All-New Intellivision Console To Launch October 1 As Retro Gaming Explodes

We may well be in the heyday of retro gaming. There have been several retro console launches to let old-school gamers enjoy many of the games they grew up on in a more modern package. Nintendo was up to bat first with its NES and SNES Classic Editions, helping to push spending on gaming hardware. Earlier this month NeoGeo announced that it would be selling a retro console complete with its own screen and controller in a tiny arcade cabinet. Now Intellivision Entertainment has announced that it will be bringing a new console to market.

The Intellivision was a big deal back in the late '70s and through the '80s selling millions of units. Intellivision had lots of firsts to its credit including being the first 16-bit console, the first to support digital distribution, the first to add speech/voice to games, and the first to license sports leagues. The new Intellivision console will carry on that tradition promising a new concept, design, and approach to gaming, but there is no official name for the console just yet.

That seems to indicate that the console won’t be a retro style affair, but we will have to see. What we do know about the console right now comes courtesy of an Electric Playground livestream that Intellivision Entertainment President Tommy Tallarico participated in recently. During that livestream Tallarico promised that the console would cost "much less than $200" and that it would include retro Intellivision games pre-installed on an internal HDD.

The console will have HDMI output and there will be no physical game releases. Edutainment titles will be available for the game console. The official announcement and details of the new console are set for May 31, 2018, which is tomorrow if you aren’t keeping up. The console will launch on October 1 according to the company.

"I grew up playing Intellivision with my parents and younger brother," says Tallarico. "It was always my favorite system because the games were cutting edge, yet fun and simple to play so our entire family could enjoy them together. I find those important elements to generally be lacking from our industry with the current modern gaming consoles. Our goal is to change that by focusing on bringing all age groups and levels of gamers and non-gamers together while introducing new generations of people to the legacy success of the Intellivision brand."