New INTV plug-and-play

[NovaXpress]

I saw their new model earlier today. They were smart enough to include AD&D Cloudy Mountain and Tron Deadly Discs with new titles (proof that the blue sky guys could release their hoarded protos if they really wanted to). Also updated versions of Astrosmash and Space Armada.

 

Still just a rip-off amount of ten games, and two of them are taken from that embarassing Sharp Shot cart.

[jboypacman]

Did you see what they renamed thoses two games?Also whats the going price on this thing?Thanks.

[Shannon]

Tron Deadly Discs?

 

Cooool... great game, lots of fun, but I wonder how well it translated to whatever pad they used. Any links, pics?

[NovaXpress]

I don't remember the new names, it was selling for $10.95. The other games I recall being included are Tennis and Volleyball. But those two Sharp Shot "games" shouldn't even be counted.

[rockman_x_2002]

I think for "Tron Deadly Discs", the Tron name was simply removed and the game is just called "Deadly Discs" now. But I'm not sure on the other game. I saw these things about a week ago, but decided to pass on it. Didn't much care for the other INTV plug-and-play.

[mos6507]

I saw their new model earlier today. They were smart enough to include AD&D Cloudy Mountain and Tron Deadly Discs with new titles (proof that the blue sky guys could release their hoarded protos if they really wanted to). Also updated versions of Astrosmash and Space Armada.

 

Still just a rip-off amount of ten games, and two of them are taken from that embarassing Sharp Shot cart.

 

According to your opinion in another thread, the whole game-on-a-stick market is collapsing and all these things are irrelevant junk just minutes away from a landfill, so why did you even bother starting this topic?

Edited December 19, 2006 by mos6507

[Student Driver]

This thread would better fit in the "Dedicated Systems" forum, I think.

 

Anyway-- anyone know if it's another damned NOAC, or does this one more accurately simulate the play and feel of Intv games?

[jaybird3rd]

Anyway-- anyone know if it's another damned NOAC, or does this one more accurately simulate the play and feel of Intv games?

I'm pretty sure it's another NOAC, unfortunately. I read in another thread that Curt has figured out how to make a genuine INTV-on-a-chip and has offered his services to Intellivision Productions, but I guess they haven't followed through.

[Mezrabad]

..damned NOAC..

 

I heard an interview on retrogaming radio with one of the INTV guys and he offered an acceptable (to me, anyway) rationalization for NOACs and Intellivision games. He said something to the effect of: imagine if there had been no crash prior to the NES coming out. They would've been porting games to the NES just like they'd been porting them to the 2600. So, when you're playing a NOAC, think of it as playing the Nintendo ports of Intellivision games! Anyway, that's what he said.

 

IntvOAC would rock.

Edited December 19, 2006 by Mezrabad

[BydoEmpire]

I picked this up a few weeks ago at KMart for $10. However, I gave it to my wife to give it to me for Xmas, so I haven't tried it yet. =)

[Shannon]

They would've been porting games to the NES just like they'd been porting them to the 2600. So, when you're playing a NOAC, think of it as playing the Nintendo ports of Intellivision games! Anyway, that's what he said.

 

IntvOAC would rock.

 

Lame reasoning. Emulation or an intellivision on a chip would recreate an experience more true to the original.

 

Best case scenario if you still have the original source code you may be able to get away with it. But really as anyone knows a port does not always translate very well. The nintendo architecture is completely different from the intellivision architecture.

 

Worse case scenario you end up with a flashback 1 which includes half assed ports that make the games look like a dim shadow of their former selves.

 

I bet if nintendo took all of their classic nes games and slapped them onto a genesis on a chip architecture people would be all over it. Because there is a difference. But since we are talking pre-nintendo era nobody seems to care.

Edited December 20, 2006 by Shannon

[NovaXpress]

According to your opinion in another thread, the whole game-on-a-stick market is collapsing and all these things are irrelevant junk just minutes away from a landfill, so why did you even bother starting this topic?

 

For the last time I HAPPEN TO BE INTERESTED IN THESE TOPICS. I also happen to be smart enough to know that I'm part of a SMALL group who's interested in these topics which is why I'm on a message board to communicate with others in said group.

[jpfalcon2003]

I'd but one of these if it had the game "Diner" on it.

[jaybird3rd]

I heard an interview on retrogaming radio with one of the INTV guys and he offered an acceptable (to me, anyway) rationalization for NOACs and Intellivision games. He said something to the effect of: imagine if there had been no crash prior to the NES coming out. They would've been porting games to the NES just like they'd been porting them to the 2600. So, when you're playing a NOAC, think of it as playing the Nintendo ports of Intellivision games!

