Intellivision was always my favorite video game system. In fact, to this day I feel guilty about my childhood self ditching it for the Nintendo in 1987. People always complain about the grown men of today who play video games, but I can recall in the early to mid 80’s all the older guys in my family who would get together and play Intellivision. It wasn’t uncommon to see my 55 year old grandpa(a Korean war veteran) and other relatives fire up a game of Tron Deadly Discs at a family get together. My uncle was especially skilled at games like Astrosmash and Space Armada, and I would eagerly watch him play just to get to see levels I would never make it to in a million years. My own personal favorite games were probably Treasure of Tarmin, Lock N’Chase, and Commando, games which I continued to play well into the mid 90’s. One thing I loved about these games was how merciless they were. No continues, no passcodes, nothing. You could play for hours and when you die, the screen freezes on game over, and it’s back to the title screen.

Intellivision got something of a re-release recently in the form of the “Intellivision Flashback” console, which comes with 60 built-in games. A lot of people worked very hard to get this thing, and it’s great! It even looks like the original.

The only major drawback is that you can’t plug in cartridges. That means you are limited to only the built in games, which include many crappy sports and education games and only a handful of the classics. The makers claim this is due to licensing issues, but that could have been overcome if one had the ability to plug in other original cartridges similar to other retro consoles for NES, Genesis, etc. If you buy this, you can’t play Commando, Lock N’ Chase, Donkey Kong Jr, Atlantis, Burgertime etc. There are still enough cool games to make it worth it though, as the original consoles are getting more expensive and harder to find(in good working order anyway.)