[19] In 1975, mechanical engineer Richard Chang, a director under Ryan, contacted MOS Technology for a demonstration of their new 6502 microprocessor in a video game application.

With Mattel executives skeptical, Chang's group moved forward with handheld electronic games enlisting Hightower's help with a prototype.

"[21] In April 1977, David Chandler, with a doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering, a career in Aerospace, also having prototyped an early word processor as well as an arcade video game, joined Prelimanary Design under Chang.

Chandler shared Chang's vision for a video game system with rich graphics and long-lasting gameplay to distinguish itself from its competitors and took over responsibility for its engineering.

[5] In 1978, David Rolfe of APh developed the onboard executive control software named Exec, and with a group of Caltech summer student employees programmed the first Intellivision games.

[31] A series of advertisements starring George Plimpton used side-by-side game comparisons to demonstrate the superior graphics and sound of Intellivision over the Atari 2600.

The Sears Super Video Arcade,[29] manufactured by Mattel in Hong Kong, has a restyled beige top cover and detachable controllers.

The original five members of that Intellivision team were Mike Minkoff, Rick Levine, John Sohl, Don Daglow, and manager Gabriel Baum.

Starting in 1981, programmers looking for credit and royalties on sales began leaving both APh and Mattel Electronics to create Intellivision cartridges for third-party publishers.

Cheshire Engineering was formed by a few senior APh programmers including David Rolfe, author of the Exec, and Tom Loughry, creator of one of the most popular Intellivision games, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

Daglow created Utopia, a precursor to the sim genre and, with Eddie Dombrower, the ground-breaking sports simulation World Series Major League Baseball.

[35] The Intellivision was designed as a modular home computer; so, from the beginning, its packaging, promotional materials, and television commercials promised the addition of a forthcoming accessory called the Keyboard Component.

David Rolfe of APh wrote a control program for the Keyboard Component called PicSe (Picture Sequencer) specifically for the development of multimedia applications.

'"[40] Complaints from consumers who had chosen to buy the Intellivision specifically on the promise of a "coming soon" personal-computer upgrade eventually caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who started investigating Mattel Electronics for fraud and false advertising.

[46] Any customer who opted to keep the products was required to sign a waiver with the understanding that no more software would be written for the system and absolving Mattel of any future responsibility for technical support.

Ultimately, this fulfilled the original promise of turning the Intellivision into a computer, making it possible to write programs and store them to tape as well as interfacing with a printer.

In the fall of 1982, the LUCKI, now renamed the Entertainment Computer System (ECS), was presented at the annual sales meeting, officially ending the ill-fated keyboard component project.

A new advertising campaign was aired in time for the 1982 Christmas season, and the ECS itself was shown to the public at the January 1983 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

[49] Prior to release, an internal shake-up at the top levels of Mattel Electronics' management had caused the company's focus to shift away from hardware add-ons in favor of software, and the ECS received very little in terms of furthering the marketing push.

Further hardware developments, including a planned Program Expander that would have added another 16K of RAM and a more intricate, fully featured Extended-BASIC to the system, were halted.

The Intellivoice was novel in two respects: human sounding male and female voices with distinct accents, and speech-supporting games designed with speech as an integral part of the gameplay.

In the spring of 1983, Mattel introduced the Intellivision II, a cheaper, more compact redesign of the original, that was designed to be less expensive to manufacture and service, with updated styling.

When Mattel Electronics cancelled the project in mid-1983,[59] Toshiba was laying out the new graphics chip, consoles expected to be in production by Christmas, cartridges to be ready by January 1984, according to Glenn Hightower of APh.

[13] Although the Atari 2600 had more third-party development, Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games reported after visiting the summer 1982 Consumer Electronics Show that "the momentum is tremendous".

New game systems (ColecoVision and Atari 5200) introduced in 1982 took advantage of falling RAM prices to offer graphics closer to arcade quality.

[15][14] Former Mattel Electronics Senior Vice President of Marketing, Terrence Valeski, understood that although losses were huge, the demand for video games increased in 1983.

They also got into producing next-generation games with the production of Monster Truck Rally for Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1991, also released as Stadium Mud Buggies for Intellivision in 1989.

[75] A July 1980 article in Video magazine said "Now, arcade addicts can revel in the most sophisticated games this side of the complex simulations designed for high-level computers right in their own livingrooms.

", "Those used to joysticks will have to endure a short period of adjustment, but even finicky players will be forced to agree that the company has developed a truly elegant solution to the controller problem.

The unique disk-shaped directional pad provided unprecedented control for the time, and the numeric keypad opened up new options previously unavailable in console gaming."