Tech Nostalgia: Intelligent Television (Premium)

When Atari announced its VCS video game machine in 1977, established game makers rushed to offer their own alternatives. Magnavox was first to market in 1978 with its Odyssey 2 console, though it was only moderately successful and didn’t attract a single third-party game title until 1983, by which point it had already lost the video game wars. But Atari’s most formidable competitor was Mattel, which had previously pioneered a successful line of electronic handheld sports game machines under its Mattel Electronics sub-brand.

The resulting product, called the Intellivision Master Component, would not outsell the VCS, but it would go on to outsell the rest of the market before the crash of 1983. That success was the direct result of Mattel Electronics’ unique take on home video game machines. Where Atari created the VCS as a way to bring its successful arcade video games into the living room, Mattel Electronics wanted to offer a product with better visuals that offered more sophisticated and longer-playing games. Indeed, David P. Chandler, “the father of Intellivision,” saw Intellivision as a modular system that could be upgraded to a home computer.

“Hardware [is] designed for software, not vice versa,” Mr. Chandler wrote the system philosophy section of the original Intellivision design document. “Video games will always be the heart of home systems but are dead-ended as a standalone product. Videos games [also] provide the best base for home computers [because they are] friendly [and] non-threatening … Mattel has been (maybe still is) in a unique position to make the home revolution happen in a valid way.”

After a two-month delay triggered by indecision over which chipset to use for the new console, Mattel finally reached an agreement with GI to use three of its chips: a 16-bit (!) CP1610 processor, which ran at 2 MHz, an AY-3-8900 STIC (Standard Television Interface Chip), which supported a screen resolution of 160 x 96 and 8 hardware sprites, and an AY-3-8914 sound chip that delivered three channels of sound. Combined with the system’s 1.456 KB of SRAM and 7 KB of ROM, the Intellivision Master Component was a significant step up from the Atari VCS. And with the design specs in place, Mr. Chandler worked with a very small team throughout 1978 and 1979 to bring the Intellivision hardware to market.

It took a while. After missing the 1978 holiday selling season, Mattel finally introduced the Intellivision Master Component to the world at the 1979 Winter CES in Las Vegas that January with the tagline “Intelligent television.” The strange original name of the product was due to Mattel’s plans to create a modular product line that could be expanded into a home computer system via a Keyboard Component and access an early online service called PlayCable. Mattel marketed both hardware products at the show, and again at the Summer CES that June, leading to legal issues after the Keyboard Component was never released broadly. Most people simply referred to the Intellivision Master Component as the Intellivision regardless.

Mattel sold its first Intellivision Master Component consoles in December 1979. It arrived with one in-box game cartridge, Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, alongside several game titles. But national distribution didn’t begin until August 1980, and Chandler and his superiors worried that Mattel had lost its chance to challenge Atari and redefine home entertainment. “Product [is] not moving,” Mr. Chandler wrote at the time. “People don’t know about Intellivision.”

Help—and an amazing turnaround—came from an unexpected place: Mattel hired George Plimpton, a writer and sports journalist, to star in a series of TV ads that directly compared the graphics of key Intellivision games to their Atari equivalents. Few budding video gamers knew who Plimpton was, and the older gentlemen gave off a kindly college professor vibe in the ads, but as Chandler noted, “sales turned around immediately. Intellivision was finally a reality in the marketplace.” And that’s because the ads were so effective.

“I’ll try almost anything,” Mr. Plimpton says in one of his first Intellivision ads, “so when Mattel Electronics asked me to compare their Intellivision games with Atari, I gave it a try. I compared Atari Baseball with Intellivision and found Intellivision played much more like real baseball. Then, I compared Atari Football with Intellivision. Again, Intellivision played more like the real game in my opinion. If you try them both, there’s only one conclusion you can come to: Intellivision from Mattel electronics.”

This doesn’t seem like Mad Men-level marketing. But the ad—like future ads—was effective. In this commercial, Plimpton is seated in what looks like an opulent old-school living, and as he talks, he walks up to two TVs, one with the noted Atari games onscreen and the other with the Intellivision titles. Viewed side-by-side, the Atari titles look and sound primitive, while the Intellivision games look sophisticated, with realistic sound effects that included baseball gloves hitting mitts and the soon-to-be-iconic Intellivision crowd cheering sound.

Thanks to these ads, a partnership with Sears—which sold a rebranded Intellivision via its popular retail stores, and a growing stable of high-quality games, Intellivision unit sales jumped to over one million units the following year. And this after Mattel had sold just 175,000 units in 1979 and 200,000 in 1980. (By comparison, Atari sold 2 million VCS units in 1980 and 4 million in 1981.)

The Intellivision’s most controversial feature was its two hand controllers. Unlike the iconic Atari VCS joystick and paddle controllers, each of which featured just one button, the Intellivision arrived with two hardwired controllers that featured a 12-button numeric keypad, two buttons on each side (three of which were unique; the top buttons were identical on both sides), and a “control disc” directional pad that Mattel said could replace both a joystick and a paddle. Games shipped with overlays that slid over the keypad and were particularly useful in the more complex games.

