History of video games/Platforms/Intellivision

Development
The Intellivision is based on the General Instrument GIMINI 8900 platform.

Test marketing for the Intellivision occurred in the area around Fresno, California in 1979.

Launch


The Intellivision was released in 1980. In 1981 the system cost $299.95. Cartridges for the system cost between $24.95 and 34.95 in 1981.

An internal group of highly paid, hardworking, and secretive team of developers known as the Blue Sky Rangers worked on producing games for the Intellivision through at least 1982. A 1982 Ford concept car featured a built in Intellivision.

The Intellivision and the Atari 2600 competed fiercely in the market, leading to the first major console war.

Legacy
The Intellivision lasted on the market until 1990. The Intellivision sold over 3 million consoles.

Mattel's next console was the HyperScan in 2006, though there is little relation beyond the parent company between these consoles.

Compute
The Intellivision had a 16 bit General Instrument CP1610 CPU with 10 bit instructions clocked at 894.886 kilohertz (About 0.89 megahertz) and 1352 bytes of total RAM.

The Intellivision output at a resolution of 160 by 196 pixels with 16 colors.

PlayCable
The Intellivision had an online service called PlayCable that operated from 1980 to 1983 that allowed downloading games over a cable TV connection.

Third Party Lockout
The Intellivision II was released in 1982, featuring a ROM that tried to keep third parties who were not licensed from making games for the system. This was among the first lockout methods used on a major console, and would refuse to boot unless a Mattel copyright screen was shown, though because this was implemented while the console had already been on the market, it caused incompatibility with some prior official games. The system was not effective in stopping unauthorized third parties from publishing Intellivision games.

Notable Games
125 games were released on the Intellivision.