Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Also known as: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain (Re-release)

Developer: Mattel

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was Mattel's way to give Intellivision owners their very own variation of Atari's Adventure. If this game had been released a few years earlier, around the same time as Adventure, I think it would have stolen the spotlight from Atari's beloved game…well, to a degree. Adventure is still remembered fondly today because of its simplicity. Anyone, regardless of video game playing experience, can play Adventure and figure out what to do. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons isn't nearly as simple, so it's going to leave some players behind, but, like the first word in the title implies, it gives more 'advanced' players a little more meat to the adventure genre, making it a bit more like what home computer players were getting from the genre. You start out on a world map, of sorts, and your goal is to traverse through the mountains via a series of cave systems. Entering one of these caves brings you to a maze-like screen where nothing around you is visible. Moving in a direction will make things visible in that direction. As you move through the caves, you'll find quivers to arm yourself with more arrows…which you'll need to take out the monsters guarding other tools like a boat, an axe, and a key. Speaking of the monsters, there's a nice variety of them to be found here, with each monster having different characteristics to them. Bats act differently than blobs, which act differently than dragons…so enemy encounters in this game don't get stale quickly. Health of your character is displayed by the color of their body - black is healthy, blue is wounded, red is seriously hurt, and invisible…well that means that your character has died. The "party" concept of the game basically like extra lives. You'll only control one party member at a time, but when one dies, another party member takes their place until there is nobody left. Ultimately, the goal is to get to "Cloudy Mountain" and collect two halve of a crown to win the game. Overall, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is a solid adventure game, improving on the formula of Adventure, but lacking a bit when compared to similar games on computers of the time. Still, if you only had access to the Intellivision and didn't have a home computer back in the early 80's, this was one of the better adventure games that you could find.

Review added: 05/08/2026

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin

Also known as: Minotaur (Re-release)

Developer: Mattel

I liked the first Dungeons & Dragons game on the Intellivision, but I wasn't really "wowed" by it. It was fun for what it was, but it didn't really set the world on fire, visually. Later that year, Mattel released Treasure of Tarmin…and this, in my opinion, was the impressive game of the two. Instead of a top-down perspective, Treasure of Tarmin is a first-person dungeon crawler. Your goal is to navigate the 3D maze while trying to collect the Treasure of Tarmin, while picking up various items and battling various monsters, climaxing with a showdown with a fearsome minotaur, who is guarding the treasure that you're searching for. There are thirteen different monsters in total to encounter here, each with varying levels of difficulty. Equipping yourself with armor and weapons is the key to surviving these encounters. On the screen, you'll see your "score" and the monster's "score," as the manual calls them. In modern terms, those would be the hit points. Paying attention to those stats is also important for survival - if you encounter a monster with higher HP than you, sometimes it's better to run. The game also boasts different difficulty settings, which also increase or decrease the length of time needed to complete the game. That allows new players to ease into this a little, which is probably needed. Treasure of Tarmin isn't exactly a pick-up-and-play game. It takes time get used to everything…the Intellivision overlay literally uses every single available button, so you'll likely find yourself looking down at the controller a lot in the beginning to figure out what button to press. It also may take a little bit to figure out how to best manage your inventory - many weapons and items disappear after being used in battle, so you need to be smart about what items to use, as well as when to fight and when to run. Overall, Treasure of Tarmin does a good job of bringing a home computer-style RPG to console. If you're a sucker for early, first-person dungeon crawlers like I am, then you'll probably find plenty to like here.

Review added: 05/08/2026

Armor Battle

Also known as: N/A

Developer: APh Technical Consulting

Back in the early days of video games, there were a lot of games that did not have a single player option - you needed to have a friend to play with or against, or you wouldn't be playing at all. Armor Battle is one of those games. A two player-only fight, Armor Battle has you controlling two tanks (one you actively control, and one as a reserve) battling against your opponent, who is also controlling two tanks. That sounds pretty standard, right? The gimmick with Armor Battle, though, is that you have different terrain to battle on every round that you fight. With 240 stages programmed in the cartridge, that load up randomly, each battle feels like a different experience. In fairness, I think it's actually one, giant battleground split up into 240 areas…I happened to have a few screens from playing, that when lined up with each other, looked like they clicked together like a jigsaw puzzle. Anyway, the terrain isn't just for looks, either. You need to navigate it all wisely if you plan to blow your opponent to smithereens, instead of the other way around. Your tanks can move faster on roads, normal on grass, and slower through water, and they can hide behind trees for cover. You can also lay invisible mines to hopefully eliminate your opponent - only one mine per round, so you've got to use it wisely. Five seconds after contact, the mine blows…whether you contact it or the opponent does. Whoever is in the blast area, you or your opponent, regardless of who planted the mine, instantly loses their tank. To add to the fun, each tank takes three normal hits to blow up, instead of one hit like most games of this type…and since you've got a reserve tank after that, it feels like after six shots to the enemy, the winner was the result of skill more often than luck. Especially since the tank recoils after each shot, making it impossible to spam the attack button. There IS some luck involved in the form of the random environment layout and if you blow yourself up after forgetting where you planted a mine, but overall, Armor Battle takes the one-on-one vehicular combat style of game and takes it to the next level. If two player battles are what you love about old games, then Armor Battle is a game worth playing.

