ColecoVision vs. Intellivision

[Stingray]

I never knew there was an INTV Pac-Man. I've never seen the cart anywhere, and INTV carts are actually pretty easy to come by in my area.

 

-S

[Flojomojo]

No contest here. Colecovision had higher video resolution and a better game library, including lots of wonderful arcade ports. Intellivision had a large number of 2-player-only sports titles and some interesting niches (especially TRON, Dungeons & Dragons, and Burgertime), but I choose the CV then and now.

 

As others have pointed out, it's an unfair comparison because of the technological progress in the later system, like comparing the XBOX to the Saturn.

[Retro Rogue]

its not a very fair comparison, 1979 vs 1983

 

i would say a better comparison would be the 5200 vs Colecovision

 

Well considering the 5200 is 1979 technology as well, I don't see that as a viable point of discrepancy. Remember, the 5200 is just an Atari 400 in different clothing.

[Avid Fan]

"Comparing these systems to one another is like having a Rotweiller fight a Jack Russle Terrier. "

 

Funny you say that. I groomed dogs for a few years. And I am much more afraid of a Jack Russel than a Rottweiler. Although once a 160 lb Rott tried to make me his bitch, and then bit me

[JB]

"Comparing these systems to one another is like having a Rotweiller fight a Jack Russle Terrier. "

 

Funny you say that. I groomed dogs for a few years. And I am much more afraid of a Jack Russel than a Rottweiler. Although once a 160 lb Rott tried to make me his bitch, and then bit me

Yah. General rule is the bigger they are, the friendlier they are.

 

 

As a side note... I got assaulted by an asthmatic chihuahua while taking a walk once.

It's hard NOT to be embarassed when a dog runs up going "RARARA*wheeze*RARARA*wheeze*RARARA*wheeze*" at you, whether it actually gets you or not.

[joeybastard]

For anybody with a CV and the Roller Controller, I'd suggest making one of these. I call it my CV arcade stick. It's just a handle from and old broken VCS stick cut down and glued to a CV stick and hooked up to the Roller. It works so well, I can't believe Coleco didn't offer this themselves, although it's only good for 2 button games since that's all the roller can handle. SA games still use the excellent SA sticks.

[raindog]

I had (maybe still have, somewhere) a CV roller controller. I always HATED those red fire buttons.... kept breaking my nails when I would be hitting them rapidly while playing Slither.

[Gabriel]

For those saying the Colecovision has better games than the Intellivision (everyone in this thread other than me), what are these games?

 

Sooner or later, I'm going to be purchasing a Colecovision. But it keeps getting put off, because no matter how much I research I just don't find any particularly good games beyond Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, War Room, and Venture.

 

And Venture is better on the Intellivision. Try it!

 

So, give me some lists of the must have titles. It will help me out when I finally get around to getting a Coleco again.

[chrisbid]

its not a very fair comparison, 1979 vs 1983

 

i would say a better comparison would be the 5200 vs Colecovision

 

Well considering the 5200 is 1979 technology as well, I don't see that as a viable point of discrepancy. Remember, the 5200 is just an Atari 400 in different clothing.

 

i had forgotten about that, but i would say that the atari computer line in the day was a tad more expensive than the intellivision, and designed as a computer first, game machine second, while the intv,was game machine first, and possible computer later, with an expensive keyboard add on.

[joeybastard]

For those saying the Colecovision has better games than the Intellivision (everyone in this thread other than me), what are these games?

 

Sooner or later, I'm going to be purchasing a Colecovision.  But it keeps getting put off, because no matter how much I research I just don't find any particularly good games beyond Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, War Room, and Venture.

 

And Venture is better on the Intellivision.  Try it!

 

So, give me some lists of the must have titles.  It will help me out when I finally get around to getting a Coleco again.

 

Good CV games:

HERO

Choplifter

The Heist

Miner 2049er

War Games

Destructor (Needs steeering wheel)

Turbo (Needs steeering wheel)

Montezuma's Revenge

Jumpman Jr.

Sky Jaguar

Frenzy

Victory(needs roller controller)

Frontline(needs Super Action Sticks)

 

tell you the truth I like most of them but those are my favs:D

[Gregory DG]

Last night, I went through a good portion of the Intv library through an emulator... (someone said Intv Burgertime was the best.) And I gotta say, many of the games were terrible. The colors were awful and the resolution looks only barely better than the 2600. The sounds were pretty good in places though.

