Atari Acquires Intellivision Brand And Rights To 200+ Titles

LOL, this is hilarious. Atari probably got a great deal due to Tommy Tallarico devaluing the brand so much. And I guess the zombie Amico sham will keep lumbering along.

Tommy Tallarico was reported as saying: Actually the Amico was so successful that we own Atari. We just made them say they bought the brand so they didn't feel bad.

Reporters noted that he was busy printing his own world records and updating his website to say he's written all video game music ever.

I guess this ends the Intellivision Amico debacle for good. Intellivision had no more money since Tommy Tallarico took all the money and Phil Adam couldn't make money back on just shovelware games alone. Now that Atari own Intellivision, time to just release any new games (Cloudy Mountain, Moon Patrol, Night Stalker, etc.) on modern consoles.

Atari Amico coming soon in 20XX

So I guess Amicovision is no longer a thing. A pity. I was looking forward to such cool jaw-dropping classics like Cornhole or Finnegan Fox*.

In all serious, the most I'm hoping out of this deal is that we get the Intellivision equivalent of an Atari 50 compilation. Not so much for the games, but more for the historical overview so people could about the brand beyond something that was prostituted to sell a bill of goods.

On an unrelated note... can Atari buy Coleco next?

*Yes, I already know about Fox N Forests. It didn't make my jaw drop.

I wonder how Tallarico is going to spin this one.

Edit: never mind, @Henchdog already wrote it perfectly. Good work lmao

Glad Atari deliberately went out of their way to not acquire the Amico. Let Tommy keep that... thing.
Apart from that, say what you will about consolidation and all that, but I personally would trust Atari more with the Intellivision brand and legacy than Tallarico Incorporated.

Intellivision had a rather excellent port of 'Lady Bug' by Universal Ltd (kind of a Pac-Man clone - but still very much its own thing imo).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgr_4608EjY&t=272s

Well, that's one way to learn that Amico project is still alive.😅

"Atari, meanwhile, will license out new versions of the Intellivision games for the Amico."

lol sure.

@LadyCharlie Atari didn't buy the Amico brand, they bought the Intellivision brand. Phil Adam and his company could still used the Amico branding. That means if they are still making the vaporware console, they could only call it the Amico Home Entertainment System.

Atari really is in a good place right now and its lovely to see. They seem focused on becoming a retro video game house rather than desperately trying to break into markets they had no business in.

Reminder that this isn't the original Atari,formerly they were called Infogrames.They bought Atari,closed it,and took its name.

Are they still trying to shill Amico? Can't wait to play 2015 Android shovelware on the big screen with a wonky controller!

I wouldn't be surprised if they paid extra so they DIDN'T have to buy the Amico mess (to put it lightly).

I am ready for Intellivision 50. 😊

The Amico can finally come out now that they actually have people that have actually distributed a console (no matter what your opinion on the modern Atari VCS)

Too bad that this didn't happen before they started selling IP off like 'Shark! Shark!'.

@Fighting_Game_Loser Atari didn't buy the Amico, there's basically only Phil Adam left at that company and no chance the console gets released

Good news IMHO. Intellivision games on modern hardware. And hopefully the Amico gets enough funding to get released.

Only 43 years too late. lol

Must be doing well if they’re buying up the Intellivision property. Personally, nothing from Atari2 excites me, so don’t really have a dog in this fight.

lol @ “longest running console war”

Now that Atari owns the Intellivision brand, maybe Tommy and friends will announce a rebrand for their "totally real" device and call it the Fairchild Amico to mine that Fairchild Channel F nostalgia.

@Randomname19 Infogrames didn't closed Atari, the original Atari was dead from the very beginning anyways. It died after the videogame crash of 1983. Cause after both founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney left, the company was sold to Warner Communication run by Ray Kassar and then later sold it to the Tramiel family. After a few runs with Jack Tramiel, they sold the brand to Hasbro. After that Infogrames bought the brand from Hasbro and change their name into Atari and the rest is history. After Infogrames own Atari, the brand stopped getting sold. If anything Infogrames is the real Atari now. The original Atari sucks anyways. What's even better now is that current Atari is resurrecting not only Intellivision but Infogrames as well and they now own Night Dive Studio and Digital Eclipse so their company in the gaming space is looking mighty awesome now. They own every IPs from Atari (Tempest, Missile Command, Primal Rage, Jungle Hunt, Yars, etc.) Intellivision (Night Stalker, Moon Patrol, Shark Shark, etc.), and Infogrames (Alone in the Dark, Lucky Luke, Rollercoaster Tycoon, etc.) under one roof.

