This week on Retronaut, the total destruction of a planet. It's my best George Plimpton, sorry.

Hello, and welcome to the only podcast to feature the utter destruction of a planet.

We're talking about the Mattel in television this episode.

This was a contemporary and a competitor to the more popular and arguably better known Atari 2,600.

And that rivalry kind of ran through the whole of the 80s, which is very interesting and unusual, I feel like.

It was very much known for its complex games, its superior graphics, etc.

And joining me for this podcast are the folks who literally wrote the book on the Intellivision.

So who do we have with me on the other side of the line here? I'm Tom

Belstorff from the University of California, Irvine. And I'm Braxton Sutterman, also from the University

of California, Irvine. And you two literally wrote a book about the Intellivision, which came out

last year by my reckoning as of this recording.

Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I came out last November. So it's been like

seven, eight months basically since it came out, which is a huge relief and we're so excited.

Yeah, we were working on it for many, many years.

And it was wonderful to actually see it out there and people talking about it and buying it.

And, you know, just wonderful to get our ideas finally out there.

Yeah.

So your book is in television.

God, what's the full title?

I should grab that off the shelf before I started recording.

Oh, a video game system battled Atari and almost bankrupted Barbie.

That was it.

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