I
ntellivoice was introduced with great fanfare in 1982, hitting the market with three titles: Space Spartans, Bomb Squad and B-17 Bomber. But while the Intellivoice and the games were well reviewed, they were not big sellers. By June 1983, only 300,000 each of the voice unit and first games had been shipped (compared to over 3 million Intellivisions); most of these were still on store shelves. The fourth game, TRON Solar Sailer, received only 90,000 orders. The release of a planned International Intellivoice module was cancelled.In August 1983, the plug was pulled on Intellivoice altogether. Work continued on two titles, Space Shuttle and World Series Major League Baseball, where the voice would become an enhancement only; the rest were canceled. Space Shuttle was canceled later, leaving World Series Major League Baseball to become the fifth and final voice game released. The fact that it works with Intellivoice is mentioned only briefly on the back of the box.
For more information on the history of Intellivoice, check out the Intellivoice Hardware Page.
HEAR IT! Listen to a sample of the Intellivoice talking from the game Space Spartans.
FUN FACT: The Major League
Baseball cartridge uses the Intellivision's sound chip to
generate a crude voice saying "Yer out!" Marketing ordered a stop to
further use of the sound chip to synthesize voices, fearing it would
hurt demand for the Intellivoice.
CREDITS: All Intellivoice games had scripts by the Creative Media Department (Joey Silvian, Brad Geagley, Glenn Stello) to develop distinct personalities for the voices. Voices were recorded at Fred Jones Recording Services in Hollywood, directed by Joey Silvian. International voices were recorded at studios in France and Italy and smuggled back into the U.S. on tapes marked "blank" to avoid paying duty (really). Voice files were digitized, edited and optimized by the Voice Department (Ron Carlson, Patrick Jost, Deidre Cimarusti, Sandy Disner, Lynn [Liliedahl] Fordham, Irene Pfannkuch). All Intellivoice programs included voice routines written by Ron Surratt and Steve Roney.
The following list includes all Intellivoice games on which programming was actually done. Games completed but never released are marked UNRELEASED; games canceled before completion are marked UNFINISHED.
Space
Spartans
Instructions posted here |
Overlay posted here
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CATALOG DESCRIPTION
You are the commander of a spaceship. Suddenly, your ship's under
attack. "Shields destroyed, Battle Computer one-third down," the
ship's computer warns. You've got to hold them off until you can
hyperdrive to a Starbase for repairs. "Starbase Two under attack!"
The aliens have you in their clutches -- "The battle is over." Four
different voices, two screens.
DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
Space Spartans, the first Intellivoice game, was
begun in mid-1981 by Brian Dougherty, who only worked on it a
short time before leaving to join the start-up company Imagic. Mike
Minkoff took over the project and developed it further. When Mike
was promoted to manager, he passed it off to the team of Bill Fisher
and Steve Roney, who really defined the game and made it more
than just Space Battle with voice.
At the time the game was in development, all Intellivision cartridges were 4K in size. To accommodate the voice data, Space Spartans was the first to be given a seemingly generous 8K. This turned out to be woefully inadequate; dialogue had to be cut to a minimum, and the sampling rate was dropped to the point where it's difficult to distinguish the male voices from each other. Luckily, dropping these to a very mechanical sound added to the sci-fi feel of the game. Only the female computer voice was kept at a higher rate, since it adds a strong note of personality. (Check out a sample of her voice below.) All the voice games that followed were allocated 12 or 16K; even the foreign versions of Space Spartans (Gli Spartani Dello Spazio, Les Spartiates De L'Espace and Spartana Aus Dem All) were given 12K each.
Most of the sound effects were written by Bill Fisher, but Bill Goodrich contributed the explosions; this was fortunate, since it helped find a bug in Intellivision II. While playing Space Spartans on an Intellivision II, Bill Goodrich was distressed to discover his explosions sounded "thin." Comparing other released cartridges, he discovered similar loss of sound quality in the bubbles in Shark! Shark! It was too late to fix the bug in Intellivision II, so subsequent games were tested and reprogrammed to get around any sound problems.
HEAR IT! Listen to a sample of the female computer voice.
BUG: The level counter is
not checked properly -- it allows you to reach one higher level than
it's supposed to. On that "level," you can reposition the alien bases as
if they were your own.
Bomb Squad Instructions posted here.
CATALOG DESCRIPTION
It's a race against time as
you attempt to disarm the terrorist bomb before it destroys the city!
The screen shows the bomb circuitry as voices heighten the tension.
"Wrong part...they'll never do it in time...one minute till blast." Hurry,
other lives besides your own hang in the balance. Three voices, three
screens.
BUG: Depending on the level
(Level 3 is the worst), you cannot take a part, with pliers, to extreme
ends of the circuit board when the fast (top action) key is pressed.
Once the key is released, you can. It is most noticeable when you
release a part and you need to pick one up at the top level.
BUG: If the wrong part is cut,
Frank will say, "wrong part: resolder!" and there is a sound associated with
it. If Boris is talking when this happens, his voice overrides Frank's.
Frank won't say "wrong part: resolder," but the associated sound still
occurs.
BUG: When you have correctly
soldered a part, it will not move like the others so that you know what
you have replaced. However, if you solder that piece again, it will
start moving.
FUN FACT: The working
title Juggernaut came from the 1974 Richard Harris
movie of the same name that was used for inspiration.
FUN FACT: The voices of
Frank and Boris were provided by Phil Proctor and
Peter Bergman, two members of
The Firesign Theatre, the popular comedy group
responsible for 22 best-selling record albums. Phil
Proctor and a third member of the
group, Phil Austin, are heard in the
game B-17 Bomber.
