Intellivision

One thing that my readers will come to know about me is my obsession with old gaming, cartoons, and so on. I have long subscribed to the statement "you're never too old to have a happy childhood". I could whine about my past, an incomplete childhood, but why? There's no reason to dwell on the bad memories of the past, or you'll spend your entire life trying to rewrite what has gone before and never enjoy what's going on around you.

But try to recapture the past? Certainly!! I'm not entirely certain that's what I am trying to do since many modern day childish things attract me... but that's a post for another day. I'm here to talk about capturing a part of childhood I never had, but wish I did. Does that sound angsty? It shouldn't. The part of my childhood I would go back and change is nothing sad at all, simply a statement of accepting my own prior stupidity. I wish my parents had bought me Intellivision rather than the Atari 2600, and it was my own fault because they DID ask me. While the 2600 is certainly a lot of fun.. in fact I continue to play mine today, the Intellivision was more for the sort of child that I was. The 2600 was the "cool" system. It had all the arcade conversions and just.. tons of games.

You know what it did NOT have? Games with significant depth. About 5 or 6 years back, I discovered the Intellivision on a whim, wanting to try this "Dracula" game that never made it to the 2600. I couldn't figure the game out, decided it was garbage, and thought that would be the end of it. And for a few years, it was. I picked up some "Intellivision Lives" collections on principle, but never really paid much attention; until the fateful day I played it with Miba. On that day, two seeds were planted... one that led to the great love story which, in turn, leads me out into the woods to live my life as a hermit, and the other.. the Intellivision itself.

I decided that, as I was going out to the woods, retrogame collections for my DS would be priority. The first I ordered was Intellivision Lives on the DS, and I played it for.. as my wife can recall, three days almost nonstop. The games were just.. so in depth; not just for the time, but the complexity of them even holds up today. The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games easily recreate the joy of those early, plot-less DnD games we all played. The DM made his dungeon maps, and we adventured through them... I had to play more. I found out the basketball game had you not just playing, but managing a team. The football game had you MAPPING OUT YOUR PLAYBOOK. It was.. simply amazing for a system released in 1979.

I had to have one. So I placed a bid on ebay.. and lo and behold I won! The system came and... I love it. I've opened it up a few times, replaced a few parts, and even bought a signal amp so it runs on my HDTV. I actually had to open the amp and back it off a little as well... still not perfect, but it works. Mostly, I've played as much of it as I can stand to, often to the exclusion of other things. I'm ecstatically happy with my Intellivision II, but I am eagerly looking forward to landing an original woodgrain Intellivision or, holy of holies, a System III. As far as gaming goes; they're the same system. Why do I want the other two instead? For simple reasons, my friends. The other systems are made of far more durable and easily replaced parts. Anyway, point is, you can expect me to write little rants about Inty games here and there. You'll hear from me about my 2600 and my Amiga as well... but at least for a while here, the Intellivision will be the belle of the ball.

Also, did you know it was the first 16 bit system ever made? Stick that in your Genesis and smoke it.