Every home video game console has new features and innovations, some more than others. The Mattel Intellivision had many innovations and industry firsts that helped to mold gaming even don to this day. Listed here are the most well-known. 

• Intellivision can be considered the first 16-bit game console, as it has a 16-bit microprocessor with 16-bit registers, 16-bit RAM, and a 16-bit data bus.

• Intellivision was the first home console to use licensing for sports titles, such as NFL, NBA, and NHL.

• The first home console and one of the first video games to use a tile-based playfield. It allowed for the display of detailed graphics and colour with very little RAM.

• The Intellivision was also the first system to feature downloadable games with PlayCable in 1981.

• Intellivision was the first game console to provide real-time human voices in the middle of gameplay, courtesy of the Intellivoice module.

• The first game controller with a directional thumb pad.

• The Intellivision was also the first game console or home computer to offer a musical synthesizer keyboard.

• Intellivision was also the first console to have a complete built-in character font. While Odyssey² had a limited character font (uppercase alphabet, numerals, and some other characters), Intellivision's system font had completed upper- and lowercase alphabets, numerals, and almost all of the punctuation and symbols found on standard computer keyboards.

• Utopia (1982) is credited as the game that spawned the construction and management simulation genre.

• World Series Major League Baseball (1983) is considered to be the first sports simulation video game with a number of innovations: multiple views of a 3D calculated virtual playfield, statistical based gameplay using real historical baseball player statistics, manager player substitutions, play-by-play speech, and save games or lineups to tape storage.