Jump to content
IGNORED

Mattel Intellivision - Game Opinion Summaries / First Impressions, Part 1


Recommended Posts

18 minutes ago, mr_me said:

In Deadly Discs, the disc loses momentum on the return, otherwise you couldn't catch it.

This is what happens when it doesn't lose enough momentum and you try and catch it - you lose your fingers!!!!

 

:rolling:

 

 

Look at those little hot dogs go flying off of the poor guy's hand :lol:

 

makes me laugh every time I see this scene

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To the OP.  I appreciate your write-ups, but it kinda seems like you are having a miserable time.  You might need to the approach the Intellivision from a different perspective (or something) to get more enjoyment out of playing the games.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, wongojack said:

To the OP.  I appreciate your write-ups, but it kinda seems like you are having a miserable time.  You might need to the approach the Intellivision from a different perspective (or something) to get more enjoyment out of playing the games.

 

Miserable?  That's going too far; sure, it's not exactly my favorite system and I'd probably put it in the lower third of my 'how much I like consoles' list, but I've had much worse times with other games, and things I've written.

 

If you want to talk miserable, the one that was indeed miserable to have to work on, and is indeed why I don't do lists that long all at once anymore, is this one: http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=186 I dislike the Playstation so much, that was kind of torture to have to spend so much time playing mostly PS1 games, some of them so bad...

 

Honestly, this list took a month to finish more because I kept not wanting to start working on it, but once I finally did I had a reasonably good time.  Sure, I'm hard on a lot of the games, but some were fun despite their issues, like in this second part Space Battle, Space Spartans, Snafu, Venture, Pinball...  maybe a few more (Night Stalker maybe).

 

Or like, Safecracker?  At first I wanted to give up pretty much right away, since navigating is so absurdly difficult. (Safecracker with IntelliVoice would be great by the way... voice for the directions!) But looking up how to play the game, and sticking with it enough to manage to at least complete a safe and get past that, was pretty interesting and well worth my time.

 

 

Also the Sears Super Video Arcade is a pretty nice-looking console.  It's got a cool classic look.  Of the five pre-crash consoles I have (2600 (4-switch), 5200, Colecovision, Intellivision - Super Video Arcade, Odyssey 2) it's one of the best-looking ones, and definitely looks a lot nicer than the 2600, never mind the Colecovision, one of the ugliest systems I own... the 5200 and O2 look nice also, but the Super Video Arcade might be on top, based on just how it looks. ... oh, and I also have a 7800 if that counts, but it's only average looking, and anyway the poor thing broke years ago and I haven't been able to fix it.

Edited by A Black Falcon
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, A Black Falcon said:

... definitely looks a lot nicer than the 2600, never mind the Colecovision, one of the ugliest systems I own... 

 

The Atari 2600 with its woodgrain finish is a beauty to behold and the colecovision has a huge footprint but with a purpose so it has a charm its own

 

obviously you must want to rumble with comments like that!  Lol all kidding aside I don’t think the look may have been great but the colecovision was the first console that for the first time had many arcade games that at least played and in many cases looked very similar to their arcade counterpart.  Nowadays someone tries the colecovision games, 90% of them you can probably appreciate more by playing the read deal in mame but then that’s missing the point.  Somehow someway you have to wear those pink colored glasses when playing the old consoles and look at it from the era these were born in. Programming a game that basically fits in a memory footprint smaller than a couple of typed pages in a word document shouldn’t be ignored 

 

in saying that I’m very much a Coleco fanboy so maybe I wear a couple of thickness of pink sunglasses I dunno.  I will say even nostalgia wise there are limits so with that in mind 90% of the Atari 2600 games haven’t aged very well but for some reason the Intellivision and colecovision (and the c64) seem immune to that, as they have just enough detail in their games to be acceptable.  The apple 2 is starting to fall into the Atari 2600 realm of few and far between for acceptable to play but those exceptions certainly are worthwhile to play for sure

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While it's true that in 1982 all the kids wanted to play arcade games at home, the best home video games at the time were not arcade conversions.

 

Even if most Atari 2600 games haven't aged well there's still plenty of quality cartridges in its 500+ library.  All systems in the eighties have their share of duds.  The colecovision is ugly but it's not a beauty contest.

