Games That Defined The Intellivision 

I have a strong memory of being around 5 and being mesmerized by the exploding planet, in Star Strike. It's probably my first video-game memory. I played the C64, way more, as a kid but I also remember playing Intellivision Burger Time, at a friend's house.

Imagic''s Microsurgeon is the one game I have a hankering to play. The game had really unique and ambitious premise and the art work really left an impression on me.

I hated Intellivision back in the day because of their rivalry with Atari. But like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, the two now represent an awesome era.

Treasure of Tarmin was my favorite. I would play it so long my intellivision would over heat and graphics got wonky. So i would put a cup of ice over the power supply spot since it was inside. It worked but i cringe now when i think of it.

I had completely forgot about the 2 excellent D&D games.

In the late 1970s/early 80s (UK) I do remember being really impressed with the graphics capability on the Intellivision. Unfortunately, Intellivision was the more expensive option when compared to the Atari 2600.

B17 BOMBER was the defining game for me, a sim with voice... for 1982.. amazing

Space Battle was my favorite Intellivision game that I never got to play at home (Atari kid) as well as baseball when someone else was around. Years later I grew fond of Thunder Castle which I played on the Nintendo DS Intellivision compilation cart. I didn’t know about that one in the early 80’s…

Beauty and the Beast, Lock 'n Chase, Swords and Serpents, Horse Racing, Skiing, Tron Deadly Disks, and many others were mainstays at our place :)

Power of He-Man really was great.

Auto Racing is the game that made the biggest impression with me. Later, a clone for the Atari 8-bit would enhance it. Rally Speedway had fun little animations of a crashed car bursting on fire, and the panicked driver bailing out - rolling on the ground to put out his flames.

Tron Deadly Discs, Baseball, Skiing, Advanced D&D, Burgertime, Lock N Chase, Bump N Jump, Motocross, Football, Demon Attack, Ice Trek

Back in the late 70's / early 80's I had two friends who worked at Mattel, one on the Intellivision itself. We played several of the games in the beta versions. I played one originally called Minotaur (release name Treasure of Tarman) the most. We spent what seemed like endless hours playing mostly Triple Action (flying), both Tron games, Baseball, Soccer, Tennis, Bowling, Bomb Squad, Night Stalker and Star Strike.

i remember this game where you were skiing sideways, and if you hit a deer some goddess came out to kill you. i didn't care for the game, but played it over and over because it was Norse Mythology related. I played a ton of Utopia, for some reason. I guess i was at the age that loved it. I loved Space Spartans. in college i got my first PC and made somehow got it to do the "Hello commander, computer reporting" when it booted-up.

Strong list, especially "Night Stalker". I must say that I'm surprised you didn't include "Thunder Castle" which is one of the most atmospheric games of the era on any system and remains an impactful experience to this day.

Treasure of Tarmin: you just unlocked the deepest core memory man

I had so many cousins (nephews) in my childhood. I played atari 2600, commodore 64, 128, amiga 600, apple macintosh with them….great times!

The Intellivison was my console of choice growing up. The games were cutting edge for the time. Great video! Too bad Tallerico F*CKED up the release of the Amico

All good games. World series MLB baseball for the intellivoice was incredible with play by play back in the old days

I reminder being amazed by the full screen scrolling of Auto Racing. I couldn’t believe a game could look that good, LOL. Sadly, it was one of several two-player-only games that were very good, but I was a better player than my younger brother and he got frustrated quickly, so I rarely got to play them. I would have loved to have spent more time with Armour Battle, and especially Sea Battle.

Good video! I remember getting the Atari 2600 system first years ago, when it first came out! I never seen too much Intellvision systems and games till later on in the early 80's. ! Nice list of classic games for the Intellivsion system!

I would add all the one player versions of the big three sports of the day, basketball, football, and baseball. Particularly Slam Dunk given its deep statistical features. I would also add PBA Bowling, If you don't use the get a strike everytime built in hack it is a very challenging and fun game to this day. I love the Intv. I am a one handed disabled gamer and it was the only one of the era's consoles I was truly competitve on. There were so many more of the 125 originals that were solid games. Bump n' Jump was great. Space Hawk, Space Battle, and Horse Racing are also worth a look.

My friends growing up wanted it for the sports games, specifically football & baseball. We all did wind up liking Astrosmash & Night Stalker.

B-17 Bomber with the Intellivoice add on.

I remember "Hermans Sporting Goods" at the mall, had a running demo of Intellivision Major League Baseball. I begged and begged my parents to buy it. Suffice to say, I was stuck with "Home Run" on my 2600 lol

Good list, but I think Utopia has to be here also. There's a reason it's called 'Civilization .05'. :)

YOOO NSG! Thanks for the new video. Glad to see the weird ole INTV get some love

I loved the D & D games. Truckin’ was also one of my favorites

Great vid !! Utopia was my fav !

