WEBVTT - Intellivision and the Blue Sky Rangers 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:12.399 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:16.320 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:19.720 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:24.840 tech are You? So this past weekend and I'm recording 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:28.320 this June twelfth, twenty twenty four, But this past weekend 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:31.280 was the Summer Games Festival, which is kind of a 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:37.160 marketing extravaganza for the video game industry. The festival has 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:41.680 grown in importance, especially since the dissolution of E three 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:44.760 May at Rest in Peace, and while several of the 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:47.160 big companies in the space now tend to hold their 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:51.479 own events that are completely independent, the festival still remains 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:55.000 a really important tool for tons of developers who might 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:58.640 otherwise find it difficult to get their work showcased. But 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.800 one thing I did see during the festival was news 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:06.759 on the long awaited piece of retro hardware called the 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:11.360 Intellivision Amiko, and that reminded me that I've never really 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:16.400 done an episode dedicated to in television either. So we're 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.160 going to address that today. And before I get to 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:24.360 all of that, if you're really, really really into in television, 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:29.120 well chances are you already know about the Intellivisionaries podcast, 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:31.480 which I have no connection to, by the way, but 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:36.480 it's a show that has episodes that dive super duper deep, deep, deep, 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:40.000 deep down into all things in television. I listened to 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:43.839 about a third of one episode in which they interviewed 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:48.680 authors Braxton Soderman and Tom Belstorf. Those two wrote a 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.440 book that's titled in Television, How a Video Game System 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:56.040 Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie. That book actually comes 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:58.920 out later this year, so sadly I wasn't able to 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:01.200 use it for this episode. Maybe I'll reach out to 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:04.080 them and we'll do an episode later in the year 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:06.520 when the book comes out. But I really did listen 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:08.840 to like a third of the episode they were on 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.799 because that interview is about an hour long, but the 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:17.040 whole episode is five and a half hours long. So 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.520 y'all thought my shows get lengthy, I got nothing on 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:24.000 The intellivision Areies. Turns out like the more I think 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:29.920 focused your podcast is, the longer the episodes tend to get. Anyway, 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:33.560 for those of us of a certain age, the brand 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:39.079 in television conjures up memories of very early console wars. Technically, 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:43.040 the second generation of video game consoles. So in television, 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:46.680 along with things like I would say Kalico and Atari 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:50.480 would compete in the burgeoning home video game system market 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:53.560 more than forty years ago at this point. So let's 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.240 talk about where in television came from, what happened to it, 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.720 and how recent efforts to resurrect it have in countered 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.359 new road bumps along the way, as well as the 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.519 tale of an old enemy coming back to pick over 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.640 the bones of its former competitor, which is foreshadowing. So 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:15.840 let us set the scene now, before home video game 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:22.120 consoles or video game arcades, there were nerdy computer science students, 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:25.160 and these students were some of the only folks to 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:29.120 have regular access to computers. Computers in those days were huge, 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:32.560 they were expensive, they were super complicated. You know, a 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:35.600 small computer might be the size of your typical refrigerator, 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.000 and many of them were much much bigger than that. 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:40.640 And while the computers were meant to do all sorts 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:45.520 of important number crunching things, creative students would naturally begin 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:49.560 to experiment with them in order to make them, you know, 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:53.400 do other stuff like games, for example. And so in 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.480 the early days, and we're talking like the nineteen sixties. 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.600 Here the only folks who even knew that video games 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:03.880 could be a thing where college students working in computer labs. 