Company | Intv |
---|---|
Type | Video games |
Year | 1985 |
End year | 1991 |
CPU | General Instrument CP1610 |
Speed | 895 KHz |
RAM | 1352 bytes |
ROM | 7168 bytes |
Media | cartridge |
Controllers | Twelve-button numeric keypad, 4 side-located action buttons, 16-directions controller disk |
Graphic modes | 160 x 196 |
Colors | 16 color palette |
Sound | General Instrument AY-3-8914 (3 channels sound + 1 noise generator) |
On the close of business, January 20th 1984, Mattel Electronics, a subsidiary of Mattel the famous toy company, was shut down and sold to a liquidator after loosing $300 million US that past year on the Intellivision line of game consoles. But even the liquidator had troubles selling the remaining stock of consoles and game cartridges.
After much of the inventory had been sold, former Mattel marketing executive Terry Valeski with an investment group bought all rights to the Intellivision for $6.5 Million US in March of 1984, and started a new venture. The new company, INTV Corp., continued to sell old stock via retail and mail order.
By October of 1985 the old stock of Intellivision II consoles had ran out so they introduced a new console dubbed INTV III (later renamed “Super Pro System”). This unit was actually a cosmetic rebadge of the original Intellivision console and was 100% compatible to it.
In addition to manufacturing new consoles, INTV Corp. also continued to develop new games, releasing a few new titles each year. Eventually, the system was discontinued in 1991 with the realization that competing video game technology had finally caught up to the Intellivision design.