Figure Painting Total - August 2025

While on our way back from Vancouver, we stopped in to the Sentry Box.  I was very tempted by the Silver Bayonet forces, and the Hairfoot Jousting minis.  I did manage to get an older Blood Bowl team, as well as some Frostgrave figures.  

I had picked up the Model-in-a-month figure from Warhammer, and had built, primed, and base coated it before we left.  I stayed up late when we got back on the Friday and finished it in time to take it in for August 30.

 

Bought

Blood Bowl – Scarcrag Snivellers – 12

Blood Bowl – Gnome Treeman – 1

Unmatched – Battle of Legends – Volume 3 – 4

40K – Primarus Marine - Space Wolf Bloodclaw – 1 (model of the month)  

Frostgrave – Soldiers II – 20

Frostgrave – Wizards II – 8

 

Painted

40K – Primarus Marine – Infernus – 1 (model in a month)

40K – Model in a Month – Space Wolf Bloodclaw – 1 (model in a month)   

 

 

Aug total – figures bought 46, figures painted 2

Running total 2025 – figures bought 79, figures painted 2

All hands on deck

 We had decks installed on the house over 10 years ago.  You are supposed to re-stain them every 5 or so years.

 

But the stain is fussy.  It requires the temperatures to not be above 36 degrees Celsius, and to not drop below 13 degrees Celsius.  It also requires it to not rain or have high humidity for 2 days before, and two days after staining.  This has really limited the days that we could apply it.

 

You are also supposed to pressure wash it a few days before, and not apply on too sunny of a day.  That didn’t happen.

 

But, for the August long weekend, all the stars aligned, and  we got out and painted most of the back deck on Friday.  On Saturday we painted the front deck and the side, as well as the rest of the back deck.  On Monday we put all the plants and patio furniture back.  On Tuesday, it rain again.

 

The stain is odd.  It goes on a honey brown color and, as it is absorbed into the wood, it turns it a dark teak color.

 

It really refreshed the deck.  It looks much darker now. 

Second Generation Video Games consoles – there is another

  

The first generation of video game consoles included the Coleco Telstar, the Atari Home Pong , and the Odyssey series.  They were mostly variations on Pong-like games, some with overlays for the TV, but they also included some tank games.

 

The first of the second generation consoles was the obscure Fairchild Channel 4.  It came out in 1976 and was discontinued in 1983.  It came with two games preloaded and had another 26 games available for it.  It had a unique controller with a triangular 8-way joystick / rotary dial and action button.  It sold the least of the second generations, with about 350,000 units.

 

The Atari VCS (later Atari 2600) system came out next in 1977 and wasn’t discontinued until 1992.  It ended up with between 470 and 500 games.  It had  paddles, and an 8-way joystick with an action button.  It was the clear winner of the console wars, with about 30 million units sold, more than twice as much as all the other second generation systems combined. 

 

The Odyssey 2 came out in 1978 and was discontinued by 1984. It had a full keyboard, an 8-way non-centering joystick with one action button, and about 50 games.  It sold a respectable 2 million units and was clearly fourth of the top four systems.

 

The Intellivision came out in 1979 and did not get discontinued until 1991.  There were 129 games released for it originally.  The controllers included  a 12 button keypad, 4 buttons, and a 16 direction disc.  Because it changed hands between Matell Electronics and INTV, the numbers are a bit tricky, but it is figured to have sold between 3 to 5 million units. 

 

The Colecovision did not come out until 1982 and it was discontinued in 1985.  It also had about 137 games released for it.  The standard controllers were a full keypad, with two action buttons and a stubby joystick.  The company claimed about 6 million units were sold, but it is believed to be closer to 2-3 million units.

 

There was also a Vectrex system that came out in 1982 and was discontinued in 1984.  It included a built-in monitor, and only had about 28 vector style games with screen overlays.   It had a controller with a small 8-direction joystick, and 4 action buttons.   It only managed to sell between 500 to 600 thousand units.

 

My Road to 55 - the first half of 2025

 There is a local place that has a fair amount of classic video games including a fair sized Intellivision section.

I popped in and got Tron:Solar Sailor for $50, and ABPA Backgammon with the top number for $15  This completes the last of the original Intellivoice games I needed.

 

I found a copy of Venture by Coleco from ebay for $15 plus $22 shipping.  I had played this on the Colecovision back in the day.  This means that I now have 4 of the 8 Coleco games.  I just need Mouse Trap, Donkey Kong Jr, Turbo, and Zaxxon.  This is the first one of the other company titles that I am halfway to completing.

 

I also picked up The Electric Company Math Fun from ebay for $9 plus $34 shipping.  This included a color manual, and has a top number on the box as well.  There were two versions of this game, one where you entered the answers starting from the left, and a later version where you start from the right.  This is the left version.  This was the last one that I needed from 1979.  I now have all the ones from 1979 to 1981.  I now would now need 8 to complete the original 19 with top numbers.

