jaybird3rd

I agree. The Blue Sky Rangers addressed that "rumor" also, which I quoted in an earlier thread on Intellivision Donkey Kong: Then there's this interesting anecdote from Blue Sky Ranger Dave Akers:

Try running it from the command prompt instead of double-clicking the executable; that will at least let you see what the text is saying. The easiest way to do this is to open a command prompt window, drag and drop the executable into it, and press ENTER. It's probably expecting some command-line parameters (which it wouldn't get if you're double-clicking it); if so, the text is probably a "help screen" to show you what the parameters are.

Okay, the final product is starting to take shape. Here are some sample screenshots (all subject to change, of course): The main menu ... The manual pages ... The "trivia files" ... I currently have all of these screens working on the real hardware. However, I've still got some design work to do on the main menu (I'm not completely happy with the colors, among other things), and I also need to add hand controller support and a few other features. I'm expecting the last of my cartridge board prototypes any day now. I've selected a manufacturer for the final boards, and I'll proceed to put them into production after I've successfully tested the prototypes. While I'm waiting on that process, I hope to get the rest of the software written and the manuals and other materials converted and reformatted. I'm going to try to get the thing done within the next three or four weeks, so I can begin shipping them in time for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. As you can see from the main menu screen, I'm experimenting with different names for the final product. "Aquarius Multi-Cart" is descriptive enough, but it's a little too utilitarian. "Multi-Cart", to me, implies a collection of dumps slapped together inside an EPROM or a flash card and stuffed into a cartridge. My cartridge is going to be a lot more than that, so I'm looking for a new name to reflect this. I've got a few ideas of my own, but for some reason I'm stuck on the name "Aquarius Album Cartridge." The multi-game collections that were planned for the Intellivision (like the unreleased "Go for the Gold") were referred to as "album cartridges," so it's a historically appropriate name. It also evokes the idea of flipping through a family album, which is a nice fit with all the historical information that I'll be including. I'm certainly willing to entertain other suggestions, if anyone would like to volunteer their ideas.

Exact sales figures seem to be hard to come by, but that sounds about right to me.

My pleasure! The Intellivision II was a cost reduction of the original Intellivision. It was smaller and had removable controllers, but it was functionally identical; there were no Intellivision II games that weren't also compatible with the original Intellivision. It plays almost all of the same games, except for a handful of third-party titles (mostly from Coleco). Fortunately, the games that aren't compatible were fairly mediocre arcade ports that were all done better on other systems, so in my opinion, you aren't missing much by not having them. Which console you choose is mostly a matter of personal preference; each has its advantages and disadvantages. Many people find the original Intellivision to be the more comfortable of the two to use. The controllers are a bit better than the Intellivision II controllers because the side action buttons provide slightly better tactile feedback, and because the Intellivision II controllers have a large cavity in the back which makes them more awkward to hold. Also, the ON/OFF switch is more straightforward than the Intellivision II's combination power/reset button, which you have to hold down for three seconds in order to turn off the console. The Intellivoice speech synthesis module (a fun add-on that I'd highly recommend) was only manufactured in brown plastic, so it's a better cosmetic match for the original Intellivision. On the other hand, the Intellivision II's controllers and power supply can be replaced without opening the console, and the console hardware is reportedly more reliable than the original Intellivision (although I've never had any trouble with either that couldn't be fixed by replacing a few chips). I also find that the Intellivision II seems to be the cheaper of the two, and if you want to expand your collection to include the Entertainment Computer System accessories, those are a better cosmetic match for the Intellivision II. I've got all of those accessories, so the Intellivision II tends to be the one I use the most, but you won't go wrong with either. There is an excellent multi-cart available, the Cuttle Cart 3.

Congratulations! The Intellivision is a great system. The Intellivision hardware isn't nearly as problematic as the ColecoVision hardware, at least in my limited experience. You might do better to post a notice in the marketplace here on AtariAge: I know there are several collectors here who have spare Intellivision consoles, and you're more likely to get a better product than you would from eBay. Personally, I'd say that about $40 (give or take shipping charges) is a fair price for a working console and a handful of cartridges. You might get one a little cheaper without any games, but a few commons are generally thrown in as freebies, and it will save you the trouble of buying them later. The most common Intellivision titles are still very easy to come by, and as it happens, many of them are among the best games for the system. The power supply is built into the console (at least in the original Intellivision), so no AC adapter is needed. The Intellivision II requires a somewhat unusual power supply, but third-party replacements are available for about $25, so they're not too bad. Composite video upgrades are harder to come by than on Atari consoles, so far, but the RF output from the console is usually quite good. The original Intellivision is somewhat bulky, and is a little too large to fit into standard boxes, so perhaps that accounts for the higher shipping. The Intellivision II is much smaller and lighter. Yes! Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

Are you bumping every Aquarius thread you can find just so you can make snide comments about it? Don't you have anything better to do?