I played an Amico at one of their events (you can see them on youtube) and I really enjoyed it. There was plenty of clunkiness, but at its heart it felt like games for the sake of having fun instead of doing the same thing all the other companies are with the only goal being money.

There was no way they could compete, though they dreamed they'd find a huge audience of people who just wanted to have fun.

The controller was too big to really hold and had some issues staying connected, but I loved the dial on it, it felt like something that could make for some different game play, and the tilt worked well enough to play Evil Knievel, and that game is one I'd buy if it came to Switch, it was a bunch of fun.

Anyway - I get that we want to hate everything we don't understand and that is probably why so many people hate the Amico, AND from my experience playing it, I appreciated what they were trying to do to give us something different than the other consoles, which increasingly all provide the same experience (I'll hold out hope that Nintendo bucks that trend w/Switch 2, but I fear the days of crazy innovation are behind them)

@Serpenterror IIRC correctly Warner actually bought (or at least invested a lot in) Atari all the way back in 1976, because the Atari VCS was proving very costly to develop.

Later Jack Tamriel bought the hardware/home computer/console software part of Atari when he was thrown out of Commodore for selling their hardware to cheaply.

Whatever they do with the IPs, they've got to do it with an Intellivision keypad. The majority of Intellivision games are unplayable with modern controllers, as we've seen from every console collection released in the past.

My first console was at 2600 and then I moved to the NES Genesis, etc., etc. but when they call the Atari and intellavision, the golden age of gaming I don’t agree one bit. If anything, it’s the bronze age or iron age no way is it the golden age that would probably be towards the end of the super Nintendo‘s life cycle.

Give me 'Turbo', 'Bumb 'n' Jump', 'Lock 'N' Chase' (maybe?) and the aforementioned 'Lady Bug' plus around 50 more titles from the library (and maybe some documentation of the Intellivision history) and I would gladly pay 40 € for an Intellivision 50 (or rather 45 - it's from 1979) collection.

While I am happy that Amico no longer has the Intellivision rights, I am not sure that the holding company that is Atari 3.0 (or is it 4.0, can't keep track of all the different Atari's in the past 50 years) is going to be a much better steward. Given their track record of playing by Limited Run Games playbook (overpriced items made as cheaply as possible), I fear what they will produce.

This is shocking news. It’s great.

I’d say bring back Colecovision, too, while you’re at it! 😁

Though, like Intellivision, I’m not sure what IP would fall under that Colecovision brand name. Most of the games I loved on Coleco were licensed arcade ports or 3rd party releases. Lady Bug, for example, was a great early Coleco port of a Universal arcade game.

To everyone else who was surprised Tommy was sitting on 200+ games, let alone that there were at least 200 Intellivsion releases, I have been trying to work with the Atari executives' assistants all day to get a full list of assests, but much like with Accolade, Microprose, and GT Interactive; Wade is playing Mum to it. My count is only 54 IP (Tommy already sold Shark Shark and Astrosmash to a German outfit), but a big chunk of the missing 140+ could be sports and solitaire esque games that I simplified down to simply "Intellivision Sports" and "Intellivision Casual"

@shgamer Sega, Marvelous, Marvelousagain , and Universal Entertainment of Japan (no releation to the Comcast division) own the four games you mentioned.

@Darknyht "The Wade Era" is technically still the same Infogrames from the PS2 era, so it's still the 4th version of Atari (Nolan, Warner Split, Jaguar-age, Infogrames) though most of us obsessives see it as being the 5th iteration since it's so drastically different. As for the LRG allegations, yeah they were guilty of that with the Recharged games (and Akka Arrh, and Atari Mania) Ever since last year's Haunted House they've started publishing everything on their own. Even Wayforward's Yar game will be sold at normal retailers, and they normally go out of their way to try and send as much buisness as possible to the worst part of Embracer Group for what I can only assume are blackmail related reasons. If you're reffering to the 2600 cartridges... yeah kinda made a mess of that, but it was an extremely limted thing for very specfic weirdos. Not something that affected the general consumer.

By the way, for everyone wondering who owns Colecovision; Paramount. Paramount inherited it from CBS because back in the 80's CBS had their own consumer electronics division.

The 80's were nuts, man.

@Zeebor15 Yeah, I was a bit afraid that the rights to Intellivision's various arcade ports are not owned by Intellivision (now Atari) anymore (but I still hope there'll be a solution as I don't think I'm that much into the "first party" games).

Edit: Blaze Entertainment (Evercade and Hyper Megatech) did manage to negotiate some pretty good deals for their various (physical) arcade collection cartridges, so maybe there's a chance Atari could do that as well for some of the best arcade ports on the Intellivision system.

