Robot Claw

It was time once again for another TV game system tournament. The place: KLS’s parents house. The time: July 4 weekend. The entrants: KLS, Jim and myself. 

Three experienced combatants would this time set sail into unfamiliar waters: Intellivision! 

 
The (emulated) Intellivision system contains about 60 games and includes controllers modeled after the original as well as the plastic overlays. It’s nicely designed, and much better than the Atari one with its poorly working IR wireless controllers.

The usual rules applied: only play single player games with scores, no practicing and each games winner goes first on the next game (a disadvantage). 

 
The graphics are stylish, with effective use of color and quite a bit more animation than I thought the system would have. Of course the games themselves have aged very poorly, and are probably best played these days in a tournament such as this.

We put our hearts and souls into the struggle, and it took us about 4.5 hours to play every game that fulfilled the requirements! 

 
It was a hard fought battle, full of triumphant highs and terrible lows, craven bluster and stoic bravado, of cheers and of jeers and even a few tears. But by the end none of us doubted who had rightfully earned the title of ‘Ultimate TV Game King‘. 

Here are the results:

   
The first plot shows the cumulative scores (2 pts for a win, 1 for second, 0 for last) and the second plot shows the score percentage per game.

With my usual humility, I’ll graciously accept your congratulations for my impressive victory 🙂

 
This last photo shows screenshots of the best game in the collection: a strange Pac-Man/RPG hybrid called Thunder Castle. It had three levels, of which we only saw two, and was perhaps the only game in the system I’d be interested in playing more…

…but that’s going to have to wait, since I’ve also acquired the Colecovision TV game system, and the early stages of Colecotourney 2015 have even begun!

However it will take months for the next ‘Ultimate TV Game King’ to be crowned. Stay tuned 😉

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2015 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Family, Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.