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Why do you like Intellivision?


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My dad first got our Sears Super Video Arcade in around 1980. As I grew up it became a great way to play two player games. I have many, many memories of Baseball (YER OUT), Frog Bog, Auto Racing, and Triple Action. The single player games were a ton of fun, too! Masters of the Universe, Space Armada, and Night Stalker were great.

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5 minutes ago, frdarryl said:

My dad first got our Sears Super Video Arcade in around 1980. As I grew up it became a great way to play two player games. I have many, many memories of Baseball (YER OUT), Frog Bog, Auto Racing, and Triple Action. The single player games were a ton of fun, too! Masters of the Universe, Space Armada, and Night Stalker were great.

Reading this brings on the nostalgia.

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because I grew up with it: I got it when I was thirteen (or maybe fourteen) and kept on playing it even though all my friends moved to C64. It has always been like one of my best friends during all these years and now that I'm fast approaching my 50s I know I will never betray it.

I know, I'm not telling why I like Intellivision, but only how much.

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I received an Atari and my best friend got an Intellivision the same Christmas (1980). We spent tons of hours together playing games on both systems. I have great memories of playing Major League Baseball, Astrosmash, Swords & Serpents, Lock N Chase, Beauty and the Beast, Demon Attack, Space Battle, Space Armada, Advanced D&D (Cloudy Mountain), Burgertime, Poker & Blackjack, Skiing, Beamrider, Bowling and lots of other games. 10 years later I bought my own intellivision and my college roommates and I discovered many of the later releases like Body Slam Wrestling, Super Pro Football (which I purchased new instead of Stadium Mud Buggies) and Slam Dunk Basketball as well as a bunch of older games, some that I hadn't played before. Today I love getting homebrews and later this year I'll be excited to get an Amico. 40 years of Intellivision and I've never outgrown it!

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Back in the day... my family was poor and couldn't afford anything so luxurious as a videogame console, but most of the other local kids had an Atari and I would have to visit them to get in some gaming.  One guy in the neighbourhood, though, had an Intellivision with several games.  He invited me over one afternoon and we spent several hours playing Astrosmash and Utopia.  I was impressed with how much better the graphics were, but cursed the funny controller.  It was many years after that before I saw an Intellivision again, but the memory has always stuck with me.

Edited by ls650
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To echo comments above, I had friend with Ataris for a couple of years while I was console-less, but my uncle took advantage of a special Intellivision offer where he bought the system and had a slew of games mail ordered to 3 or 4 different addresses of family members on the cheap. It was the finest Christmas ever. My brother who was a huge sports fan played baseball, football, and basketball with me. My uncle taught me how to play poker with Poker and Blackjack, and my older and nerdy friend next door and I learned to master Utopia and had epic Sea Battle fights.  I spent time solo with Sub Hunt and Cloudy Mountain, and was terribly excited to get a decent home conversion of Qbert. Eventually when the crash hit and cartridges were everywhere in bins for a few bucks stumbled on a handful of later releases (including Tarmin, which was life changing). Although an Atari 800xl and then Atari ST took over, I still brought out the Intellivision from time to time, even taking it to the college dorm where we would have Horse Racing events after dinner. 

 

The system was innovative with 16 directions and a keypad, depth with games that utilized different controls and strategies, and the Intellivoice module. The games had charming box art, and artful use of overlays with cool instruction manuals. It seemed so much more 'grown up' than the more popular Atari 2600. It's still my favorite system ever, and many of the games hold up well even today. 

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I liked the relative depth of the games, the relatively higher resolution graphics, and the extra inputs made possible by the complex controllers. I came to it during the cartridge crash of 83-84 so it was a value option for me as well. Some years later, I enjoyed Tower of Doom as an action roguelike. 
 

2014's Intellivision Flashback was cute but I wish it had sold better so it could get an update with some emulation fixes and more games. 
 

As much as I enjoyed it, games (and I) have moved on. I have warm remembrances but I'm unlikely to put any money into new things with that name. 

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BURGERTIME!

