(Full disclosure: This product originally received a scathing “not acceptable” review, which has been completely rewritten due to an update shortly before publication. While this is good news for users, developers who don’t adequately playtest software before release tend to make critics surly.)
It doesn’t happen often, but Intellivision finally won a round against Atari.
Mattel’s quirky video game console from the late ’70s was stomped by the Atari 2600 in sales and game titles, and barely been on the fringes of retrogaming while the Atari is the all-time favorite of homebrew programers. But the perennial runner-up is the first console from that era to appear as an app for the iPhone/iPod/iPad as a full-blown multi-catridge emulator (there’s a few individual 2600 titles, including an excellent version of Adventure and a lousy port of River Raid). After fixing some maddening control issues in version 1.0, the app does a remarkable job of capturing the Intellivision’s love it/hate it qualities.
Those who owned an Intellivision and likely got into schoolyard fights with those “other” fanboys about who reigned supreme probably remember the one thing it did consistently well was sports. NFL Football was years ahead of its time and the 1986 followup, Super Pro Football – featuring a one-play option with a computer opponent – still gets an occasional workout from me on a computer emulator these days. Pitting it against Atari’s Football was like matching Peyton Manning against JaMarcus Russell, both in performance and appearance (third-place Odyssey 2 owners got stuck with the guy flipping all those cheeseburgers for JaMarc).
The Intellivision also offered in-depth simulation and RPG titles the Atari hasn’t yet managed to match. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is a rare early effort that actually captures the essence of the dice-based board game, and Utopia is highly acclaimed as a prequel to real-time strategy games likes Civilization and Warcraft.
Problem is, the Intellivision absolutely sucked at arcade games. Sure, the unimaginatively named Space Battle was a remarkable 3D shooter for its time, and the late-in-life Diner a fantastic and unique sequel to the nearly as enjoyable Burgertime. Some third-party efforts were pretty good, including Atari which inexplicably offered a bunch of titles far better than those for the 2600. But how many gamers got suckered into buying Star Strike for its Death Star trench looks, only to discover it had all the entertainment value of being trapped in the garbage compactor?
The other standout feature every user surely remembers is those controls. Those, miserable, imprecise, unreliable “what-the-&%/$-were you-thinking” controls. Disc-shaped “directional pads” theoretically offered 16-direction movement, but in reality spaceships and other player characters found themselves the victim of delayed and wayward guidance that was usually fatal. That alone is why plenty of arcade titles otherwise full of promise simply didn’t cut it. Intellivision designers did bring a welcome innovation by including numeric keypads on the controllers, but to this day I wish programmers had used them to include an inverted-T (4-5-6-8) option for movement.
VH1, which offers a handful of Intellivision games playable in a browser at its website, is responsible for the iPhone/iPad apps, which differ slightly. The iPhone version is free and comes with the ubiquitous Astrosmash, a lukewarm vertical shooter that sought to grab a piece of the Asteroids craze, with five additional titles available for 99 cents each. The iPad version, not tested for this review, costs $2.99 and comes with all six games.
The interface does a nice job of capturing the real console’s wood-grain feel. Players insert virtual cartridges one at a time and select options using pushbuttons on the emulated console. Opinions include full or TV screen views (I’m a fan of the latter, complete with its channel 3 LED), tilt or touch controls with adjustable sensitivity, and multiplayer using Bluetooth. Each game also comes with a decent set of instructions.
Emulation in all games is dead-on, presumably because they’re the actual code and not remakes. The virtual controls, a complete train wreck in version 1.0, have been refined to the equal of the original’s, a gargantuan leap forward even if that’s hardly the standard of perfection.
The following are the initial titles available with letter grades based on their quality compared to all Intellivision games (with the caveat reviewers tend to be all over the map when it comes to personal favorites/disappointments on the console):
Astrosmash (C): It seems like everyone who’s heard of the Intellivision has played this, so it’s probably an appropriate free starter. The player shoots asteroids descending from above, which do no harm unless they collide with his/her laser base, along with “spinners” that are fatal if they reach the bottom of the screen. Every so often a beeping drone will rapidly hone in and eventually a huge mothership cluster-bombs you. Scoring’s a bit weird – you gain points for hitting things, lose them if they drop off the bottom of the screen.
Getting enough points advances you to faster and busier levels, where the point values are multiplied. Thing is, you get an extra base every 1,000 points and it’s too easy to rack up a bunch of reserves if you get past level 1. Because it’s so simple to pick up and play for a few minutes it tends to be the first title I try when testing Intellivision emulators, but it almost never gets an encore once I move on to other games.
Chip Shot Super Pro Golf (B-)
It’s far from the Intellivision’s best sports game, but anyone wanting to see why virtual jocks stampeded to this machine should give it a try. This title was released in 1987 by INTV, which picked up the console after Mattel abandoned it, and it’s among a number of games from the latter part of the 1980s that could have given the Atari a real run for the money early on. The feature list is amazing for the time: a driving range and putting green to sharpen your skills, five full courses and the ability make your own from 99 pre-defined holes.