The thing that bugs me about Tengen Tetris is that you have to press "Down" to rotate and the button to drop. I don't know whose idea that was, but it's completely counter-intuitive to me; it seems like it should be the exact opposite.

How old something is has little to do with whether it's "classic" or not. Not every old game or game system (or film, book, piece of music, etc) is a "classic." In my opinion, whether it's a game or a piece of hardware, it has to be a groundbreaker in some important technical or creative way to be legitimately called a classic.

Fortunately, I still have it, along with both controller overlays. I'll PM you.

Here is the worst one I've ever had: This was a World Series Baseball cartridge that I got in a dud eBay lot earlier this year. I've successfully cleaned cartridges before, but I don't think any amount of cleaning could have brought this one back. It went into my scrap pile.

There are more than enough genuine sealed copies of these common titles, so I doubt that anyone would bother doing the work to re-seal opened ones in a convincing way and market them as "new/sealed." It would be like counterfeiting $1 bills.

When Intellivision cartridges fail, they seem to fail in some very unusual ways. Cleaning usually brings them back, but I've seen others where the chips themselves seem to have gone bad. Fortunately, Tron Deadly Discs is a common title, so the time you'd spend trying to recover it beyond a simple cleaning wouldn't be worth it; you might as well just replace it.

The compatibility issues were caused by changes to the Intellivision II's EXEC. The EXEC chip is (I believe) a 40-pin ROM, probably similar to a 16-bit EPROM, which is soldered to the Intellivision II mainboard. Any modification would require desoldering and socketing this chip, which would make for a very cumbersome installation process. My guess is that most Intellivision II owners probably wouldn't want to be bothered with it, especially since the original Intellivision can still be obtained fairly inexpensively. Besides, I'm not sure it would be very easy to "undo" the changes that were made to the EXEC without creating incompatibilities with other games; reportedly, Mattel was reluctant to fix known bugs in the original Intellivision's EXEC (such as negative square roots causing the console to crash) for this very reason. It would probably be easier to simply patch the games that don't work, if this hasn't been done already. You're only talking about a handful of titles, many of which (particularly the Coleco titles) aren't exactly the best ever made for the Intellivision. Of course, the problem with that idea is that you'd need a CC3 (or some other programmable cartridge) in order to play the patched versions on the real hardware.

Yeah, but most of the cheap ones aren't as good as the originals. The shrinkwrap is usually much too "crispy."

As edintv says, the combination power/reset button does not power down the system unless you hold it down; I think you're supposed to hold it for three seconds. It's apparently possible to reduce that amount of time with an internal modification (replacing a resistor, as I recall), but I've never tried it. The Intellivision II controllers aren't nearly as bad as their reputation would suggest. The Intellivision II is my main Intellivision gaming system, and the controllers don't really bother me. People seem to have some funny ideas about how Intellivision controllers should be held/used, and I think that's what accounts for a lot of the bad reviews. There was some talk about doing that (Don Daglow mentioned this during one of his CGE keynotes), and it is unfortunate that Mattel decided against it. There was a mockup made of an Intellivoice II, which was designed to match the Intellivision II, and I think it would have also included multiple languages. It was pictured in Mattel's January 1983 catalog, but it was only a painted block of wood; no working prototype was ever made. I really wish they had at least included the Intellivoice in the ECS Computer Adaptor: there was plenty of room for it, and it would have made the Computer Adaptor more useful. As it is, there are only a few games that can take advantage of it, which is also very unfortunate.

