For years I've been wanting to build some sort of homage to the Intellivision, and I've finally gotten around to making it happen. The Flashback unit that was released a couple of years ago came with quality controllers that properly emulate the 16 direction disc and the full keypad for each controller, but the emulation that the Flashback used was spotty (especially with sound) and limited to the games contained on the chip. ByteKnight over at AtariAge
forums offers an Ultimate Flashback upgrade with a Raspberry Pi and hmdi that many have praised, but I wanted to do this myself with a proper pc and contained monitor.
Aside from the
Ultimate PC Interface ($60) and miscellaneous paint/screws/angle iron, the rest was made from left over wood, plexi, an old XP computer and LCD monitor. Most notably, The black laminated particle board pieces that I mounted the monitor and motherboard to were from an old cd tower or something and were already cut to a workable length. Since I had four of these identical boards, I used them as the width dimensions for the build.
Wood stain on the top, brown paint to match the controllers on the sides and front, and acrylic gold paint for the angle iron.
It runs the very stable and accurate JzIntv emulator, and all functions (start, exit, pause, scroll) are mapped to the player one controller. The Ultimate PC Interface was a bit tricky to get working at first, but I'm very happy with the result.
There are quite a few excellent homebrew games for the Intellivision. I've enjoyed discovering these labors of love along with some old classics that I was unfamiliar with as a kid. My kids love playing Snafu, Utopia, Body Slam Super Pro Wrestling, and Shark! Shark!
I've ordered a gold plated plaque with the logo for the front drawer face, which has a magnetic double=push latch. Overlays and instruction manuals can be kept here with the controllers when it is not being used.
The front end is a custom Mala background with a screenshot and the overlay image appearing in the controller graphic.
Still need to put a proper back on it.