Intellivision president Keith Robinson passes away

Keith Robinson, president of video game console brand Intellivision has passed away, aged 61.

A games industry veteran, Robinson had been suffering from ill health recently and sadly passed due to kidney failure and cardiac arrest.

The Intellivision Facebook page that announced the news, adding, "Please know that all of you Intellivision fans brought immeasurable joy to his life. Thank you so much for that."

The Intellivision console was one of the many were was developed during the gaming rush of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Robinson worked for toy manufacturer, Mattel, who created the console in 1980 and employed an internal team to produce the console to meet demand. The console is often thought of as the first true 16-bit home gaming system.

Following the market crash in 1983, Intellivision was sold to INTV Corporation, headed up by another former Mattel employee, and production continued until 1991. Robinson became a historian to start, launching the Blue Sky Ranger website to celebrate the history of the console and a few years later, picked up the rights to the system.

Robinson’s work helped bring the console and its games to a new generation some twenty years later earned him the reputation as an Intellivision champion, despite not designing or having an influential role in Mattel and the Intellivision project during its heydey. Emulations of the console and its games became a great success on PC and Mac, and made their way to PS2 and iOS, and Robinson also produced a documentary on Intellivision.