In 1989, INTV Corp. signed a joint business deal with World Book Encyclopedia to manufacture the Tutorvision. The Tutorvision was basically just a modified version of the original Intellivision Master Console except it's exterior was gold coloured, the buttons on the keypad are bubble-style and not flat like the INTV III version, it featured a power-on LED, the original two circuit boards were now merged into one with the chips all dated 1988-90, and the logos were changed to the Tutorvision logo on the top portion of the console and the World Book emblem on the bottom.
The plan for this new system was to release two sets of eight educational game cartridges for children; one set for the very young and the other for older kids. These cartridges would only work on the TutorVision model and not on a regular Intellivision unit, although the TutorVision would also be able to play regular Intellivision cartridges also. The World Book direct sales staff would market Tutorvision as they did encyclopedias; i.e.: get the console and one set of the cartridges for a set of monthly payments.
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Contributors: "Skel" (Derek McDonald)
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Your history of the World Book Tutor Vision saga is quite thorough and accurate! As one of the programmers of the software for the system (I wrote 5 or 6 of them as I recall), your recap brought back tons of memories!
I do also recall that at about the same time as the titles were being completed, and the system was about to launch, a new kids-oriented learning game system hit the stores - one that was superior in most ways - a system that was called Socrates.
The sound capabilities of the Socrates were inferior (at least as was demonstrated by the few examples I heard), but the system did in fact beat the Tutor Vision to market. And it appeared to have better graphics, and superior processing power.
I''m sure that Dave Warhol and/or Keith Robinson would have more information should you care to contact them.
Sunday 3rd August 2014
Steve Ettinger
NAME
Tutor Vision
MANUFACTURER
World Book
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
1989
END OF PRODUCTION
1990
BUILT IN SOFTWARE / GAMES
None
CONTROLLERS
Twelve-button numeric keypad (0–9, Clear, and Enter) + 4 side-located action buttons (two of which are electronicaly the same) + 16-directions controller disk
CPU
General Instrument CP1610
SPEED
895 KHz
RAM
1352 bytes
ROM
7168 bytes
GRAPHIC MODES
160 x 196
COLORS
16 color palette
SOUND
General Instrument AY-3-8914 (3 channels sound + 1 noise generator)
I/O PORTS
Cartridge slot, video ouput (RF or RGB depending versions), power in
MEDIA
Cartridge
NUMBER OF GAMES
16 dedicated cartridges were to be released for the Tutor Vision The Tutor Vision is also compatible with all Intellivision cartridges
