Purchase of Intellivision Trademarks and Games Unites Competing Brands from the ‘70s and ‘80sPARIS and NEW YORK, May 23, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Atari® — one of the world's most iconic consumer brands and interactive entertainment producers — announced today it has purchased the Intellivision brand and certain games from Intellivision Entertainment LLC. Intellivision Entertainment LLC will rebrand and continue its business of developing and distributing the Amico brand game console with a licen
  • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    69·
    6 months ago

    “Uniting Atari and Intellivision after 45 years ends the longest-running console war in history,”

    Sure, but they both lost the war long ago. This is just some archeologist coming along to display both their bones in a museum hoping to boost gift shop sales.

    • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)@badatbeing.socialEnglish
      7·
      6 months ago

      Two of my favorite consoles of all time. If they could do an updated retro console based on the Intellivision II and allow playing Atari 2600 games without buying a separate adapter I would be in heaven.

      I have bins of games, but my controllers did not age 40+ years all that well. 😞

      • TexasDrunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 months ago

        I cannot speak to Intelliviaion, but you can get 2600 replacement controllers. If you’ve still got them it’s also likely that you can get someone to repair them if the issue is the electronics.

        • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)@badatbeing.socialEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago

          My Atari joystick still works, it’s more my Intellivision controllers. But having a nicer way to play on a modern TV with the original games with higher quality controllers would be amazing.

    • snownyte@kbin.social
      2·
      6 months ago

      Which is hilarious because they were both part of the reason the video game market crashed back then.

    • TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      Isn’t Tommy working for colecovision?

      Edit: we have too many visions from the late 70s/early 80s

  • jedibob5@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    6 months ago

    Huh, first I’m hearing of this Amico thing. I don’t know if it really has the support to capture enough of the market it seems to be going for… It looks like it’s trying to go for the “family-friendly, easy-to-use” concept that the Wii had, but the Wii had Nintendo behind it, along with other major publishers making games for it. The games included also look rather… basic.

    …Annnnd it’s also a Tommy Tallarico thing. Of course it is. Why on earth does Atari want this?

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      6 months ago

      You should read up on the Amico and in particular watch Pat The NES Punk’s various videos on it. The entire debacle is hilarious.

      The Amico is/was basically an investor scam. Yes, it did eventually turn into an actual product (which is crap) but it was never intended to be a serious contender to anything. The intent was for Tommy Tallarico to get his face published everywhere and pocket/embezzle a significant amount of investor and Indiegogo money.

      The system itself is basically an out-of-date smartphone chipset running a cut down version of Android. Most of its games, as you would expect, are basically mobile trash. Other than emulated Intellivision titles, anyway. And mobile trash you have to pay up front for a console with bullshit controls to even play it on.

        • SineSwiper@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          Is that the video that uses a deceptive title on a different subject, only to rant about Tommy for the rest of the video for 3 hours?

          • urata@kbin.social
            1·
            6 months ago

            Heh… yeah I was watching the video and was mildly interested for a while. I realized he hadn’t said much about the sound for a while and looked at the length of the video…

            I’d never heard of this Tommy as far as I can remember, and I’m definitely old enough to have heard of him.

            Maybe I’ll listen to the rest when I want to go to sleep.

      • snownyte@kbin.social
        2·
        6 months ago

        And they totally wasted a new Earthworm Jim game on that thing.

        But yeah, Tommy Tallarico had a personal vendetta with Pat the NES Punk for a while, taking swipes at them as he was covering the whole issue on his podcast the CUPodcast. It’s a really wild ride from beginning to end, if it ever did end.

    • Altima NEO@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      Atari doesn’t want that. They’re leaving Tallarico to run the amico under license.

      • jedibob5@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        In that case, I’m still not sure what the Intellivision brand even has left that Atari would want… I guess they could do one of those nostalgia re-release collections of old Intellivision games, but I feel like the nostalgia market for a nearly 50-year-old console mostly known for being a failed competitor to the 2600 is… very niche.

    • Lanusensei87@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Sunk cost? Perhaps they think the idea has potential without the baggage of having The First American around.

  • Jomega@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    6 months ago

    I could have sworn Atari was bankrupt. Where’d they get the money to acquire anything?

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      6 months ago

      Bankruptcy is intended to be (though is not often in actuality) a temporary restructuring period. A lot of companies just end up liquidating while under bankruptcy proceedings, but Atari emerged from Chapter 11 in 2014 after a year of restructuring and selling off IPs to pay their bills. Now they’re doing a bunch of stuff, including casinos and hotels.

      • magnetosphere@fedia.io
        5·
        6 months ago

        … casinos and hotels.

        On one hand, that’s weird AF. On the other, I would definitely stay at (and probably steal towels from) the Hotel Atari.

        • snownyte@kbin.social
          1·
          6 months ago

          In the Video Game Business, it’s not estranged to find video game companies doing casino things. Konami doing pachinko for example, which lead to them pissing a lot of their IPs off to pachinko machines that were themed.

          Hell, Nintendo licensed to Konami to do Mario Roulette which is a medal game.

      • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
        3·
        6 months ago

        (Half of bankruptcy is restructuring/planning while the other half is liquidation. Either way, the goal is to have a clean-ish start in debt terms.)