I heard that interview, too. I think it was one of the best that RGR got from CGE2K5.

 

There's only one problem with that rationalization, though. When they were actually developing video games themselves, the Blue Sky Rangers were capable of stretching the Intellivision hardware and creating some VERY polished, VERY professional games (like Thunder Castle). If they could have gotten their hands on an NES while they were at Mattel, or if INTV Corporation had lasted longer, they would have produced equally polished, equally professional games for the NES (like Monster Truck Rally, the one NES game that INTV did develop).

 

The "NES ports" in the Intellivision handhelds are NOT polished, they're NOT professional, and they don't even come close to stretching the capabilities of the hardware. Back in the day, they would never have gotten past Mattel's bug testers or QA department, nor would they have passed muster with guys like Mike Minkoff or Dave Warhol. After seeing what Jakks was able to do with the NOAC in their Atari 13-in-1 Paddle, I'm convinced that the NOAC is at least capable of running something derived from the original Intellivision game code, and I wish that Intellivision Productions had insisted on that with the new handhelds instead of allowing yet another release of half-baked, coded-from-scratch recreations of their original (and superior) games.

 

It's getting way too late for these kinds of half-assed products, and they're only hurting the long-term marketability of their flagship emulation discs (people are going to think that the choppy, sound-free games in the handhelds are the Intellivision originals and won't want to buy the discs), so Intellivision Productions really needs to come up with something better. I still say they should take Curt up on his offer and release a real Intellivision handheld.

Edited December 20, 2006 by jaybird3rd

[jpfalcon2003]

Wish Jakks would come out with another pac-man collection one with Jr. Pac-man, and Baby Pac-man

[jaybird3rd]

Before I get slammed, I think I should clarify something for the "nobody cares about the original games, these are just cheap toys that are going in the garbage anyway, why don't you go to marketing school, dammit" crowd.

 

The real issue with the Intellivision handhelds (at least to me) is the lack of quality rather than the lack of fidelity to the originals. I understand the economics of the TV-games business, and I know that the NOAC might be the only affordable solution for a small company like Intellivision Productions. But if they're "stuck" with a platform that can offer them superior audiovisuals than the original Intellivision hardware, and if they can't use it to emulate that original hardware ... my God, at least put superior audiovisuals into the games! My feelings wouldn't be hurt at all if they tried to be creative and used what they had in the NOAC to build upon the original game concepts, as long as the games played as well as the originals. Even if they couldn't do that, at least put in more than a grand total of four different sound effects! Or smoother sprite animation! Or more interesting wall textures or explosions in Night Stalker! Or a little bit of music! Or at least collision detection that actually works!

 

Of course, I probably wouldn't like the results anyway (because everything from Techno Source sucks super monkey balls), but at least I could come away with some respect for the attempt to provide updated treatments of the original games.

Edited December 20, 2006 by jaybird3rd

[Mezrabad]

Okay, my ideal INTV product: sell me a pair of the original controllers with a box that uses, effectively, the same hardware as the original console. The box will take some form of media and will allow me to play any INTV ROM that I can find on the internet. It should let me load all of the ROMs onto it at once so I can select them from an on-screen menu. Also, it should come with a slot for cartridges because I have enough of those that I wouldn't want them to go to waste.

 

I want it for $10 bucks and in my choice of color. (I like blue)

 

If they come out with anything that isn't as perfect as I require it then all of their futile efforts are just flatulence and a waste of my precious, precious time that I could be using wisely to post in the middle of the night.

[Flojomojo]

I started a thread about the Intellivision 2nd Edition device a few months ago in the Dedicated Systems sub-forum. Here it is:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=91083

 

I got the new stick as soon as it was available. It's shit on a joypad, even at $12.99. My unit was defective, and I couldn't get anyone at BlueSky/Intellivision to return my calls or emails, so I ended up disputing the charge on my credit card before I threw the thing away.

 

"Shit on a joypad? Isn't that a bit harsh" you say? Not really ... these "enhanced classics" are ports to the usual Famiclone-type hardware (yes, one can tell) and don't play nearly as well as the games of similar names they're pretending to update.

 

Avoid.

 

Cheap shot: I no longer wonder why they don't have a publisher for their Nintendo DS-based Intellivision emulator. They don't return calls, they ship cheap, misleadingly-labeled garbage .... what's to recommend?

