There's been a trend among microconsoles and mini-consoles over the past few years. Race one out to catch a trend and it sucks. PlayStation Mini, Google's Stadia cloud controller, the army of Android boxes can all slink sullenly into the bargain bin.
Doing it right last year was Evercade with the charming portable and a solid cadence of classy cartridge collection releases to tempt both older gamers and those looking for collectibles without the stupid price tag. Another job-well-done was the mini PC Engine, with lots of clarity of thought going into the design and games.
Intellivision is also pushing hard on the marketing front. With appearances promised in physical stores in the US. You can download an iOS app to play demos, and the controls themselves look more user-friendly, like a mid-era iPod and less like yet-another dual stick on steroids.
The games are all family-friendly, encourage multiplayer on the same screen (up to 8-player if you buy extra controllers) and games will come in under a $10 price point. There's enough processor power in the console for modern-looking titles among the classics. The firm showed off 30 games in a video last October, hopefully many more are on the way.
