The Final Word game review

A Collection of Classic Games from the Intellivision -- Livesay Technologies, Inc./Activision, Inc.

R.I.P.
As with the Atari 2600 collection that Activision released some time ago, this is a great set of old favorites from a classic system. This time around though, on top of reproducing the graphics and sound, they've actually addressed some of the issues that I had with the 2600 collection. This time they've added some brief videos featuring comments from original Intellivision programmers. They've cleaned up the title selection interface so it isn't as clunky feeling. And most importantly, they've added support for the joystick on the Dual-Shock controller.

But... all is still not perfect even with this release. While you can use either joypad or joystick on your Dual-Shock controller, some of the titles are nearly unplayable because of control issues. The biggest examples of this was Night Stalker which I had constant trouble getting the guy to move, and Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack which was flat out unplayable, period (mostly due to the fact that I just couldn't seem to get it to acknowledge button presses of any kind. I spent 10 minutes trying to just get through the first hand and gave up).

On the positive site, playing Astrosmash brought back fond memories, and play-control with the stick was excellent. I even managed to rack up 21,000 points in my first game before dying. Of course Salamander sat down and bested me at over 30,000 points (sigh). I checked out everything in the collection, but my favorites had to be Astrosmash (of course), Space Armada, and Shark! Shark!, all of which I felt responded the best using the Dual-Shock joystick.

Overall this is a decent collection that will likely get some replay. I can't wait to see the next collection and the further improvements they make with game control. I still have to wonder why the game needs five billion (exageration, but not by much) disk loads to swap between a collection of games that, combined, should fit into memory with space to spare.

>>>>> 18.5/25 <<<<<		R.I.P.
Graphics		3.0
Sound		3.0
Gameplay/Control		4.0
Longevity/Playability		4.5
Overall		4.0
Total		18.5

(11/99)