 

 

Running Total:

Original 55 Mattel Electronics:  49/55

1979 – complete

1980 – complete

1981 – complete

1982 – missing Shark! Shark!

1983 – missing Bump ‘n’ Jump, Buzz Bombers, Kool-Aid Man, Motocross, and Pinball.

 

Original 19 top numbers missing – Armor Battle, NBA Basketball, NFL Football, Auto Racing, PGA Golf, Space Battle, Tennis, The Electric Company Word Fun.

I’m not sure how much effort I’ll put into these beyond getting the red box Space Battle, and the Auto Racing with the alternate steering. 

So far I have spent $270 plus $134 in shipping to help complete this.  Although some of that includes lots which included some Imagic games.

 

 

Next 41 – have 12

Activision (7): have Pitfall!

Atari (3): have Pac-Man cartridge only

Coleco (8): have Carnival, Donkey Kong, Lady Bug, and Venture

Imagic (14): have Atlantis, Beauty & the Beast, Demon Attack, Microsurgeon, and Swords & Serpents

Interphase Technologies Ltd (2); missing Blockade Runner, and Sewer Sam

Parker Brothers (6): have Frogger

Sega (1): missing Congo  Bongo

 

I am especially interested in chasing down the 3 games that I need to complete the 10 games released in 1982 – Mouse Trap, Dragon Fire, and Tropical Thunder.

In addition to the Beauty & the Beast and Demon Attack that were include in the lots above, I spent another $74 plus $86 in shipping to get these games.

 

 

From the remaining 29, I don’t have any at all.  I’m not sure I’ll get the ESC games, as I’m pretty sure I may not get the ESC module to run them.

INTV (21): I have none

Dextel Ltd (2): missing Championship Tennis, and World Cup Soccer

ESC (6): I have none

 

I’ll look at getting the ones that aren’t on the Flashback – Commando, Dig Dug, Diner, Mountain Madness: Super Pro Volleyball, and Pole Position.  Tripple Challenge is not on the Flashback, but the three games included (Backgammon, Chess, and Checkers) are.  Tower of Doom is on the Flashback but the file is corrupted, so I will probably get that one.

I haven’t spent anything on this group.  Yet.

 

In addition to what I started with, I have spent a total of $344 on this collection so far, plus another $210 in shipping charges.  Plus the $30 that I spent on a working Intellivision.

My Road to 55 - small steps in 2024

 In 2024, I got Imagic Swords & Serpents for <53 total> from ebay.

 

I picked up some overlays and rules for another <31 total> from ebay.  This covered the rest of the missing overlays I needed, as well as giving a nicer copy of the Boxing rulebook.

 

I ended the year by picking up Roulette from ebay for <51 total>.  This finished off the last one I needed for the 1980 set.  It also had a top number, and a full color manual.

 

I finished the year with 46 of the original 55 as well as 11 of the next 41.  I don’t have any of the 29 from Dextell, INTV, or ESC.

Of the original 55, I was missing ABPA Backgammon, and The Electric Company Math Fun from 1979. Shark! Shark! from 1982, and Bump ‘n’ Jump, Buzz Bombers, Kool-Aid Man, Motocross, Pinball, and Tron: Solar Sailor from 1983.  I had 9 of the 19 top number games.

My Road to 55 - good first steps

 After all the delving into the old games, I played some on the Intellivision Flashback.  It has 60 games built in from both Mattel Electronic as well as INTV.  They also have some of the unreleased games.  The console itself is a bit smaller but the controllers are the same as on the original system. 

 

I ordered a new RF connection to be able to play the old consoles.  This ended up costing about $~15 from ebay.  When it came and I went to hook it up, I was gutted to see that our original Intellivision was open, missing four of the six screws that hold it together.  I was unable to get it to work. I was able to find another one locally for $30 which does seem to work fine except for the reset button, which is intermittent.

 

When I first decided to go back and fill in the gaps on the Intellivision collection, I started checking local places as well as online on ebay and facebook marketpace for lots.  Starting with 28 cartridges, or slightly over half of the original 55, I had a way to go. 

I also had 4 of the next 41.  I had Pitfall, Carnival, Ladybug, and Donkey Kong.

 

My first find was from facebook marketplace for $80.  It included NBA Basketball, NASL Soccer, The Electric Company Word Fun, Boxing, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Royal Dealer, Sub Hunt, AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin, Mission X, and B-17 Bomber (with a piece missing on the cover).  It also had Beauty & the Beast, and Demon Attack from Imagic.

It also included the ‘first 19’ copies of Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, as well as The Electric Company Word Fun.

 

 

I was able to find a copy of Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man on ebay for $40 (plus $25 shipping).  It is in good condition and even includes the comic.

 

 

At a local flea market, I was able to get some more games beyond the original 55.  I got Imagic’s Atlantis, and Parker Brothers’ Frogger for $10 each.

