Intellivoice

Voice synthesizer adapter for the Intellivision video game system

The Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module, commonly abbreviated as Intellivoice, is an adapter for the Intellivision, Mattel's home video game console, that utilizes a voice synthesizer to generate audible speech. The Intellivoice is a large, brown cartridge that plugs into the Intellivision's side mounted cartridge slot; games specifically designed for the device can then be inserted into a slot provided on the right hand side of the module. An international version of the Intellivoice was planned, but never released. The Intellivoice was discontinued in 1983 due to poor sales, with only five titles released with support for the device. Despite this, it has been called an important innovation in gaming, since the Intellivoice software used speech as an important gameplay element.

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. One of the peripheral and support chips introduced for G. I. 's microprocessors was the SP0256 Narrator speech synthesizer chip. Since the Intellivision was based on General Instrument's CP1610 microprocessor and support chips, and talking electronic products (such as Texas Instruments' Speak & Spell) had already captured the public's fascination, Mattel Electronics decided to develop an add on speech synthesis module for the console. Engineer Ron Carlson was put in charge of designing a device capable of utilizing the chip. Programmer Ron Surratt was hired to write the software for the module, and Patrick Jost would analyze the voice data for the device. The Narrator had 2kB 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. The words included numbers, "press," "enter," "and," "or," and "Mattel Electronics Presents" in a generic male voice. These phrases (as well as the speech for the first game, Space Spartans) were recorded and digitized by Carlson and Jost at General Instrument's facility in New York, and the resulting data was turned into a mask so that a customized version of the SP0256 could be manufactured with the generic phrases permanently stored inside the chip. Since the Orator chip could also accept speech data from external memory, any additional words or phrases needed for specific games could be stored inside the game cartridge itself. According to Ron Surratt, when he first received Carlson & Jost's data from G. I. 's New York facility and loaded it into the prototype unit, all the device would do was repeat "Auk yooo! Auk yooo!" repeatedly to the Mattel executives and marketing personnel who had come to see the demonstration. 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. Once the bugs were resolved, Mattel Electronics committed itself to producing voice games and built a state of the art voice lab at their Hawthorne, California facility to do the recording and digitization on site.

This unit would have contained additional internal ROMs with the built in "generic" library of words translated into French, German, and Italian, and would have been sold along with appropriately translated versions of the Intellivoice titles into those markets. While at least two prototypes were known to have been built, 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. Even a promotional giveaway of a free Intellivoice by mail with the purchase of an Intellivision Master Component failed to kick start sales of the Intellivoice game titles; the fourth Intellivoice game release, Tron: Solar Sailer, sold 90,000 units. World Series Major League Baseball, however, was completed as part of the initial round of games produced for the Entertainment Computer System add on module, making it the final game produced with Intellivoice support. Unlike the other four Intellivoice games, WSMLB didn't actually require the use of the Intellivoice in order to play; the game was merely "voice enhanced" for those Intellivision owners who happened to have both the ECS and Intellivoice modules.