Activision is a North American company founded on 10/01/1979 by music industry executive Jim Levy, investor
Richard Muchmore and former Atari programmers David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead.
It was the first independent company to develop and distribute electronic games for home consoles. Its first
products were cartridges for the Atari 2600 launched from July 1980 on the North American market and from
August 1981 on the international market (UK).
The departure of Atari's four programmers, creators of titles responsible for more than half of the company's
cartridge sales at the time, caused a legal battle between the companies until a settlement in 1982, the year
when Activision launched Pitfall!, one of the greatest successes in the history of video games. As the
market for console games began to slow, Activision started producing computer games and acquiring small companies.
On 06/13/1986, the company acquired the pioneer developer of text games Infocom. Jim Levy was a huge fan of
Infocom titles and wanted to keep it active. About 6 months after the "wedding", Bruce Davis took over the
direction of Activision. He has always declared himself against the acquisition of the company and has taken
a hard line in his management. Finally in 1989, after years of losses, Activision closed Infocom's studios
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and put only 11 of the 26 employees in a reallocation to Activision's headquarters
in Silicon Valley. Five of them accepted the proposal.
In 1988, Activision became involved with other types of software besides games, such as business applications.
The name of the company was changed to Mediagenic, which, according to those responsible, would represent all of
its activities. With this name, the company continued to launch games for various platforms, mainly for the
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Master System, Atari 7800, Atari ST, Comodore 64 and Amiga.
On 12/02/2007 the acquisition of Activision by the French conglomerate Vivendi was announced, which would
contribute financially in exchange for the majority of the shares. The merger of the companies was confirmed
on 09/07/2008, which was renamed Activision Blizzard. Activision continued to exist as a subsidiary of the new
company and produced games such as Call of Duty, as well as titles from Vivendi itself such as the
Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the series Dragon.
Activision is currently one of the three largest companies in the world in the field of electronic games and
reached the top of the ranking in 2007 in the United States. On 02/09/2011 he announced the cancellation of
the Guitar Hero franchise and that it would not produce new titles for the series.
Atarisoft was the name used by the North American Atari Inc. between 1983 and 1984 in the manufacture of games
for home consoles from competing companies. Each platform has a specific color assigned by Atarisoft for the
packaging - green for the Commodore 64, blue for PC games and red for Intellivision, among others. Despite the
short duration of less than two years, the company has a vast catalog with dozens of games for various consoles
and computers. Most of the titles were produced by partner companies, while Atari developed games only for its
own system.
The name Atarisoft was used only on packaging and manuals. The game screen had the name and logo of the parent
company.
The brand ceased to exist in all countries except France, where Warner Communications sold part of Atari Inc.
to Jack Tramiel. It survived for another year in that country until it closed in 1985. A lot of software was
in production (especially for the BBC Micro in England) when the company closed. A small part of them were
launched by other companies.
Classic games like Pacman and Centipede have been released for Intellivision. Others, like Galaxian, were
promised but not finalized.
Founded in 1950, Bandai became, within a few decades, the dominant toy company in Japan, with licenses from
famous characters such as Godzilla, Ultraman and Dragon Ball.
After successfully commercializing handheld games and a game based on the classic Pong during the 1970s, Bandai
entered into a partnership with Mattel Electronics to distribute Intellivision in the country.
The Japanese version of Intellivision was released on 10/07/1982. Marketing and distribution were managed by
Bandai, with magazine ads and TV commercials. A young actor named Beat Takeshi (who became quite popular)
participated in the commercials. He used the slogan: "The same 16-bit power as a computer, but without waiting
to load".
With the console, 17 games were also launched on the market (with several sports titles). The boxes and names
of the games were kept in English, but with manuals in Japanese. Franchise brands were removed (Major League
Baseball, for example, became Baseball). The back of the box has two cutouts so that the manual can be fitted
and its cover can be seen outside the product.
The cartridges were sold for between 4800 and 5500 yen (between US$21 and US$23).
The price of the Bandai Intellivision was high, compared to that of a personal computer in Japan. Contrary to
the commercial's own slogan, no expansion module was launched in the country, which contributed to its failure.
Still in the first half of 1983, Bandai started to develop new consoles with other partner companies
(Emerson Arcadia and Vectrex). The space for the Intellivision decreased even more in the following months with
the emergence of the new Sega and Nintendo devices, cheaper and more powerful, in addition to the breakdown of
the North American games industry, which caused Mattel to stop giving due Japanese partner support.