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:07.600 But eventually these ideas were able to creep their way 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:12.560 into the mainstream. Nolan Bushnell, who will mention a few 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:16.160 times in this episode because he did not work in 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:20.240 television at all, he would be a co founder of Atari, 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:25.120 the other really huge important video game console company in 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.600 the late seventies early eighties, and he took an idea 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.640 that began in computer labs. It was a game that 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.840 was called Space War, and he adapted this into a 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:41.760 coin operated arcade cabinet called Computer Space. This was back 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.839 in nineteen seventy one. However, this game failed to take 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.800 the world by storm. It was a complicated game. It 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:53.359 was very difficult. It did not get much traction, but 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:57.280 it was a start. The first home video game console, 0:04:57.600 --> 0:04:59.800 and at least this is what the general agreement is on, 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:04.920 was the Magnavox Odyssey. This launched way back in September 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:09.000 nineteen seventy two, and it was Pong before there was 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:13.440 a Pong. Quick side note, the aforementioned Nolan Bushnell, who 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:18.160 again co founded Atari, would actually assign his brand new engineer, 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:23.279 Alan Alcorn, the job of building a table tennis arcade cabinet. 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:27.400 So essentially what Bushnell did was he described to Alcorn 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.320 all the elements of the table tennis game on the Odyssey, 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:35.279 like he knew of that version, the home video game 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:37.520 console version, but Alcorn had never seen it. He had 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:41.560 never played that, and this was a test of Alcorn's abilities. 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:43.520 He essentially said, hey, I need you to build this game, 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.239 and he was able to describe specifically what he wanted 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:49.040 because he was describing a game that already existed. It's 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:52.880 just that Alcorn didn't know about that. And Bushnell claimed 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:54.919 that this was all part of a contract job with 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.960 General Electric, which turned out to be a total fabrication. 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.719 So Alcorn took the assignment and eventually he made Pong. 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:04.920 Pong ended up going on to be a huge hit 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.400 arcade cabinet for the fledgling Atari company. In fact, you 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.200 could argue it was the first like mega hit as 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:15.160 far as arcade cabinets go. Anyway, my point is that 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.479 the home video game console market got its start in 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:23.680 the early nineteen seventies. The Magnavox Odyssey was a dedicated console. 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:27.279 Now that meant you could only play what had been 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:32.920 hard coded onto the console itself. The game was integrated 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:36.120 into the console, so there was no cartridge slot. There 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.719 certainly wasn't something like an optical drive or anything like that. 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:43.400 All of that would come on later. So in a way, 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:45.839 it was sort of like those retro consoles that you 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.159 sometimes find that have a limited library of games pre 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.760 programmed onto the device itself, right Like there's some of 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:56.560 those for the Atari twenty six hundred or Nintendo Entertainment 0:06:56.600 --> 0:07:00.240 System or SNS, all of those old systems have like 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:06.000 these dedicated retro consoles that have a limited library available 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:08.719 on them. That's kind of what the first video game 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.800 consoles were like, except the library often was just one game, 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:16.000 and it was just some variation of Pong. In nineteen 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:21.400 seventy six, the Fairchild Channel F console would introduce an innovation. 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.200 It was a console that could accept ROM cartridges and 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:28.080 therefore it was not limited to games that had been 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:32.400 hard coded onto the console itself. BROM stands for read 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:36.560 only memory. That means the games were physically programmed on 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:39.400 circuit boards and there was no way to write new 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.680 information to the games themselves. The circuit boards had a 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:46.200 little electrical contacts on them, and those contexts would connect 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:50.120 to matching contexts in the console itself. When you plug 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:54.120 the cartridgeen, that's what would complete the circuit. It would 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:57.720 let you play whatever game had been programmed on the cartridge. 