[Flojomojo]

BTW ... almost forgot ... they took a month to ship this thing. Seriously, if you choose to give this thing a chance, do NOT get your hopes up.

 

My review from http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...t&p=1150320

 

First impressions of Intellivision PnP "2nd Edition": something's wrong with the video output of my unit, so I'm going to try to see if it can be exchanged. Considering the wait time I had and the cost of shipping, I'm hoping they'll just send me a second unit so I can dissect this one.

 

"Original games have been modified to run on this unit" says the box. That's for sure. I can't see the output perfectly because of the video problem, but I can see enough to know that this is a Famiclone port, probably much like its predecessor. The graphics on the familiar games are close, especially on the iconic games like Astrosmash, but the sounds are missing and off. Crown of Kings sounds especially rotten, but could be a decent Roguelike game on its own terms. Since Deadly Discs was obviously completely reprogrammed, there's no need to wonder if they left the TRON Recognizer as an end-level boss: I didn't play long enough to see, but it's about as close to the original feel as the Atari Flashback's version of Battlezone is to the VCS version. Space Gunner is a Intellivision-esque shooting gallery, kind of like the "TV-Pixx" version of Space Battle, only uglier. Volleyball looks like Realsports Volleyball from the Jakks Atari sticks. I didn't play the other games on the unit yet.

 

Hopefully I'll get a working unit soon but in the meantime, it's plan to see that this collection fails as a retro piece and as a modern amusement. It's not close enough to the real Intellivision to appeal to fans of the old games, and it's not exciting enough on its own terms to make it worthwhile as a modern set of games. It's cheap, and it's better than the first Intellivision collection plug and play devices, but that's really not saying much.

 

:( :(

[chrisbid]

http://www.intellivisionlives.com/media/ne...news051115.html

 

the BSR have acknowledged these are crap, but they make enough money on them to fund their upcoming intellivision cart releases Deep Pockets and Illusions. that is a fair trade off between hobbyists and casual users imho

[Flojomojo]

http://www.intellivisionlives.com/media/ne...news051115.html

 

the BSR have acknowledged these are crap, but they make enough money on them to fund their upcoming intellivision cart releases Deep Pockets and Illusions. that is a fair trade off between hobbyists and casual users imho

 

Casual users don't deserve to have crap foisted upon them any more than the hobbyists do. Personally, I think the garbage Intellivision products diminish the brand and do a lot more harm than good. It's a shame that they're cashing in this way.

 

When a good brand is treated this way: Those who know the Intellivision brand are disappointed, and those who don't aren't going to buy this stuff based on the name anyway, If they do, they'll forever associate Intellivision with the crap knockoff game they bought and hated.

 

P.S. Illusions looks neat -- it's hard to believe that there weren't other M.C. Escher-inspired games out there, but Q*Bert, Marble Madness, and Crystal Castles count, I guess.

[jaybird3rd]

Casual users don't deserve to have crap foisted upon them any more than the hobbyists do. Personally, I think the garbage Intellivision products diminish the brand and do a lot more harm than good. It's a shame that they're cashing in this way.

Exactly! That's the point I tried to make in my earlier posts in this thread: the BSR might be getting more sales than they've ever had before with the PnP units, but I don't think they realize how much they're damaging the marketability of the real Intellivision games in the long run.

 

I only hope that they actually do follow through and release the cartridges, as well as the Nintendo DS version of Intellivision Lives. It's already been over a year since they announced both, and we haven't seen anything yet.

[chrisbid]

keith robinson admitted in an interview with retro gaming radio that the plug and play units were crap, then he pointed out that the PC emulation packages were spot on, yet only sold a few thousand copies, a tiny percentage compared to plug and plays.

 

if youve played intellivision lives and rocks for PC/Mac (and used their Intellicart to play the ROMS on an actual Intellivision), then i dont really think you can tarnish their reputation in your head.

 

frankly, whenever hobbyists get any attention in this day and age, it should be a welcome sign, as they never drive mass markets

[PressureCooker2600]

did you read about that Martian Child movie on the INTV site.....lol lol lol

[deadmeow]

"shit on a stick".... haahha. I had the first hand held, and I took that stinky peice of shit back so quick! It wasn't worth the whatever I paid for it. I think it started out at like 15.99, and ended up 9.99, and ended up like 4.99 in the bargain bins of walgreens. I wouldn't take one for free, because it doesn't justify wasting like 8 triple A batteries to play something that you are gonna smash into the floor after like 30 seconds.