Greetings! Nice video 😀 my top 10 intellivision games (no especific order): astrosmash, tron deadly discs, ad&d cloudy mountain, horse racing, poker & blackjack, star strike, auto racing, baseball, night stalker and burger time. There are a lot more and i still play all of them on my original intellivision console!

Fantastic list! I think there should be a supplemental Imagic games lists, though, as they were always the ones that shone brightest on Christmas or birthdays. BEAUTY & THE BEAST, DEMON ATTACK, ATLANTIS, WIZARDS AND WARRIORS and DRACULA were the ones that showed how inventive & offbeat games could be.

Great video! On my list I would have donkey kong, and lock n chase but only because that's what I remember playing at 4-6 years old lol.

the Demon Attack game on this was totally different from the Atari release and was AMAZING.

Solid list. I’d probably add Sewer Sam to my version of the list.

He man for intellivision was awesome.

Wow! I probably can't remember all of the games I played as a kid. Space Hawk, Basketball and Football, Triple Action (we played the biplane game as a family), Tron Deadly Discs, Frog Bog, Bump 'n' Jump, Atlantis, Beauty & the Beast, Dragon Fire, Ice Trek, Empire Strikes Back, among all of the titles from this video! The two D&D games I remember in particular, even though I had no idea what to do in them.

Tron Deadly Discs, Lock n Chase, Burgertime, Advanced D&D (both), Space Hawk, Demon Attack, and so many already mentioned were my faves. Being 9, well, immersed at the right age when it showed up and I loved it, would play whenever I could, and my mom was playing Royal Dealer as her fave. Flashback to a better time? hmmmm

Baseball, Beauty and the Beast, Sewer Sam, Worm Whomper, Utopia, and Stampede and Donkey Kong and the awesome port of Pac Man

Great video! I didn’t have an Intellivision when I was a kid, but I got an INTV III about 10 years ago and the best third party game that I’ve played on it is The Dreadnaught Factor. I know it also came out for Atari 8-bit computers and for the 5200, but the Intellivision version plays so well and looks fantastic! I don’t know when we’ll see another compilation of Activision games from the 80’s, but when/if that happens, I would love to see The Dreadnaught Factor on it. I definitely think that it’s Activision’s most underrated game.

A couple of games that I thought were really impressive and quite fun were Scooby Doo's Maze Chase and Mind Strike, which both required the expansion to play. There was also Utopia, which I never really understood as a kid, but that was the first ever RTS on a console and it was quite deep for what it was. The Intellivision port of Q*Bert was also quite impressive and I always liked Thin Ice.

Pretty excellent list. Agree with most of them. Only thing I'd add is Thunder Castle.

Night Stalker is THE game for the system, still love it today

Great list. I can’t quibble with any of it. A few of them I didn’t have, but wish I did (especially Shark! Shark!). I’d add Atlantis, Sub Hunt, Lock ‘n’ Chase, Beauty & the Beast, and Swords and Serpents to the list.

Good solid list 💯

Armor Battle, NFL Football, MLB Baseball, Utopia

I miss AD&D so much as well as Swords and Serpents. Thinking about getting a console just for those!

I can't believe that Mattel has not released an Intellivision Classic/Mini plug and play retro console yet.

I once found one of theese in the trash once. It would power on and show the start screen but wouldn't boot any of the games. If my electronics repair skills back then were as good as they are now I could probably have fixed it.

Great list! Think I would add Utopia and Tron too…

There are actually multiple speed settings for Night Stalker.

More like 10 of my favorite games episode.

Any list without baseball is incomplete. It sold me on the system as the players actually looked like they were running.

Other games you didn't mention that you should check out: B-17 Bomber, Tron Deadly Discs, Bomb Squad, Body Slam: Super Pro-Wrestling, Space Spartans and World Series Baseball...

I owned the first five on your list (as well as Burgertime). One game I really want to mention: Microsurgeon. Absolutely loved that game back in the day!

for me 2 games come to mind is utopia and atlantis I had quite a few but those two along with shark shark and burgertime were played mostly

Great video and your list feels pretty respectable. I got my Intellivision as they started heading to the clearance aisle, sadly. I really love Dreadnaught Factor and Motocross as well as both D&D games and Tron Deadly Discs. If those games were never introduced I may not love Intellivision as much as I do. And yes, Burger time and Bump n Jump were way more fun than their arcade counterparts.

If you reas the intellivision wiki you will find out that the way it was built hampered its speed. (Or something like that) but 3rd party developers who bypassed this actually showed the speed of the intellivision. Games like dreadnaught factor is a good example.

