Jamie Lendino is back once again, and this time he's taking a look at Atari's primary competitor in the first console war - Mattel's Intellivision. And for UK readers, yes, it made it here too, just with all of the impact of a plummeting feather - the UK was far more interested in home microcomputers at the time, if they could afford one anyway... But I digress...
The Intellivision was a fierce competitor to Atari's VCS, and one that, as so many other tech orientated companies did, over promised but also kind of delivered. It brought a powerful console spec (for the time), a range of games that could arguably be described in many instances as genre defining, and the a concept for expansions that, well, you'll find out in this 280-odd page paperback, as Mr Lendino lays focus on the machine, its story, and its software.
If you've read his previous tomes, you'll be familiar with the style of presentation. Each of the nine chapters covers a specific period of the machine's life - from the story of the company that released it to the modern day efforts at emulation, new game development and, yep, mention of that "homage". Cards on the table, I had a pre-order for the Amico through UK retailer Argos and, when things really started to turn sour, cancelled and got my money back. I wanted to believe it could be something different, but it turned out to be nothing much at all. Sigh.
The book itself lacks colour aside from the cover, which is no great loss - imagery and screenshots are handled well anyway, and it is the writing that should concern us here. It's an easy read, yet packed with detail, including snippets from magazine articles and interviews providing contemporary thought on the console in its prime.
And what a prime it was. Although I never experienced an Intellivision first hand, I had heard of more than a few of its major software successes - Utopia, B-17 Bomber, Astrosmash to name but three. Many more are covered within these pages and each is shown the love, care and attention they deserve. It is apparent that, like the other formats the author has covered, there is a real sense of enjoyment in experiencing these games, a celebration of the best that home gaming could offer in the early 1980's.
There were some missteps along the journey of the Intellivision, mostly to do with the hardware - the keyboard expansion caused a great deal of pain, but there were also some triumphs. Synthesised speech was a new one for gamers at the time, and I had never heard of Playcable before, yet this early subscription-based download service was a game changer (literally) for those who used it.
It's a cliche, but if you want a single volume on the Intellivision, this has to be it. Engaging, informative and yet another damn good read from Mr Lendino, it offers a history of a console that, really, saw relatively little action outside of the US, yet still has an active group of users developing new titles for it. You can pick up a copy from Amazon here (note this is for the Kindle version, so remember to check right for other options).
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