Great show.
That's my Mario. Some of you gentlemen were a bit rough on my beloved Intellivision, lol. It obviously doesn't hold up now, but it was my favorite console of that generation. Collecovision had the best graphics, but I only knew a couple kids who had them, and they never seemed to own many games. I don't know if it was a function of a greater price or less availability, but it seemed a problem. The various Atari iterations were more popular, but I thought the Intellivision had a much better game library. Not only were the graphics and game play better; it had a diverse catalog of genres for that time. Some highlights:
For the time,
AD&D Treasure of Tarmin was an excellent approximation of the tabletop game, and it was a legitimately rich CRPG. It included rudimentary character design options, giving the players treasure items that re-calibrated stats. This effectively enabled nascent magic vs. physical attack builds. It also included stat grinding that increased your chances of survival in the more dangerous levels. It was a glimpse into how much permadeath increases the stakes, because you could spend hours building a character, but it would still be vulnerable to high level monsters. It added a layer of actual trepidation to the encounters, which was accentuated by the death screen you where instantaneously switched to when you received the fatal blow. The sound effect and little tombstone marker on the map were brutal, lol.
AD&D Cloudy Mountain was a fun adventure game that presaged Zelda. The over world had obstacles that could only be crossed if the player retrieved the appropriate item from a dungeon. It had an open world aspect too, because players could make strategic decisions about which items to retrieve. Each item type was guarded by monsters of different difficulty levels, and the randomly generate maps rarely required you to retrieve every item to reach the final boss. So you could often make choices about taking a shorter path with more dangerous bosses or a longer one that required you to clear more dungeons. The other really cool feature was that the game gave your graphical and aural hints about the location of monsters. The confined spaces, coupled with the high speed of the monster sprites, created an environment that rewarded players who tracked their prey through these clues. You could set traps, strategically choose which room to attack from, and if I remember correctly, even use stealth tactics to draw monsters away. I found this gave the game huge replayability and a greater array of gameplay options than what other games offered at the time.
Utopia was a relatively politically sophisticated competitive
RTS TBS game that pitted players against each other as rulers of competing banana republics. The game gave you a continuum of strategies from the militaristic to benevolent all of which had appreciable in game consequences.
In addition to the games above that I felt were ahead of their time, the Intellivision had some really fun action, multiplayer, and sports games. In order,
Tron: Deadly Discs,
Space Battle,
Pittfall!,
Nightstalker,
Microsurgeon,
Star Strike, Dragonfire,
Atlantis,and
Space Hawk /
Sea Battle and
Armor Battle /
Skiing,
NFL Football,and
NASL Soccer were my respective favorites.
The final fun thing about the Intellivision was that adults played it. I remember going to parties with my parents where the adults would play
Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack and
Horse Racing (with actual gambling on the side). It was kind of like the Wii era, but with a lot more booze and cigarettes. My uncle even competed in a
NFL Football league that had a trophy and cash prizes.
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