Thin Ice Title Screen

[Ikrananka]

Could someone who owns a physical cart of Thin Ice let me know what the title screen displays.  There are a few 8K roms around with one showing the original "Mattel Electronics presents" on the title screen and another showing "Intellivision presents".  Just curious to know if the latter, or former, is the official INTV cart release.

 

Thanks

[+evg2000]

Both my white labeled carts show this:

[Ikrananka]

16 minutes ago, evg2000 said:

Both my white labeled carts show this:

Fantastic - thank you so much for your help ?

[mr_me]

The Intellivision presents rom file might have come from one of the Intellivision Lives collections.

[Ikrananka]

10 hours ago, mr_me said:

The Intellivision presents rom file might have come from one of the Intellivision Lives collections.

Yes, you're right.  It's on the Intellivision Greatest Hits 20th Anniversary Edition.  So, I assume the title screen was changed for that release.

[Zendocon]

If "Mattel Electronics presents" chages to "DUNCAN'S" when Duncan appears on the screen, it's the unreleased version.

[Ikrananka]

1 hour ago, Zendocon said:

If "Mattel Electronics presents" chages to "DUNCAN'S" when Duncan appears on the screen, it's the unreleased version.

Yeah, thanks.  I've got the Duncan's rom file as well.

[Ikrananka]

Looks like they renamed a few title screens:

 

Intellivision Greatest Hits 20th Anniversary Edition

• Buzz Bombers ("Mattel Electronics" changed to "Intellivision")
• Thin Ice ("Mattel Electronics" changed to "Intellivision")
• Vectron ("Mattel Electronics" changed to "Intellivision")
• World Championship Baseball ("All Star Major League Baseball" changed to "World Championship Baseball")

Edited December 7, 2021 by Ikrananka

[mr_me]

They probably changed the grom rom file as well.  That file has the Mattel Electronics presents text for the standard exec titlescreen.  That would affect all cartridges that use the exec titlescreen.  They might have been legally obligated to remove the Mattel name where possible.

[carlsson]

12 hours ago, mr_me said:

They might have been legally obligated to remove the Mattel name where possible.

It makes me wonder how many Mattel references there are in Aquarius ROMs and game files, in case Radofin took over all those and supposedly in the same manner were obligated to scrub away all signs of Mattel.

 

In a similar manner, I believe that the Sinclair Spectrum ROM got modified so it only says copyright Amstrad after they obtained the rights, which probably makes sense given that the copyrights transfer when ownership changes place.

[Ikrananka]

13 hours ago, mr_me said:

They probably changed the grom rom file as well.  That file has the Mattel Electronics presents text for the standard exec titlescreen.  That would affect all cartridges that use the exec titlescreen.  They might have been legally obligated to remove the Mattel name where possible.

Just checked the Inty Rocks and Inty Lives collections and they have the original GROM with Mattel Electronics Presents text.  However, looks like they possibly integrated the system roms, including the GROM, into the "GamePlyr.exe" for the Inty Greatest Hits.  So, perhaps in the latter case they changed the GROM.  I'd be interested to test this out but I can't get the game player to work in Windows 10.

[+Lathe26]

There is also a difference between using a Sears Intellivision console and any other Intellivision console.  The Sears Intellivision blocks the "Mattel Electronics presents" portion of the game title screen while the other Intellivisions show it.

[Ikrananka]

12 minutes ago, Lathe26 said:

There is also a difference between using a Sears Intellivision console and any other Intellivision console.  The Sears Intellivision blocks the "Mattel Electronics presents" portion of the game title screen while the other Intellivisions show it.

Very interesting.  So even if the game was an original Mattel game cartridge, the Sears Intellivision would still block the "Mattel Electronics presents".  I must admit I'm unclear as to why Mattel would allow that.

[Zendocon]

For extra fun, try firing up AD&D Cloudy Mountain on a Sears unit.  "ADVANCED" covers up "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS".

[BSRSteve]

1 hour ago, Ikrananka said:

Very interesting.  So even if the game was an original Mattel game cartridge, the Sears Intellivision would still block the "Mattel Electronics presents".  I must admit I'm unclear as to why Mattel would allow that.

On all the original games, the Mattel Electronics presents text is in the EXEC ROM. The EXEC ROM in the Sears unit has blanks there instead. The Sears unit is not "blocking" anything, it is replacing it before it gets generated.

[Ikrananka]

10 minutes ago, BSRSteve said:

On all the original games, the Mattel Electronics presents text is in the EXEC ROM. The EXEC ROM in the Sears unit has blanks there instead. The Sears unit is not "blocking" anything, it is replacing it before it gets generated.

Ah - understood.  This reminds me of a few ColecoVision examples:

• The standard "COLECOVISION" title screen and game menu selection was built into the BIOS, but this was often bypassed by third party game publishers.
• The SpliceVision console replaced the title screen "COLECOVISION" with "SPLICEVISION".
• The Microdigital Onyx console replaced the title screen "COLECOVISION" with "ONYX" and a diamond graphic.

So, this makes me wonder, why didn't Sears replace "Mattel Electronics presents" with "Sears presents" rather than simply blanking it?

[+Lathe26]

Mattel and Sears had a special business relationship.  Most likely it was just that Sears wanted their own branding and was willing to pay more than other partners than other partners were.  Even the in-store demo hardware (i.e. the Kiosk Multiplexer) had a special mode for when it was used in Sears.

[+DZ-Jay]

13 hours ago, Ikrananka said:

Ah - understood.  This reminds me of a few ColecoVision examples:

• The standard "COLECOVISION" title screen and game menu selection was built into the BIOS, but this was often bypassed by third party game publishers.
• The SpliceVision console replaced the title screen "COLECOVISION" with "SPLICEVISION".
• The Microdigital Onyx console replaced the title screen "COLECOVISION" with "ONYX" and a diamond graphic.

For what it's worth, that's how it works now with modern home-brews.

 

By the way, the ColecoVision BIOS is like the Intellivision EXEC.

 

Quote

So, this makes me wonder, why didn't Sears replace "Mattel Electronics presents" with "Sears presents" rather than simply blanking it?

I imagine that it wasn't just a matter of displaying it to the user, but of licensing and branding.  Sears probably licensed the entire thing from Mattel to use as their own, so it made no sense for even the internal components to say that they are from Mattel.

 

By the way, the string and the code to display the title screen may reside in the GROM chips, but it is actually part of the EXEC.  When the EXEC grew larger than 4K, they "stole" a bit of the end of GROM to store the overflow.  That's the garbage cards you see when peeking at the GROM character set:  its EXEC code.

 

   dZ.

 

Edited December 13, 2021 by DZ-Jay