The controller was unique, and it certainly offered advantages over the Atari joystick. But the control disc was imprecise and frustrating, and the game overlays would wear thin with use. As bad, one couldn’t easily replace a broken unit because they were hardwired into the console. With Atari, all you had to do was buy another joystick.

In addition to its custom hardware, Intellivision had some advantages over Atari and other would-be rivals of the day. Mattel created a software framework that was so easy to use that some of its launch titles, including Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, were created by summer interns. And its superior graphics and sound, and a serious focus on original ideas over rehashed arcade titles, really set Intellivision apart from its simpler but more popular competitor. And as with Atari, the first third-party game companies like Activision and Imagic immediately started shipping their titles on Intellivision as well. The Intellivision versions of these games were always superior to the Atari equivalents, of course.

Mattel originally contracted an outside firm to create its first-party games, but as the console exploded in popularity, it brought that work in-house. And its first-party games were almost universally terrific, with Mattel marketing each as being in categorized into specific “networks” like Sports network, Action network, Arcade network, Children’s Learning network, Gaming network, Space Action network, and Strategy network.

But where to start?

Some of the many amazing and unique early Intellivision titles include Auto Racing, Major League Baseball, NASL Soccer, NBA Basketball, NFL Football, U.S. Ski Team Skiing, Armor Battle, Sea Battle, Lock ‘N Chase, Frog Bog, Night Stalker (a personal favorite), Shark! Shark!, Snafu, Triple Action, Tron Deadly Discs, Utopia, Astrosmash, Space Armada (a Space Invaders clone), Space Battle, Space Hawk, and Star Strike.

And by 1983 Mattel had released a stunning second generation of new titles that also included new classics like Bump ‘n’ Jump, BurgerTime, Buzz Bombers, Kool-Aid Man, and Mission X.

And let’s not forget the third-party titles like Pitfall!, River Raid, and The Dreadnaught Factor from Activision; Atlantis, Beauty & the Beast, Demon Attack (another favorite), Dracula, and many others from Imagic; and Congo Bongo, Frogger, Popeye. Q*bert, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Super Cobra and others from Parker Bros.

Even Atari got in the game, pardon the pun, with Intellivision ports of Centipede, Defender, and Pac-Man. And Coleco, which would field its own videogame console rival in 1982, showed up with Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Lady Bug, Zaxxon, and others. Indeed, by the time of the video game crash of 1983, each of the major video game hardware makers were producing games for rival devices. Mattel did the same for Atari and Coleco through its M Network brand.

And if those seem like long lists compared to what I provided for the Atari VCS, there’s a reason. The Intellivision was my first video game console—I had owned a Mattel Football 2 handheld electronic gaming device in the late 1970s—and I owned every single title listed above in the 1980s. My brother and I spent countless hours playing these games and my biggest accomplishment, I think was rolling over the score in Astrosmash.

We also got an Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module, the first Intellivision peripheral to take advantage of the modular design that David P. Chandler championed. Released in 1982, the Intellivoice was a small hardware module that emulated the look and feel of the original Intellivision Master Component, plugged into its cartridge port, and provided a pass-through cartridge port for games. Like the base hardware, it was powered by a GI chipset, and it could produce realistic male and female voices in multiple accents.

Only a few games were ever made for the Intellivoice—traditional Intellivision games worked just fine, too, of course, when plugged into the unit—but at least two of them B-17 Bomber and Space Spartans—were terrific.

In early 1983, Mattel released a cost-reduced version of the Intellivision that dropped the Master Component moniker and was marketed as the Intellivision II. This console was significantly smaller and more professional looking than the original, with its (very) light gray form factor and black and red accents. And its controllers, finally, were detachable (and Atari compatible). I didn’t own this device but was very envious of its more attractive look and feel. And I consoled myself in knowing that some poorly-written game cartridges, most notably that for Donkey Kong, were not compatible with the Intellivision II because of a misguided change to the console’s Exec ROM. Plus, the Intellivoice module, with its old-school styling, looked ridiculous when plugged into an Intellivision II.

But the Intellivision II was important for another reason: its cartridge port included a video line-in that the first console lacked, leading to two other hardware peripherals, one of which fulfilled an original Intellivision promise. In 1983, Mattel released the Entertainment Computer System (ECS), an Intellivision II-styled module with an external keyboard that turned the console into a computer. The ECS featured yet another GI processor, 2 KB of RAM expansion, a built-in BASIC interpreter, two additional joystick ports, and interfaces for connecting tape recorders (for storage) and printers.

The ECS was my first computer and the reason I win so many “What was your first computer?” contests as it’s such an esoteric and rare choice. I learned BASIC programming on this machine, used a Radio Shack tape recorder to store my programs, and was delighted that I could use the sprites in a plugged-in game cartridge in my own simple games. (Less delightfully, I had to use my old-school original Intellivision with the modern-looking ECS. They were a mismatched pair, visually.)

The ECS BASIC was, well, basic. Each keyword was limited to just four characters—so PRINT became PRIN and so on—and the ridiculously low resolution of the hardware meant that very little text—20 characters across by 12 characters down—could appear onscreen at once, with very large all-caps characters.

