The Intellivision is a second-generation console, released in 1979. The Evercade is a recently released console that focuses on physical media collection for retro games. Coming in the Fall of 2021, the Evercade will have an Intellivision collection to call its own thanks to the growing partnerships that Blaze Entertainment continues to form!
Now, I may be a little biased because Intellivision was the first video game console that I ever played. I remember playing Astrosmash, Space Armada, Shark Shark, Night Stalker, and Burgertime quite a bit with my late grandparents and my parents. I have preordered the upcoming Amico and with the recent release date changed to October 10, 2021, the Amico and this cartridge’s release should align quite nicely.
As of the writing of this article, Evercade has announced the following titles:
Frog Bog
Night Stalker
Astrosmash
And nine more games that have not been announced
Frog Bog was a fun game to play as a kid. The frogs are on two lily-pads and they jump back and forth in a quest to eat the most flies. As for long-term play, I don’t know if it has enough variance to keep an adult player engaged. Night Stalker and Astrosmash are both set to receive a make-over on the Amico. These are action-based games and are of far more interest to this writer.
Astrosmash is a game where the player is a small ship destroying asteroids that fall from the sky. Occasionally, there are satellites that will destroy everything on-screen if they reach the platform where the player sits. There is even a small satellite; represented by a dot that follows the player, requiring hyperspace techniques in order to avoid it. In truth, I have never been good at avoiding that dot. Due to the limitations of the hardware; although 16-bit at the time, the gameplay elements remain similar throughout the game. The background colors change as the player progresses and the attacks are more aggressive. After multiple levels, another enemy starts moving across the screen from the left or right, shooting at the player. With only a few buttons required to play, a D-Pad should make for a nice addition to the game. The original disk was not ideal for long-game sessions.
Night Stalker is another game that should transfer nicely to the controls of the Evercade. It only requires four buttons (representing up, down, left, and right) and the diamond shape button layout should serve nicely. Essentially, the player is a small character with the sole goal of destroying all enemies on the screen. The player’s only refuge is the bunker. The game starts off with the following enemies: two bats, a spider, and a robot. As the bats are destroyed, two other first-generation robots replace each bat. After enough points are earned, the robot is replaced with a stronger model. The robots that have since replaced the bats remain the same first-generation model.
I personally own an Evercade and strongly favor the second Namco Collection over the other games. In the newer firmware, there have been options to change the controls. With a console like the Intellivision being emulated on the Evercade, I would hope that the controls can be modified however the player chooses.
As an Intellivision fan, I look forward to playing this game and maybe even comparing it to the Intellivision Lives games on the Xbox and PlayStation 2.
