Atari Purchases The Intellivision Brand, But Not The Delayed Amico Console

Well, the Intellivision brand is almost certainly in a better place with Atari than with Tallarico Incorporated, at the very least. I wonder how the Amico is coming along these days...

Is the Amico going to be the first console to already be old enough to be classed as retro on its day of release?

I'm currently discussing with some of the Atari executives what exactly is in that >200 games count. Will report back with finidngs later.

EDIT: Wade refuses to make the full list publisc. Again. Bollocks

Great news!!
So many Intellivision IP:s, I wanna see new versions of.
Like Night Stalker. And I bet Atari would make something MUCH better out of Astrosmash.

Tommy once said, that he was gonna beat Atari with the Amico.
I wish I could see his reaction to this

Hopefully this acquisition will do something other than just extend the life of the pyramid scheme that is the Amico . . .

@Steel76 Don't get your hopes up on Astrosmash just yet. We're trying to figure out if Tommy already sold that to the Germans.

Smart of Atari to keep away from that nonsense that is the Amico.

Also let's be honest, that will never see a commercial release, it's digital only with no way of distributing games, they no longer own any games, they have no money to build the thing and they have huge debts, one of which is tied to per unit sales of it should it ever come out.

Amico Home on the Play Store shows only 1K+ downloads, so overall they have no money, no games, no staff and no market

Like I said in NintendoLife, I wouldn't be surprised if they paid extra NOT to buy the Amico mess. (To put it lightly.)

Not even Atari wants the Amico trashfire.

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.

Still Nightstalker, Lock N' Chase, Burgertime, Bump 'n Jump, Minotaur (formally AD&D Treasure of Tarmin), Beauty and the Beast, Dragonfire, Tron: Deadly Discs, and He-Man were my early childhood gaming along with a dozen other titles. The Intellivision II (and Odyssey II) made up my video game consoles until I got the NES with PowerPad for Christmas in 1988.

So Atari now owns Intellivision and a 49% stake in Polymega. Hopefully that means something for future Polymega development. If Polymega can launch an online retro game store then that could be a game changer, and this intellivision purchase could help bolster the number of launch games on that store.

@Zeebor15 Not making the list public to begin with makes sense. I imagine it will take a while to untangle the rights and work out what they really have. e.g in some case they may only have the name etc. Plenty of companies like to use smoke and mirrors to hide what they really have in a sale.

Having worked for a publisher myself in the past I know rights can be a very murky issue. The Atari games I am most fond of are games like APB from the late 80's early 90's and the rights to that are now with warner bros.

I know of a few cases wher larger multimedia companies do acquire rights to some games and then just set on them.

@Steel76 @Zeebor15 I'm afraid that Astrosmash and Shark Shark were not in that adquisition, since Tommy Tallarico sold the rights to those two games to another company. It's up to Atari to rescue those IPs and bring them back under the Intellivision umbrella

@Fallingshadow @KGRAMR Yes, Astrosmash and SHARK! were sold to a compnay called BBG. AS for the likes of APB, yes the first collapse of Atari into console Atari and Arcade Atari is confusing. That's why I eventually sat down and figured out what Warner Bros Discovery now calls "Midway Classics" Here's the in -progress list https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uHp_wqa1tNWa8DpeRRH-KGp3rSU4fmYLtIr86Z7f7og/edit#gid=639918701

@Darknyht

It's Atari 6
...I think.
original 70's Atari
WB-tari
Tramiel-tari
Hasbro-tari
Info-tari
and now Nu-tari

I think Nu-tari also changed hands at least once

@Darknyht You definitely raise some valid concerns, but I still think this acquisition is a big step up for those who care about the Intellivision brand and legacy. The current Atari isn't perfect, but at least it doesn't take customers' money and give them nothing in return.

@Zeebor15 to put it in simple terms more or less: After the original Atari collapsed in 1984, the console/computer division went to Jack Tramiel, becoming Atari Corporation (7800, ST, XEGS, Lynx, and Jaguar) before dissapearing in 1996 during a reverse merger with JTS. Hasbro Interactive acquired the Atari brand in 1998 and declared the Jaguar (as well as the Lynx according to Carl Forhan of Songbird Productions and former Hasbro spokeperson Jayson Hill) open platforms in 1999. Hasbro Interactive was later sold to Infogrames in the 2000s, becoming Atari Interactive.

Meanwhile, the arcade division fell into Warner Communications and became Atari Games. Between 1996-1997, Atari Games was acquired by Williams Entertainment, becoming a division of Midway Games to get them out of the competition and was eventually closed in 2003 IIRC. After Midway fell into bankruptcy, Warner Bros acquired the full IP library of Midway and Atari Games, but they have done nothing with the Atari Games IP outside of Gauntlet.

@KitsuneNight @KGRAMR The current Wade era is still Into-tari. The name hasn't been sold to anyone else since then, but their market segments and divisions have changed drastically. While the other Atari's were straight up re-incarnations, the transition to this current age is more a ship of theseus piece by piece re-invention. Again, trying to do the Embracer style "put the old company back together piece-by-piece" approach without making the same mistakes of getting sidetracked by Randy and over-extending

Joust and Defender are in Lego Dimmensions, along with I THINK Blasteroids, and I know the rights to Sprint are a bit weird right now.

The atari arcade rights have been with midway since 1996. Which is now owned by warner bros. They won't get them back that's for sure. Embracer where not putting a company back togehter they where just buying up everything and then leveraging the increased value of the company to get more captail then buying another company rince and repeat. It now why they are in a total mess.

@cdog555 I agree they have a more invested interest and if they put out a quality release like Atari 50th I will be interested. I just worry they will also put out $1000 collector crap that is half-baked also. The Blue Rangers did what they could to preserve the memory, I just hope the new stewards show the same love for its legacy.

At the same time I weep that these games should be in the public domain, but by the time they reach it they will be about as useful as silent movies are to most modern audiences.