9 replies to this topic

[Mendon]

I was reacquainting myself with the history of the Intellivision by visiting the home page:
http://www.intellivi...s.com/home.html

A few questions pop'ed into my mind while reading and maybe you guys can answer:

1) Did Blue Sky develop all of the INTV Corp. game releases or did INTV Corp have some of their own developers that worked on games? Did any other gaming company write or port any games for the Intellivision that were released under the INTV Corp. label?

2) The history page states that after INTV Corp. went with the All-America campaign that didn't help sales, they started developing games for the NES. Did any INTV Corp. games actually make it to the NES?

And finally, while not a INTV Corp. question, why do you think the IntelliVoice failed? I think upon release, it was priced at $99 but seemed to quickly fall in price and was soon being given away by Mattel. Could possible reasons it didn't catch on be because Mattel didn't release enough games for it or it was too expensive to manufacture games for or the released games for it were unpopular with consumers or the "crash" was coming and sales were down on all gaming products when the IntelliVoice was released?

Thanks in advance for any info- thoughts!


Mendon

Edited by Mendon, Mon Jan 16, 2012 9:10 AM.

[DZ-Jay]

As I understand it, developing games for the Intellivoice was a very expensive process, which in turn made the games more expensive. There was already a huge investment in the recording and voice processing facility, and the ROMs chips required more space in order to accommodate the sampled data.

However, the worse part was that it came right before the bubble burst--once Mattel Electronics started hemorrhaging money, it was natural for them to discontinue one of their most expensive enterprises.

By then, Intellivoice games have not sold so well, so it wasn't clear that it was going to pay off. According to the Wikipedia article, the various problems that resulted in a lackluster reception were:

• The digitized voice data required bigger and more expensive ROMs.
  
• The Intellivoice module itself was a costly add-on.
  
• Due to the limits of ROM space, the sampling rate of voices was so low that it made them sound mostly robotic and mechanical, reducing their appeal.
  
• Mattel refused to support 3rd-party development by restricting access to programming interfaces and documentation, making it almost impossible for 3rd-parties to make games for it.

-dZ.

[jaybird3rd]

 Mendon, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 9:09 AM, said:

A few questions pop'ed into my mind while reading and maybe you guys can answer:

1) Did Blue Sky develop all of the INTV Corp. game releases or did INTV Corp have some of their own developers that worked on games? Did any other gaming company write or port any games for the Intellivision that were released under the INTV Corp. label?

As I understand it, INTV contracted with Realtime Associates (founded by Dave Warhol), and Realtime subcontracted the work out to other ex-Mattel developers. Warhol himself did a lot of the work on the INTV releases, as did Ray Kaestner, Steve Ettinger, Connie Goldman, Rick Koenig, and a few of the other "Blue Sky Rangers" from Mattel, collaborating from their home offices via modem. Keith Robinson did the INTV box art and manuals.

Most of the INTV releases were either enhanced versions of previous Mattel releases, such as the Super Pro sports series, or games that were completed (or almost completed) at Mattel but never released. INTV did repackage a few games that were initially developed by third parties (such as Pac-Man and Dig Dug), but as far as I know, there weren't any new third-party releases for the Intellivision during the INTV era. I'm sure the Intellivision's audience was too small by that point to attract third-party support.

 Mendon, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 9:09 AM, said:

2) The history page states that after INTV Corp. went with the All-America campaign that didn't help sales, they started developing games for the NES. Did any INTV Corp. games actually make it to the NES?

The only game INTV published for the NES was Monster Truck Rally, developed by Realtime. It is essentially the same game as Stadium Mud Buggies, and apparently both games were to have the same name, but the Intellivision version's name was changed. I didn't even know this until I looked it up, but apparently Monster Truck Rally supports up to four simultaneous players, using the NES Four Score interface. Interesting.

[Mendon]

Thanks much, DZ and Jaybird, for your responses! Very interesting reading and I learned quite a bit from your posts.

As for the Intellivoice.... I kind of thought that the voice carts were more expensive, but I can't remember pricing in the stores. I would think that they might be $10 more or something like that above a regular cartridge but I can't recall what price I paid for them new from Toy's R Us.

Anyone recall what the voice carts were priced at upon release compared to regular cartridges?

I wasn't sure if the video game crash had anything to do with the low showing in sales for the Intellivoice or the few voice game releases. I know that it was released before the INTV 2 hit the shelves and I would think that if sales were really slowing down in the INTV market that Mattel would have given pause about releasing a new console. But again, my memory just doesn't remember everything that happened back in those days.


As for 3rd party INTV games.... I sort of thought that INTV did all the games once they bought out Mattel but wasn't absolutely sure as Commando was a Capcom property but it was released as a INTV Corp. production. I don't have the game anymore so I'm not even sure if Capcom got ANY recognition on the game box or in the manual.

Knowing that Commando was a Capcom property, I was curious if Capcom did any of the work on the INTV version or whether INTV Corp. did all of the work with their own developer team/contractors.

I'm not even sure how Commando was acquired for the INTV... whether Mattel had purchased the rights and INTV aquired them when they bought from Mattel or whether INTV acquired them on their own.

