''Intellivision Lives!'' is a compilation of over 60

Intellivision The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. In 1984, ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

s, originally produced by

Mattel Electronics The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. In 1984, ...

and INTV Corporation between 1978 and 1990. Using original game code and

software emulation In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use perip ...

, ''Intellivision Productions'' released the first edition in December 1998 on a

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

and

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

hybrid CD-ROM. A sequel, ''

Intellivision Rocks ''Intellivision Lives!'' is a compilation of over 60 Intellivision video games, originally produced by Mattel Electronics and INTV Corporation between 1978 and 1990. Using original game code and software emulation, ''Intellivision Productions ...

'', was released in 2001 that includes third-party games originally published by

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...

and

Imagic Imagic ( ) was an American video game developer and publisher that created games initially for the Atari 2600. Founded in 1981 by corporate alumni of Atari, Inc. and Mattel, its best-selling titles were ''Atlantis'', '' Cosmic Ark'', and '' D ...

as well as Mattel Electronics

Intellivoice The Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module, commonly abbreviated as Intellivoice, is an adapter for the Intellivision, Mattel's home video game console, that utilizes a voice synthesizer to generate audible speech. The Intellivoice is a large, brow ...

and

ECS ECS may refer to: Education * Education Commission of the States, in the United States * Engleside Christian School, in Alexandria, Virginia, United States * Etowah City School in Etowah, Tennessee, United States * Evangelical Christian Sch ...

games. Versions of ''Intellivision Lives!'' were then released for the PlayStation 2,

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by th ...

, and

GameCube The is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 (1996), and predecessor of the W ...

Crave Entertainment Crave Entertainment was an American video game publisher founded in 1997 by Nima Taghavi. Its headquarters was in Newport Beach, California. It was acquired by Handleman Company in 2005 in a deal valued up to $95,000,000 but was then sold to Fi ...

. In 2010 ''Virtual Play Games'' released a Nintendo DS edition. Some games could not be included due to licensing (e.g. ''

Tron ''Tron'' (stylized as ''TRON'') is a 1982 American science fiction action-adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. The film stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programme ...

, Lock 'N' Chase,

BurgerTime originally released as in Japan, is a 1982 arcade game developed by Data East initially for its DECO Cassette System. The player is chef Peter Pepper, who must walk over hamburger ingredients located across a maze of platforms while avoiding c ...

, Loco-Motion, Mission-X,

Masters of the Universe ''Masters of the Universe'' (sometimes referred to as the ''He-Man'' or ''She-Ra'' series) is a sword and planet-themed media franchise created by Mattel. The main premise revolves around the conflict between He-Man (the alter ego of Prince Ada ...

Pac-Man originally called ''Puck Man'' in Japan, is a 1980 maze video game, maze action game, action video game developed and released by Namco for Arcade game, arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its l ...

Dig Dug is a maze arcade game developed by Namco in 1981 and released in 1982, distributed in North America by Atari, Inc. The player controls Dig Dug to defeat all enemies per stage, by either inflating them to bursting or crushing them underneath rock ...

, Diner,

Pole Position In a motorsports race, the pole position is usually the best and "statistically the most advantageous" starting position on the track. The pole position is usually earned by the driver with the best qualifying times in the trials before the ra ...

Commando 40_Commando.html" ;"title="Royal Marines from 40 Commando">Royal Marines from 40 Commando on patrol in the Sangin area of Afghanistan are pictured A commando is a combatant, or operative of an elite light infantry or special operations forc ...

''). Others such as '' Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain'' and ''

Treasure of Tarmin ''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin'' is a video game for the Intellivision video game console and the Mattel Aquarius computer system. This game was a licensed ''Dungeons & Dragons'' adaptation. Gameplay In ''Treasure of Tarmin'' ...

'' are working prototype versions to avoid trademarked names. Licenses such as

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL) ...

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the maj ...

NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United ...

