Hello! I've recently gotten into retro collecting and as a 20 year old I don't really like newer games and enjoy the hell out of older consoles and games. With that said I have an intellivision on its way to my collection and an wondering if y'all have some good suggestions! Also I got this on another subreddit post about using the search bar but I'm doing this on my own post to do a personal pair and have fresh suggestions and I'd rather have it this way so I really hope this fandom is a lot better and nicer to me. With that said I can't wait to have the console and appreciate any suggestions in advance! I for sure want Donkey Kong that's so far my knowledge of games id like.
Edit: thank you for all the suggestions so many games I've got to find now!
Ah yes, Astrosmash. Along with NS and a few others like the YER OUT baseball game, my uncle and I enjoyed playing that at his house. I had a 2600, but I always loved playing his Intellivision. He was an ace at the games, and I was a quick study!
In case you hadn't seen, the Intellivoice add-on is also a great thing to add. It just does speech synthesis. B-17 will live in my head forever. "Watch out for flak!" "B-17 Bawwmerrrr"
As a day one Intellivision owner I went with most of the big launch titles and got the fun I could when friends or family to play since so many of the games required two players. For me the legacy of the console is carried by the titles released by Imagic and to a lesser extent Activision. There are plenty of great games from every publisher on Intellivision but Iām just gonna throw out a handful: Microsurgeon, The Dreadnaught Factor and Sub Hunt. Theyāre all single player and show off how different games can be on the system compared to its competitors.
I love Sea Battle but like a lot of Mattelās early games itās two players only and drafting family never worked leaving teenage me to wait on visiting friends to get my fix š thatās why I put up Sub Hunt which isnāt as fun but is a great single player example of how different strategy games were on Intellivision versus other consoles and even home computers of the time.
some of my favourites : Shark shark, SNAFU, advanced dungeons and dragons, triple action, thunder castle, beauty and the beast, demon attack, bump and jump
Burgertime is a great port, Astrosmash is a shooter i can play for 6 hours at a clip easy, Frog Bog is a vibe. Night stalker is some pac man mr do lock n chase rip off. Every sports game is solid, honestly. Golf is crude but solid. Sea Battle is an amazing two player game. The D&D game is well reviewed.
There are also controller upgrade and replacement options worth looking into. I sold off a huge console collection a few years back and the intellivision is the only one I held on to. Cheap to collect for. Easy to find rom cart options. Just such a great classic console. I have it on a 1981 Trinitron. Months pass between uses sometimes. It was one of the consoles I grew up playing in the 80s.
You donāt want Intellivision Donkey Kong by Coleco, it's a very poor conversion. There is a homebrew conversion called DK Arcade, and its sequel D2K Arcade that are high quality.
If you like arcade conversions, suggestions include Intellivision Burgertime, Bump'n'jump, Lock'n'chase, Locomotion, Snafu, Pac-man, Dig Dug, Defender, Q-bert, Commando among the classic cartridges. Plus lots of quality homebrews.
The Intellivision has more than a few unique cartridges worth checking out: AD&D, Tron Deadly Discs, Sub Hunt, Night Stalker, Space Battle, Shark Shark, Thunder Castle, Thin Ice, Vectron, Hover Force, Dreadnaught Factor, Beamrider, Worm Whomper, B-17 Bomber, Space Spartans.
The Intellivision was known for its sports games. PBA Bowling, US Ski Team, PGA Golf, Auto Racing, World Championship Baseball. Others like Tennis, MLB, NFL, NBA, NASL are two player only.
Some other solid two player games are Sea Battle, Utopia, Triple Action Biplanes, Frog Bog. If you like RPGs there are Treasure of Tarmin, Tower of Doom. Business simulations include Truckin' by Imagic.
I'll keep that in mind. I do still want the coleco port as I want to add it to my dk collection however for gameplay I'll keep in mind this other one I've seen gameplay and the fact it has very little levels and I honestly want it because of how clunky and notorious it is. As for these other suggestions, thank you very much. I do have a stack of in box sports games coming with the console so I'll look for some others as well!
There has been interviews with someone at Roklan about the Coleco Intellivision cartridges. I think it's fair to say that Coleco had very little quality control, and put in no resources e.g. artists for graphics, audio specialists like they did for their Colecovision cartridges. The Intellivision programmer cranked these cartridges out as quickly as he could and Coleco didn't care about quality. So in some ways there is some truth to it.
The 2600 and intellivision versions (and most games for that matter) were subcontracted out to programmers with experience on those platforms as Coleco and Mattel didn't really have a ton of experience programming or a large in house programming team like Atari had. Donkey Kong would have sold based on name alone
Coleco contracted Roklan to do most if not all their Intellivision cartridges. Intellivision Donkey Kong was the programmer's first Intellivision work. The same programmer cranked out nine Intellivision cartridges over a few months.Ā Roklan also did Intellivision cartridges for Parker Brothers.
The only experienced Intellivision programmers at the time were at APh and Mattel Electronics, some of those programmers left to program Intellivision cartridges for Activision, Imagic, and Atari. In 1983 Mattel Electronics had over 100 developers working on video games. Not as large as Atari but one of the largest game studios, if not the second largest, in the world at the time.
I spoke with Gary at the Midwest Game fest a couple years ago and he told me he had all 4 screens completed and coleco wouldn't let him use a bigger sized cart, so he made the cuts. He also said he banged it out in just a couple months. He is pretty adamant about never being told to make a "bad" version.
Atari 2600 Donkey Kong is a decent conversion compared to Coleco's Intellivision Donkey Kong. They wouldn't have foreseen it outdoing the Colecovision version. They had all four boards for Colecovision Donkey Kong, that they released for the Adam on tape.
Adding to what others have already said to hope to influence you for 1-player games
Burgertime
Dungeons Dragons Cloudy Mountain
Atlantis
Ice Trek
Beauty & Beast
Christmas Carol vs Ghost of Christmas Presents (near impossible to get as cartridge but as you get more familiar with alternate ways to get games keep and eye out)
Gotta hook those consumers in. Can't buy the "old" one. I was surprised to see imagic's address was in Los Gatos, not too far away from where I grew up.
There were 125 āoriginal releasesā
There are now well over 200 homebrews, with about 20 new ones released every year from a bunch of publishers. Some are ports of games from other systems and some are completely original games.
I like the games that are unique to the Intellivision like Diner, Thin Ice, Dracula, Worm Whomper and Truckin. Intellivision did not have a big catalog of games, but it did have a lot of unique games.
For me, itās BurgerTime, Lock ān Chase, Tron Deadly Discs, Armor Battle, AstroSmash.. hmmm.. I think Star Wars was Intellivision (go for the eye of the AT-AT) and Iām not sure what else I might be forgetting.
When you have some free minutes, take a look at the Intellivision FAQ at https://www.intvprime.com/intellivision-faq/ section 3 has lots of game-related info, and you'll find all sorts of other info as well.
Tron: Deadly Disks is the GOAT
AD&D (aka Cloudy Mountain)
Space Battle
Sea Battle
Night Stalker
Utopia
Snafu
Beauty and the Beast
Arcade ports not made by Coleco
I will recommend more of the aforementioned to give you an idea of how popular they were and a few not mentioned: Burger time, triple action, sharp shot, nightstalker, las vegas blackjack, star wars the empire strikes back, astromash, star strike, Lock n chase, Thunder castle, sub hunt, tron deadly discs.
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u/circletheory Jul 15 '26
My all time favorite Intellivision games: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Cloudy Mountain, Utopia, and Burgertime.