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:01.160 While the Channel F hit the market months before Atari 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.840 launched the twenty six hundred, initially called the Video Computer 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:08.800 System or VCS, Atari's library of games would have a 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:13.360 much broader appeal than the Channel f's selection. The Atari 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:17.280 twenty six hundred became a really popular video game console, 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.280 and there was a huge demand for the technology. Folks 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:22.680 who worked at Atari began to enjoy a sort of 0:08:22.840 --> 0:08:26.000 rock and roll lifestyle as the money came flooding in. Seriously, 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:29.440 if you read the articles about Atari in its early days, 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:32.440 it comes across as a bit rock and roll. Probably 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:36.440 not as wild and crazy as some of the articles indicate, 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:41.120 but it certainly presages, i would say, the startup culture 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:44.480 that we would associate with companies in like the late 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:48.200 nineteen nineties before the dot com bubble burst. Of course, 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:54.000 lots of companies wanted to cash in on this growing trend, 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:57.760 whether it was considered a fad or an actual trend 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:00.800 at the time didn't matter. Companies saw that people were 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:03.520 interested in video games and they wanted to be able 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.400 to get in on that. So some of the consoles 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:09.520 that popped up in the mid to late seventies and 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:13.040 into the early eighties were pretty much garbage. In fact, 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.480 the number of consoles that essentially were just Pong clones 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:21.320 created an unstable market, and consumers grew disenchanted with the 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.160 limited offerings that these consoles made and that some of 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.960 them were just really poorly designed. Ultimately, this led to 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.720 the first video game crash of the home video game 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:36.160 console market. This happened in nineteen seventy seven. Now, when 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.719 you hear me talk about the video game crash, typically 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:43.880 what I'm referencing is a much larger market crash that 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.200 happened in the United States in nineteen eighty three. But 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:50.520 the first generation of consoles had its own crash six 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.800 years earlier. Again, these were for consoles that were mostly 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:58.880 dedicated consoles are Pong clones. Anyway, there's overlap between the 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:03.520 first generation of conso and the second generation. It's not 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:08.040 like we can just draw a line in years and 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:11.400 say everything before this is first generation and everything after 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:14.119 this is second generation. There was a lot more crossover 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:17.600 than that. Really, when we say first generation and second generation, 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.559 we're talking about a generation of consoles that were primarily 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:25.560 dedicated systems where you could not change out what game 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:28.160 you were playing. It was just limited to whatever was 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:31.120 on the console itself. And the second generation would have 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:34.880 more of the cartridge based approach where you could buy 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:39.280 different cartridges and thus you could accumulate a library of games, 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:41.720 and you know, playing a different game was as simple 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.320 as turning the system off, pulling a cartridge out, putting 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:46.120 a new one in, turning the system on again, and 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:49.319 they're your way to go. So there is overlap between 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:53.120 those two generations. Atari would become the dominant company in 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:55.800 this space, but there were quite a few other competitors 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:59.400 that also stood out with systems that sometimes had features 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.000 and function that made them a more serious threat to 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:06.960 Atari's dominance because the systems were more sophisticated and had 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.040 you know, a leg up in some technical aspect. But 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:14.240 Atari had a really big head start and that was 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:16.920 a huge help because they were able to establish a 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:22.760 pretty significant customer base early on, and that's invaluable. Well, 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:26.120 one company that saw opportunity in the video game space 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:30.720 was the giant toy company Mattel. So Mattel got started 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.880 as a little home business made out of a garage 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.240 way back in nineteen forty five, and originally Mattel made 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:40.600 stuff like you know, like dollhouse furniture and picture frames 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:42.960 and that kind of thing. But in nineteen forty seven 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.880 Mattel introduced a toy ukulele as a new product and 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:51.200 then began to make toys more regularly. Things really got 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.800 moving in nineteen fifty nine with the introduction of a 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:59.440 little toy called the Barbie Doll Hi Barbie. That Doll's 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:03.679 massive sitcess propelled Mattel into becoming a publicly traded company, 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:07.199 and it really took off, and flush with cash from 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:09.719 this IPO, Mattel started doing what a lot of other 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:12.760 companies do when they get tons of money. It started 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.120 to gobble up other toy companies left, right and center. 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:19.680 And not just toy companies. Mattel would also acquire everything 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:23.000 from the Wringling brothers in Barnum and Bailey Circus to 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:27.840 industrial companies specializing in everything from plastic production to die casting. 