Game Genres, pt. 2: Mattel Intellivsion's Networks (1979)

Continued from part one.

Another early attempt at categorizing digital games into specific genres was taken up by Mattel Electronics to organize their own line of game cartridge titles, which appears to have begun with the system's test market launch in late 1979. Note that this appears to predate Atari's own "contents" system of genres by at least one year.

Mattel Intellivision's "Networks"

Example of different game boxes for different "networks," Intellivision Catalog (1983)

Mattel's take on game genres is that each game belongs to a specific "network," capitalizing on the Intellivision being an "intelligent television." Each Intellivision game cartridge comes in a colorful box matching the color of its home network. This system of color-coded networks appears to have been designed from the earliest days of Intellivision: game cartridges were color-coded even during the early days of test marketing. The system evolved over time, with new networks like Space Action Network and Arcade Network added later.

• Major League Sports Network (high-quality sports games with unrivaled graphics set Intellivision games apart from their Atari VCS competitors. Mattel shows their love for licenses with NFL Football, PGA Gold, NHL Hockey, and other sports licenses.)
• Action Network (most arcade-style games are in this network. Note that Space Action is a spinoff from this network.)
• Gaming Network (casino-style games, many with a "Las Vegas" moniker at the start of their title. Note that Horse Racing falls under this network rather than Action Network.)
• Strategy Network (mostly games based on classic board games, with the addition of Don Daglow's Utopia, one of the first examples of a real-time strategy game. ABPA Backgammon uses a license from the somewhat obscure American Backgammon Players Association.)
• Children's Learning Network (only two games released were Electric Company Word Fun and Electric Company Math Fun in 1980. Interestingly, the TV show Electric Company had ceased production in 1977, but Mattel used the strength of licensing to lend an air of legitimacy to their software titles.)
• Space Action Network (this network is an offshoot of the Action Network. Two early games in this category, Space Battle and Space Armada, were first published in the red boxes of the Action Network.)
• Special Intellivoice Cartridges (games designed to use the Intellivoice voice synthesis hardware module released in 1982.)
• Arcade Network (only Vectron was added to this short-lived network. Later arcade game ports like Burgertime were released without a network classification)

Like Atari's system, Mattel's genre system is designed around marketing needs and informing a population of consumers. It serves as another data point of how early digital game manufacturers organized their own individual works as they saw best.