Welcome back to part 2 of my SepTandy Spectacular 2. In the last post I went over the Radio Shack TV Scoreboard line. In this post I'm going talk about their next game console,The Radio Shack Tandyvision One, also known as the Tandyvision.
Released in 1982, The Tandyvision was a unique console that offered pretty good graphics and sound compared to the Atari 2600 and other game systems of the era. Unfortunately, it had trouble competing with the 2600s line up and, along with other factors, It was discontinued after just a few months.
Much like the Pocket Computer and Tandy 100 line, Tandy Radio Shack didn't manufacture the Tandyvision, It was actually licensed version of another console called the Intellivision, which was manufactured by a surprising source, Mattel toys.
Obviously, Mattel didn't begin its career as a video game company, but rather a toy company. They were founded in 1945 by Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler along with Elliot's wife Ruth. The name was a conjunction of Matt and Elliot's names (They left out Ruth's simply because there wasn't any room) . At first they began by making wooden picture frames, but after seeing the lucite and the wood scraps left over from picture-frame production, branched out into the toy business by reusing the scrapes to make doll house furniture. Their first successful toy was the Uke-A-Doodle, a child-sized Ukulele released in 1947.
By 1969 the company had major toy hits on their hands, such as Barbie (which was invented by Ruth Handler), The See 'n Say, and Hot wheels. All of which are still sold today in various forms.
Their first product was a simple electronic handheld racing game (The first electronic handheld of its kind) called Autorace.
After they proved successful and seeing the release of the Atari 2600, Mattel decided to take the division one step further and develop their own console to compete with it. Richard Chang, The head of Development at Mattel, contacts Glen Hightower, president of APh, a consulting firm in Pasadena California to research the possibilities. They eventually find the chipset for the system in a 1977 General Instruments catalog Which GI created around the same time as the AY-3-8500 called the GIMINI Programmable Game Set.
After making some modifications to the components, they had a working board in 1978. They called the system, The Intellivision, Which much like Mattel's name, is a combination of two words, Intelligent Television. Mattel introduced the Intellivision to a test market in Fresno California in 1979 and after the test proved successful, in 1980 it was ready for a nationwide release. The system launched at a retail price of $299 with the box containing the console, an RF modulator, and a pack in game, Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack. The system proved to be a sales success as all of the initial 175,000 unit shipment sold and soon triggered the first true console war.
Again much like the Pocket Computer and Tandy 100 line, Tandy Radio Shack wasn't the only company Mattel licensed the system to produce their own version, GTE Sylvania produced a version to sell in certain stores during the initial test market phase, Sears marketed their own version of the console under the Sears Tele-Games name known as the Super Video Arcade with a different console design, and Bandai produced a licensed version of the system sold in Japan.
The Tandyvision was introduced in November of 1982 for a retail price of $249.95 with each game cartridge sold between $17.95 and $34.95.
The console itself is exactly the same in design as the Intellivision only the panels on the front are wood grain instead of gold, it also has the Radio Shack Logo and TandyVision logos separate as opposed to the Intellivision where both the logo of Mattel Electronics and The Intellivision are together at the bottom left.
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The console design itself is somewhat unusual, Its an all in one design with the power switch and reset button in the bottom right corner, and the controllers are hardwired into the system with a retractable coil cord for each that you just simply remove from the base.
The controllers are also unusual, they look a little bit like TV remotes, calculators, or telephone handsets. They have an ambidextrous design so you can hold them in either your left or right hand and feature a keypad. The keypad is typically used to select settings for the game, but in some games their also used as action buttons. There's also a slot for overlays so you can have a better idea of what each button does for each title. there's also two fire buttons on each side mirrored, again, for left and right handed players, and rather than a joystick you get a weird looking gold disc. It works a bit like a dpad, you just simply move it in the direction you want to go. It's considered to be the first video game controller capable of moving in 16 directions. According to a 1979 demonstration tape, Mattel picked it over a joystick because it allowed objects to quote: "Be precisely maneuvered with a unique object control disk to perceptively simulate lifelike 360-degree movement." The problem is that the controllers can be uncomfortable to use sometimes especially in a game where you need to move in 4 directions, and they are hardwired into the console. So if they break, you can't easily replace them. Now the Sears version actually had detachable controllers and there were third party companies that provided a joystick that you could stick on the base, but other than that, that's what you had to deal with for controllers.