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:31.840 So by the nineteen seventies, Mattel was a really big deal, 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:34.560 despite some missteps along the way, Like there were some 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:38.400 times where Mattel was in some financial trouble, but the 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:41.360 company had managed to survive all of that. In the 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:45.200 early to mid nineteen seventies, Mattel leadership was reluctant to 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:49.719 get into the video game console space because remember, in 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:53.640 this time, the market's still very young, right, it's unproven. 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.080 This is also really still the era of the first 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:02.600 generation video game consoles, so tell executives weren't entirely sure 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:05.240 that this was going to be a sustainable business. So 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:07.280 it should come as no surprise that the company kind 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:09.440 of held back at first. And to be totally fair 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:13.240 to Mattel, the corporation had some rocky financial situations earlier 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:15.800 that decade, so you know they were a little gun 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:19.840 shy as well. But then enter Richard Chang, Mattel's head 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.360 of toy design and development. In the mid to late 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:26.280 nineteen seventies, he began considering the possibility of getting into 0:13:26.480 --> 0:13:30.200 home video games. There were some competing ideas within Mattel 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:34.200 at the time. Some engineers wanted to focus on handheld games. 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:37.360 These would be similar to the dedicated consoles in that 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:40.600 they would have a game hard coded onto the circuitry 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.560 of the system itself. Others wanted to make an actual 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:47.880 video game console for hooking up to your television. Ultimately, 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.560 Mattel would do both, though at first the company would 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:53.680 produce and release the handheld systems while some within the 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:57.280 company worked on what would become the in television. Okay, 0:13:57.280 --> 0:13:59.319 we've got a lot more to this story, but before 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:01.040 we get to that, let's take a quick break to 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:14.200 think our sponsors. We're back. So Chang, the head of 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.760 development over at Mattel's toy division, reached out to a 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:23.440 company called APH Technology Consultants to help with the various 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.320 video game projects within Mattel and Mittel would actually spin 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:31.240 up a kind of a subsidiary called Mattel Electronics to 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:34.840 oversee this stuff. So this consulting group would ultimately do 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:37.880 a lot of the programming for the handheld systems. Mattel 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:40.960 worked with a company called General Instruments to tweak the 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:45.280 design of a platform that General Instruments or GI had 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:49.480 created called the Jiminy sixty nine hundred. I guess it's Jimminy. 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:55.320 It's spelled Gimni, and I know that some astronauts referred 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:58.280 to the Gemini spacecraft as the jim and E spacecraft, 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.560 so I'm guessing it's the same here. Anyway. The whole 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:05.200 concept was to take this platform, this Jiminy sixty nine 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.360 hundred and tweak it so that it would be easier 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.920 for programmers to use the same basic foundation to program 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:14.600 different games that would speed things up and bring costs down. 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.440 And GI was eager to do this because they saw 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:22.200 this as an opportunity to really have a profitable business 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:27.600 working in chips meant for specific applications like this. Mattel 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:31.040 began to release the games these handheld systems, and they 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.360 did well, and this helped build some momentum toward pushing 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:38.120 out a fully fledged home video game console system. So 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:42.040 this was around nineteen seventy eight or so. Atari had 0:15:42.080 --> 0:15:45.920 released the VCS in nineteen seventy seven. And the dates 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:48.120 get a little fuzzy when I talk about this kind 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:50.360 of stuff, because, as it turns out, no one was 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:54.320 really acting like an historian during the whole process. Like 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:57.320 that's true for a lot of the technologies that came 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:00.800 out in the seventies and eighties. The documentation is limited. 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.200 Sometimes it doesn't even exist, or no one knows about 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.120 where it might exist, because the company is responsible may 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.080 have gone out of business decades ago. So the book 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:14.000 I mentioned earlier in this episode, the one that was 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.640 featured in that interview of the epic podcast, that book 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:20.840 isn't out yet. It comes out later this year, the 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:25.400 fall of twenty twenty four, so I can't reference it, 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:28.160 so I can't look to see what the more heavily 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:32.160 researched bits actually say. Maybe again, I'll revisit this when 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.120 that book comes out to see if it clarifies things. 