Page 7 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #41 FREE Edition

dramatic comparisons between
its capabilities and that of its competitors. The famous George Plimpton commercials contrasting sports titles and emphasizing more complicated games worked. The "Intellivision Sports" label, which included titles like Major League Baseball, NFL Football, and NBA Basketball, were notable for their attempts at realistic sports simulation and complex controls, which were innovative for the time.
Intellivision’s advantages were
that it was a 16-bit system (way ahead of its time), outboard features like the Playcable system for new games, and, in my opinion, the controllers. The problem is that most people don’t agree with me
on the controllers. Yes, they were different from the joystick standard
that Atari had set, but I thought the added functionality with the keypad was great!
Atari's advantage in the equation was its brand name and arcade history. Many Intellivision games were designed to be similar to popular arcade releases in most regards. Games like Astrosmash compared to Space Invaders, Armor Battle compared to Combat, et cetera. That said, they did
get licenses to other games like Atlantis, Bump and Jump, and Burgertime. Usually the Intellivision versions were superior, but not always. However, then you have the sports games, where Atari couldn’t even get close to the Intellivision! Still, Atari won very big in one department, that being the quantity of games. While Atari had over 600
releases between their internal and third party developers, Intellivision only had around 100 releases internally and another 20 or so from other companies in its original life. Greg’s Game Room has a great video that contrasts similar games from both systems that you should check out: Search for “Atari 2600 vs Intellivision! 53 Games Compared!”
The Intellivision, while not as iconic, nor having the ongoing history and brand recognition
of Atari brand-wise, was still a
big deal for many of us in my generation. For me, the Intellivision was my very first introduction
to gaming at home. It didn’t last forever, but I never forgot it, despite moving on to Apple computers throughout high school and college, and my introduction to the Sega
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