Once, a very long time ago, there was no such thing as a Playstation, Xbox, Gamecube, or Gameboy. In fact, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo weren’t even making video games yet. Instead, the good citizens of America had Ataris and Intellivisions; which, at that time, were the coolest things ever. With the new age of games and their beautiful graphics, sound, and gameplay people tend to forget all about these gems of the past. Crave and Realtime have brought back these classics; sparking memories in older gamers while showing newer gamers where it all began.

Intellivision Lives! features 60 games from the late 70’s/early 80’s ranging from sports to space to arcade classics to unreleased games. They all feature their original graphics, and luckily not all their original bugs.

When you start the game, you’re inside of Hal’s Pizza with arcade machines and a bottomless pocket full of quarters (every gamer’s dream). All the games in Intellivision Lives! are organized by category, so each arcade machine represents a specific category that features all the games relating to it. The cabinets are labeled Space, Arcade, Gaming and Strategy, Sports, Combat and Sorcery, Children’s’, and Unreleased. There’s also a jukebox where the options are located and photos on the wall where you can see special features about the history of the Intellivision.

The controls in each Intellivision game can be tough to get used to. To help, each game has a mini menu where you can access the games original manual, box art, and even production notes. The controls are basically the same for every game, but it can still get really confusing when you don’t understand the point of the game, or when pressing a button doesn’t seem to do anything. One of the most important things to get used to is accessing the keypad by pressing the Select button. An image of the original Intellivision control pad pops up and you can see which buttons do what. Otherwise, the buttons were mapped well and the controls are pretty precise compared to what they used to be.

As if 60 games weren’t enough, extra gameplay modes were added to keep you playing. Each game has a Radical Gameplay Modes option where you can play the game upside down, backwards, and other strange ways. Also, games will have different challenges for you to complete that usually have you trying to reach a certain score. Upon completion, old Intellivision commercials are unlocked that show off some dated advertising methods that can’t be missed.

As you stand in Hal’s Pizza, contemplating your next play, there is some nice background music playing in the parlor. It’s a variety of very 80’s-sounding tunes that are actually pretty catchy and end up stuck in your head for days. The music played can be edited in the jukebox, so you don’t have to be stuck listening to songs you don’t like. When you enter a game, you can still hear the music from the jukebox, but the music and sound effects in the game are more prominent and can easily be heard over the background music. This can all be changed in the options too, so if you’d rather hear the background music over the Intellivision or vice versa it can be done.

There are lots of really fun games in Intellivision Lives! that you’d never expect would be fun. Some of my favorites were Hard Hat, Shark! Shark!, Frog Bog, Space Hawk, and Astrosmash. In Hard Hat you and another player race to finish your building. You earn points by placing glass panels on your building and getting to the lunchbox first at lunch time. In Shark! Shark! you and a second player control little fish looking for food. You can only eat what’s smaller than you, so have to avoid the bigger fish while chasing the smaller fish. As you eat more, your fish grows in size so your choice in food grows. As you can see, these games have the simplest goals yet they’re fun for hours. A lot of the games have multiplayer modes as well, so you and a friend can compete in almost all of the 60 games.

Even though the sound and graphics seem close to prehistoric, you can easily see that a lot of ideas expressed in the games fuel the games that come out now. They may not look or play very similar, but you can tell that games these days are just better looking versions of a lot of these games. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing – it’s actually very interesting. I highly encourage gamers to give Intellivision Lives! a shot; for the older gamers it’s a fun trip down memory lane, and it can show younger gamers where the games they’re playing now started. Once you get the hang of these games, they can be just as fun as a lot of games that are out now.  

Gameplay: 8
The number of games sported in Intellivision Lives! is mind boggling. There are so many fun games that it’s hard to stop playing. If you happen to run into a game you don’t like, no big deal – just move on to the next.

Graphics: 3 
Surprisingly, these aren’t the worst graphics out there. Some games even look pretty good. You can see really well how good some of the games actually look when they’re compared to Atari games in the unlockable commercials. Still, they’re pretty bad.

Sound: 5.8
The music in the games isn’t too bad; I actually found myself recognizing songs to the games I played more often. Plus, the background music that plays in Hal’s Pizza is good and will easily get stuck in your head.

Difficulty: Medium
The real difficulty is getting used to the controls for some of the games. There’s a mixture of really complicated games and really simple kid games, so it all balances out. Intellivision Lives! was intended for a wide audience, so there’s a game for everyone.

Concept: 7.5 
Bringing back old games has been a recent but popular trend, and I support it wholeheartedly. Many of these old classics are hard to get your hands on anymore, so it’s nice when they’re revived on an accessible console. Plus, we get 60 games on a single disc instead of 60 cartridges.

Multiplayer: 7.8
Some games are one player only, but the rest either allow or require two players. It’s a lot of fun to play these games with other people – you wouldn’t really expect a game like Intellivision Lives! to be a good party game, but it is. Games like Shark! Shark! and Hard Hat are great family or party games.

Overall: 7.4
Intellivision Lives! is a great compilation of Intellivision games. When you have 60 games, there’s so much room for variety. Even if there’s an entire genre you dislike, there are still so many other games that you’re bound to find more than a dozen that you really enjoy. Intellivision Lives! provides such simple and addictive fun that it’s a great game for people young and old.