Arghhh!!!, where is B17 Bomber? That was an amazing game.

What about Baseball, Football, Bump 'n' Jump, Space Battle,Sea Battle, B17 Bomber Beauty and The Beast, Dracula ?

Cloudy Mountain looks like sort of a pre-release of ADD for Intellivision. Ciao!

Good list, I own most of these on mine...

BURGER TIME! I wanted this Intellivision II to play the voice games and the TRON games when i was a kid.

My defining games were Baseball, Soccer, Auto Racing (all of those multiplayer PvP), Demon Attack and Astrosmash. While the library for the 2600 was considerably more fleshed out, the quality of the games did seem better on the Intellivision ... but they both look and sound absolutely horrendous by today's standards, haha.

Star Strike = Star Wars in the trench...well, you just said it before i hit enter, but we always thought that.

Sea Battle , Tron Deadly disks, Look and chase.

He-man was my favorite intellivision game..Night stalker too

Some of their arcade ports were average at best but Burgertime on the Intellivision was one of the best home ports for its time. I would say it's just as good as Burgertime on the more advanced Colecovision imo👍

Utopia and Tron deadly disks were defining for me.

I very much enjoy these videos of yours, such as this one especially...Thanks to a neighbor friend back in my early teens (i.e. in the early 1980's) I was able to play MLB Baseball, Poker & Blackjack, NASL Soccer, Utopia, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (which I never knew until I watched your video that it was also known as "Cloudy Mountain"), and I believe Astro Smash also, as well as perhaps a few others I can't think of at the moment. In later years I eventually got my own Intellivision, which I still have, and am so fortunate to have been a "kid" back in those days. And excellent point you made about the gameplay of home video systems lasting longer than arcade games, which surely increased the former's popularity, as it literally gave you more bang for your buck, so to speak, than a quarter would for an arcade game where the gameplay may only last a few minutes (which of course just depended on your skill level at that particular game -- e.g. I'd last much longer on a quarter playing Tempest than I would Stargate). Several of the games you featured in this video I'd either never heard of before, or if I had I'd perhaps never played or owned them. I will say that one of the games, Night Stalker, I'd never owned (and I don't think ever played, even to this day), but I did play incessantly the M-Network version for the 2600 which was Dark Caverns. Loved it!

I had the VCS if i had known that such games were avalable i would have went mattel

This was CUTTING EDGE technology back in the day. LOL

What was the intellivision game where we could run the 100m dash, and Olympic sports please? I remember playing it but not the name

A great list but Intellivision baseball needs to be on that list. It was a great game in its day and probably sold more Intellivision systems than any other title due to it's superior graphics and sounds at the time.

I like all the games on your list, however I daresay that you should have included at least one sports game. In the early days, the Intellivision released a massive series of sports cartridges, which were clearly superior to the Atari equivalent titles, and which were even advertised on TV, using famous testimonials. In particular, I believe Soccer was the beloved title, at least here in Europe, every Intellivision owner had it.

One game I think that's missing from this list-- Utopia! (way more interesting than Shark! Shark!)

Teets Tallarico has forever stained this once very innovative company.

No Tron/Tron Deadly Discs?

I need that he man

The graphics were impressive compared to Atari VCS and Odyssey², but these games (excepting Burger Time and AD&D/Cloudy Mountain) don't look that impressive. I think I did OK with my Atari and got a lot of play out of its games. For long-term success they probably should have gone all-in on their computers, only releasing Pac-Man and other games in 1982 on that platform. Pac-Man fever might have been strong enough for people to run out and buy a computer. They did make money in the short term, but where did it go? Intellivision began losing money around this time, and didn't have a way out of the hole. Coleco spent their money on a failed computer for the ColecoVision and buying the Scrabble & Parcheesi company, while kids would soon tire of Cabbage Patch Kids.

B17 Bomber

What about Evel Knievel?! 😁

The controls of the intelivision were so bad I couldn’t play any of them for more than a minute before giving up

NFL Football 🏈 for me!

The graphics on the Intellivision are much better than the VCS, but the animations look choppy to me.

King tut was good. Early zelda

Buuuy sevunteen bowmer!!

where is tower of doom?????

I genuinely feel sorry for the people behind the original Intellvision, and it's games, who lived to see what became of the brand. Imagine someone taking your life's work and not just disrespecting it, but making it radioactive. Ensuring no one ever goes near it again.

As an original owner of this system and experienced player, I would say your list is just a list of your personal favorites not at all a list of games that defined the system. No B-17 bomber, not one sports game. Come on.

the best console of this generation, far better games than the 2600 and the Coleco. Nice selection of games in this video, you only miss Utopia, imho

That controller...🤮