[1] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, General Instrument, like nearly every microelectronics manufacturer, was rolling out their own series of microprocessors and support chips in hopes of gaining a share of the then-new and rapidly exploding market for increasingly sophisticated consumer and industrial electronics.

Programmer Ron Surratt was hired to write the software for the module, and Patrick Jost would analyze the voice data for the device.

[2] The Narrator had 2 KB of Read-Only Memory (ROM), and this was utilized to store a database of generic words that could be combined to make phrases in Intellivision games.

This led to several heated phone calls between Hawthorne and New York, and considerable finger-pointing between the hardware and software camps until the problem was found.

[3] The device was brought to the public in 1982 with an initial lineup of 3 games: Space Spartans, Bomb Squad, and B-17 Bomber.

Despite critical acclaim, the Intellivoice did not sell nearly as well as Mattel had hoped; while initial orders were as high as 300,000 units for the module and its associated games, most of them just sat on retailers' shelves.