Mattel Electronics
and
The Intellivision
Very brief history of Mattel
Mattel, Inc. is an American multinational toy manufacturing company founded in 1945 with headquarters in El Segundo, California. The products and brands it produces include Fisher-Price, Barbie, Monster High, Ever After High, Polly Pocket, Hot Wheels and Matchbox, Masters of the Universe, American Girl, board games, and WWE. In the early 1980s, Mattel produced video game systems, under its own brands and under license from Nintendo. The company has presence in 40 countries and territories and sells products in more than 150 countries. The company operates through three business segments: North America, international, and American Girl. It is the world's second largest toy maker in terms of revenue, after The Lego Group. In 2014, it ranked #403 on the Fortune 500 list. On January 17, 2017, Mattel named former Google executive Margo Georgiadis as CEO. Georgiadis stepped down as CEO of Mattel on April 19, 2018. Her last day was on April 26, 2018. Ynon Kreiz is now the new CEO of Mattel.
The name Mattel is a portmanteau of Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler, the company's founders.
Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler founded Mattel in 1945. The company sold picture frames, and later dollhouse furniture. Matson sold his share of the company to Handler due to poor health, and Handler's wife Ruth took Matson's role. In 1947, the company had its first hit toy, a ukulele called "Uke-A-Doodle".
The company incorporated the next year in California. Mattel became the first year-round sponsor of the Mickey Mouse Club TV series in 1955. The Barbie doll debuted in 1959, becoming the company's best-selling toy in history. In 1960, Mattel introduced Chatty Cathy, a talking doll revolutionizing the toy industry, which led to pull-string talking dolls and toys flooding the market throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
The company went public in 1960, and the New York Stock Exchange listed them in 1963. Mattel also acquired a number of companies during the 1960s (see table). In 1965, the company built on its success with the Chatty Cathy doll to introduce the See 'n Say talking toy, spawning a line of products. They released Hot Wheels to the market on May 18th 1968. In May 1970, Mattel formed a joint venture film production company Radnitz/Mattel Productions with producer Robert B. Radnitz, and later entered a multimillion-dollar partnership with Mehra Entertainment, whose CEO, Dr. Nishpeksh Padmamohan Mehra, is one of Mattel's Inc.'s main directors for Barbie (film series).
Mattel purchased The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1971 for $40 million from the Feld family, whom Mattel kept as management. Mattel sold the circus corporation by December 1973, despite its profit contributions, as Mattel showed a $29.9 million loss in 1972.
In 1974, an investigation found Mattel guilty of issuing false and misleading financial reports, banishing Elliot and Ruth Handler from their own company.
In 1991, Mattel moved its headquarters from Hawthorne, California to El Segundo, California.
Arthur S. Spear, a Mattel vice president, took control of the company in 1975, who returned the company to profitability in 1977. Ruth Handler sold her stock in 1980.
The Mattel Electronics line debuted in 1977 with an all-electronic handheld game. The success of the handheld led to the expansion of the line with game consoles then the line becoming its own corporation in 1982. Mattel Electronics forced Mattel to take a $394 million loss in 1983 and almost filed for bankruptcy.
Intellivision
Development of the console began in 1977, the same year as the introduction of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. In 1984 Mattel sold their video game assets to a former Mattel Electronics executive and investors that would become INTV Corporation. Games development started in 1978 and continued until 1990 when the Intellivision was discontinued.
The Intellivision was developed at Mattel in Hawthorne, California along with their Mattel Electronics line of handheld electronic games. Mattel's Design and Development group began investigating a home video game system in 1977. It was to have rich graphics and long lasting gameplay to distinguish itself from its competitors. Mattel identified a new but expensive chipset from National Semiconductor and negotiated better pricing for a simpler design. Their consultant, APh Technological Consulting, suggested a General Instrument chipset, listed as the Gimini programmable set in the GI 1977 catalog. The GI chipset lacked reprogrammable graphics and Mattel worked with GI to implement changes. GI published an updated chipset in its 1978 catalog. After initially choosing National in August 1977, Mattel waited for two months before ultimately going with the proposed GI chipset in the fall of 1977. A team at Mattel, headed by David Chandler began engineering the hardware, including the famous hand controllers. In 1978, David Rolfe of APh developed the executive control software (Exec) and with a group of Caltech summer student hires, programmed the first games. Graphics were designed by a group of artists at Mattel led by Dave James.
