Old School Video Games: Intellivision

That's how I roll! Intellivision. Never had an Atari or Atari2600. Never had a NES(nintendo entertainment system). No Super Nintendo. No N64. Nada on the Playstation, 1,2, or 3. No Xbox or Xbox 360. I did once by a Sega Genesis but only had 5 or 6 games. I confess my kids have a Wii but you get the point. From the days of Smurfs and Snorks I had the most interactive game system around. It wasn't just a joystick and a fire button, oh no! It had a motion disc that you used like a joystick but typically controlled with only your thumb, it had FOUR buttons, 2 on either side of the tethered rectangle controllers and then each game came with its own unique pair of plastic overlays which slid into the top of the controller and covered 12 buttons that gave you even more control options depending on the game.

For its time it was pretty well advanced. Some of its games were unique just to the brand, i.e. Lock and Chase. It was similar to Pac-Man but in this case you were a robber, chased through a maze collecting coins while being chased by 4 cops. You could place "locks" anywhere it would connect to a solid line in the maze at the top and the bottom, "locks" could be used to trap cops and allow you to gather the coins in your current maze level without them interfering. Just as Pac-Man's ghost would change back to normal colors after his power dot wore off your "locks" would soon disintegrate and the trapped cop would be set free to resume his chase. The best part about L&C was 2 people could play together. One could navigate the robber and the other could be there simply to place locks. While one was focused just on the robber the second could scan the whole maze for potential obstacles and traps.

Many games were exactly like games on the Atari system but had slightly different names. Astrosmash was like Asteroid, Space Armada was just like Spaced Invaders, then we had the common titles like Pole Position, Donkey Kong, Pitfall, etc. You could get all the major sports games including bowling and golf. Horse racing was great fun with different track conditions and lengths and the ability to wager. There was a Vegas blackjack and poker. The earliest flight simulator in B-17 Bomber. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Reversi and who could forget Q-bert. An extended list of Intellivison games can be found here,
http://www.intellivisiongames.com/gamecatalog.php

When my Intellivision started to act up and became unplayable I went straight to the Commodore 64. Nothing says horny adolescent quite like a 64-bit version of a naked woman on the floppy disk version of Strip Poker.