Mattel had been a toy manufacturer for decades so, and after witnessing Atari’s runaway success, jumping on the video game bandwagon seemed like prudent and financially rewarding business move. Their machine arrived on the wider North American market in 1980, having already had a test phase release in Fresno, California in 1979 with four games. These released games were ABPA Backgammon, Armour Battle, The Electric Company: Math Fun and Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, all of which were developed by APH Technological Consulting.

The test proved very successful, so in 1980 the console arrived on the wider North American market as the Intelligent Television before launching in the UK the following year. Then in 1982 the console was released in Europe. In the bowels of the machine is a General Instruments CP1610 16-bit processor and a 16-bit data and address bus that made this the first 16-bit console; a whole decade before the 16-bit rivalry between the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive. This goes to show that bits don’t mean anything when it comes to graphical finesse. The console could put out 16 colours and its sounds were produced by the AY-3-8910 programable sound generator (PSG- designed by General Instrument in 1978) which incorporated five channel sound that was more than a cut above Ataris 2600. It also utilized a tile based playfield, which helped to take the strain away from the CPU and consumed precious little of the available RAM while displaying detailed graphics.

The Intellivision’s controllers provide a numeric pad with optional game specific overlays and a flat disc for directional movement using the thumb- which works much in the same as a D-pad. It is this design that is the precursor to modern control pads.

Like its rival the Atari 2600, the Intellivision was able to survive the video games industry crash of 1983 (which had seen an end to so many consoles and games developers). During its life span it had 133 cartridge games released for it before being finally discontinued as late as 1990.


​Enter the ‘Talkies’

In 1982 Mattel introduced a new peripheral for the Intellivision: the Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module. A speech synthesizer which produced speech with compatible game cartridges. The Intellivoice was pioneering and original in two respects: human sounding male and female voices with distinct accents, and the speech-supporting games were designed with speech being an integral part of the game-play.

Like the Intellivision chip-set, the Intellivoice chip-set was developed by General Instrument. The SP0256-012 orator chip has 2KB ROM inside, and is used to store the speech for numerical digits, some common words, and the phrase "Mattel Electronics presents". Speech can also be processed from the Intellivoice's SP650 buffer chip, stored and loaded from cartridge memory. That buffer chip has its own I/O and the Intellivoice has a 30-pin expansion port under a removable top plate. Mattel Electronics planned to use that connector for wireless hand controllers which never fully came to fruition. The four titles available for the Intellivoice system, in order of their release, were. Space Spartans, B-17 Bomber, Bomb Squad & Tron: Solar Sailer. However, retailing at a high price, the Intellivoice did not sell as well as Mattel had expected, and Intellivoice modules were later offered free with the console. In August 1983 it was quietly phased out. A children's title called Magic Carousel, and foreign language versions of Space Spartans were completed but shelved before they could be released. Additional games Woody Woodpecker and Space shuttle were in development but went unfinished.