Atari's Resurrecting the Intellivision, One of Its Biggest Competitors in the '80s (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0179816466
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/10/17/1910204/ataris-resurrecting-the-intellivision-one-of-its-biggest-competitors-in-the-80s
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/news/801646/atari-intellivision-sprint-console-competition
> Atari has announced yet another retro console revival, but this time it's launching hardware from an old competitor.
>
> Atari and Plaion, a company that develops, publishes, and distributes games, have [1]collaborated on the new Intellivision Sprint that blends '80s console aesthetics with modern gaming conveniences. It's a new take on Mattel's Intellivision, which initially went head-to-head with the Atari 2600 when it was released in 1979.
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> The $150 Sprint looks a lot like the original Intellivision with a gold and black case and a wood-grain panel on the front, but there are a lot fewer cables. It connects to a TV using a single HDMI cable, and while it still includes two controllers featuring dials and number pads instead of joysticks, they're both wireless and charge when docked to the console.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/801646/atari-intellivision-sprint-console-competition
Re: (Score:2)
Practically all of the Aquarius' games that Mattel created (which Atari bought after the Amico debacle) would just be ports of the Intellivision games.
Nope, you blew it (Score:3)
while it still includes two controllers featuring dials and number pads instead of joysticks, they're both wireless and charge when docked to the console.
Wireless, no matter how good, still has delays or blips which interrupt the signal. You need the consistent signal of a wired connection.
I know people will give me reasons why I'm wrong, but this is no different than having touchscreens for basic operations in a car. You need the analog touch for simplicity and reliability.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a freaking 16-bit Intellivision running at 895kHz (not even mHz, let alone gHz!) ... any latency from the wireless devices will be _dwarfed_ by latency in the processor (or emulated processor). I'm sure the processor in the re-issue we're talking about here is much much faster, but it's probably spending 99% of its time in sleep cycles to dumb itself down to the original console's timing... meaning it can handle the wireless controllers just fine.
Now for modern-day gaming, yeah, I won't argue. But fo
Re: (Score:2)
This is going to be a cheap System-on-Chip emulation box connected to an HDMI display. Wireless controllers aren't going to be your only latency concern.
Re: (Score:2)
You're thinking of bluetooth which has lag from encoding and packet schemes and such.
Intellivision was fun (Score:2)
While most of my friends, including my family, had Atari 2600 systems in the early 80's one of my friends had an Intellivision, complete with voice synthesizer. It was expensive but so much better than the Atari 2600. I didn't care for the pushbutton/joystick wheel game pads much but you got used to them. Our game consoles didn't see much use however when we got our first computer system, me a TRS-80 Model III and then CoCo2, and my friend with the Intellivision a completely decked out TI99/4A system (they
Intellivision for $150 (Score:1)
Wasn't the original Intellivision in the $150-$200 ballpark?
Re: (Score:3)
I know it was quite a bit more than the Atari 2600. Only one of my friends had an Intellivision (the rest of us had the 2600) because of it's hefty price tag.
Re: Intellivision for $150 (Score:2)
$200 was the original MSRP but depended on which package you got.
LOVED my Intellivision (Score:1)
Got it for Christmas when I was a kid in the early 80s and played it a TON throughout the 80s. Football, Auto Racing, Baseball, Sea Strike...all favorites. The B-17 Bomber game I got quite a bit later and didn't play it quite as much but I remember being excited for it at the time.
Not sure the nostalgia is worth owning one today, but it could be fun to play with one for a few hours.
Re: (Score:2)
The B-17 bomber game is the first one I ever played that had voice if you had the optional voice synthesizer. Way cool at the time.
Re: LOVED my Intellivision (Score:2)
I would love to have a retro Intellivision, but I want to play the obscure third-party stuff like White Water and Ice Trek, or Maze-A-Tron, in addition to the obvious first-party choices. Give me a packed eStore with as close to the full catalog as possible, along with printable overlays for the digital titles, and youâ(TM)ll have my full attention.
At least it's an actual Intellivision this time (Score:2)
Unlike the disaster that was the Amico.
Modern Gaming (Score:2)
> blends '80s console aesthetics with modern gaming conveniences
I hope that doesn't mean the modern game system experience.
80s console: Turn on, 5 seconds later the game is ready to play.
Modern gaming conveniences: Turn on, wait 30 minutes for the console to patch, then another 30 while the game pulls in a 1 GB update.
Personally... (Score:2)
I'm always amazed when I hear Atari still exists.
Takes me back (Score:2)
I could have sworn I played this game on an Intellivision:
[1]Take the Money and Run [myabandonware.com]
But it's not listed as a system for this game. Maybe my rich friend with the Intellivision also had an Odyssey 2, lol
[1] https://www.myabandonware.com/game/take-the-money-and-run-svp
WTF happened here (Score:2)
When did Slashdot start accepting posts from subscription sites ?!?! Fsck the Verge...
It's a little pricey (Score:1)
But just having new Intelevision controllers that should be pretty well built given atari's track record make it a pretty good buy.
The games just don't play right without the proper controllers except for a few of the really simple ones. You really need that keypad and you need it right there so you're not reaching for it on your keyboard.
There are already old flashback consoles and last I looked you could still find them on eBay for reasonable prices. But the Atari controllers are probably going to b