Mattel also used Intellivision II’s new video-in capability to release another plug-in hardware peripheral, the System Changer. This module included an Atari VCS port and could play game cartridges for that system, allowing Mattel to claim that the Intellivision now had the biggest software library of any video game machine. The System Changer also provided two Atari-style joystick ports, though users could play Atari games with the Intellivision II hand controllers too. The System Changer wasn’t compatible with the original Intellivision, though owners could bring the device to an authorized service company to make it compatible via a hardware modification. I never owned this peripheral.

Oddly, Mattel also sold a separate Music Synthesizer keyboard add-on as well. This full-sized 49-key keyboard required the ECS, making it a non-starter for most, especially given the timing, and it just as oddly provided two additional hand controller ports of its own. I later owned this peripheral in the 1990s, during my retro game hardware collecting days.

Because the ECS and Music Synthesizer were released just before the video game crash of 1983, neither was supported with an extensive games library. But there was one notable title released for the ECS called World Series Major League Baseball, which offered an even more realistic rendition of baseball and stands as one of the best-ever Intellivision titles. I later owned every ECS title released—there were only 5 in total, plus the only game released for the Music Synthesizer, called Melody Blaster.

By 1983, newer video game machines like the Atari 5200, which was based on the company’s powerful 8-bit computer line, and the ColecoVision had surpassed the graphical quality of the Intellivision, and so Mattel began marketing a true Intellivision sequel called the Intellivision III. But this system was never released because of the video game crash that year. Mattel responded by lowering the price of the Intellivision II to just $69—it had cost $150 at launch—and laying off 660 employees. Mattel Electronics went on to lose $280 million in 1983, having sold 750,000 Intellivision units that year. By January 1984, Mattel laid off its remaining staff and closed its offices.

Oddly, the Intellivision enjoyed a muted success for the remainder of the 1980s. Mattel sold its Intellivision business to a group of investors and a former executive, Terrence Valeski, who created INTV Corp. This company sold the remaining stock of Intellivision hardware and software via mail order—and I snapped up a bunch of it at the time—and released the INTV System III in 1985. This console looked nearly identical to the original Master Component and not the more modern Intellivision II for some reason. INTV also released a handful of games that Mattel Electronics had finished but not published, and then several new games, most of which were uneventful.

Since then, Intellivision has benefitted from various eras of tech nostalgia, with various commercial hardware emulators like Intellivision Flashback and software emulators like Intellivision Lives!/Rocks! (for MS-DOS, Windows, Mac, and some early 2000s video game consoles) released over the years. And there have been recent efforts to revive the Intellivision brand via a new console called Amico that, sadly, does not play the original games.

Those interested in emulating the Intellivision in Windows will find that much harder to get started with non-commercial emulation than is the case with the Atari VCS and its excellent Stella emulator, in part because of legal issues. The only viable emulator for Windows, called Nostalgia, comes with a bizarre set of games that were made in the early 2000s, but you will need to download two Intellivision ROMs—named Executive ROM and GROM (for Graphics ROM) to play the original titles in emulation. And you will need IntelliVoice BIOS and Entertainment Computer System EXEC-BASIC ROMS to access titles related to those peripherals. As always, Google is your friend.

I will be as clear as possible here: it is not technically legal to do this as there is a company, Blue Sky Rangers, that owns the rights to all of the intellectual property associated with the original Intellivision. (Meaning that Intellivision Entertainment, which is making the Amico, does not. If I’m reading this right.) This company doesn’t seem to be an ongoing concern from what I can tell, but rights are rights. And my understanding is that the rights owner here does allow individuals to use downloaded system and game ROMs for emulation purposes if they own the original hardware. So if you have an Intellivision console of any kind, and whatever game cartridges, you’re good to go. Otherwise, you know what you’re doing.

Moving on.

I am not aware of any decent books that were ever written about Intellivision from a business perspective, but there are two fairly recent books, neither of which I’ve read, about learning to develop games for this console, both by the same author: Programming Games for Intellivision and Advanced Game Programming for Intellivision. And those interested in technical information about Intellivision hardware and software should check out the IntelliWiki. (This site also has some programming tutorial content.)

Before taking leave of this subject, allow me to note that I happen to play a small role in our expanded understanding of the Mattel Intellivision, thanks to my mid-1990s retro video game collecting activities. At that time, I used to frequent a flea market at which a local video game shop had a stand. And this company had at one point purchased numerous crates of unopened classic video game cartridges, still shrink-wrapped in their original packaging, from a store that had gone out of business years earlier. This shop had trouble selling all these cartridges, and so they were offered for just a couple of dollars apiece. I bought up multiple copies of everything Intellivision-related they had (and a lot of other stuff), and I sold a lot of it on USENET via AOL, earning a nice profit.

Eventually, the shop caught on to me and raised their prices, but it was still lucrative, and they had a unique cache of game cartridges that had been produced but never shipped nationwide. And so I was able to confirm some stories about games that had been allegedly released but never found at retail, and fill in other gaps related to games no one seemed to even know about. As such, I am listed as a contributor to the original Intellivision FAQ to this day.

Not my most important contribution to this space, I guess. But it’s still fun.