Atari Acquires Intellivision Brand

Goronmon@lemmy.world to Games@lemmy.world – 86 points –
Atari Acquires Intellivision Brand
finance.yahoo.com
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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?

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The system itself is basically an out-of-date smartphone chipset running a cut down version of Android.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.

Speaking of Tommy Tallarico, the Hbomberguy video on him was hilarious, sad and eye opening.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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