Dave Warhol needs your vote! On Halloween we reported that Dave had launched a new game genre with the release that day of Soul Catcher for the iPhone. Available on the iPhone AppStore, Soul Catcher is the first Realtime Audio Adventure from Dave's company, Realtime Associates.
As "Audio Adventure" implies, players have to rely on their ears, not eyes, to progress through Soul Catcher. Clues are provided through narration, dialog, sound effects and music. Navigating requires paying attention to where sounds are placed in the stereo spectrum. Only static graphics and simple controls are displayed on the iPhone screen.
Soul Catcher is indeed an entirely new type of game, which is why it has been nominated for a Best App Ever Award in the category "Most Innovative Game"!
Dave is planning a series of Audio Adventures, but he needs your help! Winning this award would help publicize and sell the game, making future editions possible. So please click on the Vote! button below to support Soul Catcher! Please do it now - votes have to be made by January 6! Dave and the other Blue Sky Rangers thank you!
Vote for Soul Trapper: Episode 1 - Ollie Ollie Oxen Free! in Most Innovative Game
The Best App Ever Awards are presented by 148Apps.com: reviews and news of iPhone applications.
Dave Warhol was the designer of the Intellivision game Mind Strike and co-designer of Thunder Castle at Mattel Electronics. He went on to produce all of the original titles released by INTV Corp., including Commando, Diner and the Super Pro sports series. He is founder and president of Realtime Associates, which has developed titles for most of the major game platforms over the past 20 years. Realtime developed the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube versions of Intellivision Lives! Write Comment
Last Updated ( Friday, 02 January 2009 )
Blue Sky Ranger Invites You to Check Out his Science Fiction Stories
Thursday, 01 January 2009
Blue Sky Ranger Richard S. Levine was one of the original Intellivision programers. At Mattel Electronics in 1980, Rick developed PBA Bowling (with Mike Minkoff). Later, at Imagic, he created two of the most imaginative Intellivision games, Microsurgeon and Truckin'.
Beyond his videogame work, Rick has always had a fascination with the English language. For the last few years he's been writing speculative fiction (science fiction, horror and fantasy). He's had several short stories
published in Ray Gun Revival, OG's Speculative Fiction, The Martian Wave, The Fifth Di, The Lorelei Signal, AlienSkin, Golden Visions and other online and print magazines. His short story, "A Comic on Phobos," was nominated for the 2006 James Award and more recently his "Seismic Morality" was nominated for the 2009 Darrell Award (best Mid-South story).
Many of these are posted online; links can be found on Rick's website. He hopes the fans of his games will read and enjoy them! Write Comment
Last Updated ( Friday, 02 January 2009 )
Happy Birthday Gabriel Baum, Pat Lewis DuLong
Tuesday, 02 December 2008
Celebrating a birthday today is the leader of The Blue Sky Rangers: Gabriel Baum. As Vice President of Applications Software at Mattel Electronics, Gabriel was in charge of Intellivision, M Network (Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Apple II, PC) and Aquarius Computer game design in California, France and Taiwan.
In the TV Guide profile that coined the name "Blue Sky Rangers," the Intellivision programmers interviewed were given fake names to hide their identities from Atari headhunters. Gabriel was called "Hal," after the Hal 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
When the article was published in June 1982, the programmers created a Blue Sky Rangers shield with a drawing of Gabriel in the middle, surrounded by the motto "In Hal We Trust." The shield was displayed throughout the Applications Software department - on plaques, T-shirts and stationery - partly to boost camaraderie but mainly because it bugged Gabriel. (He had fought against the magazine using the made-up name "Blue Sky Rangers.")
Also celebrating a birthday today is Pat Lewis DuLong, who created music and sound effects for M Network games, including the Atari 2600 versions of BurgerTime, Bump 'N' Jump and Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man. Write Comment
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 02 December 2008 )
Four Programmers Celebrate Birthdays
Monday, 24 November 2008
Four Blue Sky Rangers celebrate birthdays this week.
Minhchou Tran celebrated her birthday November 23. She programmed the Intellivision Pinball cartridge with Blue Sky Ranger Bob Newstadt. You can play Pinball on the Intellivision Lives! collection for Windows and for PS2/PS3, both available in our web store, or on the Xbox Originals version in the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Steve Sents (November 24) programmed TRON Deadly Discs, one of the most popular Intellivision games. Due to licensing restrictions from Disney, we cannot currently re-release the original. HOWEVER, our Intellivision Second Edition plug-and-play unit does include Deadly Discs, a slightly reworked version that removes the copyrighted elements from the TRON movie. If you've been missing this game, the Intellivision Second Edition version (shown here) is the closest thing to the real thing. Hurry! The plug-and-play is being discontinued - we are limited to stock on hand!
Steve Tatsumi (November 25) was a programmer in the M Network group which translated Intellivision games to the Atari 2600 platform. An exception was Steve's Kool-Aid Man. It is not an Atari version of the Intellivision Kool-Aid Man; it is an original design by Steve.
