worst Intellivision games

[BassGuitari]

First of all, anybody who thinks Pac-Man is one of the worst Intellivision games is on crack.

 

Second, Zaxxon isn't too bad a game for what it is: a weird arcade port that took some creative (and possibly necessary) liberties with the source material but which manages to be a fun, playable game nonetheless. The Atari 2600-esque graphics could have used a little more detail, but at least they're clean and pleasant to look at. The lack of isometry isn't a deal breaker since it was essentially a gimmick in the first place, and I'm not a huge fan of the arcade version anyway.

 

Donkey Kong is sort of interesting to me. It's a bad game by basically every possible measure. But...if it was just what you had or you were stuck with it, or you forced yourself to spend time with it for some reason, it's still possible to derive some modest enjoyment from it. I would even rather play Donkey Kong than Carnival, Space Hawk, Bomb Squad, Vectron, Locomotion, or Donkey Kong Junior, to name a few.

Edited June 12, 2018 by BassGuitari

[Intymike]

. I would even rather play Donkey Kong than Carnival, Space Hawk, Bomb Squad, Vectron, Locomotion, or Donkey Kong Junior, to name a few.

 

 

Wow...Bomb Squad is a great game!

[1980gamer]

 

 

Wow...Bomb Squad is a great game!

The code, the code. Figure out the code!

 

OH NO!

[BassGuitari]

 

 

Wow...Bomb Squad is a great game!

 

Just not my kind of game.

[1980gamer]

 

Just not my kind of game.

I get that! I think I am the only one here that doesn't like AD&D.

[Atari PAC-MAN Fan]

The code, the code. Figure out the code!

 

OH NO!

 

"It won't be easy! Replace this third, this fourth, this second, this first."

Edited June 13, 2018 by Atari PAC-MAN Fan

[fdr4prez]

The code, the code. Figure out the code!

 

OH NO!

am I the only one who says this, either out loud or in my head, whenever you need to type in any kind of passcode, or password, or fiddle with a combination lock?

 

I'll even hear a "they'll never do it in time!" pop into my head if I type in a wrong password hoping my account doesn't get locked out before I can guess it correctly.... Stupid IT people...

[DZ-Jay]

am I the only one who says this, either out loud or in my head, whenever you need to type in any kind of passcode, or password, or fiddle with a combination lock?

 

I'll even hear a "they'll never do it in time!" pop into my head if I type in a wrong password hoping my account doesn't get locked out before I can guess it correctly.... Stupid IT people...

 

Hahaha! Nope! I do that too. Also, when someone in a movie says something like "we need to figure out this code..." I tend to respond with "the code! the code! figure out the code!" in my best Bomb Squad impression.

[fdr4prez]

 

Hahaha! Nope! I do that too. Also, when someone in a movie says something like "we need to figure out this code..." I tend to respond with "the code! the code! figure out the code!" in my best Bomb Squad impression.

Sweet, glad to hear that I am not alone.

 

When driving and I get temporarily blinded by the sun, or a high beam, etc, I pull out a "I can't see 'em..." followed "stay on target..."

 

Anyone?

[DZ-Jay]

Sweet, glad to hear that I am not alone.

 

When driving and I get temporarily blinded by the sun, or a high beam, etc, I pull out a "I can't see 'em..." followed "stay on target..."

 

Anyone?

Hmmm this is getting weird.

 

Whenever I give directions to my wife or a friend who is driving, instead of saying "go straight," I typically say "stay on target..." "stay on target..." Followed eventually by "... they came... from... behind!"

[+wongojack]

Sweet, glad to hear that I am not alone.

 

When driving and I get temporarily blinded by the sun, or a high beam, etc, I pull out a "I can't see 'em..." followed "stay on target..."

 

Anyone?

 

 

"Stay on Target" definitely comes up in my house all the f'ing time. I can't NOT say it.

[+Lathe26]

My go-to-phrase occurs when I'm asked "What do you need?"

 

"I need a droid who understands the binary language of moist vaporators. Vaporators? Sir, my first job was programming binary load lifters..." and on and on

[fdr4prez]

When I run out of gas in my lawnmower, I tend to exclaim, "did you hear that? they've shut down the main reactor; we'll be destroyed for sure...this is madness!!!"

 

And when I burn food, or even burn up an electrical component on a board, who doesn't scream "No disintegrations!"?

 

 

Now back to more Inty based catchphrases... I've previously had my older laptops saying "hello commander, computer reporting" during boot, and it would say, "the battle is over" during shutdown... I need to find these snippets again and add these to my current laptop.

[mr_me]

When I run out of gas in my lawnmower, I tend to exclaim, "did you hear that? they've shut down the main reactor; we'll be destroyed for sure...this is madness!!!"

 

And when I burn food, or even burn up an electrical component on a board, who doesn't scream "No disintegrations!"?

 

 

Now back to more Inty based catchphrases... I've previously had my older laptops saying "hello commander, computer reporting" during boot, and it would say, "the battle is over" during shutdown... I need to find these snippets again and add these to my current laptop.

 

If you add the -Vxxxx switch to jzintv it will write a wav file for each intellivoice phrase Each wav filename prefixed with xxxx. You do have to play the game and get to all the phrases.