Anyway, Thanks again guys for your responses and info!!!


Mendon

[jaybird3rd]

 Mendon, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 8:30 AM, said:

As for 3rd party INTV games.... I sort of thought that INTV did all the games once they bought out Mattel but wasn't absolutely sure as Commando was a Capcom property but it was released as a INTV Corp. production. I don't have the game anymore so I'm not even sure if Capcom got ANY recognition on the game box or in the manual.

Knowing that Commando was a Capcom property, I was curious if Capcom did any of the work on the INTV version or whether INTV Corp. did all of the work with their own developer team/contractors.

I'm not even sure how Commando was acquired for the INTV... whether Mattel had purchased the rights and INTV aquired them when they bought from Mattel or whether INTV acquired them on their own.

INTV was able to license a few properties, probably ones that they could get (relatively) cheaply. They published Intellivision versions of both Commando and Pole Position in the late 80s, but I doubt that Capcom or Namco were directly involved with the development of either of them; they were both produced entirely by Realtime. INTV also published Intellivision Dig Dug, but since that was started at Atari, that might have been a license they inherited when they acquired Atarisoft's unfinished prototype.

The INTV "era" really is a favorite of mine; the way in which it came about, and the way they were able to keep the Intellivision going alongside the NES and even the Sega Genesis, is one of the things that makes the Intellivision so unique. I love the idea of a low-overhead business picking up the Intellivision and continuing to produce new product for it through a remote network of part-time contractors and subcontractors. It foreshadowed today's "homebrew" development in certain ways, even though the audience and the income are much smaller now. Many of the best Intellivision games were produced during this time, and with the benefit of years of experience and better development tools, I'm amazed at what the developers were able to accomplish. Comparing the later INTV games with the earliest Mattel titles, you'd almost think you're looking at two different systems.

[cparsley]

2) The history page states that after INTV Corp. went with the All-America campaign that didn't help sales, they started developing games for the NES. Did any INTV Corp. games actually make it to the NES?

Yes, the before mentioned Rally game... This occured due to INTV at this point was rather cash strapped, and actually broke their agreement with their partner due to this release. The INTV version got it's named change due to this to not make the NES title appear to be a port of the INTV title.

[cmart604]

 jaybird3rd, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 8:57 AM, said:

The INTV "era" really is a favorite of mine; the way in which it came about, and the way they were able to keep the Intellivision going alongside the NES and even the Sega Genesis, is one of the things that makes the Intellivision so unique. I love the idea of a low-overhead business picking up the Intellivision and continuing to produce new product for it through a remote network of part-time contractors and subcontractors. It foreshadowed today's "homebrew" development in certain ways, even though the audience and the income are much smaller now. Many of the best Intellivision games were produced during this time, and with the benefit of years of experience and better development tools, I'm amazed at what the developers were able to accomplish. Comparing the later INTV games with the earliest Mattel titles, you'd almost think you're looking at two different systems.

As usual, Jay makes another excellent observation.

[thegoldenband]

BTW, INTV was also supposed to be bringing the Mega Drive game Curse to American shores, but I guess things collapsed before that could happen. IIRC it's all in English, so I guess it would've been a matter of paying to license, repackage, and manufacture the game.

I kind of like Curse, but it's about as flashy as a camera with dead batteries, so it wouldn't have been likely to revive their fortunes.

[mphokie]

 Mendon, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 8:30 AM, said:

Thanks much, DZ and Jaybird, for your responses! Very interesting reading and I learned quite a bit from your posts.

As for the Intellivoice.... I kind of thought that the voice carts were more expensive, but I can't remember pricing in the stores. I would think that they might be $10 more or something like that above a regular cartridge but I can't recall what price I paid for them new from Toy's R Us.

Anyone recall what the voice carts were priced at upon release compared to regular cartridges?

I wasn't sure if the video game crash had anything to do with the low showing in sales for the Intellivoice or the few voice game releases. I know that it was released before the INTV 2 hit the shelves and I would think that if sales were really slowing down in the INTV market that Mattel would have given pause about releasing a new console. But again, my memory just doesn't remember everything that happened back in those days.


As for 3rd party INTV games.... I sort of thought that INTV did all the games once they bought out Mattel but wasn't absolutely sure as Commando was a Capcom property but it was released as a INTV Corp. production. I don't have the game anymore so I'm not even sure if Capcom got ANY recognition on the game box or in the manual.

Knowing that Commando was a Capcom property, I was curious if Capcom did any of the work on the INTV version or whether INTV Corp. did all of the work with their own developer team/contractors.

I'm not even sure how Commando was acquired for the INTV... whether Mattel had purchased the rights and INTV aquired them when they bought from Mattel or whether INTV acquired them on their own.

Anyway, Thanks again guys for your responses and info!!!


Mendon

This was a long time ago, but I seem to remember games usually being bout $50, with Intellivoice games going for $60. Granted, this was before the crash, when I was finally able to buy games more often with the discounts. I just wish I'd known to buy as many copies of Spiker as I could find...

[SpaceDice2010]

I don't really remember any games from this period going for that high. $40 seemed to be the upper limit, with a few exceptions.