Atari Has Acquired Intellivision (But Not The Amico)

Atari has acquired Intellivision.

On Twitter, Atari shared the news in this way:

“We acquired the Intellivision brand and game library.

“This was a very rare opportunity to unite former competitors and bring together fans of the golden age of gaming.” – Wade Rosen

The former Intellivision will rebrand and continue distribution of the Amico console.”

They then linked to the Intellivision t-shirt which you can now buy on the Atari online store.

The official press release shares that their acquisition includes 200 Intellivision titles. The company making the Amico console has a license with Atari to continue making their Intellivision remakes for the console. But they will themselves change their name from Intellivision.

Now, Atari is being tongue in cheek about this, but this isn’t really an end of a console war. At this point, both Atari’s and Intellivision’s trademarks are owned by completely different companies than the ones who were competing in the US home console market in the 1970s. And as we know, the real end of that console war was the recession in that market from 1983 to 1985, popularly known as the 1980s video game crash.

But there are other sordid stories behind this news. While the Intellivision was originally produced by Mattel Electronics, in 1997, two former Mattel employees bought the rights for Intellivision, to bring back their games. Thanks to Keith Robinson and Stephen Roney, Intellivision titles were rereleased in collections for newer consoles for the past 26 years. This included titles like the multiplatform Intellivision Lives!, and the ATGames Intellivision Flashback plug and play console.

In 2018, video game composer Tommy Tallarico acquired the Intellivision rights, and launched crowdfunding for a new low power console, called the Intellivision Amico, under the company currently known as Intellivision Entertainment. After multiple rounds of fundraising, the company failed to deliver the console to retail, or to get most games finished, in six years. Tallarico stepped down as CEO in 2022, amid long running accusations that the company had misused the money they raised, instead of producing what they had promised. And so, for the past few years, it looked like the Amico was just going to shut down completely.

While we wouldn’t bet on this deal being enough to actually get the Amico through to the finish line, it is at least a Hail Mary for the Intellivision IP itself. In a way, the current day Atari (FKA Infogrames) is doing a sort of consolidation of their own, for many older games, and companies making them.

Thankfully, Atari SA’s consolidation involves considerably less money and lower stakes than what Microsoft, Embracer, and Sony have been attempting. They can sit on the Intellivision IP for a while, at least to prepare new games and collections for newer platforms. That could mean the next generation of consoles, such as what Nintendo has come up with, or perhaps making their own hardware, like a plug and play, mini cabinet, or a gaming handheld, filled with games owned by Atari.

That’s certainly something to look forward to, and hopefully Atari SA does have the sense to avoid the pratfalls their bigger peers have made in their acquisition sprees.