Daniel Bass (November 26) did the Intellivision version of the Konami arcade game Loco-Motion. He also started work at Mattel Electronics on the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Tower of Doom. Mattel stopped Intellivision production in 1984 with the game only half-finished. Work on it was resumed a few years later by INTV Corporation. Dan was unavailable to complete the game, so the job fell to John Tomlinson. You can play Tower of Doom on the Intellivision Lives! collection for Windows and for PS2/PS3, both available on our web store, or on the Xbox Originals version in the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Make it an Intellivision Christmas! Last Chance for Several Items!
Wednesday, 05 November 2008
Bring back fun memories this Christmas with the gift of Intellivision for yourself and your childhood Intellivision opponents: your dad, your brother, your sister, your best friend. Play the games again. Put an Intellivision poster in your game room. Give an Intellivision T-shirt. Challenge your kids to the games YOU grew up with. Introduce them to Intellivision with plug-and-play units.
But hurry! This will be the last Christmas for a number of our most popular items! Here are a few that will be going away soon:
Intellivision Lives! for PlayStation 2. Our publishing partner Crave Entertainment has discontinued this collection of over 60 classic Intellivision games because retailers now only stock products for PlayStation 3. Even though this collection plays fine on PS3, it's admittedly a PS2 product, so out it goes. We still have some, but once they're gone, they're gone. The Xbox and GameCube versions have already sold out; don't miss your last chance for PlayStation! Only $19.99 in our web store.
Intellivision Second Edition Plug-and-Play. In the last five years, nearly 4 million Intellivision plug-and-plays have been sold. Kids love them and they make great gifts. But retailers feel the plug-and-play market is, well, played out, so our partner Techno Source USA has stopped manufacturing them. We are limited to the remaining inventory of Intellivision Second Edition. The battery-operated controller has ten games built in. Plug into your TV and play! Only $12.99 in our web store.
Las Vegas Lounge Trio. For the last Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas we put together this numbered, limited-edition 3-pack of Intellivision products: the Intellivision Lives! and Intellivision Rocks PC/Mac game collections plus the Intellivision in Hi-Fi music CD. We had some left over which we made available in our web store, but we expect to run out of them during this Christmas sales season. You really shouldn't miss this! First for its collector's value: we only made 500 packs, each with a colorful wraparound cover and a reproduction of the 1980s Intellivision Game Club Membership Card, and second for the savings: these items purchased separately in our web store would cost $75. The Trio is priced at only $39.95!Get them while you can! (Intellivision Lives! and Intellivision Rocks play on Windows 98 or XP and on Macs that can run in Classic Mode. Not for Vista or Intel-based Macs.)
Find these and many other Intellivision items in our web store! Christmas is just around the corner so get your order in today! Write Comment
Last Updated ( Thursday, 06 November 2008 )
Happy Birthday Stephen Roney and Steve Ettinger
Monday, 03 November 2008
Blue Sky Rangers Stephen Roney and Steve Ettinger celebrate birthdays this week - Mr. Roney on the 4th and Mr. Ettinger on the 5th.
Stephen Roney started at Mattel Electronics in 1981 and was involved in several landmark games: he and Bill Fisher developed Space Spartans, the first game for the Intellivoice speech module, then he and Bill joined John Sohl in developing the voice game B-17 Bomber. He ported the game Utopia to the Aquarius Computer and worked on several unreleased games, including Space Shuttle and translations of Space Spartans into Italian, German and French.
(Video and audio clips of Space Shuttle and the foreign voice games are included in the museum section of Intellivision Rocks for Windows and Mac, available exclusively in our web store.)
In 1997 with fellow Blue Sky Ranger Keith Robinson, he founded Intellivision Productions, Inc. He wrote the Macintosh emulation software for Intellivision used in their first Intellivision Lives! release. That software, written in transportable C code, has been the basis for the Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and cell phone versions of the Intellivision emulator.
Steve Ettinger joined Mattel Electronics in 1982, where he had some bad luck with his games. His first project was Magic Carousel, a children's game for the Intellivoice module. After the game was finished, Mattel decided there wasn't a big enough market for a kids' voice game and killed it. His next was Hover Force 3-D, planned to be the first game using a new 3-D glasses technology. The game received a high-profile launch at the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Two weeks later, Mattel shut down Intellivision production.
Hover Force was eventually released in 1986 as a non-3-D game by INTV Corporation.Magic Carousel had to wait until 2001 to see the light of day in the Intellivision Rocks collection for Windows and Mac.
Steve had better luck creating new games for INTV Corp. from 1987 to 1989. In addition to Hover Force, INTV published his games Body Slam: Super Pro Wrestling, Chip Shot: Super Pro Golf, Slam Dunk: Super Pro Basketball and Spiker! Super Pro Volleyball. All five are included in the Intellivision Lives! collections for Windows/Mac and for PlayStation 2/3 available in our web store.
