INTV Pac-Man Release Date

[+JasonlikesINTV]

Does anyone know when the INTV version of Pac-Man was released?

 

I know that the Atarisoft version for Intellivision was released at the end of 1983.  The remaining Atarisoft stock was later sold by INTV. According to the BSR page for Pac-Man:

 

INTV Corp. bought the remaining inventory of Pac-Man cartridges after Atari stopped distributing them. Sales were still strong enough that when the stock ran out in the mid-1980s, INTV bought the software rights from Atari, relicensed the game from Namco and manufactured new cartridges, removing the Atari logo from the game's title screen and packaging.

 

All three Atarisoft games were advertised in most of the Triton Catalogs.  They stopped advertising Centipede after Winter '87, but Pac-Man and Defender were still available through '89.

 

Spring '85:

 

Fall '85 (This is the last Triton catalog to use pics of Atarisoft boxes):

 

Spring '86:

 

In Fall '86, the 3 Atarisoft games were listed separately, but all still available:

 

By Spring '87, Defender wasn't advertised, but Pac-Man and Centipede were still available:

 

By Summer '87, all three were advertised:

 

In Winter '87, all three still available:

 

'88 Sports Issue:  Pac-Man & Defender advertised:

 

Fall '88: Pac-Man and Defender advertised:

 

Holiday '89: Pac-man and Defender advertised:

 

 

[+cmart604]

Had never noticed that. Good job science boy! 

[+JasonlikesINTV]

17 hours ago, cmart604 said:

Had never noticed that. Good job science boy! 

Yeah, since it was sort of a 2nd run when stock ran out it's hard to pin down the release date.  Almost every other game of the 125 had at least a reliable year of release.  Also, should we really consider this one as a unique release?  It's basically an Intellivision Inc game!  Time to revisit 124? ? ?

[BSRSteve]

2 hours ago, JasonlikesINTV said:

Yeah, since it was sort of a 2nd run when stock ran out it's hard to pin down the release date.  Almost every other game of the 125 had at least a reliable year of release.  Also, should we really consider this one as a unique release?  It's basically an Intellivision Inc game!  Time to revisit 124? ? ?

I believe there are 125 without counting Pac-Man has two releases......

[+cmart604]

3 hours ago, JasonlikesINTV said:

Yeah, since it was sort of a 2nd run when stock ran out it's hard to pin down the release date.  Almost every other game of the 125 had at least a reliable year of release.  Also, should we really consider this one as a unique release?  It's basically an Intellivision Inc game!  Time to revisit 124? ? ?

As Steve mentioned, it's not part of the 125. 

[+JasonlikesINTV]

12 hours ago, BSRSteve said:

I believe there are 125 without counting Pac-Man has two releases......

 

10 hours ago, cmart604 said:

As Steve mentioned, it's not part of the 125. 

Crap, I think I knew that.  I've been staring at this too long ?

[Morpheus]

I any case, it’s impossible to do not have on the shelf both Atarisoft and Inty versions...

[+Black_Tiger]

My family stopped ordering Intellivision games by 1986 or maybe very early 1987 at the very latest.

 

My parents ordered at least our last few Intellivision games from a distributor in Edmonton. When my Dad showed me the last catalogue he picked Space Hawk from it was the first one that also had NES games. Since there were more NES games to choose from than Intellivision I asked him why we don't just get an NES?

 

They surprised me with one for my birthday/Christmas around September/October of 1987 and it was long after we had gotten and tired of Space Hawk.

 

The game before the game before that was INTV Corp Pac Man. I didn't even know that Atarisoft had made any Intellivision games until after I was an adult.

 

At that point my parents weren't buying games very often. I wouldn't be surprised if it was as early as 1984 but I really don't think that it could have been later than 1985.

 

When we got it no one had heard of NES or SMS yet and we lived in a hardcore video gaming town.

 

 

Edit: We also got an INTV System III after our Master Component died, but I don't remember for sure that we got Pac Man first, but I think we did.

Edited May 16, 2021 by Black_Tiger

[+JasonlikesINTV]

3 hours ago, Black_Tiger said:

My family...

Thanks for the info!  Not sure why it's bugging me, but I really want to know when the switchover occurred.

[BSRSteve]

These documents indicate 1986 for INTV PAc-Man

INTV Corp 1987 Price List (Front).pdf

INTV 1986-1987 Software Titles.pdf

[+JasonlikesINTV]

6 hours ago, BSRSteve said:

These documents indicate 1986 for INTV PAc-Man

INTV Corp 1987 Price List (Front).pdf 1.04 MB · 3 downloads

INTV 1986-1987 Software Titles.pdf 692.66 kB · 3 downloads

That lines up with the Stock/Item number change.  In the Fall '86 Triton catalog, the stock number was still JAAP.  In the Spring '87 Triton catalog it was 8000, like in the documents you provided.  1986 it is!  Thanks for looking into this.

[BSRSteve]

19 minutes ago, JasonlikesINTV said:

That lines up with the Stock/Item number change.  In the Fall '86 Triton catalog, the stock number was still JAAP.  In the Spring '87 Triton catalog it was 8000, like in the documents you provided.  1986 it is!  Thanks for looking into this.

Just thankful that the two UCI professors working on their Intellivision book scanned most of our papers and ran them through OCR so I could search for Pac-Man

[+JasonlikesINTV]

24 minutes ago, BSRSteve said:

Just thankful that the two UCI professors working on their Intellivision book scanned most of our papers and ran them through OCR so I could search for Pac-Man

Did they ever publish their finished product?  I briefly talked with them in Portland at dinner.  Looking forward to what they put together.

[BSRSteve]

12 hours ago, JasonlikesINTV said:

Did they ever publish their finished product?  I briefly talked with them in Portland at dinner.  Looking forward to what they put together.

They are still working on it - trying to get a draft done by July 1 or so.

[Cellblock1138]

On 5/15/2021 at 6:38 PM, Black_Tiger said:

My parents ordered at least our last few Intellivision games from a distributor in Edmonton.

Do you remember if it was the store in West Edmonton Mall? I remember getting Tropical Trouble there in ‘87 and the guy gave me a blue catalogue. I remember it had Nintendo mixed in with Intellivision. Wish I still had that catalogue. 

 

 

[+JasonlikesINTV]

1 hour ago, Cellblock1138 said:

Do you remember if it was the store in West Edmonton Mall? I remember getting Tropical Trouble there in ‘87 and the guy gave me a blue catalogue. I remember it had Nintendo mixed in with Intellivision. Wish I still had that catalogue. 

 

 

Was it an Intellivision-specific catalog, or a generic store or game catalog?

[Cellblock1138]

8 hours ago, JasonlikesINTV said:

Was it an Intellivision-specific catalog, or a generic store or game catalog?

Pretty sure it was store specific as it had Nintendo mixed in with Inty games. 

[+Black_Tiger]

13 hours ago, Cellblock1138 said:

Do you remember if it was the store in West Edmonton Mall? I remember getting Tropical Trouble there in ‘87 and the guy gave me a blue catalogue. I remember it had Nintendo mixed in with Intellivision. Wish I still had that catalogue. 

 

 

My memory of it is that it was small (<5 " x 7"?), had b&w pages with lists of game titles and a navy blue cover.