My earliest memory of video games involved Intellivision. I had received it as a hand-me-down from my older brothers and by the time it had gotten down to me, the cartridges no longer had any labels on them, so every time I put a new game in, it was a mystery as to which one I’d be playing.
Luckily, the Skiing and Chip Shot Golf don’t fair as well. Skiing feels incredibly slow and clumsy, and is just not enjoyable to play. Chip Shot’s controls, meanwhile, hold it back from even getting off the ground. This is just too awkward to play over a touch screen phone.
On the downside, there aren’t many extras packed into this app at all. For a nostalgia trip, the developers didn’t go out of their way to provide any Easter eggs, outside of the visual of the cartridge being placed into the Intellivision just before you start playing a new game. Each game has its own in-game instruction manual for those of us who haven’t played these games in 20 years, which is a plus, but that’s about all to see here.
There is a multiplayer option available for some of the games, but it appears to only work when your phone can detect another in the area, and isn’t supported by any sort of multiplayer network.
I know I sound down about many of the games in this collection, but it really is worth the free download, if only to check out Astrosmash. If you feel like venturing into the paid games, you do so at your own risk, but there are a few here worth the $1 price tag for nostalgia’s sake alone. Those looking for a trumped-up affair can go back to your regularly scheduled iPhone games.