After a short period of 2 years, Bandai gave up investing in Intellivision, with 27 titles released and 30,000
consoles sold.
CBS Electronics was short-lived. It was an electronic games division of CBS Toys/Gabriel Industries founded in
1982 by CBS Inc. for the manufacture and worldwide distribution of video games.
In the United States, CBS Electronics was initially known for launching classic games for the Atari 2600 and 5200.
The company's club offered games for the Atari 2600 not only from CBS and Coleco, but also from other companies.
Abroad, CBS Electronics was initially known for marketing Coleco games. It also manufactured and distributed
games for Intellivision in partnership with Coleco. The company managed to achieve success, but with the
crash of the gaming industry in 1983, CBS abruptly ended its gaming division.
COLECO
Coleco is an American company founded in 1932 by Maurice Greenberg as Connecticut Leather Company. It
became a highly successful toy company in the 1980s, known for the large-scale production of Cabbage Patch Kids
dolls and their video games, Coleco Telstar and Colecovision.
Originally, it made leather shoes, the branch that guided the company in the 1950s. They started producing
molded plastic and invested in the production of plastic tanks in the 1960s. Leather production was then stopped.
Under the direction of Arnold Greenberg, Coleco entered the video game business with Telstar in 1976. Several
companies introduced their consoles that year after the success of Atari's Pong. Most of these new games were
based on General Instrument's "Pong-on-a-chip". However, GI's demand was very high and there was a deficiency
to supply it. Coleco was one of the first companies to enter into a partnership with GI.
Coleco continued to do well in the electronics business. They then moved on to handheld games, a market popularized
by Mattel. Coleco produced two popular lines, the "head to head" series for sports games with two people and the
mini-arcade series with licensed titles like Donkey Kong and Ms. Pacman. Another line of educational games
produced included Electronic Learning Machine, Lil Genius, Digits, and a quiz game called QuizWhiz.
The company returned to the electronic games market in 1982 with the launch of Colecovision. At the same time
that its console became popular, Coleco was betting on games with a line of cartridges for the Atari 2600 and
Intellivision. The Coleco Gemini was also released, a copy of the popular Atari 2600.
The quality of the games developed for Intellivision, however, left something to be desired. At the time, rumors
arose that Coleco's programmers did not use the full potential of the competing console with the clear aim of
demonstrating Colecovision's graphic superiority.
When the video game industry started to crumble in 1983, it became clear that video game consoles would be
replaced by microcomputers. Coleco's strategy was to launch Coleco Adam micro-personnel, both as an independent
system and as an expansion module for Colecovision. The effort was in vain, largely because Adam was not very
reliable. The project failed; Coleco abandoned the electronics market in early 1985.
Even after successfully selling puppets between 1983 and 1986 (like the TV character "Alf"), the failure of the
computer Adam led the company to bankruptcy in 1988. The company's equipment and facilities were sold. In 1989,
Hasbro bought Coleco's assets.
In 2005, River West Brands, a Chicago rehabilitation company reintroduced Coleco to the market. In late 2006,
they launched Coleco Sonic, a portable device containing twenty games from Sega's Master System and Game Gear.
CollectorVision was founded in 2008 and creates games for various devices - Colecovision, Atari 2600, Intellivision
and TI-99/4A. It has a team of more than 10 members including programmers, graphic artists, musicians and
marketing specialists.
French company Dextell Ltd. was responsible for the manufacture and distribution of games for Intellivision in
Europe. The games were created by the team of programmers at Nice Ideas, a French subsidiary of Mattel Electronics,
between 1983 and 1984.
Only two titles were completed by Dextell/Nice Ideas until Mattel Electronics went bankrupt and the French office
closed. However, even when completed, the games were only released years later by INTV Corp., initially in Europe
and later in the United States.
The history of Intellivision in Brazil begins in November 1983, when Sharp's local unit introduced the console to
entrepreneurs, retailers and the press. In the following month, the equipment began to be sold in the country
under the name of Digimed, a Sharp subsidiary.
At the beginning of the following year, the company of 186 employees installed in the industrial pole of Manaus
changed its name to Digiplay, with a fixed investment of about Cr$1,500,000,000 (US$1,500,000) and in order to
confirm the brand in the digital entertainment sector.
The first cartridges marketed highlighted the logo of the console, stating the name of the company as a mere
manufacturer. Soon, the Digiplay brand took over the product. On the Intellivision II console, the
Intellivision logo has been replaced by the brand of the Brazilian company, as well as the boxes of
several games from renowned companies such as Activision and Mattel Electronics itself.
