Saturday, March 17, 2018

Gaming Ads: Intellimedia Sports, Interactive Magic, and IBM

Intellimedia Sports was a company based in Atlanta that specialized in instructional multimedia software and published products under the IntelliPlay brand. Of the ads, which might include all of Intellimedia's products, only the poker software appears to have gameplay. The other products provide educational videos about soccer, baseball, golf, and football from athletes and coaches, and were marketed with ESPN.

Interactive Magic, also known as I-Magic, was founded in 1994 in North Carolina with offices in the U.K., Germany, and Japan as well. The chairman of the board was MicroProse co-founder J.W. "Wild Bill" Stealey so it should come as no surprise that Interactive Magic focused on simulation and strategy games.

International Business Machines, better known as IBM, was founded in 1911 as Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company before changing its name in 1924. Based in New York, IBM has made a wide range of products throughout its history, though it's best known for it contributions to computers, including the creation of the term personal computer (PC). The IBM PC released in 1981 and typically used DOS, which was originally created by Seattle Computer Products but later purchased and modified by Microsoft.

Of course, there is a lot that can be said about IBM, though I'm going to keep this brief and jump ahead to the software since that is what the blog focuses on. IBM actually released a handful of games for mainframe computers in the '50s and '60s, and dozens during the '80s and '90s for the PC. It released a variety of original educational games and some computer ports of well known games, like King's Quest, M.U.L.E., Jumpman, and Mad Dog McCree.

6/22/19 UPDATE: IBM fell into the post because I was originally listing it under International Business Machines. However, everyone simply knows it as IBM so I decided after I moved the ads to Facebook that IBM made more sense.

Intellimedia Sports albums: Facebook - Google Photos
Interactive Magic albums: Facebook - Google Photos
IBM albums: Facebook - Google Photos



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