You get a full range of clubs, with control determined by a two-button swing meter, and the terrain features things like slope and wind that screw up your shots just like real life. Alas, the meal doesn’t quite deliver what’s on the menu, so to speak. I had a devil of a time getting the virtual controls to select the club and place my golfer in the position I wanted. The bleep-and-blip action doesn’t feel overly realistic and gets a little monotonous. And getting stuck in the rough is only slightly less annoying than trying to back out of your driveway under duress in the wee hours of the morning. Still, these are the protests of a non-golfer; those who are a fan of the sport will doubtless get their money’s worth.
Night Stalker (D-): Skip this maze shooter and advance directly to Thunder Castle, reviewed below. You roam around shooting bats, spiders and robots that shoot back, but the controls – then and now – make things virtually unplayable. Moving in the right direction is a less-than-exact science and trying to aim shots is a travesty.
Also, your shots move incredibly slowly and you only get one at a time, so the inevitable frequent misfires leave you vulnerable pretty much anytime there’s a clear line of sight between you and an enemy. There’s some strategic elements about shooting certain enemies at certain point intervals and having to pick up a new weapon after every six shots, but few are likely to play this long enough to care.
Skiing (D+): Plenty of reviewers love this game, so take my judgements with a grain of salt. Mattel tries to be clever with a well-worn genre by offering 15 selectable slope grades and either downhill or slalom courses. Control also attempts to ratchet up the realism, as your skier must be facing downhill to build up momentum and the degree of your turns affect how much you slow down. The fire button causes you to jump, which is necessary to clear moguls that appear occasionally (definitely among the less realistic aspects).
Trees, of course, are the other obstacle to avoid as you try to complete courses in the least amount of time. Slalom gates appear in both courses and there’s a five-point penalty for missing them, but there’s far more of them in slalom mode. The app version of this was completely unplayable until the version 1.1 control fixes, but now is something close to the console original. One of the reasons I’m reluctant to recommend it is iPhone gamers have probably been exposed to an avalanche of lousy games in this genre. On the other hand, it’s probably a better 99-cent diversion than a lot of its modern brethren.
Thin Ice (C): This Qix-like game has a lot of fans, but I just can’t get exited about it even though I have a deep (platonic) love for penguins and all things polar. You control an ice-skating penguin that tries to sink enemies (other penguins, which seems cruel given all their natural foes) by carving out ice chunks around them. The trail left by your skates is limited in length and there’s a seal that constantly chases and erases your progress – plus, of course, he l-o-o-o-v-e-s penguin meat for dinner. There’s also a polar bear to avoid, which if nothing else is annoying because PENGUINS AND POLAR BEARS LIVE AT OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE EARTH (sorry, this universal failure of comprehension by game programmers is one of the few things that gets me into an all-caps rant).
The graphics are cute, the sound suitably cheerful and the action requires a decent amount of thinking. But the curse of the controller strikes again, both on the real and virtual consoles, since the nice, tight movements you need to circle opponents while avoiding them just aren’t there. I finally warmed up to the game when PC emulators allowed me to use keys to control my penguin, but the iPod’s tilt/touch controls return me to the old days in a way that’s not nostalgic.
Thunder Castle (B): This is a really nice arcade maze game plagued by the need for quick-responding controls to be any good at it. The player controls a knight trying to slay enemies (a dragon in a forest, then wizards in a castle and finally demons in a dungeon) by touching friendly creatures that temporarily energize you. There’s also randomly appearing objects that grant special powers upon demand (hint: use them quickly, because you lose an object as soon as you pick up the next one). Many of the passageways in the maze open and close at regular intervals, and unfortunately at times it’s possible to get ensnared and the proper escape direction defies logic.
The control problem is magnified on this emulator, since a frequent inability to turn corners quickly – or missing them altogether – leads to a lot of deaths and missed dragon-slaying opportunities. The graphics and music are very nice for an early ’80s release, and it will take a long time to make it through all three levels. Maybe too long, since some players will doubtless get frustrated with the difficulty even on the first level. But even with the imperfections, as an arcade fan I played this longer than all the other titles in the app library combined.
Downloading the Astrosmash freebie is obviously worthwhile for retrogaming fans and the curious, and grabbing the rest of the titles won’t break the bank for those who don’t want to pick-and-choose. The real hope, of course, is more titles will arrive shortly and the developer will be smart about picking the good ones. Among those highly recommended, should they appear, are Diner, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Slam Dunk Super Pro Basketball, Super Pro Football, World Championship Baseball, Space Battle, Shark! Shark!, Locomotion and Utopia.
Well-known but disappointing games with a good chance of showing up are Space Armada, Star Strike, NBA Basketball, Auto Racing, NASL Soccer, all of the Tron titles and any hockey game.
Score: 7 out of 10
By Mark Sabbatini
Intellivision by MTV Networks (VH1)
Free (99 cents per additional title)
Platform Reviewed: iPhone/iPod (Requires iPhone OS 3.1 or later)
Category: Arcade
Languages Supported: English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish
Rating: 4+
File Size: 2.5 MB
