CORBIE'S GAME BLOG

In 1980, Mattel introduced the Intellivision video game system to compete with the highly-popular Atari 2600 game system. Using marketing ads that featured a guy named George Plimpton pretty much openly bashing the Atari 2600 on national television, Mattel was able to actually become a serious threat to Atari's domination of the home video game market. I'm one of the few pathetic people who got an Atari 5200 instead of the Intellivision, so I had to experience the system through my best friend that lived down the street. We'd spend hours playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons over at his house. Although my trusty Atari 5200 sported what I consider to be the worst video game controllers in history, the Intellivision is one spot over and used these awful game pads that made you press your directions on these gold discs. If it sounds insane, that's because it was, and most of the time control was sporadic at best. To add insult to injury, the action buttons on the side of the controllers were extremely difficult to press down. The Intellivision had some amazing games, but using those controllers made some of them that required pinpoint control very frustrating.

Dragonfire was one of my favorite Atari 2600 games, but the Intellivision version of the game was just so much better. Not only were the graphics a lot more detailed, the game also featured an additional threat which was an archer high atop the castle wall. I remember that this game alone made me ask my grandparents for an Intellivision, but by then they had already bought me an Atari 5200 for Christmas. Activision, another one of my favorite third party companies of this era also had a great game for the system called Worm Whomper. You got to run up and down the screen shooting the approaching worms with bug spray in order to protect your corn crops. I finally went back and bought an Intellivision a few years ago along with many of these great games and although the controllers still suck, some of the games for this system still hold up well even all these years later. If you like classic gaming from way back, pick up an Intellivision system and a few of the games. Then you'll see why Mattel managed to sell over 6 million of these systems even going up against a heavyweight like Atari. A true classic!