In the early ‘80s, the console market was a three-way race between Atari, Coleco, and Mattel. Mattel was responsible for the Intellivision, one of Atari’s biggest rivals until Nintendo launched the NES in the US – an estimated 5 million Intellivision consoles were sold.
Today, Atari has announced that they have acquired the Intellivision brand, along with the rights to 200 titles. The retro community appears to be pleased with the acquisition – the Intellivision brand, and its catalogue, have been diminished after being associated with the much-maligned Amico console. It was feared the rights would end up being scattered across several IP holders.
Atari plans to re-release digital and physical copies of Intellivision games, in addition to creating new titles based on existing properties. Wasting no time, new t-shirts featuring the Intellivision logo are already available to order from Atari’s site.
While it isn’t clear which games Atari owns the rights to, some of the better-known Intellivision titles include Frog Bog, Lock ‘N’ Chase, Shark! Shark!, Snafu, Astrosmash, B-17 Bomber, Microsurgeon, and Tower of Doom.
A new collection seems inevitable. In the meantime, two Intellivision carts were recently released for the Evercade. They’re worth checking out if you’re curious about what the system offered.