May 6, 2009 - For more than three years now, Keith Robinson – holder of the rights to the Intellivision intellectual property and many of its games – has been trying to get the Intellivision Lives compilation pack onto the Nintendo DS platform. But it's been a hard sell for Robinson to get publishers to bite, and to this day the title has yet to find a publisher willing to sign to distribute the DS version.

With digital distribution now available on Nintendo DSi, Robinson has taken his Intellivision Lives project to the self-publishing route. But in the process to get the project approved by Nintendo, the DSi has hit another snag. According to Robinson, when he attempted to get approval for Intellivision Lives for DSiWare, it was rejected. In an email response to Robinson, Nintendo made mention that in the policies for WiiWare and DSiWare development, the company does not allow games that run under emulation.

To get the Intellivision games to run on other systems efficiently and cheaply, programmers write a program that's essentially a software version of the console. The games originally made for the Intellivision then run on this software emulator and play with 100 percent accuracy. It's exactly how the Virtual Console works on Wii.

We contacted Nintendo to find out if this is an official policy and -- if it is -- why such a policy is in place. Company representatives did not respond in time for the article.

While it's understandable that this policy is instituted for WiiWare (leave the emulators for Virtual Console), this doesn't make sense for DSiWare since the DSi system doesn't have a Virtual Console of its own. We can certainly speculate that Nintendo possibly has plans to move Virtual Console-like emulation to the handheld, but let's not jump the gun quite yet.

Besides, the policy is incredibly weak considering the direction Nintendo's taken with the first round of DSiWare games: more than 50 percent of first-party releases have been games ripped out of retail titles for Nintendo DS (Master of Illusion Express, Clubhouse Games Express) or Game Boy Advance (Bird and Beans, Paper Airplane). And it's not a question of legality; while "emulation" might have a negative connotation and association with piracy, Robinson is the legal owner of the Intellivision IP, hardware, and software.

Intellivision Lives has been available on PC and consoles for years, most recently in the Crave-published version for Xbox, PlayStation 2, and –surprise!—Nintendo GameCube. We've seen the pre-release build of the Nintendo DS version a few years back, and of all the versions that have been made available for game systems over the years, the Nintendo DS version makes the best fit for Intellivision.

The touch screen of the DS system is key in faithfully recreating the Intellivision experience because of the unique keypad controls of the Mattel system. The DS emulation places a keypad on the touchscreen, complete with virtual overlay made specifically for the game being played. And thanks to the tiny file size of each Intellivision game, the DS version features a Download Play option so that two Nintendo DS systems can link together for co-op and versus competition without the need for a second copy of the title.

At the very least, Robinson has said that he and his development studio are still moving forward with the conversion of Intellivision Lives to DSi, in hopes that Nintendo changes its policy. He is also preparing to release Intellivision games on the iPhone and iPod Touch platform in partnership with VH1 later this year, apps that have already received Apple's blessing.

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Two notes.

Interesting restriction by Nintendo. A VC for the DSi confirmed?

Also, this is essentially a DS version of the emulation package that was released for the Xbox, PS2, and GC in 2005/2006. The Intellivision's unique control scheme means does not translate well to regular consoles.  But Intellivision productions could not find a publisher for the DS version then (and IGN was in the bag for it then) -- and Nintendo did not allow self-published titles. So I wonder if this is much a do about nothing.

 

Mike from Morgantown