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Atari Buys Intellivision Brand, Ending 'Longest-Running Console War in History' 54

Posted by msmash from the ticket-closed dept.
An old-school video game rivalry has a new chapter: Atari, known for producing one of the first hit home game consoles, has announced the acquisition of long-time rival Intellivision's brand and rights to over 200 games from Intellivision Entertainment. The two companies were key players in the industry's first console war in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Atari plans to expand distribution of Intellivision games and explore new opportunities for the brand. Mike Mika, studio head at Digital Eclipse, an Atari-owned game studio, commented on the deal, saying the acquisition "ends the longest-running console war in history."
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Atari Buys Intellivision Brand, Ending 'Longest-Running Console War in History' More

Atari Buys Intellivision Brand, Ending 'Longest-Running Console War in History'

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  • Intellivision was a much more powerful console. Atari was what the masses had because it was affordable. Laserdisc was better than betamax which was better than VHS, but it cost a lot more than both so VHS won out.

    • Was it, though? perhaps the hardware was more powerful, but the games on Intellivision never seemed very fun or compelling. Maybe I just never saw the good ones, though.

      • B-17 Bomber had voice synthesis. They had a Dungeons and Dragons game as well. To young me that was the holy grail of gaming. Not that adventure was bad. Their sports games were streets ahead as well.

        • Beeee seventeen bawmer! My dad and I played Utopia a lot! That's probably why I became a hopeless Civ addict. D&D Treasures of Tarmin was fantastic too. I spent hours exploring and fighting monsters. Atari had Intelevison beat when it came to library and controller choices, but so many games were very simple and the graphics were pretty harsh. Coleco had both of these systems beat, but Intelevison had games that you could spend time with.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by slaker ( 53818 )

        INTV had parallax scrolling and a hardware speech synthesis addon, as well as greater cartridge memory. You could also use both controllers as a single player for at least some titles, and each controller had a numeric keypad for vastly greater input capability.

        As far as "good" games, I'd look at Space Armada, Space Battle, Discs of Tron, Beauty and the Beast, Neurosurgeon, Utopia, Dungeons and Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin and its sports titles, which were sort of universally regarded as better than the ones

      • I always enjoyed Baseball on Intellivision. Its the only game I remember on Intellivision though.

      • I remember playing Utopia a lot at my friend's house when I was a kid. That game was great!

      • FWIW, games like Cloudy Mountain and Treasure of Tarmin alone made Intellivision very desirable back in the day. None of my friends wanted to touch the Atari and its primitive block-graphics games when given the option of playing Cloudy Mountain or Treasure of Tarmin on the Mattel. Those very early Intellivision CRPGs were nothing short of amazing, especially for the period, and thoroughly enjoyable even years later.

        YMMV but that's how it was for me and my friends.

    • Re:There was no rivalry (Score:4, Informative)

      by ip_vjl ( 410654 ) on Thursday May 23, 2024 @01:20PM (#64493937) Homepage

      It wasn't just affordability. The 2600 had a two-year market lead on the Intellivision.

      Of course this meant there were technical differences (in the INTV's favor) but it also meant Intellivision was competing with an installed base.

      A kid with a 2600 could borrow cartridges from friends. The kid with the Intellivision might not even know another INTV owner. So, a 2600 user had a much bigger library of games at their disposal.

      Yeah, the 2 year gap meant that the Intellivision was more powerful, but a couple more years and INTV was competing against Colecovision and Atari 5200, both of which completely outclassed the Intellivision (and 2600) but even those didn't end up dominating like the 2600 because of the legacy installed base. It wasn't until the mid 80s when the NES appeared (and Atari corp was massively fumbling) and was enough of an upgrade that publishers were able to stop worrying about the 2600 as people bought their "next generation" of gaming system.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by slaker ( 53818 )

        Coleco owners actually had the option to run both Atari and INTV games thanks to a cartridge adapter. My hick town's rich kid had that thing and essentially the full library of games for all three platforms. I have no idea how much the adapter cost, only that he could switch from Adventure for Atari to Space Battle to the Coleco version of Donkey Kong if he wanted. Coleco also had a refined version of the INTV gamepad, although IIRC it didn't support Mattel's overlays.

        • Re:There was no rivalry (Score:4, Informative)

          by ip_vjl ( 410654 ) on Thursday May 23, 2024 @02:23PM (#64494113) Homepage

          The funny thing about the Coleco Expansion Module (at least the Atari one, IDK about others) is that it pretty much was just a standalone 2600 clone (they were sued by Atari) - just a couple components shy. I don't know what the cost was, but if it wasn't significantly different, there's no real advantage over just having both systems (other than space, and that most TVs of the era only had a single input.)

          The Coleco isn't supplying any computing power to the expansion module. It only supplies DC, and a clock signal. The expansion module returns a video signal that goes directly back to the Coleco's RF modulator. This has caused problems for retrogamers that have added video upgrades to their Coleco (like RGB mods) as the expansion module video is a completely separate signal, so even if you RGB mod your Coleco, anything running on the expansion module can't output over it as the video signal for that is already composite and fed directly to the RF modulator.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The Intellivision controllers are horrific. The Atari joysticks were not great, but they were infinitely better than what Intellivision offered.

        Games tend not to be much fun when you feel like you are losing because the controller is rubbish.