Some games had their titles translated into Portuguese, a strategy also adopted by Philips with the games of its Odyssey.
Digiplay spared no expense: all games featured quality packaging, colorful and illustrated manuals.
To get closer to his audience, he created a newsletter with launches, records, championships and tips, in
addition to using it as a communication channel for responses to letters sent by users. The "Digiplay Games"
newsletter had only two print editions in 1984.
Digiplay manufactured and sold cartridges for the Intellivision until mid-1985, when the gaming industry in
Brazil began to run out of steam. At the end of that year, the company's name was changed to Epcom.
Until closing its doors around November 1992, Epcom remained active with the manufacture of the Hotbit
microcomputer (until 1988) and reinforced the Japanese company's brand in the electronics market until the
Brazilian Sharp bankruptcy at the end of the decade.
Elektronite was born in 2005 in Italy as a non-profit organization, thanks to the initiative of Valter Prette
from the Intellivision World website.
Initially, he produced development documents and tools specifically for Mattel Electronics' Intellivision.
Intelliware was the first attempt to introduce emulation integrated into the development environment for beginners.
During 2006 and 2007, Elektronite contacted several software companies and acquired licenses to develop
Intellivision versions of First Star classics, Cinemaware, Llamasoft and Big Five Software.
Despite the enormous effort and collaboration of passionate collectors around the world, Elektronite had to
wait until 2012 to emerge as a true game producer, thanks to the investment of W. Moeller and the partnership
with Classic Game Publishers Inc. From that year, the company started using a new case designed by the programmer
Joe Zbiciak, avoiding the reuse of cartridges used to pack the circuit boards of the new games.
In the following years, the company went through ups and downs. Classic Game Publishers ended its activities and
Elektronite almost came to an end due to the high costs of producing licensed games. A short partnership with
Kai Magazine yielded great releases in the late 2010s.
Maintained by Michael Thomasson, a respectable video game historian, the Good Deal Games website sells games
created for several old consoles, launched under the name of Homebrew Heaven.
Imagic was a short-lived North American company that developed and distributed games for Atari 2600, Intellivision
and other consoles in the early 1980s. Founded in 1981 by former Atari and Mattel Electronics employees, it launched
games that became classics like Atlantis and Demon Attack.
Until 1981, the games on the market were developed only by the companies that manufacture the consoles. The lack
of recognition - technical and financial - on the part of the companies, that did not pay rights on the sales of
the cartridges to the programmers, led some professionals to create their own companies. Activision was the first;
Imagic the second.
Among the founders of Imagic were Bill Grubb, Bob Smith, Denis Koble, Mark Bradley and Rob Fulop of Atari, as
well as Jim Goldberger and Brian Dougherty of Mattel Electronics.
Despite initial success and higher than projected sales, the company's fortunes waned after the market purged
consoles and cartridges in 1983, taking Imagic back to the initial simple reseller plan.
Imagic was considered one of the best game developers for Intellivision, although it was hampered by pressure
from Mattel Electronics' marketing to accelerate the release of some games. This is the case of Demon Attack,
with several errors that occur in different situations and parts of the game.
At the end of the "Atari 2600" era, the company had the third largest collection of original games for that
system, behind Atari and Activision itself.
Imagic cartridges had the company's brand in relief. The manuals provided information about the badges offered
to the best players. The graphics quality of the games was also emphasized by the users.
Like Activision, Imagic was sued by Atari. The giant filed a lawsuit against Imagic claiming that the Demon
Attack would be a copy of its exclusive game Phoenix. Justice closed the case and Demon Attack became one of the
games with the largest number of platforms available, from consoles to personal computers.
Unlike Activision, which had a policy that games should look the same on all consoles, Imagic understood that
games should use the full potential offered by the console.
There was also a fan club for its players, the Numb Thumb Club, which published an annual newsletter about the
games (Numb Thumb News). Only two editions have been released.
It is estimated that there are about 60 games between prototypes and games finished but not released. The most
famous of these is the Cubicolor puzzle, one of the rarest and most valuable games for the Atari 2600.
About Odyssey², Imagic is responsible for the two games not developed by Magnavox in the United States: Demon
Attack and Atlantis.
For Intellivision, in addition to the classics also available on other consoles, several original games were
created: Beauty & the Beast, Dracula, Microsurgeon, Truckin' and Ice Trek.
A multi-game cartridge
with 12 titles was used in fairs and events to promote the games.
