Collecting Intellivision - road to 55

 

Collection for older game systems is a bit of an odd hobby.  Unlike the 677 games for the NES, the Intellivision only had 125 Games release for it before 2000.  There have been some new releases by the homebrew community since then, starting with 4-TRIS – a Tetris clone which came out in 2001.  This can make collecting the entire set a bit tricky.

Because of the history, collecting the entire set is a matter of deciding what you consider a complete set.  Mattel Electronics released 55 games for the system, plus another 6 for the ECS (Entertainment Computer System) keyboard expansion.  There were another 41 games released by 1983 other companies like Activision (7), Atarisoft (3), Coleco (8), Imagic (14), Interphase Technology (2), Parker Brothers (6), and Sega (1). 

Dextell Ltd released 2 games in 1986.  And INTV released another 21 games between 1985 and 1989.  They also released some older games by other companies in INTV packaging.

This gives you a bit of a choice to what you want for a ‘complete’ collection.  You can collect the original 19 games – as noted by the number on top of the boxes.  You can collect the entire 55 Mattel Electronics games.  You can collect some, or all, of the games by other companies.  You can skip the ECS games or even the INTV games, which allows a smaller collection.  Or you can go for the entire 125 – or even 124 since the Super Spiker! Game is really hard to collect. 

 

Personally, I’m interested in getting the remaining 9 I need for the original 19.  I would also get Boxing to complete the games from 1981.  Depending on what lots I get which have other games, I would probably get the 6 I need to complete the 1982 set as well.

At that point I would have 10 remaining from the 1983 set.  Three of these are on the Flashback system, but I still might try to get them to complete the official 55.  If I am able to complete that, I might try to get the Atarisoft, Coleco, and Parker Brothers games.

I might get a few of the Imagic ones, as well as the rest of the Activision games, again depending on what I had gotten in lots to that point.  I have Pitfall! Already, and would only be interested in Happy Trails from Activision, and Microsurgeon and Beauty & The Beast from Imagic. 

I would only chase down the one Sega game, Congo Bongo, if I could get it for a reasonable price.  Being a solitary game from that company, it is easy to skip.  The same is true for the two games from Dextell.  Being that they were from 1986, it is easy to cut the collection off at 1983.     

For the non-Mattel games, you also have to decide on if you want to collect just the cartridges, or if you are trying to get the games with the boxes, rules, and overlays.  Unlike for Atari or Coleco, where the boxes were not as important and the games were simpler, because of needing a place to keep the instructions and overlays, most people who had Intellivision games kept the original boxes.  However, some games did not come with overlays originally.