Atari acquires Intellivision brand, uniting competitors from gaming’s early years

Atari has acquired the Intellivision brand, purchasing its trademarks and uniting competing brands from the 1970s and 1980s.

Atari is already one of the world’s most iconic consumer brands and interactive entertainment producers, and now it has purchased the Intellivision brand and certain games from Intellivision Entertainment LLC, which had been the midst of a revival attempt by Tommy Tallarico.

The Intellivision Entertainment LLC will rebrand and continue its business of developing and distributing the Amico brand game console with a license from Atari to continue to distribute new versions of the Intellivision games on the Amico console.

Atari will seek to expand digital and physical distribution of legacy Intellivision games, potentially create new games, and explore brand and licensing opportunities as part of a long-term plan to create value from the Intellivision properties.

“Uniting Atari and Intellivision after 45 years ends the longest-running console war in history,” said Mike Mika, Studio Head at Digital Eclipse, an Atari-owned game studio, in a statement.

The first Intellivision home video game console was released by Mattel Electronics in 1979 and the console platform sold an estimated 5 million units through 1990. Atari and Intellivision arguably fought the first console war of consequence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mattel went as far as enlisting the actor George Plimpton to appear in a series of ads comparing the two systems, as well as an eight-minute-long video shown at the Gamescom trade show.

“This was a very rare opportunity to unite former competitors and bring together fans of Atari, Intellivision and the golden age of gaming,” said Wade Rosen, chairman and CEO of Atari, in a statement.

The purchase includes the rights to more than 200 titles from the Intellivision portfolio and the Intellivision trademarks. Phil Adam took over from Tallarico as CEO of Intellivision Entertainment in 2022, while Tallarico became president.

Tallarico, a longtime gaming musician, became wealthy from the Video Games Live events that he started. He bought Intellivision back in 2018 and began work on the Amico, a new game console that would run both new and old Intellivision games.

The Amico was originally supposed to come out in October 2020, but then it was delayed to 2021 because of parts shortages related to the pandemic. Then the company targeted getting the machine out by the end of 2021, but that time came and went without a launch. 

“Atari has been a valuable partner and we have every confidence they will be a responsible steward of the storied Intellivision brand,” said Adam, in a statement. “We look forward to our expanded collaboration and bringing a broad array of new Atari and Intellivision titles to the Amico and Amico Home family gaming platforms.”

To mark the occasion, new Intellivision T-shirts are available starting today on Atari.com, with more Intellivision apparel and collectibles to come.

The Amico video game console is currently under development. Meanwhile, Amico Home is the Amico console gaming experience delivered on other hardware platforms that many people already own. Amico Home is currently available on Android and coming soon to Apple iOS. Additional platforms and devices are planned in the future. More information can be found at amico.club.