Imagic launched 24 titles until it left the market in 1986. After the crash of the electronic games market
in 1983, 40 of its 170 employees were laid off. The copyright for their most popular games was acquired by
Activision in the late 1980s and re-released in other formats.
The first phase of IntelligentVision begins in 1998, when Dan B. met ex-Mattel Electronics programmer David
Warhol. David commented on the existence of some unreleased games for Intellivision and that a high school friend
owned some T-Cards (test cards) for those games.
After about 4 years, Dan purchased a Keyboard Component (and his ultra-K7 tapes) and, with the help of Chris
Neiman, borrowed the T-Cards and sent them to Joe Zbiciak so that he could retrieve the contents of the cards.
During the 2003 Classic Game Exposition in Las Vegas, Dan B. and Chris Neiman discussed the desire to produce the
games they found. David Harley joined the conversation and then decided to start producing home games before
working on the unreleased games. Chris and Dan decided to hire programmers to finish games they had started. At
that time, the only games completed were Minehunter and 4-Tris (previously released by Joe Zbiciak).
In September of that year, Chris started researching what it would take to have the cartridges physically produced.
David wanted to be part of the project and proposed the completion and launch of the game Stonix, until then in
demo version. David contacted Arnauld Chevallier, who was willing to do the job. Dan, on the other hand, left the
project due to other commitments.
With the team in place, Chris began to raise the needs for hardware work with Joe Zbiciak and Chad Schell while
David took care of the manuals and boxes. After many hours of discussion about how the games would be presented,
Chris and David decided that the games should look like the games from 1983, the last look adopted at the time,
to launch the unreleased games.
David contacted Roger Matthews, who had originally produced overlays for games without the accessory (Orphan
overlays). In addition to creating the overlays, Roger also worked on creating the art of the boxes.
After nine months of work, programming, manual, overlay, box and board assembly were complete for Stonix. With
the game selling well, it was clear that there was demand and that more games could be produced. Minehunter would be next. Chris chose Same Game & Robots (programmed by Michael J. Hayes) as the
third title, but David didn't believe it was good enough to be put in a cartridge.
The team then decided to relaunch 4-Tris to give David enough time to finish Same Game & Robots.
4-Tris was released, but Same Game was not ready yet. The launch date was approaching and David and Chris had a
discussion about cost management. Before David completed the game, Chris put a prototype of the Same Game in the
cartridge and started selling. The game has been completed and included in copies with a serial number above 100.
David left the team and Roger went on to produce League of Light and Robot Rubble. Roger now had
most of the production responsibility. The wide distribution of the two games was hampered because there were
restrictions on the programming of the cards. At the end of 2005, IntelligentVision was going to end with the
departure, too, of Roger.
In one of the Classic Gaming Expo presentations, David offered to help Joe finish Lunar MP, who has been
on the programming stage for more than four years. In 2006, Joe accepted David's offer. Joe's focus was to
continue programming the game while David designed the screens. Originally, the game would have the same levels
as the arcade, but David convinced Joe to include new levels. The name of the game changed to Space Patrol
and Joe made the game with eight different levels for four planets. After nine months of hard work, the game was
complete. David had no intention of starting over with IntelligentVision, so Joe released the game in 2007 under
his name Left Turn Only.
In 2010, David contacted Carl Mueller Jr. and William Moeller to discuss the cartridge launch of Carl's version
for the classic Donkey Kong. David was interested in helping with the production because he knew that collectors
would love the game and would show that the Coleco version, released in 1982, could have been better.
It was agreed that Carl would finish the game and David would produce it. After about a year of negotiating with
Joe, David realized that he would have to produce the game with a new team. At that time, it was obvious that if
there was so much work being done to produce Donkey Kong, then there was time to produce games not released under
the name IntelligentVision.
Wanting to do a better job than the first phase, David asked for help from real artists choosing Gil Garcia
(an old friend) and Chris S. The team was completed with Oliver Puschatzki, responsible for the design of the
boxes, overlays and cartridge labels.
Several other titles were released by IntelligentVision in the following years, including the unfinished ones
from Mattel Electronics Illusions, Rocky And Bullwinkle, Spina The Bee and Yogi's Frustration.
In 1995, four years after the bankruptcy of INTV Corp., the Blue Sky Rangers launched a website dedicated to
the history of the console. The number of accesses to the page showed that there was still interest in
Intellivision.
Based on this statistic, in 1997, former Mattel Electronics programmers acquired the exclusive rights to the
system and games and created Intellivision Productions Inc.
