The Intellivision (short for intelligent television) is the home console from Mattel Electronics, test-marketed in the United States in 1979 and distributed nationwide in 1980. It was the first machine to seriously worry the Atari 2600: its CP1610 processor is a 16-bit design, and its finer display allowed noticeably more detailed graphics than its rival.
Its controller became famous: a flat pad fitted with a 16-direction disc, four side buttons and a 12-key numeric keypad onto which players slid the cardboard overlays supplied with each game. This unusual layout enabled sports simulations and strategy games of a depth unheard of at the time, such as the Major League Baseball series, NFL Football, Utopia and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Mattel expanded the machine with several accessories and models: the Intellivoice speech synthesis module, the ECS (Entertainment Computer System) keyboard that turned the console into a home computer, plus versions licensed to Sears, Radiofonica and Bandai. The comparative advertising campaign fronted by journalist George Plimpton, pitting the Intellivision against the Atari 2600 on screen, left its mark on video game marketing history.
Around three million consoles were sold before the 1983 crash swept away the Mattel Electronics division. The brand was then taken over by INTV Corporation, which kept publishing games until the end of the 1980s.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro freeintv | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
A single emulator is offered on this system: FreeIntv, available on every board, including RPi3 and RPi Zero 2. It supports CRT output. Netplay and softpatching are not available with this core.
RetroAchievements are available on this system; light guns are not supported. A controller is mandatory.
Intellivision games make heavy use of the original controller's numeric keypad: without it, many titles cannot even start a game. See the Libretro FreeIntv page for the key mapping on a modern controller.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
exec.bin |
Intellivision executive ROM (mandatory) | 62e761035cb657903761800f4437b8af | freeintv |
grom.bin |
Intellivision graphics ROM (character set) (mandatory) | 0cd5946c6473e42e8e4c2137785e427f | freeintv |
Place your BIOS files like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/intellivision/
├── exec.bin
└── grom.bin
Both files are mandatory: without them, no Intellivision game will start.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/intellivision/
Supported extensions: .bin .int .rom .zip .7z
The standard extension is .int, the one used by No-Intro romsets. .zip and .7z archives are read directly: leave them compressed.
Recalbox ships with three Intellivision homebrews — Deep Zone, Hotel Bunny and Princess Lydie — already present in the roms folder on first boot. See the Included games page.