Intellivision Keyboard Demonstration Cassette Video

When the Intellivision was released, it held the promise of a future component that would turn the Intellivision into a fully functional home computer. This much-delayed accessory had reliability problems. A lot of Intellivision fans were consistently disappointed for many years, but the hope of a release always seemed to be just around the corner.

They even released a demo system with a cassette that demonstrated the potential of the keyboard into test markets in the late 1970s. This video shows exactly what you would have seen if you lived in a test market and happened upon a store’s Intellivision kiosk.

I sadly never saw this back in the day, but I did have friends who were hardcore Intellivision fans who talked a lot about how this system was going to unlock the full potential of their Intellivision and how I would regret having wanted an Atari so badly. This video does make it look pretty amazing, but even though a few keyboards did make it into the hands of consumers, in the end, the keyboard was a bust.