The Intellivision is returning, and it has a new boss

Wonder if this is the next Ouya. You know, crowd-funded and betting on people wanting a mobile experience on the big screen.

I’d argue that people looking for a family-friendly local multiplayer experience are better off getting a Wii with a bunch of games off Ebay.

It could be the next Ouya, but there are some differences between this and Ouya I think.

  1. This isn’t crowd funded, from what I understand money isn’t as tight for them as it probably was for the crowd funded Ouya.

  2. If I recall, the Ouya was literally just a machine that could play android games that you could get on your phone, tablet, whatever. I think Towerfall Ascension was exclusive to them but that might have been it. From what I understand every game for the Amico is exclusive. I think they have a motorcycle game that is sort of a port of a mobile game but they are adding a bunch of stuff to it.

We have a Wii, played it a ton, still do sometimes but want something new. I imagine there are a lot of other families in the same boat.

With all that said, it will come down to the games and how fun they are. I’m not convinced enough that I would preorder one, but I guess I’m cautiously optimistic from what I’ve seen so far.

Actually, yeah, it was in there, I think, right before the 3-minute mark.

Yeah, I can get on board with this. We enjoy Wii games, but I’m definitely intrigued by another console whose whole mindset is based around local multiplayer. I’ll keep an eye out here.

Nintendo Switch has tons of great local multiplayer games. Not sure why you’re talking about the Wii being some last bastion of that… since Nintendo has never strayed from offering a ton of that.

The Switch is on my list, but I’ve been unable to get my hands on one here lately!

Doesn’t invalidate the point that Nintendo has been the only company that’s really prioritized that. Another offering still isn’t a bad thing!

Tommy Tallarico did a Q&A yesterday and announced what games they are plannin/hoping to have available at launch.

Sports/Recreational
Baseball
Hockey
Bowling
Soccer
Pool
Auto Racing
Evel Knievel

Retro re-imagined games (Potentially on launch)
Moon Patrol
Pong
Bi-Plane
Missile Command
Night Stalker
Armor Battle
Breakout
Frog Bug
Centipede
Utopia
B-17 Bomber
AD&D Cloudy Mountain
Bomb Squad

Original IP
Side Swiper
Safe Cracker
Horse Racing
Dynablaster
Some other he couldn’t mention yet (probably has to wait due to licensing/formal marketing announcement)

Casual
A lot of card Games that he can’t told us.
Charade game.

Edutainment for kids

9 secret games … (couldn’t say due to licensing)

I had the Intellivision, and the mentions of sounds in this thread really took me back, permanence of childhood memory and all. One somewhat obscure title was Spacehawk (I think) where you could actually set it to no inertia or realistic space inertia and thrust, pretty damned advanced for the time.

This is…something?

I don’t hate the idea of it, and I suppose that there’s room for a Wii style casual family-multiplayer centric casual console, but I’m not sure that this is it.

Huh. It looks like a machine that belongs in a hospital.

Ha ha – it does! Press the button and a nurse comes or your bed adjusts, something like that.

Looks like you can soak your feet in it with the controllers undocked.

Wow, that was a very appealing presentation. I hope that console is a success for them, I really love the idea of something that plays simple living room couch games meant to be played together. Good stuff.

And over here it seems to be an absolute steal.

image

Price isn’t great here in the U.S. either. $250 does seem overpriced, considering for $300 you can get a Switch or Series S.

The Intellevision branding is sorta weird. Yeah, they can cash in on that IP, but everyone who has any memory of an actual Intellivision has to be pushing 50, at the youngest.

My uncle had one, so I remember them, and I’m quite a bit younger than 50. Still, in the main you are probably correct.

I’ll never forget the digitized redneck at the beginning of B-17 Bomber:

Yeah, I have no idea about the sales angle either. They seem to target young families - in which the parents likely grew up with NES, SNES, Genesis or PlayStation. $250 / €280 is a lot for something that doesn’t seem built well and provides graphics that are in line with your average mobile game. I’d also guess for that kind of money you can get a Wii w/ 4 controllers and a bunch of games off Ebay.

Ironically, the individual remote for the Wii are more expensive than the console second hand, here.

I watched the video and it’s…interesting. I think the games might feel a little simplistic, but maybe that’s part of their pick-up-and-play mandate. I think that the lack of licensed games will probably hurt them the most; I don’t know that a lot of kids will want to come over and play Explorer Fox or whatever that character was.

Some of the other features seemed more interesting, like taking your controller to a friend’s house and then they can play all of your games too. But of course that depends on getting a critical mass of other people who have the same console.

I’ll be curious to see how this proceeds, but I wouldn’t put money on it lasting more than a year.

I had an Intellivision growing up… and I just turned 50 in April. ;) I loved that console, and loved the games on it, and this… this is not what I was wanting from an Intellivision branded console. They threw in some of the old Intellivision titles (Astrosmash! Night Hawk! Probably a few more I’m forgetting now.) but they looked… terrible. Like, not even an appealing looking remake or remaster of them.

So yeah, I don’t know about the branding. People who grew up with and liked the Intellivision are not going to want this, at least not based on the name. I can see it being appealing to a younger crowd, for sure, so maybe they’re banking on their parents (who do remember the Intellivision) buying it for their kids, regardless of the fact that it has any actual resemblance to the original console.