Some Intelligent Competition

As Atari’s game console project Stella moves off the drawing boards and approaches its eventual release as the Video Computer System (VCS), Mattel Development head Richard Chang becomes interested in developing a competing system for his company, known largely as the makers of the hugely lucrative Barbie doll line. In 1976 he contacts Glen Hightower, president of Pasadena California based consulting firm APh to research the possibilities. They find the chipset for the new system from General Instruments, and after some alterations to off-the-shelf GI components, they build a motherboard around a 16-bit (while the CPU is a kludge of a 16 and 10 bit processor they still beat 16-bit systems Sega’s Genesis and NEC’s Turbo Grafix-16 by 10 years) CP-1610 microprocessor, operating at 3.6 MHz with 4K of available system RAM.

But by now Stella has become the VCS and is gathering steam, and Mattel balks at the thought of going head-to-head with Atari. Their new videogame design is put on hold while the Hawthorne, CA-based Mattel Electronics tries their luck at hand-held LED games like Auto Race (1976), Football (1977) and Sub Chase (1978). With these pulling in $112 million in sales by 1978, Mattel Electronics president Jeff Rochlis convinces the head honchos to give TV videogames another serious look. The company commissions APh to design a home gaming system based around the hardware.

JUMP: Video playlist of Mattel Electronics’ LED handheld games

The Intellivision Master Component game console, 1980

Inventing the Wheel

Mattel Introduces their new system at the 1979 Winter CES, with the game console inserted into a mock-up of a computer expansion system promising to turn it into a 64K computer complete with 64-key keyboard, cassette drive for storage and retrieval of data, and a microphone to be used by programs allowing audio input. Apropos, Atari also announces their 8-bit computer lineup at the same show. Along with the Intellivision, Mattel announces advanced sports games for their new system, as well as financial planning and personal database software. The system is dubbed Intellivision, a portmanteau of “intelligent television” that alludes to the brains of the computer add-on. A release date for the video game portion of the system is given as June 1, 1979, with 14 games and educational programs available for purchase in ROM packs alongside it. A price of $165 is reported for the game unit, and an NFL-licensed football game pack is to be bundled with it. This info is later revised by Mattel, with the game console’s price rising to $250, and a release nationwide in July, which slips yet again. Mattel promises a 4 million dollar ad budget for the Intellivision, used largely for TV commercials. Test marketing of the game system eventually gets underway in Fresno, California in December 1979.

Don’t worry, Junior got the Intellivision and keyboard component and is now learning math! 1981 Mattel brochure.

Show floor of 1979 Summer CES in Chicago, Mattel Electronics booth top left

The Big Rollout

Gaming and Action Network pages of a 1980 Mattel Electronics catalog for the Intellivision

Man does taxes on Intellivision while woman gazes adoringly at 1040 information, 1980

While Mattel’s computer system initially has no way for the user to create their own programs (user-programmability is expected to arrive in 1981), pre-programmed tapes for the computer component are promised, priced in the $30 – $35 range, They include: a Jack LaLanne licensed fitness program called  Jack LaLanne’s Physical Conditioning, a French language tutor titled Conversational French, J.K. Lasser’s 1980 Federal Income Tax Preparation, and even Jeane Dixon Astrology. The pack-in cartridge with the Intellivision Master Component ends up being Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, featuring a shifty-eyed croupier dealing cards to the player over a field of casino-table green.

Magnavox v. Mattel

Mattel eventually finds itself across the table from Magnavox in 1982, owners of the infamous U.S. patent 28, 507. This is better known as the Television Gaming Apparatus patent, the first home video game patent, granted in 1975 due to their release of the original Odyssey video game system. When Atari had released the VCS, they paid a minor sum to Magnavox for a license to produce a TV based game. Magnavox soon realizes the error of their ways in the wake of Atari’s success, and they demand a large payment from Mattel for the same rights. Confident that the patent would not hold up to legal scrutiny, Mattel refuses to cough up. Taking them to court, Magnavox wins a patent infringement lawsuit, and Mattel ends up paying several million in damages.

