Intellivision
How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie
Author: Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman Series: Platform Studies
"A platform studies approach to the Intellivision computer system"--
Paperback
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Summary
"A platform studies approach to the Intellivision computer system"--
Description
The engaging story of Intellivision, an overlooked videogame system from the late 1970s and early 1980s whose fate was shaped by Mattel, Atari, and countless others who invented the gaming industry.The engaging story of Intellivision, an overlooked videogame system from the late 1970s and early 1980s whose fate was shaped by Mattel, Atari, and countless others who invented the gaming industry.Astrosmash, Snafu, Star Strike, Utopia-do these names sound familiar to you? No? Maybe? They were all videogames created for the Intellivision videogame system, sold by Mattel Electronics between 1979 and 1984. This system was Atari's main rival during a key period when videogames were moving from the arcades into the home. In Intellivision, Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman tell the fascinating inside story of this overlooked gaming system. Along the way, they also analyze Intellivision's chips and code, games, marketing and business strategies, organizational and social history, and the cultural and economic context of the early US games industry from the mid-1970s to the great videogame industry crash of 1983.While many remember Atari, Intellivision has largely been forgotten. As such, Intellivision fills a crucial gap in videogame scholarship, telling the story of a console that sold millions and competed aggressively against Atari. Drawing on a wealth of data from both institutional and personal archives and over 150 interviews with programmers, engineers, executives, marketers, and designers, Boellstorff and Soderman examine the relationship between videogames and toys-an under-analyzed aspect of videogame history-and discuss the impact of home computing on the rise of videogames, the gendered implications of play and videogame design at Mattel, and the blurring of work and play in the early games industry.
Critic Reviews
“Fantastically researched and interestingly written.”
—BoingBoing
“[Boellstorff and Soderman] conducted a whopping 150 interviews with people involved in every aspect of Intellivision’s creation, life, and death. Plus, they dug through private and academic archives to unearth history and data that’s been forgotten for nearly 40 years. The authors wisely spend much of the book exploring this overlap between games and children’s disposable novelties—and how decisions made at this moment would harden the foundation for the gaming industry to come.”
—Polygon
“Boellstorff and Soderman note that the Intellivision system is often a footnote in home video game and computing histories, which usually focus on competing systems. In this well-researched book, they correct this oversight by illustrating the impact, design, marketing, expansion (and overexpansion), and decline of the Intellivision.”
—Choice
About the Author
Tom Boellstorff is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of The Gay Archipelago, A Coincidence of Desires, and Coming of Age in Second Life.Braxton Soderman is Associate Professor in the Department of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of Against Flow- Video Games and the Flowing Subject (MIT Press).
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