INTELLIVISION Hey, if George Plimpton liked it, it can't be all bad! HISTORY The Intellivision was a peculiar breed of game console.  On one hand, its 16-bit processor made it the most advanced system you could buy in 1981.  On the other, its dismal clock speed, which can't even be measured in megahertz, also made it the slowest.  However, the Intellivision was the most successful of the Atari 2600's many rivals thanks to a high-brow ad campaign starring the late George Plimpton and innovative games like Shark! Shark! and B-17 Bomber.  It was also the only non-Atari system to make a comeback after the video game crash of 1984.  TECH SPECS PROCESSOR CP1610 16-bit CLOCK SPEED 894.866 KHz SYSTEM RAM 128 Bytes MEDIA FORMAT cartridges, max 32K SOUND AY-3-8914, 4 channels GRAPHICS 512 bytes video RAM RESOLUTION 160x196 COLORS 16 MAX SPRITES 8 MAX POLYS not applicable I/O PORTS 1 cart/expansion port,  1 RF port, 1 power supply GAMES YOU'LL WANT B-17 BOMBER:  My brother and I would play this great World War II flight simulator for hours.  It's both complex and addictive, and the copilot's voice is hilarious! BEAMRIDER:  This is a more than adequate substitute for Tempest.  It's slick, stylish, and intense, just the way a shooter should be. BURGERTIME:  There's nothing like a hamburger piled high with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, uh, eggs... and weiners?  Well, whatever.  It's still a great game. DREADNAUGHT FACTOR:  This shooter really stands out from the crowd.  Instead of blasting fleets of tiny foes, you chip away at the defenses of a gigantic ship. LAS VEGAS BLACKJACK AND POKER:  This excellent poker and blackjack sim is more complete than similar games released for more powerful systems. MICROSURGEON:  Do-it-yourself surgery usually isn't a good idea, but in this case, it's highly recommended.  The size and detail of your patients is incredible! PAC-MAN:  It's a bit surprising that Atari would screw up the 2600 version of Pac-Man, then release a much more faithful translation on a competing system. THUNDER CASTLE:  Hunt down dragons, wizards, and demons in this exciting maze game with a marvelous soundtrack and equally beautiful animation. TRON: DEADLY DISCS:  Even if you weren't a fan of the movie, this game is a must.  It's a challenging game a lot of good ideas, particularly the Recognizer battles. WORM WHOMPER:  This hybrid of Centipede and Missile Command is more intense than both combined thanks to the overwhelming number of enemies. GAMES YOU WON'T AUTO RACING:  This is probably the most dull and pointless racing game in existance.  The only way it could be more boring is if Ben Stein was in it. BOXING: Mattel may have been a little too ambitious with this one.  It's more complex than other early boxing sims, but it's also slower and uglier. DONKEY KONG:  You've played Donkey Kong on the 2600, right?  You probably thought it couldn't get worse than that, huh?  Well, here's proof that it could. MAZE-A-TRON:  There's no escape from the MCP's sinister maze... especially when you're forced to deal with control that's sluggish even for an Intellivision game. SPACE ARMADA:  Mattel wanted to make a bigger, better version of Space Invaders.  Unfortunately, this game's aliens are a bit TOO big for their own good. SPACE BATTLE:  If you're going to play a space battle simulation on the Intellivision, you might as well go all the way with Space Spartans instead of settling for this. STAR STRIKE:  You're lucky to survive more than a few seconds in this clumsy, frustrating shooter inspired by the death star trench battle in Star Wars. STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK:  This isn't half the game its 2600 counterpart was.  The choppy play makes it much too hard to line up shots. SUPER COBRA:  Sadly, none of the other home versions I've played are any good either.  My kingdom for a good translation of Super Cobra on a classic system! VECTRON:  What's the deal with this game, anyway?  Half the time the cursor doesn't respond to your input, and it's damn near impossible to figure out what to do.