The Intellivision was test marketed in Fresno, California in 1979 with a total of four games available. It was released nationwide in 1980 with a price tag of US$299, a pack-in game: Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack and a library of ten cartridges. Mattel Electronics would become a subsidiary in 1981.
Though not the first system to challenge Warner Communications's Atari, it was the first to pose a serious threat to the market leader. A series of advertisements featuring George Plimpton were produced that demonstrated the superiority of the Intellivision's graphics and sound to those of the Atari 2600, using side-by-side game comparisons. One of the slogans of the television advertisements stated that Intellivision was "the closest thing to the real thing"; one example in an advertisement compared golf games. The other console's games had a blip sound and cruder graphics, while the Intellivision featured a realistic swing sound and striking of the ball, and graphics that suggested a more 3D look. There was also an advertisement comparing the Atari 2600 to it, featuring the slogan "I didn't know". In its first year, Mattel sold out its initial 175,000 production run of Intellivision "Master Components". In 1981, over 1 million Intellivision consoles were sold.
The Intellivision Master Component was branded and distributed by various companies. Before Mattel shifted manufacturing to Hong Kong, Mattel Intellivisions were manufactured by GTE Sylvania. GTE Sylvania Intellivisions were produced along with Mattel's with the brand name the only differentiation. The Sears Super Video Arcade, manufactured by Mattel in Hong Kong, has a restyled beige top cover and detachable controllers. The Sears Intellivision also has a modified Exec removing "Mattel Electronics" from the default titlescreen. In 1982 Radio Shack marketed the Tandyvision One, similar to the original Intellivision but with the gold plates replaced with more wood trim. In Japan Intellivisions were branded by Bandai in 1982, and in Brazil there were Digimed and Digiplay Intellivisions manufactured by Sharp in 1983.
Software
Inside every Intellivision is 4K of ROM containing the Exec software. It provides two benefits: reusable code that can effectively make a 4K cartridge an 8K game, and a software framework for new programmers to develop games more easily and quickly. It also allows other programmers to more easily review and continue another's project. Under the supervision of David Rolfe (APh) and graphics supplied by Mattel artist Dave James, APh was able to quickly create the Intellivision launch title library using mostly summer students. The drawback is that to be flexible and handle many different types of games the Exec runs less efficiently than a dedicated program. Intellivision games that leverage the Exec run at a 20 Hz frame rate instead of the 60 Hz frame rate for which the Intellivision was designed. Using the Exec framework is optional, but almost all Intellivision games released by Mattel Electronics are 20 Hz. The limited ROM space also meant there was no room for computer artificial intelligence and many early games required two players.
Initially, all Intellivision games were programmed by the outside firm, APh Technological Consulting, with 19 cartridges produced before Christmas 1980. Once the Intellivision project became successful, software development would be brought in-house. Mattel formed its own software development group and began hiring programmers. The original five members of that Intellivision team were Mike Minkoff, Rick Levine, John Sohl, Don Daglow, and manager Gabriel Baum. Levine and Minkoff, a long-time Mattel Toys veteran, both came over from the hand-held Mattel games engineering team. During 1981 Mattel hired programmers as fast it could. Early in 1982 Mattel Electronics relocated from Mattel headquarters to an unused industrial building. Office renovation work happened as new staff moved in. To keep these programmers from being hired away by rival Atari, their identity and work location was kept a closely guarded secret. In public, the programmers were referred to collectively as the Blue Sky Rangers.
