Intellivision Lives!

Relive the 80s with Intellivision Lives!

NA release: 4th November 2004
EU release: N/A
JP release: N/A
Developer: Realtime Associates
Publisher: Crave Entertainment
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: None

The Invellivision. A strange console with an awkward keypad-based controller. It never had the legacy of the Atari 2600, and the corpse of Intellivision has just been dragged through the mud over the years, including being used for a console called the Amico, a console that seemingly only existed in prototype form as an investment scam. The branding and name were then sold to Atari, who are actually a rebranded Infogrames.

Because of the controller, which was a keypad with a spinny wheel, the games from the Intellivision don’t really play well with a controller. And as many used overlays that slotted into the controller, not even a keypad is that useful. Really, an emulator for the 3DS is probably the best way to go. For this collection, Realtime Associates have mapped the relevant buttons as best as they can, and you can bring up the controller with the relevant overlay. It’s not ideal, but there’s not really another option.

In terms of additional features, there’s videos, box art, instructions and the sort. Although the instructions aren’t always that well written. You can also activate silly display modes like upside down, have the display smaller and moving around (with an immense amount of ghosting) or just lots of displays on screen at once. There’s also a few games that were never released. For the games, I’ll focus on the really good ones and then do a little summary of the rest, as there are a lot.

SNAFU

A multiplayer snake game, against other players or the CPU. It actually feels like it could have been a Tron Light Cycle game from this era, as it plays a lot like that. There are a lot of different modes which add obstacles, some that make it so you have to damage other players by biting the end of their tail and others that let you move diagonally. It’s really a ton of fun.

Now that the only game in this collection I’d want to play again is out of the way, here’s a summary of the rest.

Combat & Fantasy

Armor Battle

Awkwardly move your tanks and shoot your opponents tanks. 2 player only. You can’t fire and shoot at the same time.

Battle Tanks

Simpler version of Armor Battle, your bullets bounce a bit off the walls.

Biplanes

Take off and shoot your opponent. Controls are surprisingly bad, more of a “try not to crash”. You’ll perform better by never moving

B17 Bomber

One of the more well known games. It’s sort of impressive in that you can fly around a large area, it’s just so slow and clunky and not suited for a controller.

Hover Force

Pilot a helicopter, awkwardly scroll through the map (crosshair acceleration is dreadful) and shoot enemies below you.

Sea Battle

Couldn’t figure this one out. You’re supposed to be able to deploy ships and fight an opponent.

Sub Hunt

Move submarines around, no idea how to engage enemy. It semes you have to be at the right position, angle and depth.

Thunder Castle

A bizarre Pac-man style game. The paths change randomly, birds are power pellets that let you kill the large dragon and random items appear.

Tower of Doom

Make it though a maze, kill enemies when you encounter them. Couldn’t work out the inventory system.

Utopia

Some kind of city builder, competing against another player. I couldn’t get anything built.

Space

Astrosmash

Another Intellivison “staple”. Move left/right blowing up random things. For some reason, it has the warp function from Defender.

Space Armada

Just a bad Space Invaders clone.

Space Battle

Deploy fighters on radar, fight when close in first person.

Space Hawk

Fly around with a jetpack with terrible controls and shoot stuff

Space Spartans

Move around a grid, blast aliens. If you can figure out how to move.

Star Strike

Death Star trench run. You have to avoid enemies coming form behind and shoot them when they overtake. If you fail, the planet gets destroyed.

Kids

Crosswords

It’s Scrabble. Use numbers on the keypad to select letters. The overlay hides your letters. Even on the original system, moving up and down to select would be better.

Factor Fun

Maths sums. No idea how this game worked as no button seemed to do anything.

Frog Bog

Jump between lily pads catching flies. Another player can join in.

Math Master

Compete by solving sums – and this one actually works. Each player can even have their own difficulty setting.

Memory Fun

It’s just the card game of pairs, using letters.

Sharp Shoot

A minigame collection with four different shooting games.

Word Hunt

Create words from the letters jumbled up top.

Word Rockets

Select a letter at the bottom to shoot into words flying past.