 

Then I played a few CV games again... It has bright colors and graphics, and most games are quite fun to play.

 

Not sure how much better Intv games would be on a real system vs. an emulator, but it seems to me that the CV (or even the 2600) was miles better than the Intv.

[joeybastard]

In a small defense of the INTV, most of the emulation of it does suck. However, even on my real system, the graphics/sound/control/speed pale in comparison to the CV.

 

INTV Burgertime is good and probably one of the best games on the system. I don't personally think that's saying much.

[chrisbid]

Last night, I went through a good portion of the Intv library through an emulator... (someone said Intv Burgertime was the best.) And I gotta say, many of the games were terrible. The colors were awful and the resolution looks only barely better than the 2600. The sounds were pretty good in places though.

 

 

there are only 16 colors (the biggest drawback of the INTV), and the resolution isnt as high as the 2600. in 79-81 the INTV was superior, but the popularity/competition of the VCS drove the market to do things with that machine that it was never intended to do. check out the imagic, activision, and late mattel/INTV games to get a good idea of what the system could do.

[adamchevy]

Having owned both a Colecovision and an InTv now I would have to say their pretty even given the current Homebrew market. Given the DK2 Arcade on InTv I would lean a little more towards the InTv if Donkey Kong was the deciding factor. Of course if you could include the Adam computer it might be a little different.

Edited November 9, 2017 by adamchevy

[Video]

Intellivision may barely look better than the 2600, I'm pretty sure it has a lower vertical resolution , but higher horizontal, but it pushes way more sprites. Their still monochromatic though, and it has three color BG instead if just two.

 

Utopia is awesome for it BTW.

 

Coleco is definitely a more capable system, closer to Nintendo than Atari, but I don't recall many must haves outside of the tired arcade remakes.

[mr_me]

Atari games originally were double line resolution, similar to the Intellivision background (ie 96 line vertical resolution). Intellivision sprites were higher resolution. Eventually Atari programmers figured out how to program single line backgrounds for higher resolution. Atari sprites can be tripled and reprogrammed down the screen.

 

Coleco vision sprites were also single colour; they did have 32 of them but only four on a horizontal line. Intellivision could display all eight sprites without flicker; important for its early sports games. Intellivision background tiles were also limited to two colours each, but you could put all the colours up at the same time. Intellivision has 16 colours, one more than coleco vision.

 

Intellivision's big technical advantage over coleco vision was multi-directional scrolling. Few games took advantage of it (ie Auto Racing, Dreadnaught Factor). Coleco vision has the technical advantage of high resolution and much more ram, allowing it to bitmap the entire display.

 

At the time graphic resolution and arcade titles was so important that it really distinguished the coleco vision. Today, graphics and arcade games are less important, and coleco vision had few quality arcade titles anyway. Intellivision's catalog of original games help distinguish it today, although you have to read the instructions to play many of them.

Edited November 9, 2017 by mr_me

[zzip]

Intellivision may barely look better than the 2600, I'm pretty sure it has a lower vertical resolution , but higher horizontal, but it pushes way more sprites. Their still monochromatic though, and it has three color BG instead if just two.

At the time it was released, INTV graphics blew away the 2600 graphics. Most 2600 games were using very primitive blocky graphics.

 

But because of the way the 2600 does graphics, basically they have to be done on the fly, scanline by scanline, programmers were able to increase the apparent vertical resolution of the 2600, and with increased rom sizes, 2600 games became closer to par with INTV

[djour]

My 6 year old daughter is currently hooked on Snafu for the Inti, we can put 3-4 hours at a time easily. The Coleco controllers are a little to bulky for her to use comfortably.

 

So, for now, the Intellivision wins, but I reserve the right to change my opinion as my family evolves.

[+Black_Tiger]

My family got an Intellivision fairly early on (1980?) and I was lucky that my parents happened to pick some of the best games to buy at the times of purchase.

 

We later got an Intv III to replace our dead Master Component and our last game was purchased after the NES and SMS were out.

 

I loved the Colecovision when I got to try it a few times at friends and family's homes and wound up with one and a decent stack of games for a year and a half or so during the mid to late 80's.

 

The Intellivision will also remain one of my favorite consoles and libraries and the AD&D games alone make the Intellivision's original library superior to Colecovision's.

 

Many of the comments make it clear that people not familiar with the actual games are just jumping to conclusions based on a quick image search or crappy youtube videos.

[+LS650]

I have both, and while I like both I would give the Intellivision the edge.

