Announcing: Intellivision® Programming Contest 2008

Come one, come all! Step right up with your latest and greatest Intellivision® game!

The concept is simple: Write a game for the Intellivision®, and send it in. After a month of judging, etc. we'll announce the winners. The top games win prizes. What could be easier?

I want to see more Intellivision® home brew titles out there. I thought this contest might be the kick in the pants everyone needs.

Rules

  • The game must be no larger than 16K 16-bit words. Games are not constrained to 10-bit wide ROM. They can use the full 16-bit width.

  • The game must fit the $5000-$6FFF, $D000-$DFFF, $F000-$FFFF standard 16K-word memory map.

  • The game must not require additional RAM beyond what is available in the Intellivision®.

  • The game must play as intended on an unexpanded Intellivision®, Intellivision® II, and Sears Super Video Arcade with minimal glitches. Note that the game may make use of the ECS and/or Intellivoice to enhance game play as long as these peripherals are not required for proper play. For example, Space Patrol has enhanced sound and music when the ECS is present.

  • The game should play flawlessly in jzIntv. If you have issues getting your game to play correctly, hop on INTVPROG and ask questions! We're friendly. We don't bite. :-)

  • The game may make use of any previously existing code out there that the author has license to use. For instance, the example code included with SDK-1600 is available to all under the GNU GPL. No sense re-inventing the wheel for no good reason.

  • All entries must be received by November 1st, 2008. Judging will take place during the month of November, with results posted by December 1st.

  • All entries must be sent to Joe Zbiciak at this address: intvnut at gmail dot com.

  • Entrants grant Joe Zbiciak permission to make binary versions of all entries available for download on the web.

  • Entrants grant Joe Zbiciak permission to produce a small number of physical copies (cartridges) of the game for the purpose of issuing the contest prizes, as defined in the Prizes section.

  • Joe Zbiciak reserves the right to adjust these rules as necessary, and/or cancel or extend the contest based on number of entries received.

Prizes

The games will be ranked, and a winner and second place announced. If enough entries arrive or if it's a close race, I may also publish a first and second runner up.

First prize is $100. Second prize is $50. First and second prize winners also will receive a physical copy of the top two games on a multicart. If I do announce runners up, they too will receive cartridges and all announced winning and runner-up titles will be on the multicart.

Oliver Puschatzki has donated three of his NTSC composite mods as prizes for this contest! These will be awarded to the top entries in addition to the cash prizes and cartridges. Thanks Oliver!

(Note: Cartridge production is an occasional thing, so those prizes may take awhile to arrive. They will eventually get made though.)

Administrivia

If a game shows glitches on the real hardware, I'll be happy to work with the programmer to solve the glitches before making cartridges. Also, I'll happily answer any programming questions during the contest on the INTVPROG mailing list. The point is to get more games out there, not make life difficult. :-)

I have asked David Harley and Arnauld Chevallier to help me with this contest. I want to thank them for helping out.

Details on the judging process will be released at a future time. I'm still thinking through the details here, but you won't be disappointed.

Resources


Intellivision® is a trademark of Intellivision Productions. Joe Zbiciak, jzIntv, SDK-1600 and this contest are not affiliated with Intellivision Productions.