Intellivision 25-in-1

[shooraijin]

If you don't know what an Intellivision is/was, you won't understand this. Go here: http://www.intellivisionlives.com/

In the retro craze, there's a number of games-in-a-controller things out there, including an Atari 2600 one (which supposedly is very good -- my friend Jordan bought one), a Namco set, an NES set, and now an Intellivision set. The Intellivision 25-in-1 is fully licensed and legal (not a pirate ripoff), available in NTSC/PAL/SECAM, uses 4 AA batteries and plugs into the video/audio-in on a TV set or composite monitor. I grew up with a Tandyvision, which was Radio Shack's Inty clone, so I bought the Inty 25-in-1 (curiously, Bed Bath and Beyond was selling them, a store I normally don't set foot in, for just $20).

I was disappointed to find out this is not the real deal. The device is released by the same people who did the NES-in-a-controller and uses the same firmware (based on a knockoff of the NES A203, which is itself a knockoff of the venerable 6502, my favourite CPU). I was happy to see a 6502 in it, but the 6502 and the NES PPU clone are not the same as the CP 1610 CPU and the STIC in the original Inty, so everything had to be reprogrammed -- i.e., it's not Inty firmware, it's games that just look like the Intellivision.

The result probably should have been expected. While the games *mostly* play the same, there's a number of obvious graphical glitches (particularly in Night Stalker and Star Strike), and the sprites move *too* smoothly (the running man animation, which was the Inty's most famous feature, did survive intact). However, the sound is all wrong, and there's no music *at* *all*! How can I play Thunder Castle without the Unfinished Symphony?? How can I play Thin Ice without the Fat Man's penguin theme??

Anyway, the long and short is, if you want to play Intellivision games again, you would be better served either by getting an emulator (Intellivision Lives sells them for a variety of systems, with fully licensed [not illegal] ROMs, for Mac, PC, Playstation, and other systems), or finding a real one and some cartridges. I was able to get a Sylvania Intellivision, a real rare treat, for just $17 at a backwaters thrift shop in Central California. After I repaired the controllers, it was fully functional. Bring on Burger Time!

[shooraijin]

I should follow this up with, the 25-in-one certainly is more *convenient* than an emulator, but still, it's limited.

[Bobtheduck]

are the other ones (namely, the NES one) legal? Of course, you can get old NES games on card scanner things for gameboy advanced and gamecube... But, either way, the games are limited...

[shooraijin]

AFAIK, all the ones I mentioned are fully licensed and legal (the NES, the Atari VCS/2600, the Namco stick and of course the Inty controller). Of these, the Atari, Namco and Inty ones seem to be the easiest to get (the Atari one is just about everywhere), although I see the NES one at kiosks in the shopping malls from time to time.