Most of the early games were based on traditional real-world concepts such as sports, with an emphasis on realism and depth of play within the technology of the day. The Intellivision was not marketed as a toy; as such, games such as Sea Battle and B-17 Bomber are not made in a pick-up-and-play format which arcade style games are. Reading the instructions is often a prerequisite to play. Every cartridge produced by Mattel Electronics included two plastic controller "overlays" to help navigate the 12 keypad buttons, although not every game made use of the keypad. Mattel organized its games into networks: Major League Sports, Action, Strategy, Gaming, Children's Learning and later Space Action, and Arcade. The network concept was dropped in 1983, as were the convenient gate-fold style boxes for storing the cartridge, instructions, and overlays.
Starting in 1981 programmers looking for credit and royalties on sales began leaving both APh and Mattel Electronics to create Intellivision cartridges for third party publishers. They helped form Imagic in 1981 and in 1982 others joined Activision and Atari. Cheshire Engineering was formed by a few senior APh programmers including David Rolfe, author of the Exec, and Tom Loughry who created one of the most popular Intellivision games Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Cheshire would create Intellivision games for Activision. Third party developers Activision, Imagic, and Coleco started producing Intellivision cartridges in 1982. And then Atari, Parker Brothers, Sega, and Interphase followed in 1983. The third party developers, not having legal access to Exec knowledge, often bypassed the Exec framework to create smooth 30 Hz and 60 Hz Intellivision games such as The Dreadnaught Factor. Cheaper ROM prices also allowed for larger games as 8K, 12K, and then 16K cartridges became common. The first Mattel Electronics Intellivision game to run at 60 Hz was Masters of the Universe in 1983. Marketing dubbed the term "Super Graphics" on the game's packaging and marketing.
Mattel Electronics' team of programmers was diverse in experience and talent, proving to be an advantage. As competitors were often depending on licensing well known trademarks to sell video games, Mattel would have to focus on original ideas. Don Daglow was a key early programmer at Mattel and became director of Intellivision game development. Daglow created Utopia, a precursor to the sim genre and, with Eddie Dombrower, the ground breaking sports simulation World Series Major League Baseball. Daglow was also involved with the popular Intellivision games Tron Deadly Discs and Shark! Shark!.[citation needed] After Mattel Electronics closed in 1984, their programmers would go on to make significant contributions to the video game industry. Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower went on to Electronic Arts to create Earl Weaver Baseball, Don Daglow founded Stormfront Studios. Bill Fisher, Steve Roney and Mike Breen founded Quicksilver Software and David Warhol founded Realtime Associates.
Keyboard Component
From the beginning, Intellivision's packaging and promotional materials, as well as television commercials, promised the addition of a soon-to-be-available accessory called the "Keyboard Component". The Intellivision was designed as a modular home computer. The Master Component could be purchased as a stand-alone video game system and the Keyboard Component could be added, providing the computer keyboard and tape drive. Not meant to be a hobbyist or business computer, the Intellivision home computer was meant to run pre-programmed software and bring "data flow" (Videotex) into the home.
The Keyboard Component added an 8-bit 6502 processor making the Intellivision a dual processor computer. It had 16K 10-bit shared RAM that could load and execute both Intellivision CP1610 and 6502 program code from tape; a large amount as typical cartridges of the day were 4K. The cassettes have two tracks of digital data and two tracks of analog audio completely controlled by the computer. Two tracks are read only for the software, and two tracks for user data. The tape-drive was block addressed with high speed indexing. A high resolution 40x24 monochrome text display could overlay regular Intellivision graphics. There was an input for a microphone and two additional expansion ports for peripherals and RAM expansion. The Microsoft BASIC programming cartridge used one of these ports. Expanded memory cartridges could support 1000 8KB pages. A third pass-through cartridge port was for regular Intellivision cartridges. It uses the Intellivision's power supply. A 40-column thermal printer was available, and a telephone modem was planned along with voice synthesis and voice recognition.
