Intellivoice
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| Manufacturer | Mattel |
|---|---|
| Type | Add-on |
| Generation | Second generation |
| Retail availability | 1982 |
| Media | Cartridge |
The Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module was an adapter for the Intellivision, Mattel's home video game console, that utilized a voice synthesizer to generate audible speech. The Intellivoice was a large, brown cartridge that plugged into the Intellivision's side-mounted cartridge slot; games specifically designed for the device could 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.
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 already 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, it didn't take long for someone at Mattel Electronics to get the idea that a speech-synthesis module might be an interesting add-on 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 SPO256 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.
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