007 for Intellivision screen shot

[JohnPCAE]

On page 29, there is a screen shot of Parker Bros' 007 for Intellivision that was never released. To my eyes, the scanlines and ghosting clearly show that it's an actual screenshot and not just an artist's mockup, not to mention the reflection of the screen off the TV's case in the upper right of the photo. It makes one wonder just how far they got in developing the game.

 

http://www.digitpress.com/library/magazines/video_games/video_games_oct83.pdf

Edited October 5, 2018 by JohnPCAE

[vprette]

that's a big finding

and what a nice magazine..

[moycon]

Keystone Kapers 2!!

 

Seriously, that is pretty cool. Looks similar to the "screen shot" of in the Atari 2600 Octopussy game by Parker Brothers.

 

[+intvsteve]

That does look like a real photo of the game up on a TV screen. Parker Bros. prototypes, where are you?

[mr_me]

The character jumping on the boxcars looks like a sprite object, suggesting there might be some gameplay and not just a test screen. A prototype or a word from the programmer might clear things up. All the parker bros intellivision cartridges were programmed by a company called Roklan Corporation in Chicago. http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Roklan

 

Edit: According to this article the 2600 version of this game "007 Octopussy" was programmed by Western Technology, the people that made vectrex. It's a different game than the 007 cartridge that was released. So I'm not sure who was working on the Intellivision version.

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/games/james-bond/244065/octopussy-the-james-bond-videogame-that-never-was

Edited October 5, 2018 by mr_me

[+Steve Jones]

Wow they did most of the crappy Coleco conversions too.

[+intvsteve]

Wow they did most of the crappy Coleco conversions too.

 

Wonder who did Lady Bug and Turbo then?

 

Maybe I'm getting soft in my dotage, but the Coleco games did improve.

[+cmart604]

Hopefully Rev can have this done in time for PRGE.

[moycon]

I love games based on movie licence, it would be amazing if this was ever released!

[+Lathe26]

Wow they did most of the crappy Coleco conversions too.

 

We know who wrote the Coleco games? Was it Western Technology or Roklan Corporation?

[vprette]

On page 29, there is a screen shot of Parker Bros' 007 for Intellivision that was never released. To my eyes, the scanlines and ghosting clearly show that it's an actual screenshot and not just an artist's mockup, not to mention the reflection of the screen off the TV's case in the upper right of the photo. It makes one wonder just how far they got in developing the game.

 

http://www.digitpress.com/library/magazines/video_games/video_games_oct83.pdf

 

this picture is surely taken from a TV and has nothing to do with the catalog artwork

 

[mr_me]

 

We know who wrote the Coleco games? Was it Western Technology or Roklan Corporation?

That website doesn't credit any Intellivision games to Western Technologies. If someone ever talks with Jay Smith they can ask him if his company ever worked on Intellivision games.

[m-crew]

Hopefully Rev can have this done in time for PRGE.

2019

[JohnPCAE]

It looks like each man in the photo is using three sprites, for a total of 6. I'm not familiar with the gameplay -- could the remaining 2 be for bullets?

[Rev]

2019

Nah, I may be monkeying around with something else by the end of 2019.

[+JasonlikesINTV]

[mr_me]

It looks like each man in the photo is using three sprites, for a total of 6. I'm not familiar with the gameplay -- could the remaining 2 be for bullets?

I don't think the 007 Octopussy game was released on any platform; very few people would know the gameplay.

 

------------

In that same magazine I found this part on page 35 amusing. The mattel salesmen, talking about supergraphics in cartridges, are mentioning a chip by part number, the GDS-7809. I suppose, technically it could be possible to put the upgraded STIC chip they had developed on the cartridge but you'd also have to have the graphics ram, and composite video circuits in there as well. I don't know if such a thing was seriously considered or possible. Maybe they considered putting it it in the ECS module; that wouldn't have been a bad idea.

Edited October 6, 2018 by mr_me

[m-crew]

Nah, I may be monkeying around with something else by the end of 2019.

So its 2018 then...

[+DZ-Jay]

I don't think the 007 Octopussy game was released on any platform; very few people would know the gameplay.