David Rolfe of APh wrote a control program for the Keyboard Component called PicSe (Picture Sequencer) specifically for the development of multimedia applications. PicSe synchronized the graphics and analog audio while concurrently saving or loading data to tape. Productivity software for home finances, personal improvement, and self education were planned. Subject experts were consulted and their voices recorded and used in the software.
Three applications using the PicSe system were released on cassette tape:
- Conversational French
- Jack Lalanne's Physical Conditioning
- Spelling Challenge
- Family Budgeting
- Geography Challenge
- Crosswords I, II, and III
The keyboard component's repeated delays became so notorious around Mattel headquarters that comedian Jay Leno, when performing at Mattel's 1981 Christmas party, got his biggest titter of the evening with the line: "You know what the three big lies are, don't you? 'The check is in the mail,' 'I'll still respect you in the morning,' and 'The keyboard will be out in spring.'"
Complaints from consumers who had chosen to buy the Intellivision specifically on the promise of a "coming soon" personal-computer upgrade, eventually caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who started investigating Mattel Electronics for fraud and false advertising. In mid-1982 the FTC ordered Mattel to pay a monthly fine (said to be $10,000) until the promised computer upgrade was in full retail distribution. To protect themselves from the ongoing fines, the Keyboard Component was officially canceled in August 1982 and the Entertainment Computer System (ECS) module offered up in its place. Part of Mattel's settlement with the FTC involved offering to buy back all of the existing Keyboard Components from customers. Mattel provided a full refund but without a receipt paid $550 for the Keyboard Component, $60 for the BASIC cartridge, and $30 for each cassette software. Any customer who opted to keep theirs was required to sign a waiver with the understanding that no more software would be written for the system and absolved Mattel of any future responsibility for technical support. They were also compensated with $1000 worth of Mattel Electronics products.
While approximately four thousand Keyboard Components were manufactured, it is not clear how many of them actually found their way into the hands of Intellivision customers. Today, very few of them still exist. Many of the units were dismantled for parts. Others were used by Mattel Electronics programmers as part of their development system. A Keyboard Component could be interfaced with an Intellivision development system in place of the hand-built Magus board RAM cartridge. Data transfer to the Keyboard Component RAM had to be done serially and was slower compared with the Magus board parallel interface.
The keyboard component debacle was ranked as No. 11 on GameSpy's "25 dumbest moments in gaming".
Entertainment Computer System (ECS)
In mid-1981, Mattel's upper management was becoming concerned that the keyboard component division would never be able to produce a sellable product. As a result, Mattel Electronics set up a competing internal engineering team whose stated mission was to produce an inexpensive add-on called the "Basic Development System", or BDS, to be sold as an educational device to introduce kids to the concepts of computer programming.
The rival BDS engineering group, who had to keep the project's real purpose a secret among themselves, fearing that if David Chandler, the head of the keyboard component team, found out about it he would use his influence to end the project, eventually came up with a much less expensive alternative. Originally dubbed the "Lucky", from LUCKI: Low User-Cost Keyboard Interface, it lacked many of the sophisticated features envisioned for the original keyboard component. Gone, for example, was the 16K (8MB max) of RAM, the secondary CPU, and high resolution text; instead, the ECS offered a mere 2KB RAM expansion, a built-in BASIC that was marginally functional, plus a much-simplified cassette and printer interface.
Ultimately, this fulfilled the original promises of turning the Intellivision into a computer, making it possible to write programs and store them to tape, and interfacing with a printer well enough to allow Mattel to claim that they had delivered the promised computer upgrade and stop the FTC's mounting fines. It even offered, via an additional sound chip (AY-3-8917) inside the ECS module and an optional 49-key music synthesizer keyboard, the possibility of turning the Intellivision into a multi-voice synthesizer which could be used to play or learn music.
In the fall of 1982, the LUCKI, now renamed the Entertainment Computer System (ECS), was presented at the annual sales meeting, officially ending the ill-fated keyboard component project. A new advertising campaign was aired in time for the 1982 Christmas season, and the ECS itself was shown to the public at the January 1983 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. A few months later, the ECS hit the market, and the FTC agreed to drop the $10K per day fines.