Here are the games from the pre-crash era that I think are the most overrated (I don't have enough experience with the newer games): Pitfall!: It looks great, and we all know it was a groundbreaker, but there just isn't enough "game" there for it to hold my attention. Pitfall! II was a significant improvement, but even that didn't offer as much replay value as I would have liked. Both titles could have used some more random elements to make the gameplay more varied. Megamania: For some reason, this is a major fan favorite, but I found it to be superficial and boring. A spaceship shooting wave after monotonous wave of (mostly unrecognizable) household items? I couldn't stay interested for more than the first few levels. I think "rose-colored glasses nostalgia" is driving a lot of the affection for this one. Beauty and the Beast: This is another major fan favorite, this time on the Intellivision, but it's too flawed for me to really enjoy it (I discussed my reasons for saying so here). With a bit more polish, better jumping physics, and without those damn airplane fly-by interludes, it could have been a much better game. Again, I think this one is a beneficiary of nostalgia.

Video game distribution in the pre-crash years was very different. Major publishers were focused entirely on securing big purchase orders from retailers and stuffing the sales channels with product. Unfortunately, they didn't realize that there was much more product being generated (by them and everyone else) than the fledgling market could absorb, and not nearly enough of it sold through to the customers. They also started building up more and more inventory in their warehouses as a hedge against integrated circuit shortages, and in anticipation of future 1983 sales that never materialized. So, when all that excess product was pushed back onto the manufacturers, they found themselves with a multi-million-dollar glut of merchandise, and that's one of the major factors that lead to the crash. That's probably also the reason why it still isn't too hard to find new/sealed games some twenty-five years later: hidden stashes in forgotten corners keep cropping up, and I think there are still more out there waiting to be rediscovered. The most recent wave of sealed 2600 and Intellivision product is probably from a recent warehouse find in Venezuela. In contrast, Nintendo was much more careful (and more heavy-handed) in how they controlled game production and distribution, so you don't see the same levels of excess new/sealed NES product. EDIT: Looks like SoulBlazer beat me to it!

Eh. Not my type. (Then again, I'm probably not her type, either).

That's a popular story, but it isn't true. It's another example of something that's been repeated so many times by so many different people that it's become "documented historical fact." In his review of the Once Upon Atari series, Chris Crawford told the story this way: But, Howard Scott Warshaw contacted Crawford and denied this: Also, the "other company" that Frye and Warshaw were approached about joining was apparently 20th Century Fox, not Activision. Frye alludes to this in Once Upon Atari, and Warshaw has mentioned it in other interviews.

Ugh, that's too bad. Thanks for posting the contact info for the manufacturer, though; it's good to have it in case the existing supply of plotter pens dries up (literally and figuratively). One thing I'd recommend to anyone who owns a 1020 is to take the pens out and put them back in their tube (with the caps on) when they aren't being used. That will help to keep them from drying out too early.

It isn't thermal (heat-sensitive) paper; it's just an ordinary roll of paper. There's about a 50% chance that the pens are dead; about half the ones I've opened have dried out, and the other half seem to work fine (although not for long, in some cases). B&C ComputerVisions sells rolls of 1020 paper, and they also offer new plotter pens that are imported from somewhere in Europe. The 1020 has a built-in vector font, so it can print text in a variety of sizes as well as graphics. It was especially useful for things like diskette catalogs; you could print out a directory listing from DOS and tape it to the diskette sleeve. The sample programs included with the 1020 are on cassette tape, but I converted them to diskette for my own use. See the attached image. Atari1020MasterDisk.atr

Well, I'll have to find them first. I bought a whole box full of loose Alps plotter mechs just like the one the 1020 uses for 50 cents each. They aren't complete (the solenoid that engages the pen cage was removed), but they all have a full set of gears. When I need a replacement for the ones that go bad, I search through them to see if I can find any good ones. I've only found a few so far, so I've probably got two or three left. I'd love to find a source for new replacements, but I have no idea how to check the dimensions of the old gears. Without doing that, I don't know how I'd find a suitable match.

I'll take one also (I'll PM you as well). The 1020 used very small plastic drive gears that haven't aged well, so they probably won't work without replacing at least one of them. I've got a few spares, though.

Dan Kramer (who designed the 5200 Trak-Ball) said once that RealSports Tennis supports four simultaneous players as well, because he had to supply four Trak-Ball prototypes for the programmer to test it with. I don't know if the four-player option made it into the released version, but it was in the prototype. Actually, I'm much more interested in designing new multi-player games, and of all the Atari machines, I'd rather do them on the 5200 because that's the only Atari console that had a built-in four-player option.