Bit of nostalgia, "intellivoice" ad from 1982 Popular Science

[Scumgriever]

I've been cleaning out a bunch of old stuff in an effort to work out how I'm going to find the space to fit my cab in my house and live there too.

Anyway I found this old ad and thought some of you guys might be interested in remembering the good old days. Its kind of cute. It was in the November 1982 issue of Popular Science.





Full Size image here - http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t288/Scumgriever/intellivision.jpg

[Fozzy The Bear]

That is indeed a cool bit of nostalgia.... I don't think that they ever released the intellivoice module over here in the UK so it's interesting to see one.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Hoopz]

That is indeed a cool bit of nostalgia.... I don't think that they ever released the intelevoice module over here in the UK so it's interesting to see one.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

It was very cool to use.  It's too bad they didn't ship it over to you guys.

[RandyT]

Bombs awaaaaaay!

Heh.  It was pretty cool at the time.


BTW, I was cleaning out the attic and found about 20 issues of Electronic Games magazine.  Started with issue 2 (must have missed 1...)  They are loaded with nostalgic goodness.  Brought back a lot of memories.

RandyT

[clockwork]

I still have my Intellivision and Intellivoice. The Intellivoice was cool but I didn't have any good games for it. I'm not any they made for it were that great.

[Crowquill]

Thanks for the scan.

To Mattel's credit, I think the coolest thing about the Intellivoice was that each game had a distinct character that talked differently. The southern drawl of B-17 Bomber comes to mind.

Space Spartans was all right, but I never figured out how to properly play Bomb Squad. Solar Sailer pretty much sucked altogether.

[TOK]

I still have my Intellivision and Intellivoice. The Intellivoice was cool but I didn't have any good games for it. I'm not any they made for it were that great.

I was just thinking that... My buddy had B-17 Bomber. I couldn't imagine a more boring game for a couple of kids.
Endless hours of watching the ground go by in a bombsite, actually hoping for an enemy attack. We'd get bored and just bomb the crap out of everything, and be scolded in that horrible electronic hick voice "Uh-Oh, that was naught a targeeet!"

[RandyT]

You can't be too harsh on it though.  That was a time when computer speech was a new kind of magic.  I'm reminded of the the marquee on Stratovox that says "It talks!"  That silly fact prompted me to stuff quarters into it at the time (plus the game was pretty neat).  Check out the flyer to see what a big deal it was at the time.

I think prior to the Intellivoice, the best you could do was a hardware add-on for computers that cost hundreds of dollars, back at a time when that was serious money.  SAM was out for the C=64 in that same time-frame and wasn't cheap either, if you actually purchased it.   

There was a lot of stuff in that era that relied almost entirely upon the fact that it hadn't been done before.  Think about how lousy the first "adult" or movie-license based games were.  They didn't have to be great to be memorable (or purchased).

RandyT

[AMDman13]

Sweet! I'd have to say that Intellivision was always my favorite! I bought a working Intellivision about two years ago on Ebay for like 35.00 and it came with that ad as well as owners manual, Intellivoice, and about 25 games. My Dad and I will still get together for a game of Baseball! It was more fun than even the Coleco IMHO!

[PoDunkMoFo]

The code, the code, figure out the code.  Waaaahhaaahahaha you'll never do it in time!!!!

Brings back memories.

Gotta say the first thing I did when I got "The Software Automatic Mouth" for me c64 was try and perfect as many of the swear words as I could.

Nothing like having your computer belt out Fuggg UUuuu Ashh whole at your friends.

[SavannahLion]

To this day I still regret not bidding on this pallet piled with classic console accessories. Including a couple of Intellivoice modules as well as several knockoffs and the Atari 2600 equivalent. Thanks for bringing back that memory 

[rubberpoultry]

I loved my Intellivision growing up and I didn't find B-17 Bomber boring at all. I was in elementary school and Jr. High at the time, and I always thought running the missions, flying the plane, and engaging in realtime air combat was pretty cool. Of course the novelty of having the guy talk to you didn't hurt at all.

I got really lucky about 15 years ago when my younger brother (who is 8 years younger) went to a friend's house who had an Intellivision laying around collecting dust. He (my brother) recognized it because we had one when he was little, although I don't think he had played it much (he was more of a NES, Sega Genesis kid). My dad had given ours away to someone, because it hadn't been played in years due to my getting a NES when it first came out. Anyway...my brother came home and told me about his friend's Intellivision, and (wanting to recapture my childhood) I said "does he want to get rid of it?". He asked him, and he said he'd sell it for $20. Both my brother and his friend were in Jr. High at the time so that seemed like a lot of money. I told his friend to ask his parents because I didn't want him to do this without their permission, and I didn't want them/him to feel like they were being taken advantage of.

So he shows up with the unit and about 40 games and we make the exchange. He had more games than I did growing up, so I spent a good part of my time discovering all sorts of new games I'd never played. It was the best $20 I've ever spent. Unfortunately there was no Intellivoice included, but there were a couple of Intellivoice games in the mix. I may ebay one some day.

Playing the games using emulation is cool, but I was one of the crazy people who loved the disc controllers. My friends who had Atari always complained about them. I think at one point we bought these little joystick things that attached to the discs, but I never kept them on because I liked the feel of the disc.


Thanks for bringing back memories. I'm going to go play Tron Deadly Discs now!

[clockwork]

I loved my Intellivision. My uncle and I used to play Burger Time for hours. Great game.

Speaking of bad memories. I had an Atari 2600 in high school with dozens of games. I returned home from school one day, looked in the entertainment center where we kept it. Gone. Uh, mom, where's the Atari? Oh, I sold that today. You guys never play it any more. Some days I still want to strangle her for that.

[ark_ader]

Reminds me of my TI99/4a with breakout box.  It had a voice module, floppy drive and CP/M.

My first real 16 bit computer.

I have some old (1982) mags I should pull out and scan.  Seeing games like Castlevania for the Apple II brings me back.

[Crowquill]

Intellivision was really cutting-edge for it's time.

It was the first 16-bit console
It's controller has more independent buttons than any console controller to date, plus the 16-direction disk.
Intellivoice.

So he shows up with the unit and about 40 games and we make the exchange. He had more games than I did growing up, so I spent a good part of my time discovering all sorts of new games I'd never played. It was the best $20 I've ever spent. Unfortunately there was no Intellivoice included, but there were a couple of Intellivoice games in the mix. I may ebay one some day.

About 10 years ago I got lucky and picked up an Intellivision II with the Intellivoice and about 35 games from a thrift store for $10 (INTV II and the Intellivoice look weird together, but they work fine). Everything was in excellent shape and all the overlays were in there. I later picked up an original Intellivision and ended up splitting up the games and sold them on eBay for about $40 per lot. I was poor at the time and was quite impressed at how much I'd gotten out of them, but I still miss it sometimes.

If anyone's missing their overlays or buy used games without them, hit http://www.intellivisionlives.com/  You can download manuals and overlays for all the games. Print it in color and laminate it and the overlays are virtually indistinguishable from the originals. I think this is part of why I got so much for these. I included printed overlays for the few games I didn't have the originals.