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."

so in another 17 years?

[BFedRec]

will all the dotcommers get back together for a romp down memory lane in a few years? All those pets.com employees probably want to catch up on old times.

Seriously, I used to work for amazon.com and got laid off when they shut down the Atlanta facility and I wouldn't mind getting together with a few of the old co-workers... but I think that 20 years might be a bit of a long way off for this sort of thing. Then again I guess what we were doing wasn't as missed or as innovative as the classic video game people.

CharlesP

The good days of INTV

[teddiesmooth]

Ah, reminiscing about playing Space Hawk, Bomb Squad, and Burgertime, and Astrosmash. Those games were great. Bomb Squad is still my favorite. The voices alone are enough to make you nervous. The music changes when you cut a wrong wire or solder the wrong part into place. You only get 15 minutes (in normal difficulty, I think) to fix so many circuit boards and figure out the code to disarm the bomb.

Hopefully these guys will start a new company and make games as great as they used to. If they could remake Bomb Squad with an action-movie feel to it that would be awesome. Maybe keep the old gameplay in place as the main character cuts wires and replaces parts as another teammate helps with another set of hands. All this set in the 80s would be awesome, with the soundtrack responding to every cut! Nerve-wracking!

Some real greats...

[inkless1]

My parents came home with an intellivision when I was a kid. Gaming must be in my genes, because my dad would spend hours trying to beat Night Hunter (a mathematical impossibility for those who havent played)

Ours died years ago, but I picked up a new on eBay. Had a nostalgia weekend with some friends and found out that one of my college buddies used to keep stats and names of the players on his Intellivision Baseball team. To show he wasn't joking, he proceeded to simply school me proper on the game.

Possibly one of the great games was Sea Battle though, which combined strategy and units in a way unseen in games (except for perhaps it's contempory Utopia) and wouldn't really be seen again until games like Herzog and the RTS genre.

Or the massive dungeon crawl Treasure of Tarmin - another game that I think stands unbeaten.

Great system. Great games.