By the time the ECS made its retail debut as the Intellivision Computer Module, an internal shake-up at the top levels of Mattel Electronics' management had caused the company's focus to shift away from hardware add-ons in favor of software, and the ECS received very little in terms of furthering the marketing push. Further hardware developments, including a planned Program Expander that would have added another 16K of RAM and a more intricate, fully featured Extended-BASIC to the system, were halted. In the end a half-dozen software titles were released for the ECS; a few more were completed but not released.
The ECS also offered four player game-play with the optional addition of two extra hand controllers. Four player games were in development when Mattel Electronics closed in 1984. World Cup Soccer was later completed and released in 1985 by Dextel in Europe and then INTV Corporation in North America. The documentation does not mention it but when the ECS Computer Adapter is used, World Cup Soccer can be played with one to four players, or two players cooperatively against the computer.
Intellivoice
In 1982 Mattel introduced a new peripheral for the Intellivision: the Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module. A speech synthesizer which produces speech with compatible cartridges. The Intellivoice was original in two respects: human sounding male and female voices with distinct accents, and the speech-supporting games were designed with speech being an integral part of the game-play.
Like the Intellivision chip-set, the Intellivoice chip-set was developed by General Instrument. The SP0256-012 orator chip has 2KB ROM inside, and is used to store the speech for numerical digits, some common words, and the phrase "Mattel Electronics presents". Speech can also be processed from the Intellivoice's SP650 buffer chip, stored and loaded from cartridge memory. That buffer chip has its own I/O and the Intellivoice has a 30-pin expansion port under a removable top plate. Mattel Electronics planned to use that connector for wireless hand controllers.
Mattel Electronics built a state of the art voice processing lab to produce the phrases used in Intellivoice games. However, the amount of speech that could be compressed into an 8K or 12K cartridge and still leave room for a game was limited. Intellivoice cartridges Space Spartans and B-17 Bomber did sell about 300,000 copies each, priced a few dollars more than regular Intellivision cartridges. However, at $79 the Intellivoice did not sell as well as Mattel expected, and Intellivoices were later offered free with the purchase of a Master Component. In August 1983 the Intellivoice system was quietly phased out. A children's title called Magic Carousel, and foreign language versions of Space Spartans were completed but shelved. Additional games Woody Woodpecker and Space Shuttle went unfinished with the voice recordings unused.
The four titles available for the Intellivoice system, in order of their release, were:
- Space Spartans
- B-17 Bomber
- Bomb Squad
- Tron: Solar Sailer
Intellivision IIIn the spring of 1983, Mattel introduced the Intellivision II. Not the technology upgrade that was expected but a cheaper, compact replacement to the original. The Intellivision II was designed to be inexpensive to manufacture and service, with updated styling. It also had longer controller cords. The Intellivision II was initially released without a pack-in game but was later packaged with BurgerTime in the United States and Lock'N'Chase in Canada. In 1984 the Digiplay Intellivision II was introduced in Brazil. Brasil was the only country outside North America to have the redesigned Intellivision II.
Using an external AC Adapter (16.2VAC), consolidating some ICs, and taking advantage of relaxed FCC emission standards, the Intellivision II has a significantly smaller footprint than the original. The controllers, now detachable, have a different feel with plastic rather than rubber side buttons, and a flat membrane keypad. Users of the original Intellivision would miss the ability to find keypad buttons by the tactile feel of the original controller bubble keypad.
One functional difference was the addition of a video input to the cartridge port; added specifically to support the System Changer. The System Changer, also released in 1983 by Mattel, is an Intellivision peripheral that plays Atari 2600 cartridges through the Intellivision. The Intellivision hand controllers can be used to play Atari 2600 games. The System Changer also has two controller ports compatible with Atari joysticks. The original Intellivision requires a hardware modification in order to work with the System Changer; a service provided by Mattel. Otherwise the Intellivision II was promoted to be compatible with the original.
