1982 Intellivision 2 Mattel electronics

1982 Intellivision 2 Mattel electronics

Good, clean unit - working

Intellivision was developed at Mattel in Hawthorne, California, along with the Mattel Electronics line of handheld electronic games.[5] Mattel's Design and Development group began investigating a home video game system in 1977. It was to have rich graphics and long-lasting gameplay to distinguish itself from its competitors. Mattel identified a new but expensive chipset from National Semiconductor and negotiated better pricing for a simpler design.[17] Its consultant, APh Technological Consulting, suggested a General Instrument chipset,[19] listed as the Gimini programmable set in the GI 1977 catalog.[20] The GI chipset lacked reprogrammable graphics and Mattel worked with GI to implement changes. GI published an updated chipset in its 1978 catalog.[21] After having chosen National in August 1977, Mattel waited for two months before ultimately choosing the proposed GI chipset in late 1977.[17] A team at Mattel, headed by David Chandler, began engineering the hardware, including the hand controllers.[5] In 1978, David Rolfe of APh developed the onboard executive control software named Exec, and with a group of Caltech summer student employees programmed the first games. Graphics were designed by a group of artists at Mattel led by Dave James.[22]

The Intellivision was introduced at the 1979 Las Vegas CES in January as a modular home computer with the Master Component priced at US$165 and a soon-to-follow Keyboard Component also at $165 (equivalent to $690 in 2023).[23] At Chicago CES in June, prices were revised to $250 for each component. A shortage of key chips from manufacturer General Instrument resulted in a limited number of Intellivision Master Components produced that year. In Fall 1979, Sylvania marketed its own branded Intellivision at $280 in its GTE stores at Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.[2] On December 3, Mattel delivered consoles to the Gottschalks department store chain headquartered in Fresno, California, with a suggested list price of $275.[17][24] The Intellivision was also listed in the nationally distributed JCPenney Christmas 1979 catalog along with seven cartridges.[25] It was in stores nationwide by mid-1980 with the pack-in game Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack and a library of ten cartridges. Mattel Electronics became a subsidiary in 1981.[5]

Though the Intellivision was not the first system to have challenged Warner Communications's Atari, it was the first to have posed a serious threat to the market leader. A series of advertisements starring George Plimpton used side-by-side game comparisons to demonstrate the superior graphics and sound of Intellivision over the Atari 2600.[24] One slogan called Intellivision "the closest thing to the real thing". One such example compared golf games; where the 2600's games had a blip sound and cruder graphics, the Intellivision featured a realistic swing sound and striking of the ball and a more 3D look. In 1980, Mattel sold out its 190,000 stock of Intellivision Master Components, along with one million cartridges.[12] In 1981, more than one million Intellivision consoles were sold, more than five times the amount of the previous year.[