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.
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.
The video game crash of 1983 was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality. Waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers also played a role. Home video game revenue peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985. The crash abruptly ended what is retrospectively considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. To a lesser extent, the arcade video game market also weakened as the golden age of arcade video games came to an end.
Pitfall! is a video game developed by David Crane for the Atari Video Computer System and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls Pitfall Harry, who has a time limit of 20 minutes to seek treasure in a jungle. The game world is populated by enemies and hazards that variously cause the player to lose lives or points.
Demon Attack is a fixed shooter programmed by Rob Fulop for the Atari 2600 and published by Imagic in 1982. It sold over 2 million cartridges. Demon Attack was ported to the Intellivision, Magnavox Odyssey 2, Atari 8-bit family, VIC-20, Commodore 64, Tandy 1000, TRS-80, IBM PCjr, and TRS-80 Color Computer. There is also a port for the TI-99/4A titled Super Demon Attack.
Imagic was an American video game developer and publisher that created games initially for the Atari 2600. Founded in 1981 by corporate alumni of Atari, Inc. and Mattel, its best-selling titles were Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, and Demon Attack. Imagic also released games for Intellivision, ColecoVision, Atari 8-bit family, TI-99/4A, IBM PCjr, VIC-20, Commodore 64, TRS-80 Color Computer, and Magnavox Odyssey². Their Odyssey² ports of Demon Attack and Atlantis were the only third-party releases for that system in America. The company never recovered from the video game crash of 1983 and was liquidated in 1986.
The James Bond video game franchise is a series centering on Ian Fleming's fictional British MI6 agent, James Bond. Games of the series have been predominantly shooter games, with some games of other genres including role-playing and adventure games. Several games are based upon the James Bond films and developed and published by a variety of companies, The intellectual property is owned by Danjaq.
River Raid is a video game developed by Carol Shaw for the Atari Video Computer System and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls a fighter jet over the River of No Return in a raid behind enemy lines. The goal is to navigate the flight by destroying enemies while collecting fuel and not crashing.
Intellivision Lives! is a compilation of over 60 Intellivision video games, originally produced by Mattel Electronics and INTV Corporation between 1978 and 1990. Using original game code and software emulation, Intellivision Productions released the compilation on a Windows and Macintosh hybrid CD-ROM in December 1998. Additional versions were then released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube by Crave Entertainment. In 2010, Virtual Play Games released a Nintendo DS version.
In the history of video games, the second-generation era refers to computer and video games, video game consoles, and handheld video game consoles available from 1976 to 1992. Notable platforms of the second generation include the Fairchild Channel F, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, and ColecoVision. The generation began in November 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F. This was followed by the Atari 2600 in 1977, Magnavox Odyssey² in 1978, Intellivision in 1980 and then the Emerson Arcadia 2001, ColecoVision, Atari 5200, and Vectrex, all in 1982. By the end of the era, there were over 15 different consoles. It coincided with, and was partly fuelled by, the golden age of arcade video games. This peak era of popularity and innovation for the medium resulted in many games for second generation home consoles being ports of arcade games. Space Invaders, the first "killer app" arcade game to be ported, was released in 1980 for the Atari 2600, though earlier Atari-published arcade games were ported to the 2600 previously. Coleco packaged Nintendo's Donkey Kong with the ColecoVision when it was released in August 1982.
Ken Uston's Guide to Buying and Beating the Home Video Games was published in May 1982. The book, published by Signet in New York, was a brief strategy guide for many console games in existence at the time. The book was divided into chapters by console type or manufacturer, and each chapter had an article on each game title available for that console. The book was published in paperback, with 676 pages and illustrated throughout with black and white line drawings.
Loco-Motion, known as Guttang Gottong in Japan, is an arcade puzzle game developed by Konami in 1982 and released by Sega in Japan. The North American rights were licensed to Centuri. In Loco-Motion, the player builds a path for their unstoppable locomotive by moving tracks which will allow it to pick up passengers.
Carol Shaw is one of the first female game designers and programmers in the video game industry. She is best known for creating the Atari 2600 vertically scrolling shooter River Raid (1982) for Activision. She worked for Atari, Inc. from 1978 to 1980 where she designed multiple games including 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe (1978) and Video Checkers (1980), both for the Atari VCS before it was renamed to the 2600. She left game development in 1984 and retired in 1990.
The Dreadnaught Factor is a scrolling shooter written by Tom Loughry for the Mattel Intellivision and published by Activision in 1983. It is one of several Intellivision games developed at Cheshire Engineering for Activision. Atari 8-bit family and Atari 5200 ports followed in 1984.
Stampede is a video game written by Bob Whitehead for the Atari Video Computer System and published by Activision in 1981. Stampede is a left-to-right, horizontally-scrolling, action game with a cattle round-up theme. An Intellivision version was released the following year.
In video gaming, an achievement is a meta-goal defined outside a game's parameters, a digital reward that signifies a player’s mastery of a specific task or challenge within a video game. Unlike the in-game systems of quests, tasks, and/or levels that usually define the goals of a video game and have a direct effect on further gameplay, the management of achievements usually takes place outside the confines of the game environment and architecture. Meeting the fulfillment conditions, and receiving recognition of fulfillment by the game, is referred to as unlocking the achievement.
A vertically scrolling video game or vertical scroller is a video game in which the player views the field of play principally from a top-down perspective, while the background scrolls from the top of the screen to the bottom to create the illusion that the player character is moving in the game world.
Spider Fighter is a fixed shooter designed by Larry Miller for the Atari 2600 and published by Activision in 1982. The object of Spider Fighter is to protect an orchard containing fruit—grapes, strawberries, oranges, and bananas—from four kinds of bugs. Digital Press described it as "much like the coin-op game Stratovox but w/o the voice."
Home Run is a 1978 sports video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari Video Computer System. It was the first baseball-themed game released for an Atari platform. The game received mostly negative critical reception due to its unrealistic portrayal of the sport. It was one of the games used by console competitor Mattel to show the quality improvement of Intellivision sports games over the Atari VCS.