The site provided free emulators for PC and Mac with classics like Astrosmash and Utopia.
In 1998, the company released the first collection of Intellivision games for computers: Intellivision Lives!,
with 50 titles.
In the following years, Intellivision Productions Inc. invested in collections for several platforms, including
Playstation, Nintendo DS and XBox.
According to rumors, Interphase Technologies Inc. was a one-person company, with all games being built and
programmed by Stephen Willey at his home near Vancouver, Canada, between March 1983 and March 1988.
In 1983, Interphase released two games for Intellivision: Blockade Runner and Sewer Sam. These games were
also released for ColecoVision, in addition to Aqua Attack and Squish 'in Featuring Sam.
The new company formed after Mattel Electronics closed in January 1984 continued to sell what was left in stock
by mail. When the old stock of Intellivision II consoles ran out, INTV Corp. introduced a new console called
Intv III. The unit was actually the original console with a different label (it was later renamed to Super Pro
System). As a complement to the manufacture of the new consoles, INTV Corp. also continued to develop new
games, releasing a few titles a year. The system was discontinued in 1991.
Intellivision was developed by Mattel Electronics, a subsidiary of toy giant Mattel, created specifically for
the development of electronic games in the late 1970s. The company tested the console in Fresno, California in
1979 and officially launched it on the market in next year.
Mattel's proposal was very clear: to face Atari, which dominated the field of electronic games, with games of
superior quality to those of the competitor. Atari, however, took the opposite approach: flooding the market
with cartridges for its console, often with games of questionable quality.
Mattel invested heavily in marketing to publicize Intellivision, often using monitors to compare the game
quality of the two consoles. The writer George Plimpton was known as "Mr. Intellivision" for having acted in
several of these commercials.
Initially, the games were developed by the company APh Technological Consulting. Mattel recognized that what
had been created as a secondary product could become big business. So he created his own development team.
The original five members of the team were Gabriel Baum, Don Daglow, Rick Levine, Mike Minkoff and John Sohl.
Levine and Minkoff were veterans of the matrix and had worked on Mattel's handheld gaming team. In order to
prevent its programmers from being harassed by rival Atari, their identities and workplace were kept strictly
confidential. The group became known as The Blue Sky Rangers. In 1982, the companies Activision and Imagic,
which developed games for competitors Atari and Coleco, obtained permission from Mattel to develop games for
Intellivision. Mattel's profits amounted to US$100 million.
The team of 5 programmers became a team of 110 people, under the coordination of then Vice President Baum, while
Daglow led the development team and Minkoff directed all work on other platforms on the M Network, created to
develop games for other consoles.
Problems began to arise when customers, dissatisfied with the delay in launching the Keyboard Component, sued
Mattel. The company had promised that the accessory would turn the Intellivision into a personal computer.
However, the high cost of producing the equipment caused a change in the company's plans, which earned it
thousands of dollars in fines.
Not even the launches of ECS and Intellivoice supported Mattel Electronics. The electronic games market was
saturated and personal microcomputers were gaining ground.
In late 1983, nearly half of Mattel Electronics' staff was discharged. On January 20, 1984, the remaining
employees were dismissed and Mattel Electronics ended its activities. It was the first major drop among
companies producing electronic games, followed by several others in the following months.
Parker Brothers was founded in 1883 by George S. Parker, in his hometown Salem, Massachusetts. In 1963, General
Mills bought the Parker family company.
The company's debut in the electronic age came in 1977 with the spearfishing game Code name: Sector,
followed by a series of handheld games, including the famous Merlin.
In 1983 they announced their entry into the video game market with releases for Atari, Intellivision and
ColecoVision consoles, as well as Commodore, Texas Instruments TI99/4A and IBM PC computers.
Despite owning some of the most famous titles on the market, such as Monopoly, Clue and Risk, Parker Brothers
has not used any of its own products as a basis for its video games, except for announced versions of Risk for
Atari computers and for the 5200. Instead, they licensed famous arcades including Frogger and Q*bert, as well
as major films including Star Wars and James Bond. The company spent a fortune to excel at the licenses obtained
by Atari, Mattel and Coleco.
Although they released some titles for various platforms, most of the games announced were not completed due to
the collapse of the game industry in late 1983.
In 1985, General Mills joined Parker Brothers with its Kenner subsidiary. The new company, Kenner Parker Toys Inc.,
was acquired by Tonka in 1987. Tonka, including Parker Brothers, was acquired by Hasbro in 1991.