On the right side is the cartridge slot, which is of course the games go. They fit quite tight into the slot, so it requires a little bit of force to get them in.
On the back is the RF output, so you can hook it up to a TV. It comes with the cable and RF box separately, Unfortunately that's not the same for the power cord. Much like the controllers, it's also hardwired into the system. So if they break, you can't easily replace them. I suppose you could solder a new cable in if you were skilled enough, but I don't think people would do that.
And finally on the bottom there is the model stickers and the channel selector switch to select between channel 3 or 4.
Inside the system is a General Instrument CP1610 clocked at 2 Mhz. The chip is actually a 16 bit cpu, making the Intellivision the first 16 bit video game system, predating the Sega Genesis and NEC Turbo Grafx 16 by 10 years! Although the CPU, is technically 16 bit as the its really a 16 and a 10 bit CPU. It also has 1456 bytes of RAM (With 240 × 8-bit of scratchpad memory, 352 × 16-bit (704 bytes) of system memory, General Instrument RA-3-9600 dual ported, bridges CPU and STIC buses, with 240 words used for graphics, and 512 × 8-bit of graphics RAM), 7168 bytes of ROM (4096 × 10-bit (5120 bytes) for the executive ROM (or EXEC ROM) and 2048 × 8-bit graphics ROM (or GROM with 344 bytes used by Exec program).
The graphics are generated by a General Instrument AY-3-8900/AY-3-8900-1 Standard Television Interface Chip (or STIC) capable of displaying graphics at a resolution of 159×96 in multable graphics modes with a palette of 16 colors. The sound is generated by a General Instrument AY-3-8914 sound chip (which is a variation of the AY-3-8910), capable of generating three channels and seven octaves of either mono or stereo squarewave audio or white noise.
For 1979 and 1980, those are some pretty impressive specs. Compared to the Atari 2600, which had a MOS 6507 (a version of the 6502) clocked at 1.19 MHz, 128 bytes of RAM, 160 x 192 resolution with 8 colors on screen and 2 sprites on the screen, and 2 voice audio.
Now it's time to take a look at the games. For this were going to take a look at some of Mattel's launch title offerings, as well as all of the carts listed in the Radio Shack catalog. Also a majority of the games will come from other folks games I either don't know how to play or requires two players. the one player games I will be playing myself. So without further ado, Lets take a look
The first game were going to take a look at is Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, As previously mentioned this was the game that came free with it, a bit like Combat for the Atari 2600. I can imagine this was more of a game for the parents to play, as I can't imagine that most kids were going to want to play blackjack and poker. Now I've never played poker or blackjack so I cant say for sure if this is a decent poker or blackjack game for the time, But what i can say is that it certainly has a bit more visual flair than BlackJack and Casino for the Atari 2600. The graphics are quite nicely detailed with each card being handed out by a shifty eyed dealer giving it a little more personality compared to the cards just simply appearing.
The next game is another traditional game, ABPA Backgammon. which is pretty straight forward, It just a Backgammon game. like the game in real life, the goal is to is to move the fifteen pieces around the board and be first to remove them from the board (Or bear off in the actually game terms). Much like Poker and Blackjack, I've also never played backgammon, however this can be at least be played with the computer. So I'm sure with enough practice I can play the game. Again it does have some more visual flair than Atari offering. Its even been endorsed by the American Backgammon Players Association (or ABPA). This is one of many endorsements by Mattel, Ill explain more later.
Next game is Armor Battle. This is essentially Mattel's version of Atari's Combat, and by extension, Kee Games Tank. Two players take control of two tanks and the goal is to gain as many points as you can by shooting each other. You can select the speed, switch to an extra tank, and even lay land mines. There's also 240 possible battlefields that can be generated! each populated with things like building, trees, roads and streams. Compared to Combat, the game is quite a bit more advanced.
The last game from Mattels original line up is Math Fun. This is another endorsed game, this time by The Electric Company. In case you don't know what The Electric Company was, It was an educational children tv show created by the Children's Television Workshop (or CTW, now known as Sesame Workshop), the creators of Sesame Street, that aired on PBS from 1971 to 1977. It was essentially a version of Sesame Street aimed at elementary school children. Although it didn't last as long as Sesame Street, It is still fondly remembered by those who grew up watching it. The show was also historically important as one of its segments featured the first live action version of Spiderman (Which Marvel provided to them free of charge), and also was the breakout debut of a young Morgan Freeman (who was about 34 at the time the show first aired).
