Top 25 Intellivision Games

[digitalpress]

Discuss.

Advanced D&D: Cloudy Mountain
Advanced D&D: Treasures of Tarmin
Astrosmash
B-17 Bomber
Body Slam Super Pro Wrestling
Bump 'n Jump
Burgertime
Diner
Dracula
Dreadnaught Factor
Horse Racing
Hover Force
Loco-Motion
Microsurgeon
Shark! Shark!
Snafu
Thin Ice
Thunder Castle
Tower of Doom
Tron Deadly Discs
Truckin'
Utopia
White Water
World Series Baseball
Worm Whomper

[digitalpress]

Will no one challenge this list?! Is this the PENULTIMATE list of the best Intellivision games ever? Undisputed and without reproach?

OK then!

[MarkM2112]

Ummm... I would replace Worm Whomper with Beauty and the Beast...

[IntelliSteve]

Hmm. Several disagreements in here. While both AD&D titles are enjoyable, I wouldn't put them in the top 20. I'd also cut Horse Racing and White Water.

In their place... there are so many to choose from!

Demon Attack and Pac-Man deserve mention.

And where are the sports titles? At least one belongs in there. Choose 1 or 2 from:

World Champ. Baseball (or any other Inty baseball game), Slam Dunk, Chip Shot, or Super Pro Football.

Finally, SNAFU or Thunder Castle should be there, too. Both are fun games, and both have simply astounding music in them!

IMHO, of course.

[digitalpress]

@IntelliSteve - thanks for challenging!

Two things that will never happen on my watch:

1. Horse Racing getting knocked off of the list. We used to spend hours with this game. It's got everything. The challenge of the race, the strategy of the jockeying, and the gambling... even CROOKED gambling if you saw fit. It's just so underrated.

2. Demon Attack making this list. Listen, I know a lot of Intellivision fans love this version of the game but it's crappy. It LOOKS great, but the controls are just god-awful. And I'm pretty good with the disc. I remember getting to the mothership for the 3rd or 4th time and watching my ship drift helplessly out of my control as I smash into a dive-bombing demon. NO! Say it isn't so, IntelliSteve!

As for dropping White Water, adding Snafu and the others... I'm good with those suggestions - any "second motions" out there?

[theaveng]

It looks crappy too. It's like Baroque art... too much ornamentation.
Troy

[DarkSoul]

I've got enough disagreements to warrent my own list, hehehe =)

----

Advanced D&D: Cloudy Mountain
Advanced D&D: Treasures of Tarmin (Oo, first of a kind)
Astrosmash (Damn fine fun)
B-17 Bomber (GREAT)
Bump 'n Jump (Hey, just a lot of fun. Good music too, less muddled than the NES version)
Burgertime (Who doesn't love Burgertime)
Commando (I'm especially fond of the Intellivision version of Commando as compared to the myriad of others because I feel the 16 direction dial was a godsend for shooting those little buggers)
Diner
Horse Racing
Lock N' Chase
Loco-Motion
Night Stalker
Pac-Man (Sure, we've seen Pac-Man before, but this version is so crisp and clear.. it looks like the arcade!)
Snafu (Simple, clean fun... great with a partner.. if you can find one that'll play with you)
Space Armanda (C'mon!!!! Simple, but fun! Astrosmash is on the list tooooo....)
Space Battle
Space Spartans (Hello Commander..)
Tron Deadly Discs
Utopia
World Championship Baseball (with honorable mention to Chip Shot and Super Pro Football)

[digitalpress]

You've got a pretty good list there, DarkSoul, but when I see Space Armada on someone's top ANYTHING list, it raises questions. Simple but fun? It's abysmal! GIGANTIC invader sprites in a cramped area. In fact, EVERYTHING is just the wrong size. And what's with that nasty border? I guess they were trying to make it different than Space Invaders but that's the biggest problem with the game IMHO.

[DarkSoul]

I conceed that point, hehehe

[retrogmr]

There are a few games that I don't see on the original list:

- World Series MLB Baseball (the ECS combined with the Intellivoice, plus the ability to save games to tape make this a pretty cool game for it's time)
- Safecracker; this game ROCKS! Makes great use of the isometric view for the car scenes.
- Thin Ice; so much like Qix, yet so much cooler (pun intended).

I reluctantly have to agree with Joe about Horse Racing; it's games like that, Utopia and Sea Battle (which should also be on the list) that gave the Intellivision it's unique flavor. It was the anti-twich game gamer's machine

What games get knocked off?? Tough call... I'd say drop Bump 'N Jump; it was a marginal translation at best in comparison to the Colecovision version. Not sure which others should go in favor of those I mentioned. Maybe this system gets a Top 25!

[MegamanX]

I still like Thin Ice and Whitewater. Anyone ever play Disco 1 (the old skool arcade game)?

[Arcade Antics]

I only have a couple things to throw into the ring on this one:

1) Worm Whomper MUST stay on the list.