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

, NASL, PGA,

US Ski Team The U.S. Ski Team, operating under the auspices of U.S. Ski & Snowboard, develops and supports men's and women's athletes in the sports of alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, cross-country, ski jumping, and Nordic combined. Since 1974 the team and ...

, PBA,

the Electric Company ''The Electric Company'' is an American educational children's television series produced by the Children's Television Workshop (CTW, now known as Sesame Workshop). It was co-created by Paul Dooley, Joan Ganz Cooney, and Lloyd Morrisett. T ...

were simply dropped from the titles. Also included were games never before released and made available for the very first time such as '' King of the Mountain, Brickout, and Takeover''. In addition to the games, the Crave Entertainment editions, have several unlockables such as the classic Intellivision commercials. The original Windows/Mac edition is a resource for development history, unfinished prototypes, box art, overlays, instructions, hidden features, programmer biographies, and video interviews.

Games

History and development

In June 1995, former Mattel Electronics programmers led by Keith Robinson started the '' Blue Sky Rangers'' Intellivision website. '' Blue Sky Rangers'' being a

nickname A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...

given to the Mattel Electronics programmers in a

TV Guide TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program TV listings, listings information as well as entertainment and television-related news. The company sold its print magazine division, TV Guide Magazine, TV Guide Mag ...

magazine article from the 1982 June 19 issue. The website provides the history of the Intellivsion games and credits the programmers and artists. It was well received with fans asking how the games can be played on their computers. In 1997 Intellivision Productions, Inc. was formed by former Mattel Electronics programmers Keith Robinson and Stephen Roney with the purchase of the rights to the Intellivision and its games. At the same time, a student in Michigan named Carl Mueller Jr. was independently working on

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

the Intellivision. With the help of Intellivision ROM dumps from Sean Kelly and then William Moeller and Scott Nudds, Carl was able to create the first Intellivision

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peri ...

that plays the games on a modern computer. Sean was fortunate to have two Intellivision prototype cartridges with standard 8-bit EPROMS as opposed to the more complex memory mapped ROMS used by standard cartridges. William and Scott were able to dump the Intellivision embedded executive control software and graphics ROMS, as well as build a cartridge reader to dump any Intellivision cartridge. Carl's

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

emulator and a

emulator created by Intellivisions Productions' Steve Roney would be used in the free Intellipack downloads so anyone could play select Intellivision games on their computers for the first time in 1997. The Intellivision for PC/Mac Volume 2 download, also of 1997, was the first release of ''Deep Pockets Super Pro Billiards'', the last game programmed for the Intellivision in 1990 but unreleased by INTV Corporation. They would also be used to play the original Intellivision games in the Intellivision Lives! PC/Mac CD-ROM edition released in 1998 by Intellivision Productions.

PC and Macintosh system requirements

The PC/Mac edition was produced with Macromedia Director and may not be compatible with modern operating systems. The QuickTime videos, emulators, and Intellivision ROM image files are directly accessible on the CD-ROM. The Intellivision Lives! PC/Mac v1.0 system requirements: * PC: Pentium 90 MHz, Windows 95, 8MB RAM, 8x CD-ROM, QuickTime v3.0 or better * Mac: Power Macintosh, OS7.5, 100 MHz, 16MB RAM, 8x CD-ROM, QuickTime The Intellivision Lives! PC/Mac v1.1 system requirements: * PC: Pentium 266 MHz, Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP, 32M RAM, 8X CD-ROM, 16-bit DirectX compatible sound & video cards, DirectX 7 or better, QuickTime v3.0 or better * Mac: Power Macintosh, OS 8/9/X, 120 MHz, 32M RAM, 8X CD-ROM, QuickTime Controller functions are mapped to the computer keyboard; an extended keyboard is required to access both left and right Intellivision controllers. With Macintosh, USB game controllers could be used indirectly with a joystick to keyboard mapper utility. For PC, Intellivision Productions promoted the Gravis GamePad Pro game controller (

game port The game port is a device port that was found on IBM PC compatible and other computer systems throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It was the traditional connector for joystick input, and occasionally MIDI devices, until made obsolete by USB in the ...