You play as a gorilla wandering through a jungle. As the gorilla walks on, it will encounter a creature with a math problem you have to solve by entering in the correct answer as fast as you can. If you get the answer right, the gorilla may continue but if you get the answer wrong, then your gorilla must jump into the river and is unable to leave the river until you answer another math problem correctly. The game includes eighteen different levels of difficulty which can be set individually for either one or two players.v while incredibly simplistic, it does certainly provide a little more engagement for kids then the competing Basic Math for the 2600.
Now we move to the Tandyvisions offerings, The first is Checkers. Another simple conversion of a traditional board game. You can play with either by yourself, another player, or the computer. Its not necessarily an exciting game by any stretch of the imagination, but for what it is it's ok.
Next game is Space Battle. You take control of a fleet of alien ships and the goal is simply fly to different clusters on the map and once you get near them, you go into a battle screen where you just shot enemy space craft. An interesting bit of trivia is that when the game was in development, it was originally going to be a Battlestar Galactica themed game, but the developers learned that Mattel didn't have the license while the game was in development. So they removed most of the references to the show and only kept the Cylon Raiders as an enemy in the final game.
Next game is Frog Bog. You and or a second player take the control of a two frogs on a lily pad and the goal is to snatch as many flies as you can before sunset. It's basically a clone of an arcade game released in 1978 by Gremlin called Frogs, but it has much better graphics and sound. The controls are a bit floaty but still an enjoyable experience.
Next up is MLB Baseball. Another sports game that's exactly like what you'd expect, Its baseball. The graphics are pretty good for the time as usual, and the sound was also quite impressive for its day as it had quite good sound effects for things like the crowd cheering and even some crude speech synthesis where the umpire will yell "Yer out!" when you get 3 strikes.
And with this game, its a perfect time to mention how Mattel's marketing for the Intellivision changed within the first year or so. Remember those endorsements I mentioned earlier? That was a key in Mattel's marketing for the system. They didn't just make sports games that were JUST sports games, they were sports games endorsed by their appropriate leagues. This also became handy as Mattels original marketing strategy for the Intellivision unexpectedly fell apart.
When Mattel originally introduced the system they decided to market it differently than Atari. Where in Mattel’s eyes the 2600 was a simple kids toy that could hook up to the tv and play arcade games, The Intellivision was going to be an adult device that could be a family educational and entertainment center. The way how they were going to do that was to release a special peripheral for the console.
You may have noticed in the first ad for the Intellivision I showed earlier that there were two parts, or Components as Mattel called them, to the Intellivision, The Master Component, which is the main console we've been looking at, and the Keyboard Component, which you could plop the Master Component into and turn it into a personal computer. The Keyboard Component featured its own 6502 CPU, bumped the system memory to 16k of RAM, a full QWERTY keyboard, a built in Cassette Drive that could play both data and audio at the same time, A microphone port to allow for speech recognition, and the ability to add things like a 40 column thermal printer and a modem that would allow you to accesses BBSes, a service to download games on demand, an email system, and digital daily newspapers that could be sent electronically to your home.
Unfortunately for Mattel, The Keyboard Component kept running into cost and reliability problems, so it kept getting delayed repeatedly. It got so bad that Jay Leno, still in his standup career, performed at the 1981 Mattel Christmas party and referenced this in one of his jokes that evening saying: “You know what the three big lies are, don’t you? ‘The check is in the mail’, ‘I’ll still respect you in the morning’, and ‘the Keyboard will be out in the spring’.” Soon the Federal Trade Commision (Or FTC) started fining Mattel $10,000 per day for false advertising every day that it wasn’t released. Eventually Mattel decided to scrap the project, and only released around 4,000 units in the Seattle and New Orleans areas. Mattel ended up losing millions of dollars in the process.
