Rare Intellivision Miscellany: Boxes, Cartridges & More
Draughts
Mattel's "Checkers" was released as "Draughts" in the United Kingdom and Australia,
following the local vernacular. Before the Internet brought wider availability of
international releases into the US by the late 1990s, Draughts was considered a holy
grail of Intellivision collecting, but it has since proved less rare than once thought.
This variation has its own unique box
and manual, but the cartridge and overlays say "Checkers." There have been rumors
that the ROM itself is different (the title screen would read "Draughts" instead of
"Checkers") but at least in the copy I've seen, the ROMs are identical.
Demonstration Cartridges
Retailers would run the "Demonstration Cartridge" on their in-store display models of
Intellivision. The cartridge shown in the first row above (#1682) presents
a few text pages extolling the virtues of Intellivision and the ultra-rare Keyboard Component
(set to an excerpt from "Thus Spake Zarathustra," a/k/a the "2001:
A Space Odyssey" theme song). Then it cycled through short demos of Football, Poker
& Blackjack, and Armor Battle. After Mattel decided to kill the Keyboard Component, they
revised this Demonstration Cartridge to remove the KBC references and re-released the cartridge
with a red label in a red box (#5932). A still-later Demonstration Cartridge (shown in the second row
above, #5853-0210) featured Lock 'n' Chase (short demo of the never-released 8K version with
both Mattel and Data East copyrights and a true "©" symbol on the title screen, and special
animation in which Lupin collapses into his hat when caught), B-17 Bomber and BurgerTime. There
was also an "International Demonstration Cartridge" (#5859, third row above) which played short
demos of Soccer, Space Battle, Tennis and Basketball, and also cycled through the title screens
for Astrosmash, Skiing, Frog Bog, Lock 'n' Chase, Boxing and Star Strike.
At least in the
German market, the
Int'l Demo Cartridge came in a special localized box.
Test Cartridges
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videogames@home.com |
Mattel service centers used the MTE 201 test cartridge as a diagnostic cartridge for the
original Intellivision Master Component. It tests the hand controllers, sound, color and
each chip on the motherboard. The cartridge pictured above used "V3" of Mattel's
diagnostic software. It's impossible to decipher the test routine unless you have
the
Intellivision Service Manual. The IMI is believed to contain an early
version of the MTE 201 test cartridge software. The IMI-2 test cartridge is believed to
contain "V4.1" of the diagnostic software, which tests the Intellivision II. It has been
rumored that a test cartridge exists to test the the ECS and Music Synthesizer but none
has been found yet.
Intv Funhouse features the "
IMI Tester MTE-100" test BRIEFCASE - check it out!
Astrosmash $100,000 Shoot-Off Contest
This is one version of the entry form for Mattel's "$100,000 Astrosmash Shootff Contest." At least one other
variant exists. See the Blue
Sky Rangers
Astrosmash description for more details. All entrants received the Astrosmash patch.
Intellivision Rebate Check
[???]
This is one of various rebate checks that Mattel sent to system owners when they returned their
registration cards. It could be used at retailers to knock $2.50 off the purchase price
of a game. (Don't laugh quite so hard - that's in 1983 dollars!)
Activision Patches
Activision sent these patches to gameplayers who sent in a photo showing that they had
achieved certain high scores. The patches in the top row are from my own collection. The
pictures of the patches in the bottom row ("Beamriders" for Beamrider and "Dreadnaught
Destroyer" for The Dreadnaught Factor) come from the
Activision manual for each game. If you have either of these two patches for trade or sale,
please let me know!
Early BurgerTime Box
The Blue Sky Rangers describe this early BurgerTime box: "BurgerTime was
initially released in the same style boxes of the game networks -- the covers opened like
a book. Later copies of BurgerTime were sold in the cheaper, slightly shorter, end-opening
boxes used for all subsequent cartridge releases."
In my experience, these early BurgerTime boxes are quite hard to find -- I've only seen a few in
many years of collecting.
Early versions of the boxes for some ECS games were also released in book format.
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