In a move that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, Atari has announced that it is reviving its former rival, the Intellivision, for its 45th anniversary. The company is releasing the Intellivision Sprint, a nostalgia-bait console celebrating Mattel’s forgotten system.
For anyone who has been following along since Atari’s acquisition of the Intellivision name and library May of last year, the news isn’t totally shocking. The new system, scheduled for release in time for the holiday season, will pay tribute to the original, with some of the modern updates you’d expect in 2025.
The Sprint will come with 45 games built in, including classics like Astrosmash, Baseball and B-17 Bomber. Faithful to the original’s design, it will feature two (now wireless) controllers mimicking the original’s disc-and-keypad setup. It’ll also come with double-sided overlays, two for each of the built-in games, to help make the archaic controls easier to learn. The console also features HDMI and a USB-A port to “expand the library”.
Notably, Atari has been careful to distance the Sprint, and their acquisition of the brand, from the failed Amico project. If you missed that saga, the Intellivision Amico was a much-hyped, ultra-disastrous venture to revive the old Intellivision brand with a new console and library of games.
You might think the years of delays, failed crowdfunding, and lawsuits would have killed the Amico project long before today, but even Atari’s purchase of the Intellivision brand has not killed the Amico dream. At the time of writing, you can still reserve an Amico and even purchase physical Amico games from the company’s eBay partner. Thankfully, most of these games have ended up on Steam, so you don’t need to throw your money at what is almost certainly vaporware.
In the case of the Sprint, Atari is moving on from the Amico, instead hedging their bets on nostalgia being enough to make the Intellivision a success in 2025. Whether it will succeed remains to be seen. The Sprint is out on December 5 in the US and Australia, and December 23 in Europe, and will be priced at $149.99/£99.99.
Pre-order the Sprint directly from Atari at their official website.
Source: Video Games Chronicle
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