If you checked out our web site, you'll see that Intellivision is part of the new GetBack.com community website. It is a huge, ambitious site featuring music, games and videos, and we are proud to be part of its launch. The site is still in Beta, but a number of Intellivision games are up and running, with many more to come. The games run online for free using a Java-based Intellivision emulator, playing the actual ROM programs from the original game cartridges. The controls are mapped to your computer keyboard.
Like I said, it is still Beta, so expect some glitches here and there. Please comment on anything related to the Intellivision pages - bugs, questions, suggestions, compliments - whatever. I'll pass everything along to the team at GetBack.
I think the entire site - not just the Intellivision bits - is a lot of fun. I hope you'll explore it and will tell your friends!
Keith Robinson, President Intellivision Productions, Inc.
Intellivision Collection - Including Keyboard - Sells for $4000
A collection of Intellivision hardware and games sold for $4000 in an eBay auction ending midday Sunday, April 20. The collection included a rare working Intellivision Keyboard Component, along with a Master Component, Intellivoice module and a number of games. The private seller only found the collection recently and was unaware of the worth until doing some research on the web.
Only 4,000 of the Keyboard Components were manufactured and those were only sold in limited test markets. When Mattel Electronics decided not to release them nationally, they recalled all the ones sold for a full refund plus free products. Those who wanted to keep their Keyboards had to sign a waiver stating that they understood Mattel would not support the unit nor publish any more software for it. To find a working Keyboard Component (with its original box!) is one of the rarest finds in video game collecting.
While Intellivision Productions, Inc. had nothing to do with the auction, we did send bulletins to our friends here on MySpace alerting them to the sale.
"Video Games Live in L.A., 2007" by Keith Robinson, President, Intellivision Productions read all of Keith Robinson's blogs on his MySpace page
Friday night, I attended the Video Games Live concert in Los Angeles. The concert, which has been performed all over the world, features a symphony orchestra and choir performing music from some of the most popular video games of all time: Halo, World of Warcraft, Civilization, Zelda, Mario, and many more. There is also a costume competition and video game contests.
The Thursday Los Angeles Times dismissed the concept as "silly," to which I say, "Yeah, what's your point?" It is silly - and lots of fun. To play a giant-screen Space Invaders game, host Tommy Tallarico picked a man from the audience dressed like a giant banana. (Why a banana? "Bananas are under-represented in video games.")
I was invited to be part of the "Meet & Greet," a panel of over two-dozen video game designers and soundtrack composers signing autographs after the show.
The 2006 Video Games Live in Los Angeles was held at the Hollywood Bowl. You can see photos of the event on my blog from last year.
This year's concert was held at the brand new Nokia Theater at the L.A. Live plaza downtown. The theater had only opened 24 hours earlier, kicked off with a concert by the Dixie Chicks and The Eagles.
(Video Games Live was actually supposed to be the first event at the Nokia Theater. From what I was told, after The Eagles were booked to play Saturday and Sunday, they decided they wanted to be the inaugural act at the Nokia, so they added the Thursday night show.)
Not all of the bugs had been quite worked out of the Nokia by Friday night. A power failure knocked out the lights on the plaza - and the metal detectors - just before the doors to the theater were to open, causing a delay of ten minutes or so while they rebooted the building. Later, during the Meet & Greet, Event Director Becky Young whispered to me, "There's a leak; we might have to evacuate the theater." Yipes. I assumed gas leak, but it turned out to be water dripping from one of the ceiling light fixtures. Then the fire alarm went off. Heck of a way to run a theater.
Despite this, most of stayed past 1 AM to make sure everyone waiting in line got an autograph; nearly three hours after the concert had ended. Like I said, most. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell left before midnight. Remember that: Intellivision loves you. Atari? Not so much.
In the August 2007 issue of Esquire magazine, columnist Chuck Klosterman wrote the following about Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails):
"I lost track of Reznor's whereabouts from 1998 to 2005, mostly because his records all started to sound like a schizophrenic trying to sexually seduce an Intellivision console by screaming at it during a Pink Floyd concert."
Yes, that does sound awful. Might we suggest trying instead some Miles Davis and a nice Chardonnay?
["Chuck Klosterman's America: The Ethics Paradox," Esquire, August 2007, page 53.]
"The Great Biplanes Tournament" by Keith Robinson, President, Intellivision Productions read all of Keith Robinson's blogs on his MySpace page
One of the questions I'm most often asked is what was the favorite game of the Intellivision programmers. There were a number of one-player games the programmers were addicted to – Astrosmash, Night Stalker, TRON Deadly Discs – but among the TWO-player games, there really is only one answer: Biplanes.
Biplanes is a game in the Triple Action cartridge, programmed by Rich O'Keefe. It is elegant in its simplicity: two biplanes battle against a vast expanse of blue sky with a couple of clouds to hide behind and, at the bottom of the screen, the single obstacle: a control tower. Every now and then, a weather balloon is released, providing an extra target. The controls are about as simple as any Intellivision game: once your plane is in the air, you can pull up on the stick, push down, and shoot.