 

------------

In that same magazine I found this part on page 35 amusing. The mattel salesmen, talking about supergraphics in cartridges, are mentioning a chip by part number, the GDS-7809. I suppose, technically it could be possible to put the upgraded STIC chip they had developed on the cartridge but you'd also have to have the graphics ram, and composite video circuits in there as well. I don't know if such a thing was seriously considered or possible. Maybe they considered putting it it in the ECS module; that wouldn't have been a bad idea.

 

I believe Keith had talked about this, and it's in the BSR page, that those are the comments they were telling the press and the buyers. In actuality, the graphics techniques learned during the production of the Intellivision III prototype were applied to a regular Intellivision Master Component cartridge, like overlaying MOBs on the background for fancy and more colourful title graphics. The other part was the avoidance of using the EXEC directly and relying on one running at 60 Hz, which allowed them to make animations and other effects look better than before. It was just a trick and lots of bullshit.

 

Here are the relevant bits:

 

http://intellivisiongames.com/bluesky/hardware/intelli3_tech.html

 

In private rooms in the Mattel Electronics booth at the June 1982 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago, major toy buyers were told of the upcoming improved Intellivision to bolster their faith in the product line. At the January CES in Las Vegas, they were told, they would see the working system. But by January 1983, Intellivision III still hadn't progressed beyond the preliminary breadboard stage in the Design & Development lab.

So if it never left the lab, what were the toy buyers looking at in the private rooms of Mattel's booth at the January CES? Not a prototype Intellivision III as they thought. They were looking at a plain old Intellivision displaying some really good graphics.

Six cartridges were shown; two were supposedly games in progress, the other four demonstrated enhanced features of Intellivision III. The nearest thing to a real technical advancement in these cartridges was that they contained up to 16K of memory. Since they were all graphics, special effects and music (by Bill Goodrich) and no game play, they could be a lot flashier than the then common 4K real game cartridges.

The two "games in progress," shown with printed packaging, were Treasure of the Yucatan and Grid Shock. The first was a static picture of a stone idol overgrown with jungle vines. An impressive, complex screen, it had been done a year earlier by Eric Wels (Mr. Color) when he was first hired, simply to learn how Intellivision graphics worked. The screen eventually found it way into Bill Goodrich's D&D voice game, Quest.

Grid Shock was the beginnings of an actual game by Andy Sells. A wall that swept back and forth across the playing field, changing perspective as it moved, gave the screen a strong 3-D feel. Grid Shock had been abandoned by Andy since he was spending so much time doing sound effects and music for other games (e.g. Shark! Shark! and TRON Solar Sailer), but what was complete was visually interesting enough to pass as Intellivision III.

The other cartridges, written by Ray Kaestner and programmers at APh, used sleight-of-hand to demonstrate Intellivision III features -- multiplexing moving objects put more than the normal limit of eight on screen at one time (albeit flickering); updating moving object positions every 1/60 of a second instead of the EXEC's normal 1/20 gave the illusion of smoother, faster motion.

So what games were really in development for the Intellivision III? Well, none. Since both systems were CP1610-based, it was decided to just keep writing for the Intellivision.

 

It is funny the extent to which Mattel went to keep the charade and save face. The BSR page doesn't mention that they had a specific "product number" for the fake super graphics cartridges.

 

-dZ.

Edited October 6, 2018 by DZ-Jay

[mr_me]

Yes, Keith never mentioned the GDS-7809 chip. I wonder if the Mattel reps believed such a chip existed.

 

Masters of the Universe was the first and may have been the only cartridge programmed at Mattel that ran at 60Hz. Rick Koenig did the fast moving wind raider phase completely independent of the intellivision iii work. MOTU was the only cartridge officially designated as "supergraphics". Ray Kaestner did the second part with lots of moving objects using background animation. Locknchase was the first cartridge where I saw an object have multiple colours, so that wasn't new in 1983.

 

Cheshire/Activision, Atari, and maybe Imagic already used these techniques in their intellivision cartridges. They had cartridges running at 60hz or 30hz as well as background moving objects. Mattel should have skipped the exec and made 60hz/30hz cartridges sooner than they did, and made more of them.