 

The reasons? Well for one thing, the CV is (generalizing here) mostly arcade conversions that, while great back in the day, don't hold up so well when you can emulate the arcade originals on a half-decent PC. The Intellivision, on the other hand, has a lot of unique games that can't really be found on other platforms.

 

And I know this is trivial, but the Intellivision has got that faux woodgrain going on. I mean, c'mon, nothing says 1970s nostalgia like fake woodgrain.

[BydoEmpire]

I'd give the nod to the Intellvision. Three words: "Dungeons and Dragons." I grew up with the Inty so high nostalgia and familiarity factors.

 

The Imagic Inty titles were also awesome, as were the sports titles, Utopia and other unique offerings.

 

I do like the CV, but pretty much just for a small handful of games: Frenzy, Venture, etc.

 

Interestingly, since the Flashbacks came out I haven't played on real hardware for either console.

[Dr.Electric]

The Coleco may be full of arcade ports but for home Consoles most of those may as well ahve been exclusives, and some cross-platform games on the Intelli and VCS are so far behind the Colecovision you could swear they are different games.

 

Intellivision had a lot of unique titles but a lot of them were hard to control and once you go back to many of them few still stand out.

[sn8k]

Colecovision all day.

 

I would also rather have the Phoenix over the Amico. Sure the new intellivision will be mass produced and feature 3D graphics but Id rather play Sydney Hunter, Prisoner of War, Tank Mission and Dracula's Castle in 2D than SharkShark and AstroSmash in 3D.

 

Intellivision is mostly shit that shines at times.  Nothing more.

 

[+LS650]

5 hours ago, sn8k said:

Intellivision is mostly shit that shines at times.  Nothing more.

Ouch! 

[1980gamer]

Having owned both consoles from the first few weeks of release.  I feel I can comment here.

Of course, this is personal opinion.

 

I played a lot of hours of Donkey Kong on colecovision.  The intellivision version sucked.  Well, maybe that was intentional?  Look at the homebrew version. Better than the Colecovision console version!

This could be said across the board.  The CV console versions are much better than what they put out for the 2600 and intellivision.  Look at the 2600 venture homebrew!

 

I will say I played a lot of Lady Bug, Venture and a few others.  But these were 1 player playing time.  I'd rather play 2 player games.  Very few 2 player ( non turn based ) games exist on the CV.

 

The intellivision has the best 2 player sports games.  I still like MLB better than any other baseball game.  I did like Hardball on the C=64 a lot and Wii was unique as well.

 

let's look at the arcade conversions Mattel put out.  Burgertime.  Much better than CV.  Bump n Jump again much better than CV.  ( again, may have been intentional like the CV releases on the Intellivision )

Locomotion is pretty true to the arcade as well as mission x. I was never a fan of Lock n chase, but many others like it.

 

The exclusives like Night Stalker and Tron Deadly Discs.  You could say they were on other consoles, but the 2600 versions were not nearly as good.  Great for VCS games though.

 

The controllers.  Well, lets just say, if you played an Intellivision II,  I guaranty you hated it!  LOL.  However, I first had the original console and I LOVE these controllers.  

I didn't mind the coleco controllers for CV games and I even would use the CV controllers for many 2600 games.

However, They seemed to fail pretty quickly.  Fire button and joystick. 

I did like the Driving Controller concept. Just didn't like turbo very much.  The Super Action controllers were a step up, but I didn't love them.

I have a roller controller but I don't think I have ever used it?  Both had a 2600 module and the Intellivision had Voice.  But with only a handful of games.  The ESC with WSMLB and Voice was pretty cool.  But not as good as MLB.

Intellivision had PlayCable to download games way back when and ROCK BAND...  way before.  But the crash prevented that growth.

 

So for add-ons.  I think Intellivision has an edge.  I have the Adam as well, so don't try to tell me about that POS.

The ESC sucked also!  And the promised Keyboard Component was never really released.

 

Based on FUN times and game play I pick Intellivision hands down.  Don't get me wrong.  I am a CV fan. I have an SGM and 2 Phoenix consoles. The multi-cart etc.

 

Intellivision just has better unique games and the best sports games.

 

The other problem NOW, I can play all of the real arcade games, why bother playing on the CV?  Some nice homebrew games for certain.

The Atgames Legend Ultimate has basically put my colecovision in the closet!

 

I am hoping the Amico puts the Intellivision in the closet too.