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Atari Announces the Intellivision Sprint, Begins Reanimating Old Rivals

 19/10/2025 2 Views

Atari, which has heavily mined its early consoles for nostalgia dollars with re-creations like the Atari 2600+ and the Atari 400 Mini, has now also exhumed the corpse of one of its earliest competitors: The Intellivision. The company has announced the Intellivision Sprint, a modern take on that console with 45 built-in games that you can play on your HDMI-capable TV. Atari also released an overwrought video announcement with an admittedly sick Waveshaper & Oscillian track.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s what you need to know: The Intellivision was released in 1979 to compete with the underpowered-by-comparison Atari 2600. It featured two controllers that docked into slots in the top of the console and were connected to it by these coiled cables that I would compare to a phone cord, but I guess that’s a dated reference at this point, too. IGN has a brief history of the Intellivision that you can read for more.

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Intellivision Sprint

The Intellivision Sprint includes one HDMI port and a pair of wireless controllers that recharge by docking them in the top of the console. The full list of built-in games includes B-17 Bomber, Boulder Dash, Snafu, and Astrosmash. As noted by The Verge, the Sprint won’t work with game cartridges, but there is a “USB-A port for library expansion,” according to the press release about the Sprint.

In addition to an HDMI port and that USB-A expansion port, around the back you’ll find a USB-C port for power and two more USB-A ports labeled “Port1” and “Port2” – Atari’s product page for the console says those support original Intellivision controllers, if you can track down the appropriate adapters. A quick Google search revealed a number of them, though I’ve never tried one and can’t tell you which is worth buying. The $149.99 Intellivision Sprint is up for preorder now and ships starting on December 5th in the US.

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom’s Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.