It was discovered that a few Coleco Intellivision games did not work on the Intellivision II. Mattel secretly changed the Intellivision's internal ROM program (Exec) in an attempt to lock out 3rd party titles. A few of Coleco's early games were affected but the 3rd party developers quickly figured out how to get around it. Mattel's own Electric Company Word Fun, however, will not run on the Intellivision II due to this change. In an unrelated issue but also due to Exec changes, Super Pro Football experiences a minor glitch where the quarterback does not appear until after the ball is hiked. There were also some minor changes to the sound chip (AY-3-8914A/AY-3-8916) affecting sound effects in some games. Programmers at Mattel discovered the audio differences and avoided the problem in future games.
Intellivision III
In 1982, with new machines introduced by competitors, Mattel marketing wanted to bring an upgraded system to market sooner. The Intellivision III was to be an upgraded but backward compatible system; based on a similar CP1610 processor and with an improved graphics STIC chip producing double the resolution with more sprites and colors. The Intellivision III existed in the lab and a new EXEC was written for it but little else. It was cancelled in mid-1983. A Mattel document called Target Specification Intellivision III has the following.
- CPU: CP1610-2 at 3.56 MHz (2x original CPU speed)
- separate 16-bit data bus and address bus
- multiplexed data/address mode for backward compatibility with existing cartridges
- Graphics: STIC 1B
- tiled graphics, 20 cards by 24 rows
- 2-colour 16x8 pixel cards for a resolution of 320x192
- 4-colour 8x8 pixel cards for a resolution of 160x192
- 40 x 24 alphanumerics
- 16 programmable colors
- colour palette selectable per card
- 12-bit RGB definition for 4096 possible colors
- 8 sprites per scanline
- reusable on different scanlines
- 16 pixels wide in 1 colour, 8 pixels wide in 3 colors
- up-to 255 lines high
- overlap detect of individual colors
- fine pixel horizontal and vertical scrolling (backward compatible)
- single data bus allows graphics rom/ram storage on cartridges
- STIC 1 backwards compatible mode
- tiled graphics, 20 cards by 24 rows
- RAM: 4K words, 16-bit, DRAM (upgradable to 65K words)
- five channel sound with improved frequency range (backward compatible)
- integrated Intellivoice
Intellivision IV
Dave Chandler's group began designing Mattel's next generation console in 1981 codenamed Decade, now referred to as the Intellivision IV. It was based on the 32-bit MC68000 processor and a custom designed advanced graphic interface chip. Specifications called for dual display support, 240x192 resolution bitmap and 40x24 tiled graphics modes, four colors per tile, 16 multicolored sprites per scan-line with 3D rotation and shading, 16 programmable 12-bit colors and antialiasing. A machine that could lead Mattel Electronics into the 1990s, however on August 4, 1983 most hardware people at Mattel Electronics had been laid off.
Competition and market crash
According to the company's 1982 10-K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mattel had almost 20% of the domestic video-game market. Although the Atari 2600 had more third-party development, Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games reported after visiting the summer 1982 Consumer Electronics Show that "The momentum is tremendous". Activision and Imagic began releasing games for the Intellivision, as did hardware rival Coleco. Mattel created "M Network" branded games for Atari's system. The company's advertisement budget increased to over $20 million for the year. In its October 1982 stockholders' report Mattel announced that Electronics had, so far that year, posted a nearly $100 million profit on nearly $500 million sales; a threefold increase over October 1981.
However, the same report predicted a loss for the upcoming quarter. Still hiring continued, and optimism that the investment in software and hardware development will payoff. The M Network brand expanded to personal computers. An office in Taiwan was opened to handle Apple II programming. The original five-person Mattel game development team had grown to 110 people under new vice president Baum, while Daglow led Intellivision development and top engineer Minkoff directed all work on all other platforms. In February 1983, Mattel Electronics opened an office in the south of France to provide European input to Intellivision games and develop games for the ColecoVision. At its peak Mattel Electronics employed 1800 people.