 

It's one of the two systems I still own and constantly play. The other being Colecovision. I really like the cartridge presentations with the gatefold boxes and the overlays (even though I have pretty much memorized the buttons so don't ever use the overlays) and it reminds me of my childhood playing Burgertime with my best friend for a few hours and then running outside like a lunatic until the LA smog made our lungs hurt :)

 

 

 

 

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I never had one growing up and didn't know anyone who did. I have a limited collection of games but I loved ADD Cloudy. I'm a mark for RPG's or in this case action adventures. I loved how for an early game I still had many of those things I loved during the NES and SNES era.

 

I'm hoping to eventually get a few of the more popular games.

 

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@MrBeefy the old collections on CD are good if you don't mind playing on a computer (and you can bring a modern emulator and run the ROMs if you want). 
 

Intellivision Lives for DS is neat because it uses the touchscreen to simulate the number pad with an overlay. The emulator isn't perfect but the controller gimmick works for this purpose. Again, it's a shame it was never updated with the emulator quirks fixed and more software included, but it's still neat. Not "buy a whole new system to play old games" neat, but cool if you have a 3DS already. 

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8 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

@MrBeefy the old collections on CD are good if you don't mind playing on a computer (and you can bring a modern emulator and run the ROMs of your want). 
 

Intellivision Lives for DS is neat because it uses the touchscreen to simulate the number pad with an overlay. The emulator isn't perfect but the controller gimmick works for this purpose. Again, it's a shame it was never updated with the emulator quirks fixed and more software included, but it's still neat. Not "buy a whole new system to play old games" neat, but cool if you have a 3DS already. 

Yeah I've tried it some.

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I grew up with the Intellivision. Purchased in 1980 with my paper route money. Mowing yards and shoveling snow to pay for the games. I supported the system until around 1990 buying games through mail order. This is the only system I still play on a a regular basis. I purchased a sears super video arcade not to long ago, and I think I like this version the best.

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Aside from my love affair with the Intellivision contests, which forever cemented the system's place in my history, if you mean why did my friends, family, and I play my Intellivision more than the 2600, 5200, and Colecovision at the time?  I think streamlined gameplay coupled with decent enough graphics and great multiplayer action.  Sports games (especially the original Football, Baseball, Bowling, & Skiing), Snafu, Utopia, Shark Shark, and Horse Racing were always in high rotation.  Solo, I played the crap out of Utopia, Tron Deadly Discs, Tarmin, and Space Spartans.

 

One thing I'm noticing when going back and playing the original games with my kids is there are way fewer co-op games than I remember.  Most everything has a competitive only option, so definitely looking forward to co-op options with Amico.

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14 minutes ago, HunterZero said:

I won my Intellivision (with Star Strike pack in!) in a Streets Paddle Pop ice cream "Lick a Prize" competition when I was little. I mailed away a competition entry for 2nd chance draw, and they told me I'd won a bicycle... but the Intellivision turned up instead. It was the only game console I had as a kid.

Cool! 

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I had discussed this in much greater detail in the past.  It's simply what I grew up with.  If we had had Atari like everyone else (and apparently, one of the family members suggested it just for Pac-Man - this was in 1981), then maybe I would have moved on to something like the Amiga.  But the Intellivision was truly special to me.  We had one, and my cousins who lived nearby had a Sears Super Video Arcade with a few different games than we had.  Other cousins of mine had the PlayCable in summer 1983 when we went to go visit.  Besides that, nobody I knew had one.

 

Our system came with three games.  The first one we played was Astrosmash.  My uncle came over to check it out, and he did the best among all of us.  I was just as happy to watch as I was to play.  When I wasn't playing, I was checking out the box and the game catalogs.  That's why I enjoy games with "feelies" to this day: there's more to the game than the gameplay.

 

Also, the "art style by design" due to the low resolution and bright & cheerful 16-color palette gave an air of familiarity across all the games for the system.  That and the GROM "font".  Even Space Battle, the second game we played, wasn't so much about protecting the Mothership as it was about my "stargazing" while my sister went on to achieve "ALL CLEAR" first among us.

 

Then there was my desire for a computer in 1983.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered the Intellivision was in fact expandable to a computer!  I found it out when my father and I spotted The Jetsons' Ways With Words at a nearby Child World store, and found out we needed the ECS to play.  When we finally got one, I went on to write a number of crappy games with the built-in BASIC interpreter.

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