Simple. But thanks to the aerodynamics and gravity Rich programmed into the game, the control of the planes is amazingly sophisticated. An experienced pilot can climb, stall, then recover is an outside loop to come up under the enemy and shoot him out of the sky.
Normally the winner is the first to score 15 points, but thanks to the game not being over until all bullets on screen are spent, it's possible to end with a 15-15 tie or even a 16-15 win.
Every day in the Intellivision offices back in 1982 you'd hear a programmer throw out a Biplanes challenge to another programmer. The tightest rivalry was between Russ Haft, programmer of TRON Maze-A-Tron, and Steve Montero, programmer of Night Stalker. Their skill at flying was unsurpassed.
That rivalry ended in summer 1982 when Steve Montero left Mattel Electronics, lured away by Activision. On his final day, August 6, he and Russ played Biplanes for the last time. Knowing this was an historic event, I set up a video recorder to capture the game and the comments as they played.
The level of play did not disappoint. As the game progressed, programmers and managers gathered around the cubicle to watch in awe.
In the 25 years since, the tape has never been seen – until now. I posted a 10 minute video of the battle (edited down from twenty minutes) on YouTube this week. I had never included the video in our collections or on the web before because I didn't know if anyone would want to watch other people play one of the most graphically primitive video games ever created. But the response I've received the last few days has been unanimously positive. The viewers quickly get captured watching the competition.
We finally did it – we got the new Intellivision web site posted. It's at intellivisiongames.com. It's not 100% yet; we still have the old site posted, but we removed the passwords from the new site over the weekend so that we could start having real people check it out.
This is exciting for me, since the web site is how this whole Intellivision revival started. From the moment I was introduced to the World Wide Web in the summer of 1994 by a couple of friends at Quicksilver Software, I was hooked. The idea of instantly publishing to the world was intoxicating.
I went live with my first site in November 1994 – posting cartoons from my weekly comic strip Making It. I didn't use any web designing tools then – just HTML tags in a word processor. It was fun – I kept looking for more features to add to my site.
Then I got the idea of posting about Intellivision. I had worked at Mattel Electronics from 1981 to 1984 on Intellivision games and had planned on writing a book about the experience. Thanks to my comic strip, I got a literary agent in 1987. I pitched her the Intellivision book, but she was cool to the idea – the video games craze was long over; who would want to read a book about them? So the notes and photos got stuck in a file cabinet – until 1995. I started the Blue Sky Rangers web site and began writing about the games and the programmers who created them.
The results were overwhelming. What started as a side project quickly overtook the number of daily hits for the Making It site. And I started getting dozens of e-mails asking about re-releasing the Intellivision games.
I checked with David Warhol, another Mattel Electronics alum, who had last worked on Intellivision games for INTV corporation in 1990. Turns out he had made a couple of proposals to publishers to create an Intellivision collection for the PC. He had run into a roadblock, though: INTV Corp. had gone bankrupt in 1991 and the ownership of the rights to the Intellivision brand and games was in question. He had a lawyer working on it, but wasn't making much progress.
Finally, about a year later, Dave gave up. He told me if I wanted to pursue the Intellivision rights, I had his blessing. I started investigating, including a trip in person to the Federal Court in downtown Los Angeles to see the records of the INTV Corp. bankruptcy. I was told the disposition of the bankruptcy was missing. As they locked the doors at 5 o'clock, I refused to leave. After another hour of searching, an annoyed clerk discovered the misfiled paperwork.
Ultimately, I was able to track down and purchase the rights. With former Blue Sky Ranger Stephen Roney, I founded Intellivision Productions, incorporated on April 30, 1997. Yes, this month is our 10th anniversary!
Our first collection for the PC came out in 1998. This was followed by a Play Station collection, a sequel collection for the PC, cell phone games, plug-and-play collections, a Play Station 2 version, then Xbox, then GameCube. About 4 million units sold. Now we have a Nintendo DS collection looking for a publisher.
Over the years, the web site grew. New pages and links were cobbled together like rooms on the Winchester Mystery House. The look changed and I started using a web authoring tool, but essentially the site was the one I started in 1995. We had a wish list of features we wanted to add to the site, but the way the site had grown it looked impossible to add them.
The solution was a totally new site, built from scratch. The content is all in databases now, making it easier to maintain and update. The site builds pages from uniform templates, giving a more consistent look and flow. There are news stories and blogs on the front page. You can rate the Intellivision games. The store features a true shopping-cart system and online order tracking. Yes, the Intellivision web site is joining the 21st century! Just seven years late.
Like I said, it's not 100% ready, so the current intellivisionlives.com will still be our official site for the next month or so, but I invite all my and Intellivision's MySpace friends to check out the new site and let me know what you think!