Review added: 11/28/2025

Astrosmash

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Mattel Electronics

Astrosmash, initially, is pretty boring. It seems pointless. Everything moves slowly, you keep racking up lives…it seems ridiculous that anyone would find a whole lot of challenge or enjoyment in this game. But if you stick with it, and continue to get points, you’ll see the background color change…and everything gets a little faster. Then it changes again, and everything gets faster still…and then you get homing missiles coming at you…then suddenly, instead of just shooting stuff, every now and then, a ship that shoots back shows up on the screen. By the time you reach 100,000 points, you’ll be glad that you racked so many lives up earlier in the game because you’ll be losing them like crazy. It’s kind of like a game of Tetris, honestly…a slow build to pure chaos the longer you play. Unfortunately, the slow build does take a little too long, and I don’t think a lot of people these days would have the patience to sit with this game long enough for it to really start to get exciting. Still, for what it is, and for its time, it’s not bad, and once the pace and challenge ramps up, Astrosmash can be very fun…but, I just can’t help but feel like it could be tweaked to be just a little bit  better.

Review added: 07/13/2019

Atlantis

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Imagic

Atlantis was a beautiful shooter on the Atari 2600, similar to Missile Command, but Imagic had quite a knack for getting the most out of the Intellivision…so as soon as Atlantis was ported over to Mattel's console, visually, it blew the Atari 2600 original away. Again, Atlantis looked great on Atari's console, when compared to other games of the time….but putting that version side-by-side with this version is like night and day. Literally. The Intellivision version boasts the passage of time as you play, with the sky changing. In the morning and afternoon, you'll see different colored skies with clouds…then when night hits, you'll get a neat effect that also gives you some challenge. The sky will become black and you'll see two spotlights sway back and forth. The enemy ships at this time are black, so they blend in with the sky and are only visible when a spotlight exposes their position. This leads you to gauge their speed and location and try your best to shoot at where you think the ship should be - successfully shooting down these ships in the dark makes you feel like you're a hot-shot shooter the first few times you make successful hits. Eventually, the day/night cycle loops back around, with the difficulty ramped up a bit. The game controls well and trying your best to save the cities below is just as fun as it was in the Atari 2600 version…even more fun, when you count the increased-difficulty night time shooting. The only knock that I can really give this game, in comparison to the Atari original, is that the Atari 2600 game offered simultaneous two-player gameplay, with each player controlling a turret. The Intellivision version offers a two-player mode, but only by alternating and taking turns. Overall, Imagic did a fantastic job with this port of Atlantis, improving on nearly every aspect of the original game. If you want co-op two-player mode, then you may want to stick with the Atari original, but everything else about the Intellivision port of Atlantis makes this the definitive version.

Review added: 05/26/2026

Auto Racing

Also known as: N/A

Developer: APh Technical Consulting

I want to like Auto Racing, but Mattel made it pretty difficult. I'll start with the positives. In Auto Racing, you can select between five different cars, and all of them have their own stats. The white car has a top speed of 55 with poor acceleration and excellent cornering. The green car has a top speed of 65 with excellent acceleration and good cornering. The red car has a top speed of 75 with good acceleration and good cornering. The tan and blue cars both have a top speed of 90 with poor acceleration and fair cornering….this allows two higher-skilled players to battle it out with the exact same car to see who really does have the most skill. Once the race starts, acceleration is automatic - all you have to worry about is steering your vehicle and hitting the brakes when needed. As you make your way along the track, you'll find that you're rewarded for staying on the pavement with more speed. If you find yourself off the road and into the grass, you'll lose speed. Go too far off the road, and you'll find yourself crashing. Sometimes, you may even find yourself going out of control and way off the track…in which case, the manual actually suggests crashing on purpose at that point, since you'll respawn on the road and it'll be faster than trying to make your way back to it otherwise. If playing alone, you're only fighting time, so if you crash, it simply takes you a little more time to cross the finish line. If you're racing against a friend, however, you'll give them two points for every crash. You'll also gain one point if you get far enough ahead of your opponent, which would be twelve car lengths according to the manual. When this happens, the race is stopped so that you can see the point being awarded. That's where some negatives come in - that stopping of the race can get very annoying after a while. Just let the folks race and tally up the points in the background, ya dang fool. Another annoying aspect is the way the cars themselves control - it takes quite a bit of time to really get used to how to steer them, and the Intellivision controller simply doesn't feel like a good controller for steering cars in a racing game…at least not from the top-down perspective that Auto Racing uses. Races between two novices will have a lot of crashes and a lot of pausing from one car getting so far of another car that a point gets awarded. It can result in a pretty annoying, frustrating experience. Auto Racing is a passable game with some decent ideas, but I feel like most folks will get annoyed by everything enough when they first play that they won't stick around long enough to get good enough at this game to see some of the positives.

Review added: 11/28/2025