Intellivision IV release timeframe?

[bikeguychicago]

As has been mentioned here and on the BSR page, the Intellivision III concept was born A) as a stop-gap to compete with both the Atari 5200 and Colecovision and B) as a means to buy time for the Intellivision IV development. 

 

That said, does anyone actually know when Mattel was targeting the Intellivision IV for release (before everything went south, that is)?

 

I do have to say that 1985 was an amazing year on Earth 233, as it saw a grand battle between the Inty IV, Atari 7800, NES, SMS and CV2 for home dominance.

 

Edited April 8, 2021 by bikeguychicago

[Zendocon]

I'm sure you've been to the Blue Sky Rangers History page and seen the screenshot from Masters of the Universe when it was still posted.

 

My guess is that the Intellivision IV was planned for 1985 at the latest.  The original Intellivision III was slated for 1983, and then got canceled, and so if anybody asked, Mattel Electronics was going to claim the ECS was an adequate "upgrade" to the Intellivision III.

[carlsson]

See also this thread about N.A.P. (North American Philips) had a meeting with Mattel to compare notes for the Magnavox Odyssey^4 vs the Mattel Intellivision IV. I think the two projects were quite different from eachother, only having the "4" in common and scheduled for release in the same time period, whether that was late 1984 or early 1985.

 

ubersaurus' link to Earl Green's podcast on the site thelogbook.com has expired, but I found an archive copy at Archive.org. While that site mainly refers to Magnavox, it links quite a bit of the history to the Intellivision too.

 

Exactly how much Mattel and N.A.P. could have benefit from eachother, I'm not sure.

[mr_me]

The "north american philips - 1983" document on pappaintellivision is the agenda of a presentation by mattel to nap, dated february 1983.  It covers intellivision ii, ecs, intellivoice, system changer, intellivision iii, playcable, aquarius.  Under future product directions, it says "Next generation system under development  -   For '84 '85 introduction  -  Advanced videogame and videotex graphics ...".  They also talk about networking and peripherals like printers.  Philips may have had a similar presentation describing what they have. 

 

The Intellivision iv graphics chip was very complex for the time.  Mattel had a preliminary die size and transistor count estimate made in 1982.  No evidence of any further work as far as I know.  In 1983 some programmers were brought in to make some graphics but who knows on what hardware.  Even if the system came out by 1986 it would have been considerably more expensive and advanced then other game consoles.

 

The nes was only in one north american market in 1985, some markets not until 1987.  The atari 7800 and sms came out in 1986.  Haven't heard of an upgraded colecovision, but it would have been easy for coleco to do something based on msx2 graphics (1985), still lacks horizontal hardware scrolling.

Edited April 9, 2021 by mr_me