FUN FACT: INTV Corporation unloaded the
leftover
inventory of Bomb Squad cartridges to a distributor
in Mexico, even though the Intellivoice was never sold in that
country. Without an Intellivoice, the game is virtually unplayable.
French, Italian and German translations of the dialog were recorded but never used.
B-
17 Bomber Instructions posted here.
CATALOG
DESCRIPTION
World War II action at 12 o'clock high as you fly a bombing mission
deep inside Fortress Europe. You select your targets and switch from
cockpit view to bomb bay view. the closer you get to your target the
more flak and enemy planes you encounter. "Target in sight," you
switch back to the bomb bay view "Bombs Away." Three voices,
three different screens.
DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
Despite published reports that this game came out of a brainstorming
picnic in the park (TV Guide, June 19, 1982), John Sohl remembers it
differently: The initial Intellivoice brainstorming session was held
mid-1981 on the third floor of the main Mattel Toys building -- a
floor with armed guards to keep spies from finding out Mattel's
biggest secrets, such as what Barbie would be wearing next year.
This session yielded three ideas that went into production: Space Spartans, Bomb Squad and Air Traffic Controller. John, fresh from
Astrosmash, began work on Air Traffic Controller, although he wasn't
enthusiastic about the concept: bringing a plane in for a landing
based on feedback from the control tower. He was leaning toward
using the alternate scenario developed for the game -- an oil tanker
negotiating a foggy docking with feedback from the Harbor Master --
when Bob Del Principe, a graphics artist, came into his cubicle and
suggested making the airplane a bomber on a mission over Europe.
Now blowing stuff up was a concept John could get enthusiastic
about! Within an hour, Air Traffic Controller turned into Flying
Fortress.
By early 1982, John, with graphics artist Kai Tran, had developed an impressive bombing run simulation with revolutionary Intellivision effects, but the cartridge was oversize and the gameplay was still to be defined. Steve Roney and Bill Fisher, just off Space Spartans, were assigned to the game, now called B-17 Bomber, full-time. John, Steve and Bill worked up to the last minute -- literally -- to finish it. Unfortunately, most of John's fancy features (such as a turret gunner who could rotate 360 degrees) had to be cut in favor of gameplay. On April 23, 1982, two months overdue, on the day the program absolutely had to be shipped to the ROM factory in Arizona, programming frantically continued. (John recalls: "During the final week, and particularly the final day, I got the impression that everyone [in the department] was adding code or graphics to the game.") With less than an hour to go, they pronounced it finished (or, more accurately, "close enough"). An unsuspecting visitor to Mattel that day was Shanghaied, stuck in a cubicle and asked to try out the game. That 30 minutes of play was the extent of the game testing. The code was shipped, and everyone kept their fingers crossed that the bugs wouldn't be too bad. Luckily, they weren't, and B-17 Bomber was released to strong reviews.
BUG: If your altitude is high
enough, and you're hit
with enough enemy fire, you can rack up so much damage before
you hit the ground that you'll roll over the counter. Voilá!
Instant
repair!
BUG: Dropping a bomb to
the far left of the screen from just the right
altitude will crash the game.
BUG: Flying into flak
features some great perspective animation; the rear
view, however, doesn't look quite right. They ran out of time to
debug it. By the way, they also ran out of room for a flak graphics
picture. Instead, the program grabs some of the Executive ROM
program code and graphically displays it. This random jumble of bits
passes as flak.
BUG: When the game starts,
the bomber faces east. When you return from a
mission, the bomber faces west. When you start the
second mission,
the bomber is still facing west, so you can easily end
up half-way to
Bermuda, trying to figure out how the English Channel got so wide
and
where the German fighters are.
FUN FACT: The gauges
screen was not intended to be
in the game. It was a debugging tool, used by the programmers to
check on the value of certain variables during the game. John liked it
so much it became part of the finished product. But since this screen
was never intended to be seen by the public, it wasn't coded to check
for values overflowing, resulting in non-numeric characters showing
up on the counters.
FUN FACT: Early in the
development of the game,
John and Kai, just for fun, used Atari logos to mark targets on the
map of
Europe. No one noticed this when the marketing department
displayed the unfinished game at the January 1982 Consumer
Electronics Show. No one, that is, except the Atari legal team, who
swooped into the Mattel booth and forced them to stop
demonstrating the game.
FUN FACT: One of the
characters in the game has a
pronounced Southern accent. A few customers, hearing the drawl
"Buheee-Sevunteen Baaahmmmer" on the title screen, sent the
cartridge back as defective. (The character, described in Joey Silvian's script as: "Southern accent, laid back, slow drawl even under fire, talks like sittin' in a cotton field on a sunny day watchin' the bees buzz," was voiced by Phil Austin, a member of
The Firesign Theatre comedy group.)
FUN FACT: B-17 Bomber
was not included when
foreign versions of the Intellivoice games were recorded. In a rare
show of good taste, Marketing decided that a game in which the goal
is to drop bombs on France, Germany and Italy would be
inappropriate for the European market.
FUN FACT: At least one
programmer was strongly opposed to Mattel releasing the game at
all. In the main hallway of the programming department one day,
numerous copies of a flyer appeared "announcing" the "logical
follow-up" to B-17 Bomber: a Viet Nam game called
Napalm the Babies. The flyer described how well
Intellivision graphics could render burning flesh and how
realistically Intellivoice could reproduce children's screams. The
author of the flyer was, and remains, anonymous.
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