 

 

I also won a lot on ebay for $55 (plus another $45 in shipping).  This included Checkers, Horse Racing, NHL Hockey, PGA Golf, Frog Bog, and Loco-Motion.  It also included the ‘first 19’ copies of Checkers, Horse Racing, Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, Major League Baseball, NASL Soccer, NSL Hockey, and Sea Battle.

 

 

From a local store, I picked up the cartridge only of Atarisoft’s Pac-Man for $10.  While I will try to get a complete copy later, I could not pass it up for that price.  I was able to pass up the cartridge only copies of Sewer Sam and Blockade Runner for $20 each.

 

 

In 2023 I preordered some of the newer games.  It was a bit pricy, but it contained Time Pilot, which was one of my favorite arcade games.  This ended up taking about a year and a half to fulfill though, and cost me some momentum towards the 55.

Intellivision - My Road to 55 - the start

 

Around the time that I turned 55 a few years ago, my parents had cleaned out their basement and passed along our Intellivision games.

I had 28 games by Intellivision directly and 4 extra ones by other companies.  Two of the boxes (Space Armada and Triple Action) were in really rough shape.  The rest of them seemed okay.  I was only missing two of the overlays (1 for Major League Baseball, and 1 for Triple Action).

 

Since Intellivision had produced 55 games and I already had over half of them, I thought it might be fun to see about picking up the remainder to complete the original set.  I have the Intellivision Flashback which is a retro console that emulates a lot of the original Mattel Electronics and INTV games for the Intellivision.  It doesn’t have a lot of the licensed games though, so that was another push to get the remaining ones.

 

Starting out, I had Las Vegas Poker and Blackjack which came with the original console.  We also picked up Armor Battle, Major League Baseball, and NFL Football from the 1979 set of 8.  We also got Auto Racing, Sea Battle, Space Battle, Tennis, and the US Ski Team Skiing from the 11 games that came out in 1980.

These original 19 games originally came out with numbers on the top of the box, and many of them also came with full color manuals, both  of which are subsets of collecting the games in addition to just having the later editions that came with the two-color manuals (black plus another) and did not have the top box numbers.

 

We had 6 of the 7 games from 1981 – Astrsmash, PBA Bowling, SNAFU, Space Armada, Star Strike, and Triple Action.    One of the things that Mattel did with their boxes was that they had different colors for their ‘networks’ of games.  Blue was for Sports, Green was for Gaming, Purple was for Strategy, and Red was for Action.  They added Indigo for their Space games but had released Space Battle and Space Armada as Red originally, and then later as Indigo.

 

1982 was the largest year by Mattel Electronics.  The Intellivision II came out, which shipped with Lock ‘n Chase in Canada, and later with Burger Time in the United States.  They released 17 games and we got 12 of them – Lock ‘n Chase, Night Stalker, Reversi, Sharp Shot, Space Hawk, Tron: Deadly Discs, Tron: Maze-a-Tron, USCF Chess, Utopia, Bomb Squad, Space Spartans.  They also released the Intellivoice module, and three of the games release were in the Cream boxes for the Intellivoice Network.

In 1982, other companies started making games for the Intellivision as well.  Coleco released 3 games, and Imagic released 7.  We got Carnival, and Donkey Kong.

 

Of the 12 games that came out in 1983, we only got two of them.  Which is unfortunate as five of the games from this year do not appear on the Flashback.

We did get Vectron, and Burger Time, which are probably the worst and best games for the year.  This year they also became quite scattered in their Network colors.  Other companies released another 31 games of which I only got Lady Bug, and Pitfall!.  Mattel Electronics also put out 6 cartridge games for the ECS expansion, which allowed you to add a keyboard, and even a musical keyboard to your system.

 

At the end of 1983 there was the “crash”, with a glut of unsold games pulling down the majority of the video game consoles.  The Nintendo NES was released in 1985 and broadly in 1986.  The Apple II line of computers was already out since 1977, and the Apple IIc was released in 1984.  The Vic-20 had come out in 1980, and the Commodore 64 was released in 1982.  The IBM PC Jr came out in 1984.  

 

Then INTV got the assets for the Intellivision from Mattel Electronics and started releasing more games, mostly by mail order.  They originally game in bags with just the cartridge and manual, but later were released with boxes, although only the Baseball game came with overlays.  From 1985 through 1989 they released another 21 games, as well as rereleasing some of the games from other companies under their own line of boxes.

 

Then the line went quiet, until 2001 when a homebrew version of Tetris came out on a cartridge as 4-Tris.  Since then, there have been more games release since 2000 than were released before 2000.  This can make collecting the entire set a bit tricky.  As well, Sears/CBS released a bunch of the Mattel Electronics games under their line with variant covers.

 

Because of this 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 by 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 beyond with the newer releases.

 

For me, I set the original Mattel 55 as a goal.  With perhaps the original 19 as a secondary goal.  Then I will need to re-evaluate how deep into this rabbit hole I am willing to go.