version). The MS-DOS emulator, directly accessible on the CD-ROM, also supported original Intellivision controllers through the INTV2PC Hand Controller Interface. INTV2PC is a parallel port adapter that accepts original Intellivision hand controllers. This feature although not promoted is documented in the ''INTVPC'' files on the CD-ROM. Modern intellivision emulators and USB controller adapters have since become available, compatible with the Intellivision Lives rom image files. To play the games using real Intellivision controllers ''Intellivision Productions'' supported the use of a device called the ''Intellicart''. The ''Intellicart'' is a

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch ...

cartridge with an

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' ('' data terminal equipment'') suc ...

interface that can accept a copy of an Intellivision

ROM image A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, or used to contain a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequ ...

file from a computer. Rather than play the ''Intellivision Lives!'' games through an emulator, they can be played on a real Intellivision through an ''Intellicart''. Since that time modern Intellivision flash memory cartridges have been made that achieve the same result. In 2002 an updated Intellivision Lives! PC/Mac v1.1 was made available by ''Intellivision Productions''. Those that purchased the original could upgrade for a nominal fee. It added Windows 98/ME/2000/XP support with a native Windows emulator supporting DirectX sound, video, and game controllers.

Modern video game consoles

Realtime Associates Realtime Associates is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was founded in 1986 by David Warhol and a group of ex- Mattel Electronics employees originally to create games for the Intellivision system. Since then, the compa ...

developed the video game console editions published by

for PlayStation 2 (2003),

(2004), and

(2004). In these versions the games are accessed from a 3D "overworld" set in a circa 1980s

pizza parlor Pizza (, ) is a dish of Italian origin consisting of a usually round, flat base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with tomatoes, cheese, and often various other ingredients (such as various types of sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, onions ...

; an inaccurate representation as the Intellivision games were originally designed for a home console. Games were also re-organised by genres rather than the original Mattel Electronics ''Networks'' used in the PC/Mac edition. Some games require two controllers, even to play single player. In 2010 ''Virtual Play Games'' published Intellivision Lives! for the Nintendo DS handheld system, also developed by

. It features wireless, multiplayer support using a single game card. The ''Nintendo DSs touch screen emulates the Intellivision's 12-button keypad including an overlay image for each game. The Nintendo DS lacks a 16 direction pad used by some Intellivision games. This limitation was overcome, in ''Vectron'' for example, by mapping directional inputs to the touch screen. Only 10,000 copies of the Nintendo DS edition were ever released. The Xbox version of ''Intellivision Lives!'' is fully

forward compatible Forward compatibility or upward compatibility is a design characteristic that allows a system to accept Input/output, input intended for a later software versioning, version of itself. The concept can be applied to entire systems, electrical User i ...

with the

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...

console, and in 2008 ''Intellivision Lives!'' became available for purchase as a download through Xbox Live Game Marketplace's Xbox Originals.

Intellivision Rocks

''Intellivision Rocks'' is the PC-only sequel to the original PC version of ''Intellivision Lives!''. As with ''Intellivision Lives!'', ''Intellivision Rocks'' is a collection of games which were originally found on the

, presented in emulated form. It mainly features 3rd-party games from

and

. In addition, several unreleased games are included.

Reception

IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa dist ...

said that ''Intellivision Lives!'' is "still blocky after all these years, sure...but these games really need the controller." ''

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

'' editors said that although the controller emulation is a little hard to handle, the collection does a fine job in delivering classic Intellivision games.

References

External links

* * {{moby game, id=/intellivision-lives-, name=''Intellivision Lives!'' 1998 video games Crave Entertainment games GameCube games Intellivision Multiplayer and single-player video games Nintendo DS games PlayStation 2 games PlayStation Network games Realtime Associates games Video game compilations Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by George Sanger Windows games Xbox games Xbox Originals games Quicksilver Software games