According to a former employee of Mattel Electronics, who wishes only to be known as "Dave," the Intellivision was created by aliens, who have colonized the center of the Earth, as part of a ploy to brainwash gamers. "The Siliconians were a highly advanced race that saw technology as their religion," Dave said. "When they conquered the indigenous Morlock giants of Hollow Earth, the Siliconians created the very first artificial intelligence, called Xiros, and proclaimed it as their new god." According to a highly top secret document from Mattel that Dave procured during his employment, this digital god was said to be housed in a giant monolith the size of a small city and as tall as three Empire State Buildings. The enslaved Morlocks were then forced to labor in Siliconian factories while the other races of this inner world slowly came to worship Xiros.
According to Hollow Earth theories, there is a separate world
beneath the Earth's crust. It is this world that the Siliconians ruled.
The highly advanced artificial intelligence wanted to expand his dominion to the outer world, but was hesitant to clash against human military forces. In 1976, the Siliconians developed a device that allowed Xiros to send psionic control waves to the user. Using this mind control, the Siliconians hoped to create an army of humans to fight for Xiros and bring him to power. In order to make the device accessible to a large group of people, they re-purposed it into an electronic entertainment system. Human servants of the Cult of Xiros, a group formed during the late 1960s, told the Siliconians that video games were becoming extremely popular in a short amount of time. The Atari 2600 was a record selling product that brought electronic gaming home. The Siliconians made their own video game system to house the psionic control wave emitter.
Conceptual artwork showing the Siliconians looking at a holographic
schematic of their "electronic entertainment system."
In 1978, the Siliconians presented the system to their agents in Mattel Electronics, who were avid worshipers of Xiros. They named the console Intellivision, a portmanteau of "intelligent television," indicating the ever present mind of Xiros observing the gamers. After confirming the effectiveness of the psionic control waves on human test subjects, the system was released in 1980 and was met with great praise. "Intellivision systems were flying off store shelves," Dave said. "More and more people were putting themselves under the Siliconians' direct control."
After the first year of sales, the Siliconians were pleased with the results, but felt the progress of complete brainwashing was too slow. This was partially due to the fact that Mattel Electronics outsourced the development of Intellivision games to APh Technological Consulting. And, while the psionic control wave emitters worked, the lack of subliminal messages in the software slowed down the brainwashing process. Mattel Electronics ceased relations with APh and created their own design team that would develop the necessary mind control programs in their video games to increase the brainwashing output tenfold. Codenamed the Blue Sky Rangers, the team consisted of some of the most fervent and loyal members of the Cult of Xiros in the company. In order to keep the government from discovering their plot, the programmers' identities and work location were closely guarded secrets.
This photo is undeniable evidence of a Siliconian ship
presenting the Intellivision to a Mattel Electronics programmer.
Over the next two years, the Blue Sky Rangers worked diligently on progressing to the next phase of their plan. The team grew to about 110 people, which was when Dave joined the group. All of them were converted to the Cult of Xiros and sworn to secrecy, under pain of death, of their project. "Many new games were released in the coming years that contained the subliminal programming," Dave said. "We had enough people to start developing more upgrades for the Intellivision. One project was for an addition that could turn the Intellivision into a computer, giving Xiros even greater control over the users. The most advanced technology allowed us to create a voice synthesis device for the system."
The voice synthesis device, dubbed the Intellivoice, was marketed to have the Intellivision talk to you while you played certain games. The Blue Sky Rangers' ulterior motive was to use the Intellivoice to have Xiros directly give commands to gamers who were in the advanced stages of brainwashing. Future games would have made the "harmless dialogue" in the game command these mindless servants into committing acts of terrorism against the established governments.
Toward the end of 1982, the Siliconians and their human agents were on the brink of putting their final phase into motion, which would have resulted in the full scale invasion of Outer Earth by the Siliconians. It was then that fate stepped in and severely changed the course of humanity. In 1983, Intellivision sales plummeted. Mattel Electronics lost a lot of money on their game system/mind control device. Many factors contributed to this, including the oversaturation of competing video game systems in the market, such as the ColecoVision, which caused the video game crash of 1983. However, the biggest reason for the decrease in sales was in a fatal flaw in the Intellivision's design: horrible controls. The controllers for the Intellivision also housed the psionic control wave emitters that were instrumental in the Siliconian's plan. Since the emitters took up so much space, the technology for the actual controllers were shoddy, at best. Because of this, the controllers didn't work very well and were prone to breaking. Since the controllers were permanently connected to the system (in order to properly power the psionic control wave emitters), you had to replace the entire system when the controllers broke. It was this need to constantly replace the system that led consumers to purchase other game consoles.
The disc at the bottom of the controller served to transmit
psionic control waves, but was not very responsive as a controller.
When the video game crash subsided in 1985, many of the members of the Blue Sky Rangers had already defected from the Cult of Xiros and the dream of Siliconian domination was dying. A former Mattel marketing executive, still loyal to Xiros, bought the remaining Intellivision rights and created his own company, INTV Corp. Hoping to resurrect their plan for world conquest, the Siliconians invested in this new company to bring the return of a newly upgraded Intellivision mind control device. However, the Siliconians would taste defeat yet again from an unlikely source: Japan. The Nintendo Entertainment System had just been released and it was the next big thing in home video gaming. The Intellivision could not compete with the Japanese juggernaut. According to reliable sources, INTV Corp. tried to meet with Nintendo executives about a merger that would use Nintendo's hardware as the new housing for the Siliconian mind control device. Supposedly, it did not end well, as the INTV Corp. executives left Japan that same night, never to return.
The Nintendo Entertainment System -- savior of the human race.
While the Siliconians lost their bid for world domination, the final blow to their rule would not be for another 15 years, when Xiros' system permanently crashed after the Siliconians tried to update him by installing Windows ME. After that, the Siliconians quietly left their empire in the Hollow Earth before the other races could stage a coup.
Since then, there has been a renewed interest in Intellivision games. Keith Robinson, one of the early programmers for the Blue Sky Rangers who defected from the Cult of Xiros during the video game crash, started his own company. Now called Intellivision Productions, the company looks to bring back the games that impressed a generation without the influence of an alien artificial intelligence. Intellivision Productions created the compilation Intellivision Lives! for PS2, XBOX, and GameCube and has released Intellivision games for the Game Room service available on XBOX 360 and PC.
Even though the games are still around, Dave says the threat of Xiros is over. "Even if you play the games on an original Intellivision, you're no longer in danger of being controlled by aliens," he said. "All that matters is that the truth is revealed. People need to know that there was a time when a video game system almost brought the human race to its knees."
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