Keith Robinson passed away :(

[+grips03]

Very sad. Will be greatly missed.

[Flojomojo]

Retronauts write-up

 

http://www.retronauts.com/?p=3158

 

"Keith Robinson did not create the Intellivision, he didn't design the hardware or steer the business, but he tended to its legacy unlike anyone else. A fan at heart, he performed this duty proactively, motivated by nothing so much as his sheer love for the games. And for adapting classic games to modern formats while contextualizing the culture surrounding them. Efforts begun years before the term game preservation entered common usage. He will be remembered as a visionary in the field. The medium has rarely seen such a dedicated steward of its heritage, and it is undoubtedly worse off now without him."

[SoulBlazer]

I hope this isn't too soon for anyone, but now that the shock has worn off, something that came to mind, so a question -- was it Keith himself who had the rights to the Intelivision properties or a company? What happens to those rights now? Should we worry about the rights falling into the hands of someone who doesn't care, like Coleco?

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

RIP Keith. Think I'll be playing some Intellivision today.

[Intellfan]

R.I.P You will be missed .

[Intellivisioner]

Why so early, Keith?

Will miss you so much...

 

So thankful for your autographed TRON game - will always remember you...

[Utopia]

Rest in peace Keith.

[Jeffrey Bouchard]

RIP

[gavvv]

I hope this isn't too soon for anyone, but now that the shock has worn off, something that came to mind, so a question -- was it Keith himself who had the rights to the Intelivision properties or a company? What happens to those rights now? Should we worry about the rights falling into the hands of someone who doesn't care, like Coleco?

Intellivision Productions (at least when formed) was a partnership with Steve Roney and steve at times was titled as 'vp of software development' for IP. So I imagine the continuing IP ownership would still be in 'BSR' stewardship of a sort

[Bill Loguidice]

61 is too young. I only had limited interaction with him during the production of the Intellivision Flashback for AtGames, but he seemed like a nice guy, as those who met him in person have been saying.

[ZillaRUSH]

Met him last year at a video game show in City of Industry....nice guy...we talked INTV and my daughter mentioned her love of Snafu. He brought out the INTV Music CD and played the Snafu song. RIP Keith

[Cynicaster]

I have only played Intellivision a handful of times in my life outside of emulation, but dammit, this is sad news. While most of Keith's contemporaries have discarded classic games as no longer useful or profitable, I loved how Keith enthusiastically kept the lights on in his little corner of the retroverse. RIP Keith!

[HunterZero]

Very sad news, my condolences to Keith's family and friends. Thanks to Keith for his work with the Intellivision and tending its legacy, bringing decle coded goodness to younger generations. He left his indelible mark on video games history for sure.

 

- James

[catsfolly]

I first met Keith when we went to high school together, at Mira Costa high school in Manhattan Beach. He was well-known in high school for
making funny drawings and elaborate films.

Our high school had one physics class. I took the class a year after Keith did. For physics, we had to keep a "lab notebook". In the lab notebook, we had to make drawings of our experimental setups. A classmate told me that Keith had spiced up his lab notebook drawings by adding silly things like gorilla
hands holding the equipment.

 

I thought that was a funny idea, so the next time I saw Keith, I smiled and said "I heard about your Physics lab notebook!"
Keith looked shocked. His reply was "What! How did you hear about that? No one is supposed to known about it. Don't tell anyone about it!"
I said "Okay". Apparently there was something else interesting about Keith's Physics lab notebook, something controversial. But I don't feel guilty telling this story though, because I still have no idea what it was all about...

Keith made elaborate movies. For one scene, one of Keith's friends jumped off the "Mark Twain" paddle boat into the "river" at Disneyland. Somehow, his friend wasn't injured, and Keith talked his way out of their getting arrested.

So, we were all sure Keith would be a movie director or producer someday.

Keith did go on the work in special effects, and even worked with George Lucas on Star Wars ("Star Wars, The Holiday Special...")

The next time I encountered Keith was at Mattel Electronics. Funny thing was, I didn't recognize him at first.

