Velveeta
(4/25/04)
Intellivison Lives! (PS2)
Crave Entertainment
Ahhh Intellivision......this
magical system just sparks of nostalgia for me since this was the
first console to introduce me to the fun world of videogames.
I have many great memories of playing against or with my
brother and my dad. Some old favorites include Microsurgeon,
Beauty and the Beast, Pitfall, Frogger, Dracula, Shark! Shark!,
Burger Time, Carnival and Pinball. Yeah I know
some of the games I mentioned can also be found on the Atari, but I
did not have an Atari, so there!
When I saw that they made a
collection of Intellivison games for all of the modern consoles I
was pretty psyched because up until now I can only play my old
favorites on emulator and that sucks big time! A keyboard just
is not a good substitute for that. the original controller had
a ten key pad that you can insert plastic overlays that tell you
what each key does and at the bottom of the controller is a disc
that acts as a directional pad.
On the computer you had to
memorize or figure out what goes with each number of the ten key and
if you have not played that particular game before, trying to figure
all that stuff out sucks super big time.
Now you know why I was excited
to play these old games again on some of the modern consoles with
(hopefully) better controls than what the keyboard provided
me. All that remained in question when this game came out was
what games would be included in this compilation. In this, I
was sort of happy and disappointed at the same time because even
though this collection had many of my favorites, it did not include
Microsurgeon which is my absolute favorite or the Dungeons and
Dragons game which used to scare the crap out me because of the
scary noises when I was little. Oh come on! When I was
little, that sounded like a real dragon......
The collection of games
include: Astrosmash, Utopia, Sub Hunt, Frog Bog, Nightstalker,
Skiing, Snafu, Space Armada, Baseball, Armor Battle,
Bowling, Pinball, Hockey and B-17 bomber just to name a few.
There are about 60 games in all, including some previously
unreleased games!
Intellivision Lives! also has
some extras that are pretty entertaining such as interviews with the
"Blue Sky Rangers" or the creators of Intellivision, commercials
for the various games and of course a small collection of previously
unreleased games such as Brickout and Deep Pockets: Pool&
Billiards.
Game Layout
This game opens into a menu
that looks like a pizza place, which it is... it's called
"Hal's Pizza". There are tables, chairs, a jukebox
that allows you to change the menu music which might I say is very
nice and all that games you would like to play are divided into
categories and can be found in various arcade machines around the
pizza joint.
the game genres are as follows:
SPACE: This has all of
the space games such as Space Armada.
ARCADE: This category
includes various action games like Nightstalker and Vectron.
GAMING & STRATEGY:
Here are games that you can play against the computer or with a
buddy like Checkers and Reversi.
SPORTS: Well duh, all of
the sports games are here like Baseball and Hockey.
COMBAT &
SORCERY: This selection has all of the war type games both
realistic (now don't laugh! Smart Asses!) and sci-fi fantasy like
Armor Battle and Tower of Doom.
CHILDREN'S: Ahhhh all of
the educational gems are in this one like Factor Fun or Word
rockets.
UNRELEASED: This is by
far the most odd collection...I can see why some of these were not
previously released......either ahead of its time or just plain
weird games are in here. I really liked Hard Hat.
One thing I should mention here
is that on some games the creators give you goals of high scores to
beat etc.
Navigation and Controls
I found it very easy to
navigate to the appropriate arcade machine with whatever game I
wanted to play. In fact the navigation controls, even the
controls that bring up a side menu that has the original game
controller (which is select on the PS2) are easy and if you get lost
or want to see the instructions to a game, all you have to do is
press start. When you are still in the controls menu it always
gives you the option of quitting a game etc.
The only serious problems to
this game is the fact that you have to press select and then select
what command you want from the keypad. For some games like
Shark! Shark! and Nightstalker this is no problem because you really
do not need the ten key command pad but for games like Sub Hunt and
Utopia it is a real pain in the bee-hind because as you switch back
and forth, the game keeps playing and you could wind up dead, like I
did many times. Luckily for a good deal of the games this is
not an issue, like with many of the shooters but if you enjoy the
more complicated games like Utopia, then this is barely a step above
the crappy key board on an emulator game.
Graphics
What am I supposed to say
here? These are freakin games from the eighties and during the
time when these games came out they were considered great. If
you compare with games of today, of course they are going to be
crap.
Audio
See my notes on graphics
above and substitute "Audio".
FINAL
SCORE: 6.5*
I give this a 6.5 with an
asterisk because Intellivision Lives! is a really worthwhile
game but if you never had any love for all of these oldies then I
would not recommend this as being a game for everyone. The
controls are either really good or really bad depending on the game
and because of that I find myself gravitating to the easier to
control games.
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