A good day as an Inty "collector" in the UK

[decle]

As I've mentioned before I've not really collected Inty games for ages, however, I do keep an eye out, and whenever I see somewhere selling 2600 stuff I ask about Intellivision games, in the totally unrealistic hope they have a mispriced K/C for £10.  I guess like most places, there aren't many retro stores in the UK that cater for anything prior to the SNES / Genesis, so I probably find myself in one maybe once a year if I'm lucky.  My family are on vacation in Kent at the moment, where we discovered Level-Up games in Canterbury (https://levelup-games.co.uk/).  They had a 2600 on display with some common titles, so I asked Alex, the proprietor, whether he had any Intellivision games.  I was ready with my "no worries, I had to ask" response for when he replied "no", but then to my surprise he came back with, "uhh, yes", reached into his small store room and pulled out boxed copies of Golf and Word Fun...

 

This is the first time in well over a decade that I've found any Inty title in the wild, let alone CIB ones!  I needed a manual for Golf (told you I'm not a big collector), so I picked it up.  However, the Word Fun box was pretty rough, and although Alex knocked it down to £5, I didn't need it, so I left it.

 

We wandered round Canterbury for a bit as my son decided whether to purchase Pokemon Colosseum or Pokemon Diamond, and I pondered.  Given how unusual it is to find Inty games and how great Level-Up Games is (going in there requires serious discipline), it would be a shame to leave the Word Fun, besides it's unlikely anyone else would buy it.  So, when my son made his decision (Colosseum) and we returned to Alex, I picked it up.

 

As it turned out, this was a good decision.  On returning home and checking my collection spready, it turns out I already had the manual for Golf, but I was missing the one for Word Fun!  Now, that would have been some non-buyers regret!

 

So, whilst it's not exactly an earth shattering pick-up, it's the best day I've had as a UK Inty non-collector anywhere other than eBay in a loooonnnggg time.

Edited April 16, 2022 by decle

[+cmart604]

Awesome! Always fun finding and rescuing games from stores where they'd otherwise sit lonely. Can you take pics of the front and back of the Golf manual? I think that's a second UK version. ?

[decle]

On 4/17/2022 at 4:39 AM, cmart604 said:

Can you take pics of the front and back of the Golf manual?

Now before you judge me, remember I'm not an collector now, doesn't mean I wasn't in the past

 

It looks like I have 5 variants of the Golf manual.  Two different versions of 1816-0820, a 0820-G1, a 0820-G2 and a 1816-0920-G3.  I'm guessing the 0920-G3 is not of interest.

 

This is the baseline 1816-0820...

 

 

 

This differs from the US manual as replacement overlay ordering is in the inside front cover rather than the standard Object of the Game page - this page does not appear in the manual at all:

 

 

and there's an invitation to join the Intellivision Club inside the back cover (which seems to have been taken up in this case):

 

 

The G1 version drops the Club invitation in favour of some notes, otherwise the contents look to be the same:

 

 

 

 

The G2 variant removes references to the PGA in the text of the manual, making it consistent with the title of the manual (see first sentence of Add Overlays on page 1 for an example):

 

 

 

And finally I have what I think is an INTV variant which is numbered 1816-0820.  It's printed in black and white on really cheap non-glossy stock and is folded vertically with a single staple.  It has the same text as the 0920-G3 version (with the Object of the game page and no PGA reference), but omits the 90 day warranty and replacement overlays order sheet on the the last two pages.  It also doesn't have any references to Mattel:

 

 

 

 

Hope this helps.