    • The intellivision controller was a joke though.

    • My friend had INTV and I had the Sears version of the 2600. Not one game would he play from the Atari.
      I however, still call up in my mind the sound of the rats eating me in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or the sheer panic that sets in while the ship voice tells you every system is failing and base destruction and then you die in Space Spartans. Sometimes when the computer in any Star Trek gives quickfire statuses I flashback with a touch of rush of dying in that game.

  • meaningless (Score:4)

    by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Thursday May 23, 2024 @12:02PM (#64493721)

    neither one of these brands have anything to do with their original existence, might as well say Bell and Howell buys Packard Bell. Hell, I bet you cant even count the number of owners Atari has had on both hands

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Lewie ( 3743 )

      Agreed. "Packard Motors buys Studebaker," and all that.

      • Agreed. "Packard Motors buys Studebaker," and all that.

        Damn, bro. That's some straight up old-school there. Yer making my nostalgia glasses fog up, man.

    • If you aren't missing any fingers one hand should do. But your comment is still accurate. How long until Intellivision puts out NFT's?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

        I dunno I counted 5 just for atari games, lets not forget that it was first split up into at least 2 companies (Atari Corp and Atari Games) if you count all its offspring with atari somewhere in the paperwork it could get past 10

    • Yes, rather than the "end of a console war", it's just one zombie brand consuming another zombie brand.

    • Yup (Score:1)

      by gavron ( 1300111 )

      The Atari of today is no more than an intellectual property holding company. That they bought more intellectual property is hardly innovative or surprising. It just means they can do their "home coffee table", "home arcade style machine", and "bar table machine" players all have access to more games.

      In many ways, a creative MAME setup allows better play, more reliable hardware, off the shelf (OTS) parts, FOSS system, but to be legal about its use in the US one has to have the original ROMs. Some of them

    • neither one of these brands have anything to do with their original existence, might as well say Bell and Howell buys Packard Bell. Hell, I bet you cant even count the number of owners Atari has had on both hands

      With ten fingers, that's ten bits, so 1023 possibilities.

    • Atari ownership history (Score:4, Informative)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday May 24, 2024 @08:49AM (#64495907) Homepage Journal

      I count six owners of the Atari brand

      1972: Original Atari Inc.
      1976: Bought by Warner Communications
      1984: Warner sells home computer and console assets to Tramel Technology Ltd.
      1996: Bought by JTS
      1998: Division sold to Hasbro
      2000: Hasbro sells Atari and Hasbro video game divisions to Infogrames

      Post-1984 product identities under Atari Games, Tengen, and Midway brands, such as Paperboy and Mortal Kombat, remain with Warner Bros. Discovery, after ownership by WMS/Midway from 1996 to 2009. Hasbro bought back video game rights to Monopoly, Transformers, and other Hasbro product identities in 2005.

    • I thought there were five [wikipedia.org] owners.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

        Thats Atari Games, there's at least 4 more for Atari Corporation when eventually became Atari interactive which has yet another one

        its a endless rabbit hole, atari's all the way down

  • Starbase one under attack.
    Energy level two hundred fifty.
    Impulse Drive destroyed.
    Hyper Drive destroyed.
    Shields destroyed.
    Tracking Computer destroyed.
    Battle Computer destroyed.
    Starbase one destroyed.
    The bat-tle is o-ver.

  • Break them up (Score:3)

    by nebaz ( 453974 ) on Thursday May 23, 2024 @12:22PM (#64493775)

    Atari already has 80% of the console market. This merger should not be allowed due to anti-trust laws.

    Glad it's still 1982.

  • Atari, valued at $5,000, bought Intellivision, valued at $2,000, in a historic merger.

    On a serious note, Atari just wanted the tech behind the amazing Intellivision controllers - quite possibly the best console controller the world has even known.

  • What will become of Tommyâ(TM) s vision?

  • The Amico console is dead? (Score:3)

    by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Thursday May 23, 2024 @01:00PM (#64493873)

    Even though it likely was vaporware, I was looking forwards to seeing the Amico console being something to have, just because "remixes" of the classic Intellivision stuff would be nice to have.

  • Did they also get the rights to George Plimpton as spokesman and shill?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Oh, wait they'll use AI to replicate that... :-) He'll try anything...just didn't realize how prescient and foreshadowing those words were...

    JoshK.

  • I'd love to see a version of Zaxxon or Nightstalker I could play on a smartphone or TV. I've tried versions of Pac Man but many are not the same as the old arcade versions.

  • A while back Atari released an iOS app "Atari: Greatest Hits" that was basically an emulator for a selection of both their console games and their upright cabinet games. I hope they now make one for all the intellivision games. personally i'd love to see them playable in my Quest and or Vision as well.

  • My family had an Atari 2600. My friend's family had an Intellivision. The Intellivision was so much better ... it had a voice synthesizer too! Only good memories for both of these consoles though.

    • we had the same setup in my neighborhood. Our favorite intellivision game was Sea Battle, but it required two players. So much fun!
  • A picture has purchased another picture. Nothing remains of the people who originally made these brands great.
  • Not really. This Atari is not the same Atari that produced the 2600 during the Golden Age, so they weren't fighting that fight ever.

  • I haven't thought of my Intellivision in decades. I had a few games, but I was obsessed with Astrosmash.

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