Okay, I would probably be bashed on the skull with a two by four if I sat here and tried to tell you that the graphics and sound for Intellivision Classics were worth even talking about. When it comes to the retro gaming phenomenon, emulation is what becomes important, and by far I must say that this is one title that really does a good job of emulating the classic system. Graphically speaking, the game does the original Atari nemesis justice. Other than a few mishaps with some wandering sprites, I truly could not tell the difference. The sound however, was a big let down. The emulation sounded static-filled and jerky in most of the games, and we all know how powerful the sound was in the old Intellivision system (NOT!!). What happened in this department Activision??

This category is the most important for this game because it sums up everything the game has to offer. Intellivision Classics gives you 30 remakes of games that existed during the era of the system. Some of these games include Basketball, Baseball, Frog Bag, Hover Force, Night Stalker, Pinball, Sea Battle, Snafu, Sub Hunt, Tennis, and one of my all-time favorites, Shark! Shark! Most of the games on this CD are two-player only, so if you don’t have any friends, then you probably just cut your gaming experience from 30 games to closer to 17. Unless you were a die hard gamer back in the early 80s, many of the titles will be unfamiliar to you, which leads me to what I believe really hurt this title. Where in the world is Pitfall, or Tron? Hell, even Stampede? Where are the games that made this system the slight competitor of Atari that it was? Therefore, this sums this one up: “Good emulator, Poor choice of library.”

The learning curve definitely hurts the overall fun factor of Intellivision Classics, but if it were not for the complicated controls of the original, none of us true hardcore game masters would be coordinated enough to master many of the button combinations found on modern day titles.

OOOUUUUCCCHHH!! It is bad enough that the original classic system had one heck of a learning curve on its bulky controller with numerous buttons, but on its PSX counterpart, in many of the games there were several different button combinations that had to be pressed in order for simple character movements. However, the responsiveness was there and with some practice, one is able to master most of the games on Intellivision Classics.