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:39.560 But within Mattel, there was a guy named Dave Chandler 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:43.120 who also got the nickname Papa in television, who led 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.480 a team to develop the actual physical hardware. The software 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:50.040 side went to the APH Technology Consultants Group, and the 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:53.040 operating system for it in television would receive the code 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:57.920 name the Executive or sometimes the exec. The team was 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.400 sticking with General Instruments for the chipset that would ultimately 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:06.560 be used within the intelevision console. Reportedly, Texas Instruments at 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:10.600 one point pushed to have Mattel jettison the GI chipset 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:14.359 in favor of a chipset from Texas Instruments, but ultimately 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:17.960 Mattel stuck with their previous partner for those handheld systems, 0:17:18.080 --> 0:17:21.720 partly because changing course would have set the whole project 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.400 back by at least half a year, and the home 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:29.119 video game market was really getting red hot in the 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.239 late seventies, so a six month delay could have been 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:35.280 very costly because who knew how long this video game 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:38.879 fad would actually last. Well, the hardware was interesting, and 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.760 Mattel would introduce some add on components to make it 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:45.800 even more interesting and introduce or developed some that did 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:50.040 not get widespread adoption, but probably would have made the 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.560 system pretty incredible if Mattel had been able to get 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:57.480 a handle on some very tough problems. But first off, 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:00.720 the initial console bore at least some so samilarities to 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:04.520 the early Atari twenty six hundred console, complete with faux 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:08.000 wood paneling on the edges, because well, because it was 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.600 the nineteen seventies and we were all crazy for wood paneling. 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:14.639 I actually think it's pretty amazing that the Intellivision didn't 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:17.760 also have orange brown shag carpet on it, if I'm 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:22.119 being honest. The controllers for the Intellivision were a major 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.359 departure from the Atari twenty six hundred. So while the 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:28.080 faux paneling made it kind of look a little bit 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.280 like an Atari system, the controllers were their own thing. 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:34.960 Kalika Vision had its own controllers that were kind of similar, 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:40.639 but in television man so, the Atari controller was just 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:44.720 a basic joystick that had a single red button on it. 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:48.480 The Atari twenty six hundred joystick was digital, which meant 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:51.640 moving the stick in one of the four primary directions 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:54.159 would just complete a circuit and send a command to 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:56.840 the console. It's not like you could press harder or 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:00.240 softer to make your character move faster or slower. It 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:02.879 was either moving that way or it wasn't. Now, you 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.200 could also move the joystick on the diagonal and thus 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:10.359 complete two points of contact, and that would allow the 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.920 system to let you move characters on a diagonal path 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.320 if the game supported that, so which meant that ultimately 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:20.960 with an Atari joystick, you had up to eight directions 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:25.399 of movement possible. Now, the in television controller looked kind 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.399 of like a remote control with a direction pad disc 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:32.520 that was set either above or below a number pad. 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:36.480 Whether it was above or below dependent upon the generation 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:39.040 of controller. You had but yeah, think of like a 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.840 remote control with a number pad that's three numbers wide, 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:45.480 so you get the you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:48.600 eight nine, maybe some other little command buttons, and then 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:50.879 would have this disc either at the base or at 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:53.400 the top, and the disc was a direction pad where 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:55.240 you'd press on the edge of the disk and you 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:59.879 could make stuff move that way. This had sixteen different 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:04.240 points of directional control, and the number pad meant that 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:07.840 the Intellivision games could have a much more complicated interface 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:10.920 than your basic Guitari games. The pad itself, I would say, 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:14.160 was a real thumb killer. It was just the circular 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:16.160 disk and you would press along the edges to give 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:21.120 commands to the game. You could eventually buy little joystick 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:24.400 adapters that clipped on over that part of the controller. 