"I'm a Mac." "And I'm a...ColecoVision!?" by Keith Robinson, President, Intellivision Productions read all of Keith Robinson's blogs on his MySpace page
In a previous blog, I wrote about how author John Hodgman modeled the New Yorker ad for his book The Areas of My Expertise after the classic George Plimpton Intellivision ads of the early 1980s.
So when Hodgman appeared in Los Angeles on his book tour, Blue Sky Ranger David Warhol and I had to go meet him.
At Book Soup on Sunset Blvd., Hodgman read selections from The Areas of My Expertise (accompanied on guitar by his friend, musician Jonathan Coulton), then answered questions (via walkie talkies) from the audience. ("Hi, John? This is Larry in Biographies. Over." "Hi, Larry. What's your question? Over.")
(When one audience member brought up Hodgman's appearance as the PC in the ubiquitous "I'm a Mac" "And I'm a PC" commercials, Hodgman deadpanned, "Oh, you've seen those? The company told me they were going to be for internal use only; marketing meetings, like that.... Over.")
After the questions, the crowd lined up to get copies of the book autographed. When it was my turn, I introduced myself and Dave. Hodgman seemed delighted that we had come. He signed his name on the New Yorker page, adding "for George." I presented him with a VIP Intellivision lapel pin, which he immediately put on. He posed for pictures with me and the ad.
Then he said, rather sheepishly, "You know, I have to admit, even though I loved the George Plimpton Intellivision commercials, I was a ColecoVision kid."
What? Dave and I looked at each other. ColecoVision!?Well. We still had him autograph copies of his book for us, though.
Hodgman addressed the long line of his fans snaking around the bookshelves behind us.
"Do you know who those guys are?" he asked, pointing to us.
A group response of "NO" came back, in a tone that indicated they didn't care who we were, either. They just wanted to get the damn line moving. As Hodgman started to tell them about the Blue Sky Rangers, Dave and I grabbed our books and rushed to the exit.
That's MS. Intellivision to You! by Keith Robinson, President, Intellivision Productions read all of Keith Robinson's blogs on his MySpace page
If you've been following this blog, you know that Blue Sky Ranger Steve Ettinger took me to task for stating on the Intellivision MySpace page that Intellivision is male. MySpace makes you pick a gender and I just automatically clicked "male." I don't know why; I've just always thought of Intellivision as male.
Steve, however, cited anatomical evidence pointing to the console being female. "Fix it," he demanded.
Well, I invited you to weigh in and we did get a number of comments. Most expressed a decided opinion on whether the console was male or female. (On October 1, someone hacked our site, doing nothing but changing the name "Intellivision" to "Gay," but that doesn't really answer the question.)
The results? Two-to-one in favor of female. There were many good arguments, but probably our favorite was from Eric Fell: "I say the Intellivision should be listed as female. Mostly because then I wouldn't feel as awkward telling people I spent a lot of time with 'her' in my basement." Or as AlGrinch succinctly put it: "She was my first girlfriend."
So I've updated the profile: Intellivision is now proudly female. I'm sorry, make that Ms. Intellivision.
P.S. Steve wants to point out that the gigantic glasses he's wearing in the 1982 photo in the previous blog have been "accepted by both the Smithsonian Museum AND the Guinness Book Of World Records, and are now in a 6-months-at-a-time rotation between the two entities."
Photos from September Retrotopia! by Keith Robinson, President, Intellivision Productions read all of Keith Robinson's blogs on his MySpace page
Here are some photos from last Saturday night's Retrotopia at the Arena Interactive Lounge in Los Angeles, sponsored by Intellivision!
First up, musical guests The Megas rehearse an hour before the doors open:
8 PM. Some guests flock to the arcade machines (on free play, of course):
Some play Mario and other classic games on the 50 inch high-definition TVs:
Playing Marble Madness:
A bit after 9:30, a'cappella group Push Start perform. They kill with the theme from Tetris.
..
At 10, The Megas, Mega Man tribute band, perform while the game Mega Man 2 plays on a big-screen TV behind them:
Here's me, Keith Robinson, on the left, playing Biplanes with fellow Blue Sky Ranger Bill Fisher on the PlayStation 2 version of Intellivision Lives! (Bill won, 5 games to 0. Rematch!)
Newlywed music-makers Seth (8 Bit Weapon) and Michelle (ComputeHer) play BurgerTime on a real Intellivision while Blue Sky Ranger David Warhol rather creepily looks on:
Me again, playing Sea Battle wirelessly against Rob from Coin-Op TV on the (as-yet-unreleased) Nintendo DS version of Intellivision Lives! (I lost. Rematch!)
After the questions, the crowd lined up to get copies of the book autographed. When it was my turn, I introduced myself and Dave. Hodgman seemed delighted that we had come. He signed his name on the New Yorker page, adding "for George." I presented him with a VIP Intellivision lapel pin, which he immediately put on. He posed for pictures with me and the ad.
