Later Coleco continued adapting newer successful arcade games like Subroc, Time Pilot and Frenzy, the company also made inferior ports of many of these games for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision, in an effort to broaden its market.

* Mattel creates the original five-programmer Intellivision game design team, nicknamed the Blue Sky Rangers by a magazine writer when the company keeps their names secret in a TV Guide interview.

Although the game was not slated for completion until mid-1983, the company rushed a new TV commercial into production for Christmas, in which Intellivision spokesman George Plimpton pulled a velvet drape from a monitor and proclaimed the title to be " the future of video games.

The Intellivision is a video game console released by Mattel in 1979.

The Intellivision was developed by Mattel Electronics, a subsidiary of Mattel formed expressly for the development of electronic games.

At this time, all Intellivision games were developed by an outside firm, APh Technological Consulting.

Over two million Intellivision consoles had been sold by the end of the year, earning Mattel a $ 100, 000, 000 profit.

The Intellivision was also introduced in Japan by Bandai in 1982.

Several of the units were later used by Mattel Electronics engineers when it was discovered that, with a few minor modifications, a Keyboard Component could be used as an Intellivision software-development system in place of the original hand-built development boards.

However, because many Intellivision games had been designed for users to play by feeling the buttons without looking down, some of these games were far less playable on Intellivision II.

* Gamasutra-A History of Gaming Platforms: Mattel Intellivision, by Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton

Atari even hired several programmers from Mattel's Intellivision development studio, prompting a lawsuit by Mattel against Atari that included charges of industrial espionage.

* Official Intellivision History Site by the original programmers

* Intellivision, pitchman, himself, released by Mattel in 1979

A console-only sequel, Diner, was created after the 1984 purchase of Intellivision from Mattel by INTV Corp.

This game was programmed by Ray Kaestner, the programmer of the Intellivision version of BurgerTime.

Sports writer George Plimpton was featured in the Intellivision ads, which showed the parallel games side by side.

That same year, Mattel released Intellivision World Series Baseball ( IWSB ) by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, possibly the earliest sports game to use multiple camera angles to show the action in a manner resembling a television broadcast.

It was ported to three home systems by Coleco ; Coleco's ColecoVision, Mattel's Intellivision, and the Atari 2600.

The first sim game, Utopia ( 1982 ) developed for the Mattel Intellivision console system, covered many of these same elements, but was limited by the primitive screen resolutions of its era.

Music by Dave Warhol, who had worked with Daglow on the Intellivision game design team, was also added to the EA edition.

When the Intellivision first came out in 1978, its games were all developed by an outside firm, APh Technological Consulting.

A precursor to the standard D-pad on a video game console was used by the Intellivision, which was released by Mattel Electronics in 1980.

Despite being a commercial failure when it was initially released Congo Bongo has been ported to nearly every major gaming platform of the day, including SG-1000, MSX, Intellivision, ColecoVision, Commodore 64 ( twice-by Sega in 1983 and by U. S. Gold in 1985 ), IBM PC, Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and Atari 8-bit computers.

One of the early programmers, Keith Robinson, re-acquired the rights to Intellivision in recent years and the Blue Sky Rangers ' games are now available on a variety of computers and video game platforms, as well as cell phones.

The Blue Sky Rangers are the group of Intellivision game programmers who once worked for Mattel back in the early 1980s.

* Article at The Dot Eaters about The Blue Sky Rangers and the Intellivision

As the team grew into what in 1982 became known as the Blue Sky Rangers Daglow was promoted to be Director of Intellivision Game Development, where he created the original designs for a number of Mattel titles in 1982-83 that were enhanced and expanded by other programmers, including:

For economic reasons in mid-1983, Mattel withdrew from this plan at the last minute, and the designers were forced to replace actual players with the names of the Blue Sky Rangers Intellivision game design team.

In 2009, video game website IGN named the Intellivision the No. 14 greatest video game console of all time.

The original 5-person Mattel game development team had grown to 110 people under now-Vice President Baum, while Daglow led Intellivision development and top engineer Minkoff directed all work on all other platforms.

The unit would even provide an extra cartridge slot, allowing the original Intellivision to remain permanently docked with the Keyboard Component while still being able to play standard game cartridges.

Rather than reveal the names of Intellivision game designers, Mattel instead required that a 1981 TV Guide interview with them change their names to protect their collective identities.

Most of the released titles were ports from Mattel's Intellivision game console, but because the Aquarius lacked programmable graphics, the gameplay of many games was better on the less-expensive console.

They also released local variants of the Intellivision and vectrex game consoles.

Both Atari and Intellivision fielded at least one game for baseball, American football, hockey, basketball, auto racing and association football.

One of the various angles of Intellivision World Series Baseball, one of the earliest sports game to incorporate multiple camera angles in a manner resembling a television broadcast.

The game was ported to the Commodore 64, Texas Instruments TI-99 / 4A, and Atari 8-bit home computers as well as various home game consoles: ( Intellivision / Intellivision II / Tandyvision / Sears Super Video Arcade, Atari 2600 / 5200, ColecoVision, and Odyssey² ).

* Atlantis ( Intellivision game ), a video game for the Intellivision

Like most arcade games of this era, this game was ported to many home systems, including the video game consoles NES, Family Computer Disk System, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari XE Game System, ColecoVision, Coleco Adam, Intellivision and BBC Micro.

In 1980 Daglow was hired as one of the original five in-house Intellivision programmers at Mattel during the first Console wars.