Edited by mr_me
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No matter what your age, we can all agree that the Nintendo 64 is uglier than the mentioned consoles and if you think that it was a pain to play the Playstation library, you might as well avoid the N64 library altogether. Especially if an unconventional stock controller can be a dealbreaker for you. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

14 hours ago, Loafer said:

 

The Atari 2600 with its woodgrain finish is a beauty to behold and the colecovision has a huge footprint but with a purpose so it has a charm its own

 

obviously you must want to rumble with comments like that!  Lol all kidding aside I don’t think the look may have been great but

The Colecovision looks like... I don't know, some industrial product or something?  It's kind of amazingly ugly.  And then I make it look even worse by not putting controllers in the top, and instead using the trackball to get way better action buttons and a lot more cable length.  That leaves half of the case as a pointless pair of holes with cables coming out of them. At least the Atari 5200 has a cover for the pointless, empty controller holder part of its shell.  Not so for Coleco.

 

I got the Colecovision last summer, and recently decided to kind of hide it by putting my NES sideways on top of the controller-holder part of the Colecovision.  It actually fits pretty well, and that channel on the bottom of the NES is perfectly placed for letting out the Roller Controller cable.

 

As for the 2600, sure it has a very iconic look, but I've never been a fan of ridges on consoles -- I think the original PS2 looks awful, with its ridges -- and why do cartridges go in it backwards?  Also, the Super Video Arcade has a band of woodgrain across the front as well. :)  (And yes, the Super Video Arcade has some ridges too, but they're much less prominent.)

 

14 hours ago, Loafer said:

the colecovision was the first console that for the first time had many arcade games that at least played and in many cases looked very similar to their arcade counterpart.  Nowadays someone tries the colecovision games, 90% of them you can probably appreciate more by playing the read deal in mame but then that’s missing the point.  Somehow someway you have to wear those pink colored glasses when playing the old consoles and look at it from the era these were born in. Programming a game that basically fits in a memory footprint smaller than a couple of typed pages in a word document shouldn’t be ignored 

 

in saying that I’m very much a Coleco fanboy so maybe I wear a couple of thickness of pink sunglasses I dunno.  I will say even nostalgia wise there are limits so with that in mind 90% of the Atari 2600 games haven’t aged very well but for some reason the Intellivision and colecovision (and the c64) seem immune to that, as they have just enough detail in their games to be acceptable.  The apple 2 is starting to fall into the Atari 2600 realm of few and far between for acceptable to play but those exceptions certainly are worthwhile to play for sure

Yeah, that really is the question, isn't it -- what has more value, original titles or arcade ports?  Like, comparing the Colecovison and Intellivision, Coleco probably has somewhat better first-party games on average, but almost none of them are original, they're just ports.  Sure, it's nice that the Colecovision has a great version of Mr. Do, good Time Pilot, etc... but exclusives are what matter the most for a platform, more so than ports, and it has almost none of those.  Of the 30-something Colecovision games I have, what, maybe one is actually exclusive (Super Action Baseball), I think, and it's a pretty unimpressive game.  Back then, having good home ports of games like Donkey Kong, Pepper II, Mr. Do, and the like probably was awesome, sure, but for someone playing it today, beyond the 'it's neat to see a solid version of this game on this hardware' I probably do think exclusives have more weight.

 

However, if you're talking better ports vs. not as good exclusives that's tougher, as having the better overall games should count for a lot, but having games you can't play elsewhere is very important and a good draw to a console.  Kind of tough to decide there. This very much applies to the Jaguar vs. 3DO in terms of game libraries as well of course...

13 hours ago, mr_me said:

While it's true that in 1982 all the kids wanted to play arcade games at home, the best home video games at the time were not arcade conversions.

 

Even if most Atari 2600 games haven't aged well there's still plenty of quality cartridges in its 500+ library.  All systems in the eighties have their share of duds.  The colecovision is ugly but it's not a beauty contest.

Certainly, the games matter more than how a console looks.  Console aesthetics are worth mentioning but don't decide which console is better or worse, other things, like games, controllers, features, etc. do.

 

Also, yeah, there are some good Atari 2600 games and some bad ones.  Some are definitely still fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...