I think it's going to be what you remember. Intellivision competed against VCS (it's technically a 1970s system, after all), and in general the Inty games were stronger (programs didn't spend most of their existence trying to just draw the screen). It wasn't state of the art even by the time the NES (let alone the SNES) came out, so the comparison isn't all that fair. It's amazing the INTV System III sold at all, since it was just a repackaged Master Component.

For me, the disc pad on the Inty -- which the article author seems to have forgotten about -- wasn't the worst part of the controller, though you could really wreck them and I had to find good membranes to fix my Sylvania Inty. It was those damn side buttons.