@shgamer Well like I said, I got confirmation of around 54 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uHp_wqa1tNWa8DpeRRH-KGp3rSU4fmYLtIr86Z7f7og/edit#gid=639918701

@Zeebor15 Yes, the early 80's was the Wild West of videogames/computers (bootlegs of various popular arcade games/tons of unofficial clones on 8 bit home computers).

Isn't it supposed that they have been out of their financial problems for a few years, especially the "Bankruptcy", and now they are "playing to eat the competition"?, If they already lost many IPs (like Test Drive) and in others They even had demand and dislike from the public (like Rollercoaster Tycoon), but... oh well, it's their decision, let's see how it goes...

Well well well, it's looking more and more like those Atari logos in Blade Runner weren't so anachronistic after all!

Are they even a gaming company anymore? I seen they were doing motel6 so what happened there?

Wait, I’m confused. What does this mean for the Amico? Is it no longer affiliated with Intellivision? Because it’s clearly meant to be a new console based on the original Intellivision. Can it even exist without being an official Intellivision product?

Atari revenge for Atari 2600 games on the adapters of Intellivision and Coleco. I know a different Atari and the Infogrames and such stuff but still seemed fitting to say.

That aside eh that console never happening, the Amico games did release even if the console didn't so what will happen to those and the way Atari has been going (besides eh Roller Coaster Tycoon games but Atari 50 or others were good).

So besides Intellvision Lives or research never really had much to do with the Intellivision and some of those games are impressive. So a compilation or modern titles would be nice to see like we saw in Atari 50 a few modern remakes in there. Or some IP use possibly.

Or just whatever use they could have for the company in other ways than just re-releases and to give them some better purpose under Atari like maybe a different brand or different developer or other publishing or whatever. But who knows whatever they plan to do with them.

@KillerTan98 About that, they still have plans to enter the hotel biz....

@Zeebor15 I know CBS Electronics distributed the Colecovision in PAL regions, but I'm pretty sure the Colecovision rights are held by whoever inherited the actual Coleco company. Coleco was a company that existed before they made the Colecovision, they made the Cabbage Patch Kids among other toys, & they started as the Connecticut Leather Company, which Coleco is an abbreviation of.

It was the "Golden Age of Arcade Games". That suit is just a PR guy out of control.

Vast majority of console games at the time were inferior ports of arcade games, with the 2600 cornering the market on the best original console games. And the biggest and best developer of arcade games was also Atari. That's why it's "The Atari Age".

But I was a Coleco kid at 4 years old completely obsessed. Thank God the whole "screen time" scare wasn't a thing then!

@cyrus_zuo

I played Evil Knievel on mobile. It was a decent little Trials knock-off, nothing more or less. I can't imagine that horrid disc adding anything at all to it.

As for the rest..... shovelware is being polite.

@KAI_MIDORIKAWA My mistake. Nice find. I dug a bit deeper and apparentyl Coleco went from Hasbro to Dormitus Brands in Chicago and are currently in Holding.

@Adol-Bannings : Absolutely agree with you there, hence why I would never refer to really any Atari game as a "classic". Nothing about them has aged well and they were well and truly limited by the constraints of the day, whereas anything from the SNES era on (broadly speaking) can be every bit as playable (and enjoyable) now as it was back then.

@Sisilly_G The few Atari 2600 Games that still hold up today were from Activision. So it's all up to Xbox if they want to re-release their back catalog from before 2001.

@Atariboy Right. A shame for Astrosmash too. I would have liked to see an Astrosmash Recharged game. 😊

I see people saying, "Atari should buy Coleco too!" But I'm not sure what they'd really get out of that. The Colecovision was impressive for its time, but it was also cursed by timing. It came out so close to the video game crash, it didn't have time to build up a library of games like the Intellivision did. I can think of a lot of games Atari gets access to by taking over Intellivision, but I can't think of any Colecovision games except licenced arcade ports.

@Zeebor15 I tend to lean towards the IP should be public domain myself, but the law as stands means it will be exploited until no one cares and maybe it will still be preserved when they are curiosities like silent movies are now.

There have been a lot of bad or cheap Atari products in the last 10 years. I am not sure when neo-Atari took over, but they have been extremely awesome (Atari 50th) and extremely bad (some of what you mentioned). I hope they are good stewards of the legacy and manage to revive some of the games.

I have been on a 80’s only month for games and film, and there are some really amazing games considering their limitations. Some deserve to be given a second chance to reach a new generation.