8th March 2019, 11:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 8th March 2019, 11:13 PM by A Black Falcon.)
To mention a little about the remaining 11 Intellivision games I have:
B-17 Bomber, Bomb Squad, and Space Spartans need the Intellivoice to make much sense, so I'll hold off on saying anything about those until I get one. B-17 Bomber looks like a fairly complex (particularly for the time) flight sim; Space Spartans a flight action game inspired by Star Raiders; and Bomb Squad a puzzle game which uses voice to give you instructions about how to disarm a bomb. They sound promising.
Major League Baseball and Tennis are two-player-only sports games. Baseball looks good for the time and Tennis decent, but unfortunately I won't have many opportunities to play them. They are both games I'd potentially like if I could play them, though, which is why I got these and not the (also two player only) basketball, soccer, or football games I saw. At some point I should get the later baseball games for Intellivision which do add AI...
Armor Battle is a two-player-only knockoff of the 2600 game Combat. Won't be playing this much either, but it's worth having for comparison.
Sea Battle is a sadly two-player-only naval strategy game. It looks pretty interesting and is way above anything like this on Atari, so it's really unfortunate that they didn't make any AI for the game.
Bowling - Bowling is a pretty good bowling game for the early '80s. You can move up and down, aim and curve your shot, and adjust power. You even can select your ball weight at the start, and that does affect the game. It's an okay-looking game with a lot more depth than bowling on the 2600, so it fits in with the general 'more complex games' theme the Intellivision went for, and it does seem to be good. Of course there is no AI so if you're playing by yourself it's a solo affair, but oh well. Of the games I've played in this post, this one is definitely the best.
Triple Action - This three-in-one cart contains another Combat knockoff, which like Armor Battle is two player only and plays a lot like Combat; a pretty decent little vertically-scrolling straight-road racing game where you try to get as far as you can, scoring a point for each car you pass successfully; and a two player only biplane flight combat game, where you get a point for each time you shoot down the other plane or they crash. For some reason in the flying game, up on the disc makes you fly upwards and down flies you downwards, so the game doesn't use flight controls unfortunately. You can shoot and change your speed, and have to be careful because stalling and crashing is very easy. This cart is not great for one player, but the one single player game, the racing one, is kind of fun so it's alright I guess. The other two also look decent, particularly the flying one, if you have two players. This feels like a game that should have been a pack-in with the system, but it wasn't...
Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack - Instead, for some reason I do not understand, this card game was the pack-in title with the Intellivision for its first few years. The games are fairly complex for the time, with three different poker variants and blackjack all on the cart, playable in 1 or 2 player for blackjack and 2 player only for poker, but I don't like this kind of game at all and don't want to play enough of this to learn how to play it, so even though I do have a complete copy with its detailed instruction book I don't know that I will ever play this again. It's fine, and probably even impressive, for the genre for the time, but I do not know how to play or want to learn poker (plus, poker here requires two players), and while I do know blackjack there are much better ways to play electronic blackjack than here, not that I want to do that almost ever.
Sharp Shot - This very simple minigame collection looks like it was for kids based on the box, and it's pretty simplistic -- it's a one-button game where you just need to hit the button at the right time to do something. One minigame is football passing, one shooting enemies in space when they pass through your target sight, one shooting enemies with arrows, and one shooting ships with torpedoes, but in all of them you just hit the button at the right times and you get points. This is also meant as a two player only game, so the only single player game here is to just go for points on your own. Either way it's not that good really.
B-17 Bomber, Bomb Squad, and Space Spartans need the Intellivoice to make much sense, so I'll hold off on saying anything about those until I get one. B-17 Bomber looks like a fairly complex (particularly for the time) flight sim; Space Spartans a flight action game inspired by Star Raiders; and Bomb Squad a puzzle game which uses voice to give you instructions about how to disarm a bomb. They sound promising.
Major League Baseball and Tennis are two-player-only sports games. Baseball looks good for the time and Tennis decent, but unfortunately I won't have many opportunities to play them. They are both games I'd potentially like if I could play them, though, which is why I got these and not the (also two player only) basketball, soccer, or football games I saw. At some point I should get the later baseball games for Intellivision which do add AI...
Armor Battle is a two-player-only knockoff of the 2600 game Combat. Won't be playing this much either, but it's worth having for comparison.
Sea Battle is a sadly two-player-only naval strategy game. It looks pretty interesting and is way above anything like this on Atari, so it's really unfortunate that they didn't make any AI for the game.
Bowling - Bowling is a pretty good bowling game for the early '80s. You can move up and down, aim and curve your shot, and adjust power. You even can select your ball weight at the start, and that does affect the game. It's an okay-looking game with a lot more depth than bowling on the 2600, so it fits in with the general 'more complex games' theme the Intellivision went for, and it does seem to be good. Of course there is no AI so if you're playing by yourself it's a solo affair, but oh well. Of the games I've played in this post, this one is definitely the best.
Triple Action - This three-in-one cart contains another Combat knockoff, which like Armor Battle is two player only and plays a lot like Combat; a pretty decent little vertically-scrolling straight-road racing game where you try to get as far as you can, scoring a point for each car you pass successfully; and a two player only biplane flight combat game, where you get a point for each time you shoot down the other plane or they crash. For some reason in the flying game, up on the disc makes you fly upwards and down flies you downwards, so the game doesn't use flight controls unfortunately. You can shoot and change your speed, and have to be careful because stalling and crashing is very easy. This cart is not great for one player, but the one single player game, the racing one, is kind of fun so it's alright I guess. The other two also look decent, particularly the flying one, if you have two players. This feels like a game that should have been a pack-in with the system, but it wasn't...
Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack - Instead, for some reason I do not understand, this card game was the pack-in title with the Intellivision for its first few years. The games are fairly complex for the time, with three different poker variants and blackjack all on the cart, playable in 1 or 2 player for blackjack and 2 player only for poker, but I don't like this kind of game at all and don't want to play enough of this to learn how to play it, so even though I do have a complete copy with its detailed instruction book I don't know that I will ever play this again. It's fine, and probably even impressive, for the genre for the time, but I do not know how to play or want to learn poker (plus, poker here requires two players), and while I do know blackjack there are much better ways to play electronic blackjack than here, not that I want to do that almost ever.
Sharp Shot - This very simple minigame collection looks like it was for kids based on the box, and it's pretty simplistic -- it's a one-button game where you just need to hit the button at the right time to do something. One minigame is football passing, one shooting enemies in space when they pass through your target sight, one shooting enemies with arrows, and one shooting ships with torpedoes, but in all of them you just hit the button at the right times and you get points. This is also meant as a two player only game, so the only single player game here is to just go for points on your own. Either way it's not that good really.