In 1981, With the Keyboard Component seemingly going nowhere, Mattel Decided to change marketing strategies. Rather than position it as an family educational and entertainment center, they would more focus on sports games. In addition to the Sports League endorsements, They also created a clever ad campaign to go along with it. They hired author and sports writer George Plimpton to be their spokesperson in a series of TV commercials where he would have two TV sets one playing an Atari Sports game, and the other playing an Intellivision sports game. He would go over how much more realistic the Intellivision game was to the Atari game and conclude that the Intellivision played better.
At the time, directly showing a competitor in a TV commercial was almost unheard of, But it was an ingenius idea because although for most people at the time a video games weren't farmiliar, sports games were. So they could easily look at the Intellivision playing football and say "Hey, That looks like Football! I don't know what this Atari thing is but it doesn't look like Football!"
Anyway back to the games, Next is Word Fun, another game endorsed by The Electric Company. Its basically the same concept as Math Fun, only instead of solving math problems, you're solving word problems. there are three game modes: Crosswords (Which is a crossword puzzle, Pretty self explanatory), Letter Hunt (Where each player controls a monkey in a forest collecting letters from the forest to spell three words within a time limit), and Word Rockets (Where each player controls a rocket capable of collecting and shooting vowels up to the top of the screen to fill in vowels in various words). It certainly has More variety than Math Hunt and can probably be quite good fun.
Next is Astrosmash. Its a shooter game that plays like a cross between Space Invaders and Asteroids, You controll a laser cannon at the bottom of the screen and your goal is to shoot different falling objects such as meteors, spinning bombs, guided missiles, and a Space Invaders style UFO that crosses the screen from time to time at higher levels. The only catch is that for every object you miss, the score decreases by half as much each time a meteor reaches the ground, or a laser cannon is destroyed. It's a pretty fun game, and was well liked by both players and the programers at Mattel. It even replaced Las Vegas Poker and Blackjack as the pack in game for the system.
Another interesting development story was that the game was originally going to be a clone of Atari's Asteroids called Meteor!. Due to the games small size, Programer John Sohl used the extra ROM space for a variation of the game called Avalanche!. Before the game was released, Mattel's lawyers were worried that Meteor! would result in a lawsuit from Atari, so they asked Sohl to drop Meteor! and have the game be just Avalanche! instead, Which was renamed Astrosmash. But the interesting thing is, rather than risk introducing bugs by deleting code, Sohl simply just put a branch around the opening-screen menu straight into the Avalanche! variation. Since it was just a branch in the code, On early versions of the game, in very rare occasions, If you hit the reset button enough times, the Asteroids version will show up on screen. Unfortunately this only works in early copies and doesn't happen very reliably, however enthusiasts have introduced patched roms to return the original menu system.
Next is NHL Hockey. Another sports game that's exactly like what you'd expect, Its Hockey. The graphics and sound are pretty good for the time as usual, but other than that not much to say.
Next is Snafu. like Frog Bog, Its a variant of a Gremilin arcade game, called Blockade, which was also cloned on the Atari 2600 as Surround. Its an early "Snake" game where you and or a second player snakes that grow increasingly longer, with the goal of traping each player, these also a mode called Bite where the goal is to eat the other snake without your segments. Its basic, but a pretty fun game especially against another player.
Next up is Triple Action. Its a coplation containing three games: Battle Tanks, Car Racing and Biplanes. Battle Tanks is another Combat/Tank game where each player competes to shoot the other 15 times, Car Racing is a raceing game that spans 100 miles, with each player on a separate section of road dodging traffic in order to reach the finish line before their opponent, and Biplanes is a fight combat game wher players need to shoot to score 15 points by shooting down the balloon or the enemy's biplane. Each mode is simple but they work.
Originally, it was going to have 6 games, each of which were clones of games of Atari. Space concerns dropped the number to 5: A tank battle, a car race, a dogfight, a Breakout-like game and a Pong-like game. Legal concerns forced the programmers to drop the pong and brerakout games, Hockey and Brickout!, and was changed from 5-in-1 Arcade, to 3-in-1 Arcade, to Triple Action. The Brickout! ROM was eventually released much latter in complations of intellivision games (More on that later).
Speaking of Racing, next is Auto Racing (Or Auto Race in Radio Shacks Catalog). You can either play by yourself against the clock or race with and a second player on 5 different race courses. My only complaint with the game is the controls which don't seem very intuitive. This was also something mentioned back in the day too so Mattel changed it to a more intuitive control method.