Both Steves are on view in this home video shot by the programmers at Mattel in 1983; Steve Ettinger as himself and Steve Roney as 60 Minutes commentator "Andy Roney.":
The question I'm asked most frequently is "When is the DS version coming out?" Excellent question. It has been over three years since we first showed Intellivision Lives! for DS at the 2005 E3. Dozens of publishers have evaluated the product, and all have passed. The problem isn't the quality of the collection itself; we've received nothing but enthusiastic feedback. The problem is the bean counters for these publishers. In August, one company told us in an e-mail, "We intend to publish this game..." In September, they reversed themselves because "...the projected return did not justify the capital expenditure..." My frustration is that we have to find a licensed Nintendo publisher to get the DS version released; Nintendo does not have a path that would allow us to distribute Intellivision Lives! ourselves directly to the public.
That is changing soon. Nintendo is planning on releasing the successor to the DS, the DSi, in Spring 2009. The DSi will be able to upload complete games - including Intellivision Lives! - through a service similar to Wii Ware and Xbox Live Marketplace (which now carries our Xbox version). We are still trying to find a publisher for the current DS, but I am excited that even if that doesn't happen, you will all finally be able to play the DS version with the DSi.
Nintendo hasn't yet released details of how publishing to the DSi is going to work, so none of this is official; that's why I'm talking about it here in a blog instead of in the News column. But we have opened communication with Nintendo and I hope we can make an official announcement soon. Thanks for your patience; it looks like in 2009 it will be Springtime for Intellivision!
I'd like to thank all of the Intellivision fans who stopped by the National Cartoonists Society booth at Comic-Con to say Hello! It's always great to meet those of you who grew up with Intellivision and to hear the stories of playing the games under the Christmas tree with your brother or sister of dad, even if it does make me feel about 120 years old.
Here's a slideshow of photos from the booth... Write Comment
Earlier today, Tuesday, June 10, we posted a birthday greeting to Blue Sky Ranger John Sohl. John sent us an e-mail this afternoon thanking us for the birthday wishes and, by the way, pointing out that his birthday is actually June 20. Whoops. We've taken down the item and deleted the RSS link. They'll be back on the 20th.
I'm very sorry for the error. Luckily mistakes like this are extremely, extremely rare. Well, except for when we got Mike Minkoff's birthday wrong in the Intellivision Update e-mail last week. His birthday is May 30, not 15.
John says he is particularly looking forward to his birthday this year, as he'll be eligible for the 55+ meals at Denny's! Congrats, John (10 days early)!
Those of you who used to receive the Intellivision Newsletter should have received an “Intellivision Update” last weekend. (If not, please check your Spam folder and add us to your address book.)
If you want to sign up for the Updates, here's the form:
But, many of you have asked, Whatever happened to the Intellivision Newsletters? Here's the scoop...
Dave Warhol needs your vote! On Halloween we reported that Dave had launched a new game genre with the release that day of Soul Catcher for the iPhone. Available on the iPhone AppStore, Soul Catcher is the first Realtime Audio Adventure from Dave's company, Realtime Associates.
Blue Sky Ranger Richard S. Levine was one of the original Intellivision programers. At Mattel Electronics in 1980, Rick developed PBA Bowling (with Mike Minkoff). Later, at Imagic, he created two of the most imaginative Intellivision games, Microsurgeon and Truckin'.
Celebrating a birthday today is the leader of The Blue Sky Rangers: Gabriel Baum. As Vice President of Applications Software at Mattel Electronics, Gabriel was in charge of Intellivision, M Network (Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Apple II, PC) and Aquarius Computer game design in California, France and Taiwan.
You can read the 
Four Blue Sky Rangers celebrate birthdays this week.
TRON Deadly Discs, one of the most popular Intellivision games. Due to licensing restrictions from Disney, we cannot currently re-release the original. HOWEVER, our 
Steve Tatsumi (November 25) was a programmer in the M Network group which translated Intellivision games to the Atari 2600 platform. An exception was Steve's Kool-Aid Man. It is not an Atari version of the Intellivision Kool-Aid Man; it is an original design by Steve. 
Daniel Bass (November 26) did the Intellivision version of the Konami arcade game Loco-Motion. He also started work at Mattel Electronics on the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Tower of Doom. Mattel stopped Intellivision production in 1984 with the game only half-finished. Work on it was resumed a few years later by INTV Corporation. Dan was unavailable to complete the game, so the job fell to John Tomlinson. You can play Tower of Doom on the Intellivision Lives! collection for 
Intellivision Lives! for PlayStation 2.
Intellivision Second Edition Plug-and-Play.
Las Vegas Lounge Trio.
Stephen Roney started at Mattel Electronics in 1981 and was involved in several landmark games: he and Bill Fisher developed Space Spartans, the first game for the Intellivoice speech module, then he and Bill joined John Sohl in developing the voice game B-17 Bomber. He ported the game Utopia to the Aquarius Computer and worked on several unreleased games, including Space Shuttle and translations of Space Spartans into Italian, German and French.
Steve Ettinger joined Mattel Electronics in 1982, where he had some bad luck with his games. His first project was Magic Carousel, a children's game for the Intellivoice module. After the game was finished, Mattel decided there wasn't a big enough market for a kids' voice game and killed it. His next was Hover Force 3-D, planned to be the first game using a new 3-D glasses technology. The game received a high-profile launch at the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Two weeks later, Mattel shut down Intellivision production.