Intellivision Lives! [GC]

The only place anyone can see the actual Intellivision system is in the retrospective video of the console. This ten minute video is well-produced and covers many of the aspects of the videogame division during the ups and downs, but whoever put this video together mixed the background audio far too high. Much of the narrator's information is completely drowned out by 80s-style music.

Even with some limitations in its out-of-game experience, Intellivision Lives is a quality compilation...at least in its presentation. But the problem with the pack is in its controller: the GameCube pad is no substitute for real thing. The developers definitely tried their darndest to put as much functionality as they could, going as far as mapping the right analog stick's direction to the nine different keypad buttons of the Intellivision controller, with the other three buttons mapped to the shoulder buttons.

But even with this controller configuration, it's damn near impossible to play certain games, mostly the Intellivision sports games that required a constant thumb on the keypad for the action. Most of the laid back parlor games work with the optional on-screen keypad that can be pulled up with the Select button, but the developer really should have turned it transparent; the keypad fills up nearly half the screen which renders the game window almost completely unviewable.

Some games, though, do work well with what the controller can offer, and are still a lot of fun to play today. Utopia is a great resource strategy game that predates Sim City and Civilization. Snafu's snake-like gameplay has been done before but not with such a catchy soundtrack. And Night Stalker is a challenging maze game with pretty intense action.

But as "classic" as the Intellivision is, not every game in this pack is a winner. In fact, there are more duds than charms in Intellivision Lives, and many games that were truly classic aren't included in this compilation. Many of the Intellivision greats were licensed titles, like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Tron Deadly Discs and Masters of the Universe, while others were actually third-party games like Microsurgeon and Atlantis. This compilation plays it safe with completely non-branded game titles; even the sports games that featured the Major League Baseball, Professional Bowling League, National Basketball Association licenses have had the branding removed.

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