When I knew Keith in high school, he was much shorter than me, and slightly overweight. So I was surprised to meet him 9 years later and discover that he was now much taller than me and thin and lanky. Apparently he waited until college to have his growth spurt.

Keith had been at Mattel about a month when I got there, and he was already working on Solar Sailer.

Keith and Mark Urbaniec competed with each other to make the coolest game, which let to innovations like custom fonts for their games.

After Solar Sailer, Keith moved into management. I ended up working for M Network on Atari 2600 games, so I never worked with Keith directly.

But Keith helped to make Mattel a fun place to work - he threw all his energy into everything, whether it was making "Blue Sky Ranger" logos and t-shirts,
or company events, or even the company softball teams.

After Mattel closed, Terri Valeski bought the Intellivision rights. He subcontracted with Realtime Associates and Quicksilver software (companies founded by ex-blue sky rangers) to make new games for the system.

 

Keith helped with the manuals and box art. In his spare time, he created his own comic strip - Making it. He was also a leader in the effort to keep the city of Manhattan Beach from tearing down the landmark Manhattan Beach pier (last time I checked, the pier was still there...)

After 5-6 years, Terri Valeski's company went bankrupt. which left him holding the rights to the Intellivision Intellectual property. Keith and his friends tracked down Valeski and bought the rights from him.

From then on, Keith kept the Intellivision brand alive through releases for the popular consoles and the PC and MAC, and plug and play games. and t-shirts and other goods. He could tell stories about the Mattel days for hours, and was always entertaining and enthusiastic, and generous in his praise of the people he had worked with.

He was the face and voice of Intellivison Inc.

He will be missed.

 

 

[Jess Ragan]

Earl Green wrote a pretty damned good obituary for Keith Robinson over at The Retroist.

 

http://www.retroist.com/2017/06/15/farewell-keith-robinson/

 

I'm a little taken aback by all this. I didn't realize he was only 61... I would have guessed he was ten years older. Also, this is probably selfish for me to say, but damn, these big names in the business have got to stop dying before I meet them. Hearing that Ralph Baer actually responded to e-mail from fans was like ground glass in my soul. If only I'd KNOWN!

[+Tarzilla]

Setting up before the show officially opened

The Blue Sky Rangers talk I recorded for the Intellivisionaires podcast

Hanging out after the talk, flanked by some very friendly Blue Sky Rangers

I'm glad I took pictures of the last time I talked to him at Arcade Expo 2.0, January 2016

Somewhere I have pictures of Keith instructing my two friends on how to play AstroSmash as they naively thought they could beat Tommy Tallarico's contest score...

 

 

 

 

[tripletopper]

I honestly didn't know of Keith Robinson personally, until I made a pitch for a device which turns retrogames online. Keith Robinson was the most enthused of the retro game rights holders with my idea.

 

Oh by the way, I purchase a INTV 1 Flashback Controller Mod Kit and simple instrucitons to add external controllers in the INTV 1, and 3 Flashback controllers, 2 for the original machine,(because you can't use original INTV controllers with the Flashback Mods), and 1 for a pad hack so I can plug an arcade stick in the Intellivision for games that would benefit from it, and then go back to the original controller for games that would benefit from that.

 

I never had a Intellivision as a kid. My brother and I chose Colecovision at the time, but I found Intellivision games and a console or 2 when garage "sale-ing" and thrift shopping in the 90s, and I enjoyed them. I even found rare INTV Corp Intellivision Games like Pole Position, Pac-Man, some post-crash sports games, and a few others, 12 in all, all white label games, for $1 apiece at the Goodwill Outlet Store (If Goodwill wasn't cheap enough, this drops it another level).

 

In the short time I knew him, he was enthusiastic about the Intellivision brand, hardware, and software. He was one of the first one to think of video game preservation. He was kind, and friendly. And he appreciated new technology enough where

[Jeffrey Bouchard]

Rest in peace. Are the planed products going to stay in production? I think keeping in television on and continuing to release new products would be what Keith would want.

