The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. In 1984, Mattel sold its video game assets to a former Mattel Electronics executive and investors, eventually becoming INTV Corporation. Game development ran from 1978 to 1990, when the Intellivision was discontinued. From 1980 to 1983, more than 3.75 million consoles were sold. As per Intellivision Entertainment the final tally through 1990 is somewhere between 4.5 and 5 million consoles sold.
A sports video game is a video game that simulates the practice of sports. Most sports have been recreated with video games, including team sports, track and field, extreme sports, and combat sports. Some games emphasize playing the sport, whilst others emphasize strategy and sport management. Some, such as Need for Speed, Arch Rivals and Punch-Out!!, satirize the sport for comic effect. This genre has been popular throughout the history of video games and is competitive, just like real-world sports. A number of game series feature the names and characteristics of real teams and players, and are updated annually to reflect real-world changes. The sports genre is one of the oldest genres in gaming history.
Earl Sidney Weaver was an American professional baseball manager, author, and television broadcaster. After playing in minor league baseball, he retired without playing in Major League Baseball (MLB). He became a minor league manager, and then managed in MLB for 17 years with the Baltimore Orioles, winning a World Series championship in 1970. Weaver's style of managing was summed up in the quote: "pitching, defense, and the three-run homer." He did not believe in placing emphasis on "small ball" tactics such as stolen bases, hit and run plays, or sacrifice bunts. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996.
Realm of Impossibility is an action game created by Mike Edwards for the Atari 8-bit family and published by Electronic Arts in 1984. It was originally released in 1983 as Zombies and published by BRAM, a company formed by Edwards and a friend. BRAM previously developed and published Attack at EP-CYG-4.
The Blue Sky Rangers is a group of Intellivision game programmers who previously worked for Mattel in the early 1980s.
FIFA Soccer 64, known in Europe as FIFA 64 and in Japan as J. League Live 64, is an association football video game developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts for the Nintendo 64. The cover features Manchester United midfielder Jordi Cruyff. The game garnered mixed reviews from critics upon release. Although its simulation was generally praised as realistic, reviewers critiqued the jerky animation, choppy frame-rates, unresponsive controls, and underwhelming usage of the Nintendo 64's capabilities. The Japanese version has officially licensed players and teams from Japan's J. League.
Stormfront Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer based in San Rafael, California. In 2007, the company had over 50 developers working on two teams, and owned all its proprietary engines, tools, and technology. As of the end of 2007, over fourteen million copies of Stormfront-developed games had been sold. Stormfront closed on March 31, 2008, due to the closure of their publisher at the time, Sierra Entertainment.
Scott Orr is an American video game designer best known as the lead designer on the first video game console versions of Madden NFL Football. In 2001, Wired magazine named Orr on its list of "gamemaking gods." Orr‘s career in sports games spans over 20 years.
Don Daglow is an American video game designer, programmer, and producer. He is best known for being the creator of early games from several different genres, including pioneering simulation game Utopia for Intellivision in 1981, role-playing game Dungeon in 1975, sports games including the first interactive computer baseball game Baseball in 1971, and the first graphical MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights in 1991. He founded long-standing game developer Stormfront Studios in 1988.
Racing Destruction Set is a racing video game published in 1985 for the Commodore 64 by Electronic Arts. It was advertised as being Commodore 128 compatible. A version for the Atari 8-bit family, programmed by Rebecca Heineman of Interplay, was released in 1986 in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. The game allows players to design and race on tracks with a variety of vehicles. It is part of the Construction Set series along with Pinball Construction Set, Music Construction Set, and Adventure Construction Set.
Earl Weaver Baseball is a baseball video game (1987) designed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower and published by Electronic Arts. The artificial intelligence for the computer manager was provided by Baseball Hall of Fame member Earl Weaver, then manager of the Baltimore Orioles, based on a lengthy series of interviews. EWB was a major hit, and along with John Madden Football helped pave the way for the EA Sports brand, which launched in 1992. A Sega Genesis version was planned but cancelled.
Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball is a baseball video game (1983) designed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, and published by Mattel for the Intellivision Entertainment Computer System. IWSB was one of the first sports video games to use multiple camera angles and present a three-dimensional perspective. It was also the first statistics-based baseball simulation game on a video game console; all prior console baseball games were arcade-style recreations of the sport.
Tony La Russa Baseball is a baseball computer and video game console sports game series (1991-1997), designed by Don Daglow, Michael Breen, Mark Buchignani, David Bunnett and Hudson Piehl and developed by Stormfront Studios. The game appeared on Commodore 64, PC, and Sega Genesis, and different versions were published by Electronic Arts, SSI and Stormfront Studios. The artificial intelligence for the computer manager was provided by Tony La Russa, then manager of the Oakland Athletics and later the St. Louis Cardinals. The game was one of the best-selling baseball franchises of the 1990s.
Old Time Baseball is a 1995 baseball video game designed and programmed by Don Daglow, Hudson Piehl, Clay Dreslough, and James Grove. It was developed and published for MS-DOS by Stormfront Studios. Built on the Tony La Russa Baseball engine, Old Time Baseball includes complete lineups of every major league team from 1871 to 1981, totaling 12,000 players.
The World Series is the championship series of Major League Baseball. It may also refer to:
Shark! Shark! is an Intellivision game originally designed by Don Daglow, and with additional design and programming by Ji-Wen Tsao, one of the first female game programmers in the history of video games. The player is a fish who must eat smaller fishes in order to gain points and extra lives while avoiding enemies such as larger fishes, sharks, jellyfish, lobsters and crabs. After eating a certain number of fish, the player's fish grows in size and is thus able to eat a larger selection of fish. However, while the larger fish becomes a bit faster, he is less agile than the small fish and has a harder time avoiding enemies.
John Madden Football is a football video game originally released for the Apple II, in 1988 following the success of Earl Weaver Baseball. It was later ported to MS-DOS and the Commodore 64. It was followed by the 1990 Sega Genesis video game of same name, and went on to become the yearly Madden NFL game series. It is sometimes called Madden '88 or Madden '89 to distinguish it from later games in the series.
Earl Weaver Baseball II is a sports video game for MS-DOS compatible operating systems published by Electronic Arts in 1991. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Earl Weaver Baseball.
EWB Baseball is an iOS baseball sports game designed and published by Eddie Dombrower based on Earl Weaver Baseball. Earl Weaver has not licensed his name to the product, making the game a spiritual successor to the original. It was released on iTunes Store on March 23, 2009.
Mainframe computers are computers used primarily by businesses and academic institutions for large-scale processes. Before personal computers, first termed microcomputers, became widely available to the general public in the 1970s, the computing industry was composed of mainframe computers and the relatively smaller and cheaper minicomputer variant. During the mid to late 1960s, many early video games were programmed on these computers. Developed prior to the rise of the commercial video game industry in the early 1970s, these early mainframe games were generally written by students or employees at large corporations in a machine or assembly language that could only be understood by the specific machine or computer type they were developed on. While many of these games were lost as older computers were discontinued, some of them were ported to high-level computer languages like BASIC, had expanded versions later released for personal computers, or were recreated for bulletin board systems years later, thus influencing future games and developers.
