Intellivision Lives!

"Nostalgic or Historical, Depending on Your Age"

Overall View:
Now that we are reaching 20+ years of video games, it seems a few old-school compilations come every year. Intellivision Lives! is probably the most impressive in terms of quantity, but not quality. Some of the games are hands down fun and addictive, but chances are you won't even bother with half of them.

Graphics: 6.5/10

--This score has been determined by two sub-scores--

''New graphics'': (7/10)
There are two parts to the game: moving around a place called ''Hal's Pizza'', where, according to the instruction booklet, ''the 80's never left.'' You navigate around the pizza parlor to move to the arcade machine you want. The graphics here are nice, but it's nothing to write home about. Among the more impressive graphics on the game is a series of neon water sculptures. You know a game is trying to look impressive graphically when it incorporates some fancy water thing.

''Old graphics'': (6/10)
The graphics of the old Intellivision games themselves are great, in that they did not touch them up at all (adding to overall original feel of them). But they are bad, in that they did not touch them up at all ;) They could have at least made some of the games a little more ''see-able''. In certain games, you'll have trouble finding out where the heck you are on the screen, or an enemy will get you, and you didn't even see it. That is pretty rare looking at the whole scope of things, but it's still enough to dock a few points in my book.

Sound: 6/10
The sound in this game also leaves a lot to be desired. You can choose background music to play while you're looking around Hal's Pizza, but there are a couple problems with this:

1) There is a customizable soundtrack feature, where you choose what music you want to listen to in the background. However, there is only a handful of songs to choose from, and each one is pretty pathetic. It is all music based on the Intellivision games. They could have had some more impressive music for the background, and it still would not have taken away from the nostalgia of the games themselves.

2) When you play a game, the background music is still playing. While you can turn down either the Intellivision volume or the music volume, it is a hassle.

As far as the sound in the Intellivision games, it's not bad. Most of the music and sound effects are near perfect.

Gameplay: 7/10
With over 60 games, you're sure to find something you like, and something where the controls are not too much of a hassle for you. The main gripe I have, as with practically everyone else who's reviewed this game, is the keypad. The Intellivision had TWELVE buttons on their controller. The PS2 controllers come no where close to having that many, so you have to actually bring up a virtual Intellivision controller that pops up on your screen (blocking about 15% of the screen) and use the controls.

Again, this problem is not super common, at least it's rare that it will actually impact the actual gameplay. Most games just require that you use it to determine how many players, what level of difficulty, how much money to start out with (for Gambling games).

They hopelessly tried to program the 9 action buttons from the Intellivision controller on the PS2 controls by requiring that you tilt the right analog stick to one of 9 positions and hit the R1 button -- doesn't work AT ALL. It's just not practical.

Some games don't require the use of the keypad at all, and those games run nicely. And to reiterate, there are not that many games that make it an actual problem in terms of playing the game. It's just enough of a hassle to make you think ''Couldn't they have thought of a better way to do this?''

Compared to other games in this genre: 2/10

--Reduced to a score of 1/5 because of the lack of genre-akin games--

BEATS:
*None
TIES:
*Midway Arcade Treasures
Needless to say, the Atari compilations, Sonic Mega Collection, and countless others don't have as many control problems or bad sound/music. However, there aren't a WHOLE lot of games to compare this to, especially very recent ones. Still, while the other compilations might be better IMO, Intellivision Lives! is very close. Just a couple of technical issues make it look lackluster when compared to others in the genre.

Fun Value: 9/10
Here's where Intellivision Lives! brings in the points! The game is so fun. Maybe you don't like Sports games, maybe you don't link Space-themed games, maybe you don't like board/card games, but you'll still find something here to your liking. You may think ''Sheesh. Out of these 60 games, there are only 5 good ones'' -- but chances are, those 5 ones will be some of the most addictive games you've ever played! The 2-player games are great because of their simplicity. When you take a game like Sonic Heroes and try to make it a split-screen multiplayer game, it just falls apart because things get too busy on your TV screen and it's hard to focus.

That's where this game gets most of its fun value points IMO, in the multiplayer aspect. Of course, the same does hold true for 1-player modes. The almost total focus on actual gameplay, and not 30% focus on gameplay, 30% focus on graphics, and 40% focus on marketing (as it is today), lets me know that the Intellivision days really were the golden days of gaming. You can just choose a game in this compilation and start playing, sometimes over and over again. A lot of the games were just so well done back in the 70's and 80's, and their greatness still shines through.

And here's for you people who say ''You can just play these games online for free!'' Intellivision Lives! contains an exclusive set of interviews and videos about the Intellivision, as well as some original TV commercials, and pictures of the original boxart! Plus, when you bring up the keypad on-screen, it has the ''overlay'' on it for that game. With Intellivision, each game came with an overlay that you would put on the controller to customize it for that game. Crave entertainment even went so far as to program 60+ of these into the game, to add to the whole experience.

Not to forget, there's also a bunch of never-released games! How cool is that? You get 70's and 80's games that have never been playable until now! This includes the ''demo cartridge'' that you could see in stores back in the 80's that showed off the Intellivision's capabilities. Wonderful!

Overall Value: ($19.99) 10/10
Well, for $20, really, how can you go wrong? Forget those two pizzas this week and pick up Intellivision Lives! Even if you just want to play ''Magic Carousel'', it's worth it!

Replay Value: 9/10
This is also where classic games often were superior to today's games. With the ''try to get a high score'' goal, virtually every game in this collection is never-ending. With adventure games or even (some) RPG's, once you beat the game, it's over. With the games in Intellivision Lives! you may play a game over 50 times without getting the slightest bit bored of it. I mean, there's SNAFU, a multiplayer ''Snake'' game! How awesome is that? That's just one of the very original and addictive games in this collection. I only took off one point solely because of the fact that some of the replay value comes in the form of the 2-player games.

-----SCORES-----

***GRAND TOTAL (MY TOTAL): 48.5/65; 74.6%; C***
***GameFAQs TOTAL: 8.8/10 = 7/10; 70%; C-***

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/08/04