Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

On 11/26/2020 at 3:53 PM, IntelliMission said:

Here's an interesting question for Tommy: if the Amico is a huge success in April, all units are sold and consoles appear on ebay at $600, what would be your position on that?

Blame @cmart604

His garage will have more stock than most retailers.

4 hours ago, GD Mof said:

Could the Amico handle games similar to Zelda: 4 Swords or Pacman Vs? The screens built into the controllers seem like they could enable cool games like that, I could be wrong.

 

Any chance of an FAQ for game developers interested in developing games for the Amico? In case you're wondering what sort of questions I'd like to see answered, stuff about what options are available in terms of game engines (current and future), how much dev kits are, what the approval process is like (I'm guessing each game needs to be approved, since you wouldn't want to approve a dev and then have them start making violent games etc), what you're looking for in terms of developers and potential games, anything else we need to know. Just as much information as possible really!

Zelda: Four Swords and Pac-Man Vs. would be pretty fun on Amico! I was thinking the same thing.

I would also be interested in an FAQ designed especially for prospective game developers. (As long as it doesn't break any NDAs, of course!)

4 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

Here's an interesting question for Tommy: if the Amico is a huge success in April, all units are sold and consoles appear on ebay at $600, what would be your position on that?

That would certainly be something, no? I don't think it's going to come down to that, though, especially since there's still Amico consoles available to pre-order. Didn't XSX and PS5 run out of pre-order slots at one point?

39 minutes ago, Battlefish said:

Zelda: Four Swords and Pac-Man Vs. would be pretty fun on Amico! I was thinking the same thing.

 

I would also be interested in an FAQ designed especially for prospective game developers. (As long as it doesn't break any NDAs, of course!)

Yeah, I figured I wouldn't be the only one interested in something like that! Great minds think alike regarding the games, haha.

Another thing I'd like to see on the Amico is a non-violent old school FPS with split screen co-op and versus mode, like a more advanced version of Super 3D Noah's Ark or Dark Forces perhaps, something along those lines.

Hexen 64 and Conflict: Desert Storm had 4 player split screen co-op, as did Brute Force on the Xbox though that was 3rd person.

And 3D platformers are always very welcome in my book!

8 hours ago, CurlyQ said:

 

Blame @cmart604

 

His garage will have more stock than most retailers.

 

This is the way. 

11 hours ago, OldSchoolRetroGamer said:

Ping-a-ling-a-ling, of course. That's the great thing about purist retro-gaming, no ping to worry about, until The Office came along. 

10 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

Here's an interesting question for Tommy: if the Amico is a huge success in April, all units are sold and consoles appear on ebay at $600, what would be your position on that?

I think he already addressed that some months ago. That it's not intended but would be good for business in building hype.

Hi all, hope everyone who recognizes Thanksgiving had a good one.

Anyone know if the Karma Engine affects games while playing in single player modes?  Reason I ask is if 2 (or more) people are taking turns and playing against each other for score, could they turn off the engine and be assured they are on equal footing for potential score on any given turn?

20 minutes ago, Starpaddler said:

Hi all, hope everyone who recognizes Thanksgiving had a good one.

 

Anyone know if the Karma Engine affects games while playing in single player modes?  Reason I ask is if 2 (or more) people are taking turns and playing against each other for score, could they turn off the engine and be assured they are on equal footing for potential score on any given turn?

On 4/14/2020 at 12:45 PM, Tommy Tallarico said:

Here's a question that was asked over at Intellivision Invasion on Facebook that I thought some of the folks here may find interesting...

 

Q:  Does anyone know if the Amico's Karma Engine is an option that can be turned off? While i like casual gaming with friends and family, there are definitely times that i like to be competitive and don't want the cpu to cheat for and/or against me.

 

A:  The quick answer is YES! Each game is a little different and sometimes it's not just a simple ON or OFF. For example... in Shark! Shark!, the person in last place will always get a "hint" of which clam will be opening next (their controller will buzz and it will show the clam on your controller screen). Things like this can not be turned off.

 

Also... to be clear... the CPU doesn't have Karma when you are playing single player. It's only used in couch co-op situations... typically for folks in last place.