2) @MegamanX: I've played Disco #1. It's crazy!

[ubersaurus]

Demon Attack ruled. I've never had trouble with the controls, so clearly you must be a madman ;p

[IntelliSteve]

As far as the attacks on Demon Attack.. Hmm.. Sounds like you'd worn out your controls. I can still get into the 40Ks on that game. At high speeds, I will concede it gets touchy. More often than not, my really good games end w/ the game freezing or crashing in bizarre ways - haven't figured out if that's the unit or the cart, tho.

Followers of r.g.v.c. probably saw a thread a short time back about a top-10 list for the Inty, and the same thing happened there as here... There are too damned many fun games in the Inty library porportional to the games ever released! There are still games not on the list, like:

Beamrider - just plain f'n great
River Raid
Truckin'
Skiing
Bomb Squad
Triple Action (biplanes)...

We had fun w/ Horse Racing, but we had a lot more fun playing chicken in Truckin', jamming w/ SNAFU, and disrupting each other w/ Skiing. I always liked Bomb Squad, too. The sound effects and voices really do a good job of building up tension, and evil Boris' taunting always pissed me off. ("You'll never do it in time!") Of course, biplanes in Triple Action is untouchable, too. Hell, we even had a blast in Auto Racing - especially driving around off-road to the different tracks.

I always liked Tropical Trouble, but that one gets panned a lot. I also really love Vectron, but that's another game that requires controllers that are in great shape or you'll go nuts playing it. It's also hard on the fingers - I think if it had easier controls, it would have been much more popular. It's a visually and sonically superior game w/ another unique concept.

World Series Baseball usually gets short shrift because it never got exposure. I remember seeing an ad for that on TV and dying to get it - but never found it. Took me 18 years, but when I got it - WOW! It was really another quantum leap in console baseball games, but never got the press it deserved. In-game announcers via Intellivoice, the 3-d (albeit low-res) field, multiple camera angles, picture-in-picture, even stadium background music, save/load game, lineups based on realy player stats (though names were changed) - really a milestone in Baseball simulators!

I also really like Astrosmash and Space Armada. I do agree that the aliens are just too big in SA - makes the game VERY tough. The reason for the borders was twofold, I think. First, the color indicated which level you were on. Second, most Inty games had a border to compensate for TVs that had slightly different horizontal or vertical offsets to prevent part of the actual gameplay area from being 'lost'. Lots of games made this border the same color as the game background. The border thing wasn't unique to SA, just perhaps more obvious.

I've kept Safecracker off my lists for one main reason - lame gameplay. Yes, it's visually a masterpiece. The isometric view is awesome - and 'clipping' is done right - (why, oh why, couldn't Coleco have done Zaxxon that way?). But as far as gameplay, it's kinda lame. You find a building. You hold down an action key until you find the magic number. You open the safe and maybe shoot a couple cars. Woo.

The fact that, out of 125 released games, it's easy to come up w/ a top 25 - and still get arguments about games missing from the list - says a LOT about the quailty of the library. That's over 20% of the games! What would that translate to for the VCS? At least 100 games or so?

Well, this got way too long.

[digitalpress]

Great post, IntelliSteve! Glad to see other hardcore INTV peeps out there. I've always loved this system, and people who don't just "don't get it" in my opinion.

Well one thing that I think any Intellivision fan can agree on is that a list of 20 is too restrictive, too many quality titles and not enough slots. So I upped the list to 25 and have added some of the games mentioned here (not Demon Attack though. Please don't make me put that on this list).

Look it over again - any glaring issues?

[mmclem1112]

well heres my list baseball has to be on there. bi planes also atlantis,skiing,d@d treasure of tarimin and riverraid , just to name a few still love playing the game if anyone lives in st louis let me know maybe we can play some time

[Andy Rampage]

i do Not REMEMBER Intellivision all that well ...
that was a Long - Time ago ...

Tron's DEALY Discs was "fUN as HELL" ...

and "HARD AS HELL" too !!

... anyBody "Out-dere" ever Beat it ??

[klimatron8]

Had to chime in. Ice Hockey ruled! We used to laugh our asses off at every check (THUMP!). 2 things that sucked royally were taking a penalty (no more thumping) and when your goalie was non-existant. original Baseball also has to be on the list. I'd vote for Lock+Chase also. Football too!

[game_trek]

I know this is late, but I was just browsing through here and found this thread and was wondering how Boxing isnt on anybodys list. It didnt have the best graphics, but which intv game did? Me and my friends used to have boxing championship bouts when I was younger. It was so much fun. Oh, and #6 is the best boxer. I guess I'd have to put both D&D's , Truckin'(only good unless you have the maps), Diner(given to me by friend), and probably my favorite, microsurgeon on the list also.

[diskoboy]

You forgot 2 games...

Night Stalker
and As others have said before me: Bomb Squad.