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.160 The joystick would just manipulate the disc underneath. That's actually 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:32.360 how I played most of my intelevision games, because otherwise 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:34.960 my hands would really cramp up pretty fast just trying 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:39.200 to manipulate the disc. Just holding the controller could be 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:42.359 pretty uncomfortable. There were also, as I would call buttons 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:48.080 along one side of that gave you some more input options, 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:50.160 and it meant that you had to hold the controller 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:54.480 a specific way because the buttons would be inaccessible if 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:56.879 you held the base of the controller, say in your 0:20:56.960 --> 0:20:59.959 left hand instead of your right hand, which could be frustrating, 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:02.280 you know, if you were you know, if you weren't 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:05.080 right handed, it could be a little difficult. I'm not 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:07.080 right handed, so I guess what I'm saying is, I've 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:10.639 personally found it very difficult. But interestingly, because of that 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:14.919 number pad, game developers could create little plastic overlays, and 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.320 these overlays would slide into a slot on the face 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:22.040 of your controller and would fit over the number pad, 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:25.679 and the overlays could indicate to gamers what each button did, 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:28.199 if they did anything at all within the game. So 0:21:28.320 --> 0:21:30.840 rather than just having to remember that you would need 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:34.120 to push I'll give you hypothetical you needed to push 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:37.399 the number two button to pull up an inventory or 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:39.480 something like that, instead of that, you would have this 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:41.600 overlay and you would see like there'd be a little 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:46.600 marking that represents inventory, and it's over top the number two. 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:48.240 But it meant you didn't have to remember you needed 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:50.479 to press number two. You just pressed the picture that 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:52.840 made it look like a backpack or whatever it might be, 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:55.240 and so you could just look at the overlay to 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:57.920 see what you needed to push in order to do 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:00.920 a specific action within the game. Of course, each game 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.600 would have its own overlay, which meant you had twice 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:07.680 as many components you could misplace and thus make it 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:10.360 hard or impossible to play the game, because I mean, obviously, 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:12.600 if you misplace the cartridge, well then you don't have 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:15.440 a game to play. If you misplace the overlay, well 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:18.320 then you don't have the indicator for what the controller does, 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:20.479 and you would be down to trial and error, and 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:22.840 then you'd have to try and remember from that point forward. 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:25.680 But still, the overlay thing was a really cool idea. 0:22:25.800 --> 0:22:28.679 It was a little challenging for folks like me because 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:32.720 I inherited my in television game system and all the 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:35.280 games for it and all the overlays, and it meant 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:38.760 that I had maybe overlays for about half the games 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:41.560 that came with the box that I got, So I 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:44.080 had overlays for games that were not in the box, 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:46.600 but sounded really cool, like I'm like, oh man, I 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:48.679 wish I had the game that went with this overlay. 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:51.320 And then I also had games where there was no 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:55.240 overlay whatsoever, or at least I didn't have the overlays, 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:58.200 so whether one was never made or it was lost 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:01.600 or whatever, I don't know. Still, I mean, I had 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.840 an intelevision, gosh darn' it, so I guess I shouldn't 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:07.480 look at a gift horse in the mouth or anything. 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:11.040 The cartridge slot on the original intelevision was on the 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:13.679 right side of the system, so it wasn't in the 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:15.520 top or the face of it. It was on the 0:23:15.600 --> 0:23:19.280 right side, and the cartridges themselves were narrower than Atari 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:21.920 twenty six hundred games. They also didn't have any artwork 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:24.359 on the face of them, Like if you look at 0:23:24.359 --> 0:23:26.240 an old Atari twenty six hundred game, a lot of 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:29.480 them have this cool artwork on one side as well 0:23:29.520 --> 0:23:32.520 as the title typically along the top of the cartridge. 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:35.639 In television cartridges, you just had the title on the end. Really, 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:39.440 as I already mentioned, the APH consulting firm designed the 0:23:39.480 --> 0:23:41.920 operating system that would run on top of the hardware. 0:23:42.080 --> 0:23:45.639 They also would provide the platform for developers who wanted 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:49.119 to make games for the Intellivision, and the initial games 0:23:49.119 --> 0:23:54.160