A History of Gaming Platforms: Mattel Intellivision

The latest entry of a history of gaming platforms on Gamasutra stories the tale of the Mattel Intellivision.

Besides sports and arcade licenses, Mattel gained the rights to many other properties, including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, TRON, The Electric Company, and Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Although the strategy was to gain market share with familiar brands, Mattel’s talented developers didn’t actually follow the precedent of making lousy games and counting on the brand recognition alone to move product.

Mattel’s lineup included the classic action role-playing games Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Cartridge (1982) and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Treasure of Tarmin Cartridge (1983), the educational The Electric Company Math Fun (1979) and The Electric Company Word Fun (1980), the popular action-packed TRON Deadly Discs (1982) and TRON Maze-a-Tron, and the ECS-enhanced Scooby-Doo’s Maze Chase (1983) and Jetson’s Way with Words (1983).