I remember looking at the Intellivision over and over in the Littlewoods catalogue. In fact, the word 'Littlewoods' in Greek, means 'small payments, long time, big total'. The Intellivision had two fairly large controllers which were 8-way directional discs with buttons on the front. You got two plastic overlays with each game that you slid into the controllers for your basic selections. There were also two buttons on each side of the controller for more action packed goodness.
One I think I played a lot of was Auto Racing. Top down racer, with the tracks that were much larger than just one screen. Five different cars, from slow and turnable, to fast and drifting. In two player mode, it was simple, as you both played on the same screen, the first player to reach the leading edge of the screen won the point. So it was a good balance of, I'm in front but have less time to see the corners. The part about this I got into later was going off the track into the wilderness. Which was really just what ever the programmers had put in areas you were just never meant to look at. I get the feeling that you COULD go into these areas because they simply never even considered such a thing might happen. It was an exciting adventure that could last many minutes, navigating the bushes/trees/random squares of concrete. If you did this, you too would have discovered the drag strip. Once you knew the track layout, and put in a little time, it seemed that your car was always oriented for one turn ahead, and you could even perform 360's on the turns. But remember ONLY try this if you're a professional. Looking at it now, it does seem strange that the tracks were all set in what looked like residential areas, and not just raceways.
Also played a LOT of Soccer, because I think it's the one you got with the system. This was the first I remember of how you always could score a goal if you shot from the corner of the penalty box. A life skill which carried me through many soccer games for years to come.
Astro Smash was just a vertical asteroids of sorts. Left, right, shoot, avoid incoming death. Even had endless random teleporting. This resulted in anyone playing it the first time thought they were first to figure it being a way of being invincible, and got killed about 10 seconds into the teleport-button-spamming technique.
Space Hawk, now that was something. Adventuring through space coming across all sorts of weird aliens, and hopefully one day being able to tell my grand children, that I was one of the few that met, in person, the Space Hawk.
If you feel the need, you can get this as an Xbox Original, directly to your Xbox360. Gosh darn it, after all this, even though I have it on the PS2, I may just have to splurge the Microsoft Points myself!