Sports

Baseball

A simple baseball game that’s a pain to play.

World Championship Baseball

I pressed every button on both controllers. Nothing happened.

Basketball

Just about playable, which is more than a lot of these sports games.

Slam Dunk: Super Pro Basketball

Set team of players with different stats (supposedly). The game itself is a bit smoother than regular basketball.

Bowling

Dreadful. Gutter ball every single time.

Boxing

Punch opponents with zero impact. Your score just goes up.

Football

The American kind. Frustrating to play. A trend with the sports games.

Super Pro Football

It’s the exact same game (more than the other Pro sports games) with more stats and added confusion.

Golf

Select a club, swing, hope for the best.

Chip Shot: Super Pro Golf

No visual aids for distance, but actually playable and works well. And one of the nicest looking games in the collection.

Hockey

Slow, but fictional.

Slap Shot: Super Pro Hockey

Despite added options, the gameplay is worse than the basic version.

Auto Racing

Sort of an early Micro Machines. Race on a track, get far enough ahead to knock your opponent off the screen and you get a point.

Motocross

Very impressive for the system. Even has multiple steering control methods – point the direction you want to go or left/right.

Stadium Mudbuggies

It’s Motocross, but hard to see and very slow

Skiing

Well, it works. Fine for the system

Mountain Madness: Super Pro Skiing

Skiing but with more courses and modes

Soccer

The best sports game in the collection. Simple but effective controls

Tennis.

Fault. Fault. Fault. Fault. Fault.

Super Pro Decathlon

The running works. Not much else does.

Spiker

With the actual controller it might be fine, you aim for specific areas in a grid pattern on the keypad.

Body Slam: Super Pro Wrestling

You might get somewhere with button mashing

Arcade

Bomb Squad

Follow insteuctions and disarm bombs. Controls are a mess.

Buzz Bombers

Kill wasps in this strange Space Invaders clone

Racing Cars

Dodge left and race to avoid cars.

Night Stalker

Collect a gun, move around the maze, stop, shoot. So slow and clunky.

Pinball

It’s just a basic pinball game. But it’s actually smooth and easy control, making it better than most games here.

Shark Shark

Eat fish to slowly get bigger. Avoid sharks. Dull. For some reason a remake of this was THE big Amico game.

Thin Ice

Avoid the seal for as long as possible

Vectron

I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.

Gaming

Backgammon

Backgammon, with bad controls.

Checkers

I can move a piece, but not sure on how to end a turn. I did it accidentally once.

Horse racing

I have no idea if anything you do affects anything.

Poker & Blackjack

Be sure to ask your friend to look away when looking at your cards.

Reversi

A very slow version.

Roulette

It’s just digital roulette.

Royal Dealer

Rummy, Uno and a few other basic card games

Unreleased

Brickout

An Breakout clone. Not released as it was too similar to the original. Yet the Space Invader clone was fine.

Deep Pockets

Decent pool game with a few game types

Demo Cartridge

A non-interactive cartridge, this would have been in systems in shop displays

Hypnotic Lights

Awkwardly move rows and collumns to make large shapes of the same colour.

Hard Hat

Get glass from the crane, add them to your building. Feels a bit like an early Nintendo game.

Magic Carousel

Stop the carousel at the animal you’re told then follow the spoken instructions for each object.

So, that’s a lot of games and very little enjoyment. To be fair, a decent amount of these games would be more playable on the original console (just don’t lose the overlays) and it’s a fairly comprehensive first party collection if someone wants to relive the Intellivision. But when it comes down to it, it’s a pain to emulate the console’s controller and, ultimately, there aren’t many good games on the system anyway.

Poor

I can’t get too enthusiastic about it because even though I am a big fan of this era of gaming, there is a key reason that Atari 2600 overshadowed the Intellivision: it simply had more good games.
Levi Buchanan, IGN

Remake or remaster?

A new Intellivision collection would be good, especially by letting people use their mobile phone as a controller. That combined with a wheel attachment would actually allow for decent control emulation.

Official Ways to get the game

A few Atari 2600 ports of these games are in Atari 50, a few failed Amico remakes are on the Switch.