{"id":1752,"date":"2010-11-05T11:26:55","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T18:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/?p=1752"},"modified":"2010-11-05T11:26:55","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T18:26:55","slug":"intellivision-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/2010\/11\/05\/intellivision-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Intellivision Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was entirely Genesis games (Or SMS games played on the Genesis using the Power Base Converter), so today it is time to bring something else into the mix.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the Intellivision.\u00c2\u00a0 ((Okay, technically it’s an Intellivision II system, but I’m using it because the original Inty is massive and I need space on the shelf for quite a few systems…))\u00c2\u00a0 It was released in the late 70’s and represented the Atari 2600’s first real competition.<\/p>\n

The controllers have a 12-button keypad, which took an overlay.\u00c2\u00a0 This let games have more complicated controls, but in most games, the keypad was only used to select the initial game or difficulty level.\u00c2\u00a0 Games that used it for in-game controls were often difficult to play without the overlay.\u00c2\u00a0 The controller also has two buttons on each side of the keypad.\u00c2\u00a0 The big round thing at the bottom is the control disc, which had something like 12 way sensitivity.\u00c2\u00a0 Overall, these controllers are horrible to use.\u00c2\u00a0 Games such as Astrosmash would end up as tests of how much pain you could endure, rather than how good you were at the game.\u00c2\u00a0 In the original Intellivision, the controllers were hard-wired to the console, so there was no room for third parties to introduce more ergonomic controllers.\u00c2\u00a0 And the most unfortunate of all is the fact that this controller inspired many others in its evil ways.\u00c2\u00a0 The ColecoVision is most notable, but the Emerson Arcadia had similar controls, and even the Tomy Tutor came out with the “Joy\u00c2\u00a0Controllers”, which were disc-based.\u00c2\u00a0 Even Atari got into the act for the 5200, and the impossible to hit side buttons made an appearance on the 7800’s controllers.\u00c2\u00a0 Thankfully, Nintendo ended this reign of terror with the NES gamepad. ((Although the Atari Jaguar did try to bring back the keypad and overlay concept, even it had a gamepad style layout for the main controls.))<\/p>\n

Anyway, let’s see if I can play a few games without getting Carpal Tunnel…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was entirely Genesis games (Or SMS games played on the Genesis using the Power Base Converter), so today it is time to bring something else into the mix. This is the Intellivision.\u00c2\u00a0 ((Okay, technically it’s an Intellivision II system, but I’m using it because the original Inty is massive and I need space on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[172],"tags":[238],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1755,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}