Join us Friday, February 14, as *ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories *hosts scholars Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman for a talk about their co-authored book *Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie.* The event will be at 2PM ET on the *ROMchip *Twitch channel, https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal. Get tickets HERE <https://www.tickettailor.com/events/romchipajournalofgamehistories/1498801> and sign up for our newsletter <https://romchip.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=27c1594af9abf2dc80455091b&id=caaf5790a7> to never miss an update. **Tickets serve as calendar reminders for the event; they are not required to attend. Head to https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal to join the talk on Feb 14** *About the Book* *The engaging story of Intellivision, an overlooked videogame system from the late 1970s and early 1980s whose fate was shaped by Mattel, Atari, and countless others who invented the gaming industry.* *Astrosmash*, *Snafu*, *Star Strike*, *Utopia*—do these names sound familiar to you? No? Maybe? They were all videogames created for the Intellivision videogame system, sold by Mattel Electronics between 1979 and 1984. This system was Atari's main rival during a key period when videogames were moving from the arcades into the home. In *Intellivision*, Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman tell the fascinating inside story of this overlooked gaming system. Along the way, they also analyze Intellivision's chips and code, games, marketing and business strategies, organizational and social history, and the cultural and economic context of the early US games industry from the mid-1970s to the great videogame industry crash of 1983. While many remember Atari, Intellivision has largely been forgotten. As such, *Intellivision* fills a crucial gap in videogame scholarship, telling the story of a console that sold millions and competed aggressively against Atari. Drawing on a wealth of data from both institutional and personal archives and over 150 interviews with programmers, engineers, executives, marketers, and designers, Boellstorff and Soderman examine the relationship between videogames and toys—an under-analyzed aspect of videogame history—and discuss the impact of home computing on the rise of videogames, the gendered implications of play and videogame design at Mattel, and the blurring of work and play in the early games industry. *About the Speakers* Tom Boellstorff is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of *The Gay Archipelago*, *A Coincidence of Desires*, and *Coming of Age in Second Life*. Braxton Soderman is Associate Professor in the Department of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of *Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject* (MIT Press). *Upcoming Events* February 22 @ 11AM-11PM ET: ROMchip Twitch Fundraiser Stream, ft Phil Salvador, merritt k, qdot, Paolo Pedercini, tinahacks, Jason Scott and more! Come through for 12 hours of games, prizes, and historical hijinks. Learn more HERE <https://donate.romchip.org/>. *About ROMchip**ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories <https://www.romchip.org/>* is a free, online scholarly journal for game history. *ROMchip *develops, edits, and publishes ad-free, open access game history research for a range of audiences. It supports any discipline of work enlivening the history of games in local and global contexts, and embraces diversity in how game history is studied, documented, collected, preserved, and practiced. *ROM**c**hip* is a donation-based organization fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation <https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/> (d.b.a. Hack Club), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN: 81-2908499). -- Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/> Associate Professor | MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU <http://www.nyu.edu/> | they/them Managing Editor | ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories <https://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal> | Join our Newsletter <http://eepurl.com/crCul1> -Need to make an appt? Click, don't email: https://calendar.app.google/V9ZuMRWEKnnUBdQ56 -Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos