"Intellivision Lives!" : but why? (A review)

I know the headline seems harsh... And I'm not sorry...

Look, here is the truth. When I heard I was getting a copy of Intellivision Lives! from Virtual Play Games to try out.. I WAS ECSTATIC. I grew up on the Intellivision. I was just 6 when my parents brought home the original Intellivision - which was a briefcase sized black-plastic box with painted aluminum inlays and all. There were only two controllers- attached via a telephone style coiled wire. The controller looked more like the early cordless phones, nothing akin to the modern remote controls largely influenced by the original Nintendo controller.

My first games- Space Armada, B-17 Bomber, Bomb Squad- Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (regretably this title did not make the cut,) SNAFU, Frog Bog. All awesome games (at a time when there was very little choice in video games, and this was the cutting edge.)

Flash forward 25 years.

I really wanted to relive my youth and recall memories of falling in love with video gaming for the first time. The problem isn't the games... It's me....

No, it's the games. Sorry to say, that early love of mine came and went a long time ago. Let me analogize for you... Did you ever have a relationship with a girl (or guy) in high school and you moved on, maybe or maybe not on bad terms, maybe you just grew apart.. or someone better came along? Then you graduated from high school. Ten years later (or for this analogy, make it 25 years) you go to your class reunion and see them, but they have haven't changed. Maybe they got a boob job, a little nip or tuck.. upgraded the systems to keep up with the effects of time... But the software hasn't changed. They make the same lame jokes you fake-laughed at then to get them in the sack... They tell stories about how when you were 16 you got blasted at that home-coming party and then woke up the next morning wearing someone else's underwear... You get the point.

Well that is the way I feel about Intellivision Lives! or more correctly, about the games contained within this compilation. They've stuck a bunch of old software on a tiny chip and gave it a face-lift by putting it on a DS. I think its great that Virtual Play Games came out with this so people of the younger generation can play and appreciate what us more mature gamers (yes, I consider 31 to be mature) had as kids. And even these old games can provide some amusement.

I really loved the Intellivision and being introduced so early to video games via the Intellivision gives me an appreciation of the sophisticated nature of technology today. The games were difficult to control, they lacked anything but the most rudimentary graphics and sound. I couldn't even understand what some of the sounds or voice-overs were supposed to be in some of the games, such as Bomb Squad, which gives you some basic commands verbally.. I'm really not sure what they are saying.. There are some basic in-game directions you can access, but it really doesn't help very much.

Some of the games are better than others.. SNAFU, for example, while very basic in design, is a puzzle game as challenging as many today. you must guide your "snake" for lack of a proper term around a rectangular box, trying not to get trapped or smash into one of your opponents tails, while trying to trap your opponent to eliminate them.

Space Armada has you trying to shoot an advancing army of alien spaceships and destroy them before they reach the ground. Frog Bog has you jumping back and forth across the screen from lily-pad to lily-pad, catching bugs of various sizes and speeds, to accumulate the highest amount of points.

These games all provided hours of entertainment to me and thousands of others.

If you are a fan of nostalgia - this is a good collectors pack. There are over 60 titles, some unreleased. It is a nice compilation of action, sports, strategy, and role-playing and puzzle games. For me, this is a part of my past I yearn to get back (my youth, that is). At the same time, it makes me realize how far we've come.

The bottom line is this... get this if you like nostalgia. At the time when these games came out, they were awesome. Today, this is simply a chapter of a history book on early video games. This would be a lot easier to buy than trying to hunt down an Intellivision and all the game packs (undoubtedly for thousands on eBay.) I do suggest this as required studying material for anyone whose first gaming system was a Nintendo Gamecube, a Wii or a Playstation, and if any college professor out there is reading this and teaching a class on the history of video gaming, then make your student get this. They should really appreciate how much- in hind-sight- video games used to suck. I'm sorry (not really sorry) for the harsh words- but they really DID suck (we just didn't have any other choice or know any better.)