Amid the flurry of new hardware and software development, there was trouble for the Intellivision. New game systems (ColecoVision and Atari 5200) introduced in 1982 took advantage of falling RAM prices to offer graphics closer to arcade quality. In 1983 the price of home computers, particularly the Commodore 64 came down drastically to compete with video game system sales. The market became flooded with hardware and software, and retailers were ill-equipped to cope. In spring 1983 hiring at Mattel Electronics came to a halt.
At the June 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, Mattel Electronics had the opportunity to show off all their new products. The response was underwhelming. Amidst massive losses top management was replaced. On July 12, 1983, Mattel Electronics President Josh Denham was replaced with outsider Mack Morris. Morris brought in former Mattel Electronics president and marketing director Jeff Rochlis as a consultant and all projects were under review. The Intellivision III was cancelled and then all new hardware development was stopped when 660 jobs were cut on August 4. The price of the Intellivision II (which launched at $150 earlier that year) was lowered to $69, Mattel Electronics was to be a software company. However, by October 1983 Electronics' losses were over $280 million and one third of the programming staff were laid off. In November another third were gone, and on January 20, 1984 the remaining programming staff were laid-off. The Taiwan and French offices continued a little while longer due to contract and legal obligations. On February 4, 1984 Mattel sold the Intellivision business for $20 million. In 1983. 750,000 Intellivision Master Components were sold, more than three million units from 1980 to 1983.
INTV Corporation (1984-1990)
Former Mattel Electronics Senior Vice President of Marketing, Terrence Valeski, understood that although losses were huge, the demand for video games increased in 1983. Valeski found investors and purchased the rights to Intellivision, the games, and inventory from Mattel. A new company, Intellivision Inc, was formed and by the end of 1984 Valeski bought out the other investors and changed the name to INTV Corporation. They continued to supply the large toy stores and sold games through direct mail order. At first they sold the existing inventory of games and Intellivision II systems. When the inventory of games sold out they produced more, but without the Mattel name or unnecessary licenses on the printed materials. To lower costs, the boxes, instructions, and overlays were produced at lower quality compared to Mattel.
In France, the Mattel Electronics office found investors and became Nice Ideas in April 1984. They continued to work on Intellivision, Colecovision, and other computer games. They produced Intellivision World Cup Soccer and Championship Tennis, both released in 1985 by European publisher Dextel.
In 1985 INTV Corporation introduced the INTV System III, also branded as the Intellivision Super Pro System, using the same design as the original Intellivision model but in black and silver. That same year INTV Corp introduced two new games that were completed at Mattel but not released: Thunder Castle and World Championship Baseball. With their early success INTV Corp decided to produce new games and in 1986 introduced Super Pro Football, an update of Mattel NFL Football. INTV Corp continued a relationship that Mattel had with Data East and produced all new titles such as Commando in 1987 and Body Slam Wrestling in 1988. Also in 1987 INTV Corp released Dig Dug, purchased from Atari where the game was completed but not released in 1984. They also got into producing next generation games with the production of Monster Truck Rally for Nintendo NES in 1991, also released as Stadium Mud Buggies for Intellivision in 1989.
Licensing agreements with Nintendo and Sega required INTV Corporation to discontinue the Intellivision in 1990. INTV Corporation did publish 21 new Intellivision cartridges bringing the Intellivision library to a total of 124 cartridges plus one compilation cartridge.
Tutorvision
In 1989 INTV Corp and World Book Encyclopedia entered into an agreement to manufacture an educational video game system called Tutorvision. It is a modified Intellivision, the case molded in light beige with gold and blue trim. The Exec ROM expanded, system RAM increased to 766K, and graphics RAM increased to 2KB. That is enough graphics RAM to buffer the entire screen.
Games were designed by World Book, J. Hakansson Associates, and programmed by Realtime Associates. Sixteen titles were in production, plus one Canadian variation. However, the cartridges and the Tutorvision were never released; instead World Book and INTV Corporation sued each other. In 1990 INTV Corporation filed for bankruptcy protection and closed in 1991.