triple Action and Boxing .In 1982 I was in North Carolina I bought a Tandy vision from radio shack and Atlantis and demon Attack at the time I thought those two games were the coolest i had ever seen .What graphics . I took the Tandy-vision back a week later and got my money back one of the controllers was acting up . I also remember playing Intellivision at Sears in 1980 or so That is what got me hooked . My fondest memories of playing games are Triple action Bi Planes and Baseball . What fun we had . I would love to see a Super Pro Biplanes but I doubt that will ever happen .

[IntellivisionDude]

I can no longer remember if i got the Intellivision for Christmas or if i got it a few months before. But it came with Burgertime. That is an amazing game to start with. i right away loved the Intellivision controller. Even as a kid i never really did like the Atari Joystick. Before i got the Intellivision i did play my cousins Atari once or twice and played it a lot at a friends house. Those were great memories too. That was until i got my own system. I knew right away my system was superior. Burgertime was so bright and colorful compared to any game i played on the Atari at the time. Atari was still a blast playing with friends back then.

One of the first games i got as seen in the top picture was Star Strike. I never really did like that game. The only highlight was seeing the earth blow up and that wore off pretty fast.

I believe i owned 37 Intellivision games back then. I really wish i could remember which ones came from which store.

My best memories are when my friend would come over and play, and sometimes stay the night. We would master as many games as we could.
Back then he was the Burgertime master. He was able to get past the dreaded level 7. I never could (until recently). My friend was usually better at me at most games. Even if it was Nes or Intellivision, i remember when he brought over his Nes and would rent a game, i always learned the game first before he could, but after a while he would end up mastering it and surpass me. Except Super Pro Hockey. I was always the master at that. lol

I can remember the late night sports sessions like it was yesterday. Boxing, Hockey, Super Pro Football. Slam Dunk. And even though i had Slam Dunk we would play NBA for straight up college style action without the 3 point line (back then college basketball didn't have a 3 point line).

We even played hours of Frog Bog and Snafu.

2 player Auto Racing was so awesome. Sometimes instead of playing serious, we made up our own game where we just tried to see who could run each other off the road and crash first.

I remember the horror of learning and mastering Super Pro Decathlon. We did eventually master it. And i do believe that game led to the downfall of my controllers.

Those side buttons eventually started to fail and break. Our half ass attempt to fix it was to put small pieces of toothpicks and jam it in under the broken side button so it could still press, That only worked temporary. Eventually it failed more and more. it got to the point that all i could do was watch the games were i could choose 0 players like Body Slam. That is when i learned the joy of simming matches. I was doing it long before it became popular (not that it was ever popular lol). I would just pretend the wrestlers were WWF or NWA stars.

[Unbeliever]

Unfortunately, I didn't get an Intellivision when I was younger (I had the Atari 2600 instead), and wasn't introduced to Intellivision until going to my friend's house one wintery morning in the 70's. It was a long walk to his house, but I was more than willing to walk there as I usually spent time with my friend as much as possible during my early teen years. I remember him telling me that he had gotten a new game system and I was intrigued. He was one of "those" friends that had everything new with video games. So when I finally got to his house (and his Mom had some hot chocolate for me to warm up on), I went upstairs to his room and found him playing this system called Intellivision. Honestly, I knew nothing about it and was captivated by how the graphics and game play were. I can't remember specific games, but I do remember playing it for hours before I finally had to go home.

 

So flash forward 30 years, and finding someone that was selling the system here. I couldn't resist, so I jumped on it and the person set me up quite nicely with several games and an original model one system. I have always been an Atari guy, loving my system, but the Intellivision was a classic gaming console I had to have, and now that I'm older and can really appreciate the retro-gaming consoles of yesteryear, I'm glad I took the plunge and managed to get one in my late 40's.

[tacrec]

My brothers and I played it a lot, especially baseball. My oldest brother used to joke about the P&BJ dealer's moving "shifty eyes" and we'd laugh how the card shuffling sounded like a fart. We'd play bowling a lot too. Most of the time I played it by myself, I was good at Space Spartans, Astrosmash & Bomb Squad.

[+cvga]

I got an Atari and my best friend got an Intellivision during the same Christmas. He not only got an Intellivision but 6 games and a Microvision that Christmas. I don't remember all 6 titles but I'm sure he had Poker & Blackjack, Skiing and Major League Baseball. I think the other three might have been Space Battle, Bowling, and Astrosmash. He was a huge Cubs fan I was a huge Reds fan so we played a game of baseball every day the next summer. He always took the blue team and I always took the red team. It was fun but we got so good at it, no one else would play us. I don't remember all of the little "tricks" but you can do things like inch your first baseman up a little to catch the ball a tad earlier for the force out. I also recall being so good with the outfielders that we would sometimes cut off throws or let them go through (by throwing to second but switching to the third baseman before the ball arrived at second) if the fielders were positioned correctly. It was a blast. Now I play Intellivision baseball with my youngest son and we love it. The biggest difference is that he insists on being the Red team everytime because he's a big Reds fan