March 16, 2009by Chris

The Intellivision by Mattel was released in 1979 as a direct competitor of the Atari 2600. It clobbered the 2600 in graphics - troubling news to the Atari 2600 fanboys at the time, a fact that was notoriously mocked in the television ads with George Plimpton.

It featured a new controller type - the 16 directional disk with a 12 button keypad which accepted gaming membrane covers, and 4 buttons on the sides (two which shared the same function). An evolutionary improvement (some people may disagree) over the single button 8 direction joysticks of the time (2600) and was probably the only controller to use a coiled cable.

Intellivision controllers were tough to use, the side buttons were difficult to press and apparently caused repetitive stress injuries that are similar to modern-day injuries associated with the Blackberry.

It sold three million units, has a library of 125 games - some which speak using the intellivoice add-on, and has an active homebrew scene to this very day.

Intellivision was the very first 16 bit console - it contains the General Instruments CP1610 CPU which runs at 894.886 kHz (almost one MHz). It has 1.4Kb of RAM, 7Kb of ROM, 160x196 resolution in 16 colours, up to 8 simultaneous sprites, and a three channel / one channel noise generator audio chip (General Instrument AY-3-8910).

The Emulators
The best Intellivision Emulator for Windows is Nostalgia vr5 by Joe Fisher. It flawlessly reproduces the whole Intellivision gaming library for your legacy pleasure plus it also allows for the execution of apps and games for the Intellivision homebrew front.

Nostalgia has excellent compatibility with most modern day video cards, functions in a window or fullscreen mode (alt-enter), allows for easy keyboard and joystick mapping, and provides netplay with the Kaillera client. It has many other refinements and features and has been in development for several years and is current - the latest release of the emulator was in 2008.

Big time props to Joe Fisher for his excellent emulator. Win32 download and setup information is found here.

Intellivision was a step ahead and surprised a lot of people when it was introduced.

Max-Em 9.3