Intellivision Lives!

"A sad time for Mattel."

The Intellivision was Mattel’s first and last game console, coming out in the early eighties. Though it had a relatively short life span for consoles compared to others, it pumped out enough games for an expansive library. Then, the great game bust of 1984 stopped Intellivision dead in its tracks, though obscure games still came out for it all through the eighties. Now, over sixty different Intellivision games have all been placed on one disc, and if you really want to go back to your childhood, playing around with that old, keypad controller, then this may be a good buy. For anyone looking for any non-nostalgia fun, then don’t pick this up.

The main menu allows you to select the genre of game you would like to play. The games are very ranged, from Sports to Space, to a small section of unreleased games. A few of the games still hold up to today’s standards, and are very addictive. One of the most memorable games in the lineup is Astrosmash! Which was the one of the Intellivision’s most popular game during its lifespan. This game is part Space Invaders, part Asteroids, and it is still fun to play today. Another fun game is Shark! Shark! In this game, you start off as a little tiny baby fish, trying to survive in a big fish pond. The more fish you eat, the bigger you grow, and then you can get even bigger fish, to increase your score. Many of the games are still fun, but there is a problem: Most of them have already been made into free flash games, available for play on your computer right now. Most of those flash games also look better than the Intellivision versions!

Every Intellivision game looks exactly as they did on the original system; few colors, blocky graphics, poor animation. Everything is just unbearably blocky. You could not really expect much out of a system that was only a step above the Atari VCS (known now as the 2600.) Each character is made up of one color; if they are lucky, have moving appendages. The best looking game in this collection, “Magic Carousel,” was not released to the public, so the Intellivision was not fully used to it’s potential during its lifespan. A couple of games in this collection made use of the Intellivoice module, which allowed garbled speech, and that is here too. The only thing that looks okay is the main menu of sorts, where actual 3D is used.

Like most home console games from the early eighties, much of the music heard in Intellivision lives comes in the form of bleeps and bloops. Also, there is a selection of music that replays over and over again in the background, even while playing a game. Most of the songs anyway are based of games in this collection. All of them sound very new wave-ish, so it fits the early eighties style. As I said before, a few of the games used the Intellivoice module to produce speech, and all of it is here, and it still sounds bad.

If you were looking for a short history lesson on The Intellivision and pretty much how the great game crash started, then it would be pretty smart to look here. You also have developer interviews, telling you how they made the games, but it looks and sounds like they were made with a home video camera. Also, if you are skilled enough, you can unlock a few old commercials or unreleased games. The only reason to play after an hour or two is to see these relics from a time long past.

Basically, you may be able to get an hour’s worth of enjoyment out of buying Intellivision Lives, including watching all of the videos. Many of the games in this collection are…well, not so good. Would you really want to ruin all of those precious childhood memories?

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/01/04