Intellivision's Deathiversary Celebrated, Mourned

Thanks to the Miami Herald for its article discussing the celebrating of an important classic gaming anniversary, as "...earlier this month, dozens of Blue Sky Rangers met at their former haunt, the aging Malibu Castle Park in Redondo Beach, a miniature-golf park and arcade near their former Hawthorne office. It was in memory of the 20th anniversary of the day [the Intellivision employees] lost their jobs." The article continues by detailing the history of Intellivision up to the present day, with the NPD noting "U.S. sales of classic games reached $58 million last year, up from $40 million the year before", with releases such as a previously covered Intellivision compilation. The president of the current Intellivision also mentions: "Someday... the company might release a new title of its own, something easy to play and probably set in the 1980s."

Re:The good days of INTV

[teddiesmooth]

The voice module was pretty decent, although I don't think it was too successful, as only three games were released for it: Bomb Squad, Space Spartans, B-17 Bomber.

The voices were quite comical, especially in Bomb Squad. The villian (whom you cannot see) occasionally says "They'll be looking for us" or laugh maniacally, there would be someone else telling you how much time you have left (usually after every 3 minutes), and your helper had a few expressions:

"The code! The code, figure out the code!"
"Cut this one first, this second, this third... etc"
"WRONG PART!"
"Good going!"
and as the bomb nears explsion "Oh noooooo!"

At the time, it was a cool concept and one could understand the voices quite well. For an old system, it was really cool to hear voices in a video game and the quality was decent for computer generated voices (although if I remember correctly the voices were modeled after a couple of the programmers).

Re:eh?

[Ayaress]

In a lot of cases, it's not that easy anymore. If you can find a functional Chrono Trigger cartridge anywhere, you'll end up paying a goood $50 to $80 for it. You can get the Playstation port for $15 if you're lucky. CT isn't even an extreme case. I bid $80 for a Star Ocean SFC cartridge, but the thing ended up going for $260. The original games are becomming collector's items, while the remakes and ports are bargain-bin junk.

Re:The good days of INTV

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Tron: Solar Sailor used the voice module also. Nothing will beat the synthesized Southern drawl from B-17 however.