Edited October 6, 2018 by mr_me

[+DZ-Jay]

Yes, but Keith never mentioned the GDS-7809 chip. I wonder if the Mattel reps believed such a chip existed.

 

Masters of the Universe was the first and may have been the only cartridge programmed at Mattel that ran at 60Hz. Rick Koenig did the fast moving wind raider phase completely independent of the intellivision iii work. MOTU was the only cartridge officially designated as "supergraphics". Ray Kaestner did the second part with lots of moving objects using background animation. Locknchase was the first cartridge where I saw an object have multiple colours, so that wasn't new in 1983.

 

Cheshire/Activision, Atari, and maybe Imagic already used these techniques in their intellivision cartridges. They had cartridges running at 60hz or 30hz as well as background moving objects. Mattel should have skipped the exec and made 60hz/30hz cartridges sooner than they did, and made more of them.

 

I don't think that was a real chip, it was just part of the ruse. In my experience, it's the marketing and sales departments that come up with such things. So, yeah, I think they knew it was not real.

 

 

Ray Kaestner did the second part with lots of moving objects using background animation. Locknchase was the first cartridge where I saw an object have multiple colours, so that wasn't new in 1983.

 

I wonder what compels you to point this out? It seems so orthogonal to the conversation. Who cares if these were new techniques. This was a last minute "hail mary" from Mattel trying to stay relevant when in fact they had nothing to show that could compete with the rest -- especially after they had promised and hyped up the Intellivision III so much.

 

Who invented what and when does not seem to have any impact on that point.

 

And if I claimed it above, it was accidental and due to misremembering. I edited the comment later to add the actual quotes from the BSR site.

 

Cheshire/Activision, Atari, and maybe Imagic already used these techniques in their intellivision cartridges. They had cartridges running at 60hz or 30hz as well as background moving objects. Mattel should have skipped the exec and made 60hz/30hz cartridges sooner than they did, and made more of them.

 

Absolutely. Yet, I don't think that games running at 60 Hz was just something they claimed as a feature in those demos. It was just a technique that allowed them to cycle animations more smooth than before, so they could claim it was a better graphics chip.

 

I can imagine the claims going like this: "Look! you see how fast and smooth the objects move and animate? That's the Super-STIC at work! We couldn't do that with the old Master Component"

 

Recall that it says there was no game-play, just fancy graphics screens and animated demos.

 

-dZ.

[JohnPCAE]

That website doesn't credit any Intellivision games to Western Technologies. If someone ever talks with Jay Smith they can ask him if his company ever worked on Intellivision games.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/134301-are-there-any-chance-to-find-those-unreleased-games/page-2

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/88086-octopussy-some-of-the-mystery-solved/

 

A little more info here. I wonder if backups exist. It looks like they reached a certain point and then Parker pulled the plug, and it looks like they indeed had something playable.

Edited October 6, 2018 by JohnPCAE

[mr_me]

...

 

I wonder what compels you to point this out? It seems so orthogonal to the conversation. Who cares if these were new techniques. This was a last minute "hail mary" from Mattel trying to stay relevant when in fact they had nothing to show that could compete with the rest -- especially after they had promised and hyped up the Intellivision III so much.

 

Who invented what and when does not seem to have any impact on that point.

...

 

-dZ.

To give credit to Rick Koenig for his work creating the first 60Hz intellivision cartridge at mattel electronics.

 

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/134301-are-there-any-chance-to-find-those-unreleased-games/page-2

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/88086-octopussy-some-of-the-mystery-solved/

 

A little more info here. I wonder if backups exist. It looks like they reached a certain point and then Parker pulled the plug, and it looks like they indeed had something playable.

Yes, definitely people played the unreleased Atari 2600 version. It's kind of lousy for parker brothers to dictate to western technologies the gameplay, not be satisfied, cancel, give the contract to roklan and let them do whatever they want, a completely different game. But if they were behind schedule PB might have lost faith. Nobody said if the original game played at the tradeshows was any good. Edited October 6, 2018 by mr_me