DEMON ATTACK IMAGIC   SHOOTER   INTELLIVISION   ALSO ON... ATARI 2600 ATARI 400/800 I've been waiting years to do this!  Now that I've got a reliable Intellivision emulator, I can finally determine once and for all which of the Demon Attack games stands out as the best.  Unfortunately, I'm going to have to limit myself to three versions of Imagic's popular shooter, since I can't get the VIC-20 game to work properly... and I'd rather not touch the miserable TI 99/4A release again.  Nothing sets me off quite like playing that cosmic joke, only to take the cartridge out of the computer and read the words "SUPER Demon Attack" written on the label. Once the VIC-20 and (shudder) TI 99/4A releases are taken out of the picture, that leaves us with three Demon Attack games.  The first and most familiar of these is the 2600 version, a competant but somewhat simplistic shooter inspired by rounds from the arcade classic Phoenix.  Remember the scenes where giant alien hawks would emerge from eggs floating aimlessly in space?  Well, it's a little like that, except the aliens come prehatched and much better armed.  Unlike Phoenix, it's not necessary to hit the dead center of your attackers, but some of your foes will split into two winged warriors once they're blasted.  Worst of all, the little bastards will even attempt to crash into you if you pick off their twin brothers.  Luckily, you're rewarded with extra ships if you somehow manage to survive all this chaos.  Don't squander these lives, because they'll be hard to come by once the aliens get really vicious. Imagic did a nice job with the 2600 version of Demon Attack.  In addition to flashy, colorful graphics, the gameplay is challenging and intense thanks to the enemies, who pour on the bullets and are maddeningly tough to target.  Nevertheless, this wasn't enough to satisfy me, because I knew the Intellivision version of Demon Attack offered one thing its Atari counterpart did not... a confrontation with a gigantic, yet ultimately vulnerable boss. I was convinced that this omission was a crippling flaw, but after spending time with the Intellivision version of Demon Attack I realize that the boss fights don't matter much if the rest of the game stinks.  All right, maybe "stinks" is an overstatement... we're not talking about the TI 99/4A version of Demon Attack here.  Nevertheless, the Intellivision game doesn't compare favorably to Demon Attack on the 2600, and there are plenty of reasons why.  The graphics are hideous even with the colorful, detailed background... it's a shame all that detail and color wasn't applied to the blocky, poorly animated characters.  You'll forget about the sound just as quickly as the designer apparently did... but one thing you WON'T forget is the rough, unreliable control that robs you of shots when you need them most.  And that boss battle?  Well, don't get too excited about that.  It had the potential to be a classic gaming moment, just like the climactic fights in Phoenix and Gorf, but several obnoxious flaws reduce it to a novelty.  The first is that the mothership doesn't take realistic damage... you can't carve your way through it with shots like you could the flagship in Gorf.  Instead, there's a force field which slowly shrinks as it absorbs shots.  The second is that there's a constant stream of birds aimed in your direction... they don't fire and they don't attempt to dodge your own bullets.  What they WILL do is eat up your entire supply of ships by continually crashing into them if you lose your first life in the middle of the screen.  This also happens to be the location of the mothership's weak point.  If you're headed there, you'd better make your shot count, because it might be your last. So it looks like the 2600 version of Demon Attack is the best of the ones available.  That's doubly surprising when you compare it to the Atari 400 game.  Imagic had the potential to take the best elements from the 2600 and Intellivision games and combine them to create the ultimate Demon Attack, but they instead offered a straight conversion of the 2600 version.  I'm rating it lower not only because Imagic could have done better on this more powerful system, but also because the Atari 400 game is slower and slightly less satisfying than its little brother. I don't think I'll ever be completely happy with Demon Attack.  The series has plenty of potential, but so far it's never been fully tapped.  An enhanced remake with better graphics, more enemy patterns, and (of course) theatening bosses could change this, but until that happens, my loyalty will remain with Phoenix.