Mattel’s Intellivision was my very first gaming console (I’m not counting Pong, as it was hardly a real console) when I bought it in 1981 – or my parents bought it for me, I should clarify – and I’m seriously excited about Atari reviving this classic piece of 1980s hardware.
Yes, Atari – and if you don’t realize how strange this turn of events is, remember that this company was Mattel’s deadly rival at the time with the Atari 2600. So the Atari Intellivision Sprint reboot is a bit like, say, the Nintendo Mega Drive or the Sega Entertainment System. But as Atari puts it: the two great rivals are now friends.
If you’re lost on the name Intellivision – and you very well might be if you weren’t around in the 1980s, or have no interest in the history of games consoles – it’s an iconic console with a black and gold wood-effect finish. It also had a few controllers that looked like telephones – old-fashioned landlines, that is, because the coiled cord that attached the controller to the Intellivision base unit really looked like it belonged on a telephone from the 1980s.
Of course, that cord wouldn’t be useful today, which is why the Intellivision Sprint – that one Atari produces in collaboration with Plaion (hats off The edge) – has wireless controllers that can be placed in the base station for charging.
Other changes Atari made with the Sprint include the addition of an HDMI connector (obviously) and USB ports (for adding additional games, presumably via a USB stick). We’re not told what’s under the hood, but it will clearly be very different from what Mattel crammed in there in the 1980s.
What’s most striking about the Intellivision Sprint, however, is the way its appearance is fantastically unapologetic to the original – and I love that. The other part of the equation here is of course the games, and since this is a celebration of the Intellivision’s 45th anniversary, you already get 45 games on board. I remember a few of them all too well from the many days I spent playing (or rather playing) on the console in my youth.
Look
Tron mazes and that voice synthesis module
Yes, the controllers took some getting used to – the Atari 2600 had a more traditional joystick, which was a better bet. But you did get used to the Intellivision controllers (especially coming from a Pong ‘dial’) and they actually worked well enough (the buttons could be a bit finicky, mind you – hopefully something the Sprint will address).
The games library, however, was a slice of pure joy for me – admittedly, in some ways simply because it was a moonshot from Pong. Still, the Intellivision holds some of my fondest early gaming memories, and the reincarnation of the Sprint brings back some of those classics.
Tron Maze-A-Tron was one of my favorites. It was one simple maze game essentially, as the name suggests, but with tricky nuances that somehow made it strangely compelling, with its mesmerizing sound and chilling Master Control Program hunting me down. Although perhaps the competition with my dad, who was somehow better than me at this game, was part of what kept me coming back for more.
Utopia was one strategy game that was way ahead of its time and one that I absolutely loved. Another game I played to death was B-17 bomberwhere you had to carrying out bombing missions in Europecontrolling the flight of your plane, aiming the bombs and taking the gunner’s seat to shoot down attacking enemy fighters, all with the very first speech in a game. (You had to buy a separate voice synthesis module, Intellivoice, to hear the speech, and although it was only rudimentary utterances, it amazed me.)
What people may not appreciate is how relatively tough some of these games were at the time. They represented my very first experiences with strategy gaming. Of course there were also arcade games, such as Tronand also sports classics.
Utopia And B-17 bomber are included in the game library for the Sprint. The press release says nothing Tronbut we don’t get a complete list. There are numerous sports games, including, for example Baseball, Chip Shot Super Pro Golf, Football, Super Pro Skiing, Tennis, And Super professional football.
In addition to the original Intellivision classics, Atari is also throwing in some “favorite arcade games” including Boulder Dash (which was a much later port for the Mattel console).
The games all come with custom inlays for the controllers, and I’m seriously tempted to pull the trigger on this retro console this holiday season. The Intellivision Sprint is available for pre-order on October 17 and will be released on December 5 in the US and Australia, and on December 23 in Europe. The price is $150 in the US and £100 in the UK. (And if you’re wondering about Amico – an earlier version of an Intellivision remake – after a slew of delays, it’s unclear what’s going on with that project these days, but what I’ve read online doesn’t sound very hopeful.)
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