Under the name of Hasbro, Parker Brothers finally invested in its best-known products, releasing versions of
its famous board games for various consoles and computers.
Sears is an American department store chain founded in the late 19th century by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah
Curtis Roebuck. In the early 1980s, Sear created the Tele-Games brand to market its products in the field of
electronic games. Its stores sold the Tele-Games Video Arcade and Tele-Games Super Video Arcade consoles,
compatible, respectively, with the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. The consoles were actually manufactured by the
companies themselves (Atari and Mattel).
Several games had boxes and manuals personalized with the Tele-Games brand to be sold by Sears. The cartridges
were identical to versions of Mattel Electronics. The names of the leagues (NHL, NBA etc.) have been removed
from the titles in sports games and Backgammon. "Las Vegas" appears in the Poker & Blackjack and Roulette games,
but not as part of the title.
Sega Corporation (Kabushiki gaisha Sega), known only as Sega, started in Honolulu, Hawaii, under the name
Standard Games. In 1951, Raymond Lemaire and Richard Stewart took the company to Japan (Ota, Tokyo) to develop
and distribute coin-operated gaming machines, such as jukeboxes and slot machines. The company changed its name
to Service Games. In 1965, David Rosen, an American air force officer, entered the gaming machine market. He
then orchestrated a merger with his only competitor (Service Games) and became executive director of the new
company, Sega Enterprises, whose name derives from the first two letters of the words SErvice GAmes. The growth
made it possible to install, in addition to the Japanese headquarters, several branches around the world: in
Europe (London, England), the United States (Redwood City, California), Australia (Sydney) and Korea (Seoul),
as well as smaller offices in France, Germany, Holland, Spain and Italy.
In the home game industry, little has been produced for Intellivision. Only Congo Bongo was finished and
released. Other promises were filed with the breakdown of the industry in the same year that the game was
released, which did not stop the company from persisting in the business. Sega initially developed and
manufactured its own consoles between 1983 and 2001, including SG-1000 (1983), SG-1000 II (1984), Mark III (1985),
Master System (1986), Mega Drive (1988) and Genesis (1989).
A restructuring of the company was announced on 01/31/2001, which stopped the production of its consoles and
effectively removed it from the home video game market. While the development of arcade games remained unchanged,
the restructuring shifted the focus from the development of home games to consoles created by other companies.
So, what seemed impossible happened in the late 2000s. The fight for space between Sega and Nintendo
had a happy ending with the joining of two of the greatest electronic game characters of all time in the same
game: Mario and Sonic started to star in games together for the new Nintendo consoles.
Installed in São Paulo (Brazil), ShockVision manufactured and marketed pirated cartridges for Intellivision.
There were about 50 titles from different companies, both classic and unknown, and one game for Intellivoice (Space Spartans), although the accessory was not released in Brazil.
The cartridges had an unusual feature: the games were packaged in Atari 2600 standard cases, which required the user to use an adapter (Shock Adapter) to fit the cartridge in the Intellivision.
The Venture cartridge was also launched by ShockVision, however, in a Colecovision standard case.
Some titles have been translated into Portuguese, such as "Swords and Serpents" released as "Dragões e Serpentes" (Dragons and Serpents).
There was no manual or overlay included with the cartridge.
Founded on 11/13/1984 and installed in a commercial room (no. 302) of Rua do Catete nº 310, in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), VLS Indústria Eletrônica Ltda manufactured and sold dozens of games for Intellivision.
The wholesale sale meant that their cartridges were found in video stores across the country, and could be rented at prices well below the prices of the original cartridges for sale.
The cartridge is larger than the original, has no overlays, is packed in a simple box the size of the cartridge and there is a simplified photocopy manual.
Some titles have been translated into Portuguese, such as "Worm Whomper" released as "Pragas" (Plagues).
World Book Inc. is the publisher of the World Book Encyclopedia, one of the most sold in the world.
Created in 1917, the company entered into a partnership with INTV Corp. in 1989 for the production of an
educational video game system called Tutorvision. The Tutorvision console would be a modified Intellivision,
molded in white plastic and details in gold, with games aimed at children, youth and adults.
16 games were developed for the console. However, the console and games did not reach the market due to legal
fights between World Book Inc. and INTV Corp. The project was abandoned with the bankruptcy of INTV Corp. in 1990.
In 2011, floppy disks with the game codes created for Tutorvision were found. Programmers and collectors started
a process of data recovery and, with the help of prototypes of the console, it was possible to test and publicize
the games developed two decades before.
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