JUMP: History of the Magnavox Odyssey

A Fighter Arises

This payoff notwithstanding, the Master Component is a solid success. Mattel also enters into lucrative deals with some large-scale retailers. Tandy sells its branded version of the Intellivision, called the Tandyvision One and priced at $249.95, through Radio Shack stores starting in November 1982. Sears markets the console under the Sears Tele-Games label as the Super Video Arcade. A $6 million ad campaign pushes 600,000 Intellivision units off store shelves through the 1981 Christmas season. For the year, the Mattel Electronics division makes up 25% of net sales for the company as a whole, and 50% of the profits of the mother corporation. Another million Intellivision units move between 1982-83, becoming the first real threat to Atari’s dominance of the industry. The game that rapidly becomes the system-seller for the Intellivision is Major League Baseball, going on to become the biggest selling game in the Mattel Electronics library. 1,085,700 cartridges are sold over three years, and foreshadowing what would happen nearly ten years later between Nintendo’s NES and the Sega Master System, the Intellivision becomes known as the “adult” videogame, the serious sports fan’s choice over Atari. MLB and the other spectacular sports titles take centre stage in Mattel’s massive promotion of their machine.

Mattel Declares War

Featuring prominently in Mattel’s advertising push over Christmas 1981 is spokesman/sportswriter/actor/author George Plimpton, famous for his 1966 book Paper Lion, about his tryouts for the Detroit Lions football team. In the hard-hitting Plimpton attack ads, Intellivision sports games like MLB and NFL Football are seen running next to their Atari equivalents, with the blocky graphics of the VCS looking laughingly primitive by comparison. While EXTREMELY annoying to an Atari VCS owner like myself at the time, they are without a doubt highly persuasive and put the name Intellivision on the lips of many video game buyers come Christmas. Atari does have ammunition of its own, however, in the form of the huge number of available VCS games, dwarfing the library of its arch rival. Their ads also highlight the fact that the Intellivision has a weak selection of action games, but Mattel later fights back by pushing such fare as Night Stalker, by Mattel designer David Rolfe.  With the digital ball back in their court, Atari counters with their own spots, featuring a young child sporting nerdy glasses and speaking in similar dulcet tones as Plimpton, comparing Atari’s many arcade ports to blank screens, representing the Intellivision‘s lack thereof. Mattel, of course, then spoofs this child with their own pint-sized pitch-kid. Speaking of kids, Mattel also abducts  E.T.: The Extraterrestrial star Henry Thomas for a series of ads with Plimpton, perhaps as an answer to the hype surrounding Atari’s release of their licensed video game based on Spielberg’s monster of a movie.

This war on the electronic battlefield between Atari and Mattel sparks quite a bit of animosity between the two videogame giants, with Atari president Ray Kassar complaining to the big-three TV broadcast networks of Mattel “misleading the facts” with their attack ads. ABC and NBC eventually pull both company’s spots off the air, while CBS continues to air Mattel’s advertising. In a classic case of “If you can’t beat ’em…”, Mattel starts making product for the “inferior” VCS, via what’s initially called the Breakthrough line of games. This fraternizing with the enemy is explained to the New York Times by Mike Doepke, director of marketing for the new division: “There will be between 8 and 11 million Atari units in the marketplace by Christmas. Why shouldn’t we make software for a hardware base like that?” As a precaution against decreased sales on Intellivision, Mattel will hold off usually between four to six months after a game’s initial release on their system before putting it out on competing game machines. These games include Frogs & Flies and Dark Cavern, ports of the popular Intellivision games Frog Bog and Night Stalker, respectively. This charge onto the Atari is snafu’d at the start when released in July of 1982: the tooling of the cases of the initial batch of what are now labelled as M Network games is a bit off so that they don’t quite fit into the VCS cartridge slot. The affected games include the first three released: Astroblast which is a version of Astrosmash for Atari’s console, and the two Super Challenge sports games, Baseball and Football. Space Attack, a version of the Intellivision’s Space Battle for Atari, is also found to have the same problem. These initial cartridges are also determined to have code inside their ROM chips that renders them unplayable on the older version of the VCS. Mattel promises to replace these under warranty, and takes steps that further releases of these games are fully compatible. Later, Coleco also loses some troops when they cross over into enemy territory. Their first batch of games for the 2600 also turns out to be incompatible with the older VCS.  Both Coleco and Mattel eventually recall these non-working games and send in more compatible reinforcements.

If you can’t beat ’em… Mattel makes M Network games for Atari and other swarthy characters

JUMP: Intellivision vs. Atari attack ads, YouTube playlist