[Jeffrey Bouchard]

Rest in peace. Are the planed products going to stay in production? I think keeping in television on and continuing to release new products would be what Keith would want.

[+the1hatman]

Thanks Keith for helping to create something that contributed to many childhood memories of mine and for being a good steward to that creation so I could "re-discover" it as an adult.

 

Godspeed Mr. Robinson.

[tripletopper]

..oops let me finish ... where he could see the old blending with the new well to spread out the old experience as well as a new one. My product, the specifics of which is impolite to hawk so close to the death of a guy who approved of it, would have opened Intellivision to new people, which was Keith's vision for Intellivision. In the same way Frank Sinatra and his music he sung was cool in the 90s until his death, Keith made Intellivision cool, and preserved the Legacy of Intellivision and opened it to new audiences. Not as massively as he would have liked, but enough to make enough of a living where whatever money he made was a bonus to doing a job he loved to do and loved to share, and would do for free anyway.

 

The way I tried to sell Keith on my invention was the fact that more people would pay attention to old games if they were online because most original fans have no local opponents at their skill level. The way was to recruit network opposition. I told him if he funded it, his company would not only get a big portion of profits from Intellivision games being turned online, but with other systems like Atari, Sega, Nintendo, Coleco, SNK, NEC could be turned online with this technology. All the other companies except one said it would be nice if it were real, but no one else wanted to be the guinea pig. Sega banned me off their official website chat pages because they said "we don't do crazy". Not only did Keith say it would be nice if it were true, he did the calculations and said that my way, if it lived up to what was promised, is cheaper to make EVERY game online, than making ONE of his own games online with a traditional networking method.

 

In other words, he took my idea seriously and saw the joys it could bring and how it could be spread to other retro systems. I hope Steve Roni, whom Keith consulted with to see the feasibility of my idea, or whoever will be in charge of the Intellivision properties after Keith's death, will keep the Intellivision name alive, and I'd like to talk to the company's heir(s) once a week has gone by to mourn, and see if my invention can fit in their plans.

 

I hope I described my invention enough to show what kind of person Keith was and how him liking this idea showed something about him more than it sounds like a shill for my idea. But in order to accurately tell the story, I had to describe my relationship. I didn't specify the name or website of my project, though it is researchable if you look up my user id, out of respect for Keith. If it sounds like a shill, I'm sorry, but that's the way I primarily knew Keith personally. I wasn't an Intellivision fan until I found a real good deal at a Garage Sale i the 90s, a console and quite a few games for $5. It's easy to promote Intellivision when you biggest competitor is the Atari 2600. It takes a special kind of person to promote the Intellivision, 3 or more generations later. Keith was that special person.

[+nurmix]

I just posted the image below on the podcast Facebook Page. It was done by our friend "Vipp" - the guy who puts together the majority of the graphic art assets for the show (he's also the voice of "George"). In tribute to Keith...

 

 

 

Sent from my Keyboard Component using Jack's Conversational Intelli-talk cassette

[+Lathe26]

Intellivision Productions (at least when formed) was a partnership with Steve Roney and steve at times was titled as 'vp of software development' for IP. So I imagine the continuing IP ownership would still be in 'BSR' stewardship of a sort

That is a relief. With the recent fiasco of Coleco, I was terrified the same thing could happen to the Intellivision.

[+nurmix]

That is a relief. With the recent fiasco of Coleco, I was terrified the same thing could happen to the Intellivision.

I'm going to do everything I can to make sure something like that doesn't happen.

 

 

 

Sent from my Keyboard Component using Jack's Conversational Intelli-talk cassette

[wolfy62]

So sorry to hear this, he was one of the great ambassadors left for all the remaining Intellivision fans.

 

I hope his legacy lives on and his website keeps moving forward with great retro stuff.

 

My closet is filled with every Intellivision shirt he ever produced, I love and wear them everywhere.

 

I was fortunate enough to meet him at various game Expos, what a great person.I am going to E-mail Emily with a positive message to keep things going, I encourage that from all!

 

Our loss is Heavens gain. Best to you Keith.....