Following the modest sales success achived with its 2600 compilation
CD titled Activision Classics, the storied software publisher has
decided to bring Intellivision games to PlayStation. Its 2600 disc
was soundly criticized for having poor emulation, namely in the
speed, colors and collision detection (ok, just about everything)
and had a poor interface as well. It also lacked any historical
information -- no interviews of legendary designers such as David
Crane and Steve Cartwright. Has Activision gotten its act together
with its second attempt?
For starters, the conversion of the classic games has been greatly
improved. The emulation engine is infinitely better, and it's hard
to believe that it was developed by the same folks that created the
2600 emulator (Livesay Technologies). Therefore, the games are pretty
much the exact same as the way you remember them -- even the Intellivoice
ones such like Bomb Squad and B-17 Bomber. There's no
point in talking about the graphics and sound of this product, given
that it's intended to be an accurate depiction of early 1980's video
games. Yes, it's crude by today's standards, but folks who purchase
this product should know darned well what they're buying before hand.
This collection of Intellivision games is augmented by a nice history
section containing video clips of interviews with the Blue Sky Rangers,
who are the group of programmers and designers that worked at Mattel
Electronics during the early 1980's. Clearly, some nice bonuses are
in store for nostalgists and historians alike.
As in the 2600 pack, Intellivision Classics contains 30 games that
were released for the console. The complete line-up is as follows:
Armor Battle, Astrosmash, Auto Racing, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing,
Checkers, Chess, Football, Frog Bog, Golf, Hockey, Hover Force,
Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, Night Stalker, Pinball, Sea Battle,
Shark! Shark!, Skiing, Sharp Shot, Snafu, Soccer, Space Armada,
Space Battle, Space Hawk, Spiker! Super Pro Volleyball, Stadium Mud
Buggies, Star Strike, Sub Hunt and Tennis.
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Several of the titles, especially the sports games, have been
renamed due to licensing issues. Major League Baseball is now
Baseball while NASL Soccer (yes, that league is long gone) has
been given the generic title Soccer. Sadly, however, many of
the big name games have been left out. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,
Tron Deadly Discs and Kool-Aid Man are among those that will be
sorely missed among die-hard Intellivision-aries. One would think
that Activision could have changed the title of AD&D (how about
Dragon?) or could have altered Tron's graphics so the resemblance
would not be obvious. I enjoyed Intellivision as much as the next guy,
but I find the choices of titles to be somewhat questionable. For
instance, Checkers and Chess -- while they may have had relevance
during the system's heyday -- should have been replaced by more
viable title such as Utopia, Horse Racing or Space Spartans in my
opinion.
What's worse, given that this is an Activision-published product,
you'd expect Activision to include its own Intellivision games,
right? Wrong! Beamrider, Dreadnaught Factor, Happy Trails, Worm
Whomper and Stampede should have been prime candidates for inclusion.
And since Activision now owns rights to all of Imagic's properties,
why not add Demon Attack, Microsurgeon and others? Perhaps the white
shirts at Activision had no idea that their company did games for
systems other than the 2600? Who knows.
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The final complaint -- and this part was obviously out of the hands
of the developer -- is in the control department. Unlike the Atari
2600 which had a joystick and one fire button, the Intellivision's
controller consisted of a 16-direction disc pad, a 12-button keypad
(like ColecoVision and Atari 5200) and four fire buttons. The
PlayStation's analog joystick on its dual shock controller takes
care of the directional control, but there was no getting around
the button limitation. The number pads can be called upon by pressing
L1 and L2 simultaneously, but this is very cumbersome and makes some
games impossible to play as a result.
Bottom line is that you can do much better with Intellivision Lives!,
which is a similar compilation released for the PC and Macintosh.
It has a lot more games than its PlayStation counterpart and even
lets you check out some never released stuff such as Party Line and
Hypnotic Lights. While Intellivision Classics holds its own in the
emulation department, one can't stop but wonder what might have been
had the Activision and Imagic titles had been included in the disc.
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Title |
Intellivision Classics |
|
Publisher |
Activision |
|
System |
Sony PlayStation |
|
Graphics |
5 |
|
Sound |
7 |
|
Gameplay |
5 |
|
Overall |
5 |
|
Reviewer |
Keita Iida |
