Fathom (Intellivision)
The Golden Rule
Level Objectives
- You play as Proteus, shape-shifting between seagull and dolphin to recover Neptune’s three trident pieces and free his daughter Neptina from her Titan prison.
- You start as a seagull on the Intellivision — unlike the Atari 2600 original and the ColecoVision port, which both start you as a dolphin.
- Wing-flap is tap-UP on the disc, not a button press. The Intellivision disc replaces the joystick + fire combo of the other versions, and each upward tap = one flap.
- Sweep every pink cloud in a section to spawn a star — touch the star for a piece of the trident.
- To dive as a dolphin, sweep enough clouds to spawn the fish symbol. As a dolphin, sweep every sea horse in a section; clearing them all spawns a starfish for another trident piece. Collect enough sea horses to bring back the bird symbol to fly again.
- Three trident pieces frees Neptina and advances to the next level. The game runs through 7 levels.
- Status screen is hidden. Press “0” on the keypad to view score, energy, and pieces collected — it appears on a separate screen, swapping out the action view. Press again (or release) to return.
Show Pro Strategies
Pro Strategies
- Micro-tap the disc up, don’t hold. Holding upward sends the seagull into a steep climb; rhythmic short taps maintain steady altitude. This is the single hardest control adjustment for players coming from the Atari version.
- Check the status screen sparingly. Pressing “0” pauses the action but takes your eyes off the hazards. Glance only between sections, never in the middle of weaving through clouds or sea horses.
- Give yourself more buffer than on the Atari original. The Intellivision controls are stiffer; gaps that look identical to the 2600’s are harder to thread here. Don’t trust your 2600 muscle memory for precision dodges.
- The disc has 16 directions — use the diagonals. When you need to angle past a shark or octopus, an in-between disc direction is smoother than committing to a cardinal one. This is where the disc actually beats the 2600 stick.
- Sweep the section, don’t just survive it. Same rule as every Fathom: leaving a section without clearing it forfeits that section’s star. Energy spent on patient sweeping is cheaper than what you’ll spend re-scrolling.
- Read the manual’s keypad overlay if you have it. The cartridge shipped with an Intellivision keypad overlay that maps the buttons; without it, key bindings are easy to forget mid-game.
Imagic’s Intellivision port of Rob Fulop’s 1983 transformation adventure. The story and core loop are faithful to the Atari 2600 original — Proteus shifts between seagull and dolphin, sweeps sections to spawn the star that gives a trident piece, frees Neptina across seven levels — but this version diverges from the others in two notable ways.
First, you start as a seagull, not a dolphin. The 2600 and ColecoVision versions both open underwater; the Intellivision drops you into the sky. Second, the controls are completely re-mapped to the Intellivision disc: wing-flap is a tap UP on the disc instead of a button press. The change is small on paper and large in practice — Intellivision-version reviewers consistently called the controls “much harder” than the 2600 original, and the consensus in retro circles is that this port feels rushed compared to the parent design.
The third quirk is presentation: the status display (score, energy, trident pieces) lives on a separate screen rather than overlaid on the action — press “0” on the keypad to switch to it. The trade-off is more screen real estate for the gameplay view, paid for in interruptions whenever you want to check your numbers.
The Intellivision port was programmed by Dave Durran, who worked on Mattel Electronics hardware before joining Imagic. Per Imagic’s own history (Blue Sky Rangers archive), he described the project as “a kind of afterthought” while juggling other responsibilities — which is consistent with how the final cartridge feels next to Fulop’s original.