Too late for the first console wars, Atari acquires Intellivision

Atari announced today that they have acquired the brand of one of their formal rivals, Intellivision, as well as certain games. I know what you’re thinking, but the beleaguered Amico wasn’t part of the deal. That legacy lives on.

Let grandma tell you a story (this is actually before my time, as well, whippersnapper.) While it’s generally remembered that the Atari 2600 dominated the early days of consoles, it wasn’t the only one on the market (or the first). During its heyday, it went up against a few competing consoles like the Fairchild Channel F and Magnavox Odyssey 2. But none came closer to threatening its dominance like Mattel’s Intellivision. Things were looking good for Mattel Electronics when the bottom fell out of the video game market in the Crash of 1983. Things were so dire that Mattel sold the Intellivision brand. 

Then, in 2018, the rights were picked up by Tommy Tallarico to create the new console, the Intellivision Amico. It was a catastrophe and it isn’t even technically out yet. You can still pre-order it if you, for some reason, want to. Maybe the money from the Atari deal will finally be what gets it out the door.

The Amico will remain with its parent company (currently Intellivision Entertainment), but both company and hardware will be renamed to remove the Intellivision branding. It will also include “a license from Atari to continue to distribute new versions of the Intellivision games on the Amico console.”

Atari will get the rights to use the Intellivision name, as well as over 200 titles that belonged to the company.

This is an interesting but somewhat unsurprising move by Atari. The company is pushing with a retro-first strategy, releasing new versions of classic hardware and bringing in remaster studios like Nightdive and Digital Eclipse. They’ve been using the licenses in their portfolio to create new low-budget titles like Sneakybox’s Recharged series. Buying the Intellivision rights gives them more options for both hardware and software.

Atari has also released T-shirts to celebrate the occasion, because merchandising is another piece of the company’s strategy.