Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Intellivision

Back in the early 80's - our family owned an Intellivision video game console, and I occasionally took breaks from playing it to eat meals and grab a few hours sleep.

There were really only two video game systems back then - Atari and Intellivision (followed in 1982 by Colecovision, followed in 1983 by the bottom dropping out of the whole industry. But I digress...)

In those days - unlike the way things work today - games made for one system weren't available for the other, and vice-versa. Atari had the more popular games (Asteroids, Space Invaders), but Intellivision had (arguably) the better game system.

Loyalty between the two camps was fierce. Claims made against the other in TV ads were taken very personally - which brings us to today's link.

Feeling the heat from Intellivision, Atari aired an ad with an annoying kid (not unlike the annoying kid in today's video - only different) comparing all Atari's popular space games to the "competition". Of course, the competition - Intellivision - didn't have any popular space games, so the "comparison" was a blank screen. Ouch.

Intellivision responded almost immediately with this ad - which not only pointed out that they had recently released several fine knockoffs of the Atari games (I had 'em all - and can attest to their unqualified awesomeness), but then proceeded to make fun of the obnoxious Atari kid with a knockoff of HIM as well.

All this, and the late George Plimpton. How can you go wrong?