 

[fdr4prez]

 

If you add the -Vxxxx switch to jzintv it will write a wav file for each intellivoice phrase Each wav filename prefixed with xxxx. You do have to play the game and get to all the phrases.

 

 

Thanks.

 

That'll save me the time from digging around on my home computer looking for these files.

 

Space Spartan is one of my "go to" games, so it's no trouble for me to play it again, and again, and again....

[vprette]

maze a tron was a big disappointment to me, but I know someone like it

[+doctorclu]

I read this and realized I need to play more than Carl's DK, Planet Patrol, TRON Deadly Discs, Skark Skark, and B-17 Bomber.

 

Maybe if I played more games than that I would have some to complain about.

 

Conversely, there is a lot of the Intellivision library that doesn't catch my interest enough to play.

 

Oh wait, one came to me... Space Spartans.

 

Yeh all the voice games really drew me in. Loved B-17 so much I tried Tron Solar Sailer (had some fun), tried Bomb Squad (loved the complexity and options, never got good at it.) But Space Spartans... sadly Star Raiders on the Atari 800 just spoiled me for that.

 

So you have your typical "STAR TREK" text game with graphics AND voice. Nice. Sectors, just you against the armada.

 

The computer, voice, and damage control system is great. A lot of it is great. But no hyperspace sequence... not a deal killer, but what a waste.

 

But the in sector controls su... are extremely disappointing. Yeh, let's take a TUG BOAT into a high stakes, frantic battle.

 

I wonder if the in sector battle sequence of Space Battle can be grafted into the sector battle sequence of Space Armada? Now that would be a kick a$$ game.

[mr_me]

With Space Spartans make sure you select speed '5'. All other speeds are significantly slower. The problem with space spartans is that for an 8k cartridge most of it was dedicated to speech; and that's not very much rom left for the game. The other voice cartridges were 12k.

 

I like Space Battle a lot but it was always odd to me that your ship seems stationary in battle. The Space Battle ships seem they should be more like one man fighters where the Space Spartans ship staffed with a crew seems more like it should be the larger slower ship.

Edited August 6, 2018 by mr_me

[fdr4prez]

As I've previously mentioned here, Space Spartans is one of my "go to" games, but I've always wanted a space station battle for when you travel to the alien starbases.

 

When you arrive on the square with an alien starbase, you first destroy all the flying alien ships but then you should immediately have a battle with the starbase itself - not quite like a Dreadnaught Factor where you repeatedly only fly across it in one direction, but you should do something to destroy the actual alien starbase.

 

When they arrive to your starbase they are certainly destroying something, so why can't we destroy their base?

 

It is rather anticlimactic to kill all the alien ships and have the alien starbase automatically destroyed, too.

 

For now, I just pretend that once I destroy the alien ships in that square then their starbase uses hyper-drive and jumps off the grid to escape my ship's wrath...this is why the game continues endlessly

[+doctorclu]

With Space Spartans make sure you select speed '5'. All other speeds are significantly slower. The problem with space spartans is that for an 8k cartridge most of it was dedicated to speech; and that's not very much rom left for the game. The other voice cartridges were 12k.

 

I like Space Battle a lot but it was always odd to me that your ship seems stationary in battle. The Space Battle ships seem they should be more like one man fighters where the Space Spartans ship staffed with a crew seems more like it should be the larger slower ship.

 

Space battle was all about the one man fighter (Battlestar Galactica Viper) As for the starfield, well, yeh it did seem stationary. Bothered me at first, but then I realized that stars would not whizz by, though they might move around in the background. Wonder if there is a way to have the background move when you move the cursor?

[Atari PAC-MAN Fan]

 

Space battle was all about the one man fighter (Battlestar Galactica Viper) As for the starfield, well, yeh it did seem stationary. Bothered me at first, but then I realized that stars would not whizz by, though they might move around in the background. Wonder if there is a way to have the background move when you move the cursor?

 

Space Battle is fun when you play for the first time, but when you beat the game, it just ends.

[mr_me]

 

Space Battle is fun when you play for the first time, but when you beat the game, it just ends.

Do you play it at difficulty level 5. Space Battle was the first cartridge we had along with Poker&BJ, and I kept playing it long after I stopped playing the arcade conversions. Nothing wrong with games that end. E.g. AD&D, Dreadnaught Edited August 7, 2018 by mr_me

[Ignorama]

Every game with the word "Fun" in it is terrible. I also dislike all multiplayer only games. They are in fact not that bad, but they have no AI and so they are also not that good. Unfortunately its hard to find an opponent in our days, so they turned out to be nearly unplayable.

 

So I rather play DK from Coleco than any Fun-Game and any MP-only Game, which means they are kind of worse than DK :-/

[Intymike]

Unfortunately its hard to find an opponent in our days, so they turned out to be nearly unplayable.

 

 

 

Maybe that true nowadays, but back in the 80s I had lots of fun playing Baseball and Sea Battle with my brother in law.

[+Lathe26]

Every game with the word "Fun" in it is terrible.

Nurmix has heard me say this several times but I like to phrase it as "Any game with the word Fun in it isn't". 😉