Any chance we get a new gameplay trailer in December???  Would make a great Christmas gift 🙂

5 hours ago, DJC said:

Any chance we get a new gameplay trailer in December???  Would make a great Christmas gift 🙂

I second this.  Hopefully it happens.

With the Beauty & the Beast remake on Amico, there can be a special mode where you have to defeat evil Pete instead of horrible Hank.  That would be funny.  I would like to see that but most likely won't happen.  LOL.

I wonder if this time next year we might all be discussing what titles are discounted on the online Amico games store for Black Friday ....

9 minutes ago, nysavant said:

I wonder if this time next year we might all be discussing what titles are discounted on the online Amico games store for Black Friday ....

Don't forget Cyber Monday.

Not directly Amico related but OEB Pete gives his thoughts on the rise of gaming revenue and how it is broken down (the article was posted here by Tommy but this is a nice quick overview):

19 hours ago, jerseystyle said:

Please man, with all sincerity- let this go.  Most of us have no idea what you are actually talking about, and your last messages about this quickly went down a rather dark path.  I hope you are in a better place then you were a month ago but how about we all just enjoy some games?

Yes I feel happy about it enjoy the games.  Tommy told me that he was unaware of what Keith and I were talking about.

Even Keith said it would take a year to three after the new Neo-Intellivision (as it was called back then) for Netrogames to be worked on.

I'm just saying that this is a different technique than the traditional online technique.

The breakdown was due to a lack of communication.

Originally the emphasis was to have both multiplayer games that would easily work with couch multiplayer, online multiplayer, and user designed bot multiplayer in any combination of teammates and opponents.

I thought that the cutting down from there to just couch multiplayer was just the fact of biting more than you could chew originally.  However it seems like within 24 hours after I was suggesting ads for certain circumstances, that Intellivision publicly came out and said no ads as a principle when it wasn't announced as such before, especially considering that wasn't an issue in video games that was brought up anywhere, it felt like a personalized targeted attack.

After my breakdown I realized did I may have just brought up a loophole a little earlier than the rest of the public would have thought of it.  it just felt targeted because no one else was even talking about it before I brought it up.

if I was literally the only person to bring it up then I would seem kind of unprofessional to oppose it publicly without talking to me.  Sort of like the Homer Simpson "no apples in the vending machine" thing, where Monty Burns says "We won't take away your precious apples" when Homer  requested the opposite.

Personally the last time I saw advertising-funded video games was 1 vs 100 on the Xbox 360.  You never had to pay a single cent to play and the commercials were supposed to pay partially for the jackpot that built on the championship game where they actually paid out to a winner some Xbux or cash.

I just thought it was kind of personal until Tommy reassured me that it was just a miscommunication that made it feel that way. 

When you're in Social Security Disability,  you do not think about one-time paychecks as a good thing but think of ways to have constant residual income coming in all the time.  If I got a one-time paycheck for my idea, it would actually disqualify me for social security for one year and then I have to go back reproving my social security case.  I guess it's a different mentality thinking about the day-one payday versus payments every month or every year.

You would think with highly gameplay-aspect games (meaning all these games are not over glorified movies that happen to be interactive) if you believe that your games are being played more often shouldn't your model of payments be similarly modeled?  With most of these movie games, once you beat it, there's very little reason to play, but these ludo games you actually want to challenge other people besides the people you already know, or keep constantly raising your score, or speed running it, or whatever.

There is more than one way to be consumer friendly.  Usually depends on which type of consumer you're trying to target.  I guess Intellivision is going for the people that have more money than time, and my model goes after people have more time than money (like me).

Even if that combination of events didn't make me upset I knew it would take at least 2 years before  Netrogames gets tried by Intellivision if the Amico succeeds.   As I said I am more time than money so waiting two or three years before Netrogames gets tried is perfectly fine by me.

The thing about Netrogames though is that if my theory is correct, then you don't have to pick which games you want to turn online because every game will be turned online.  Atari of about 5-7 years ago would have liked it but they weren't sure about the legalities of turning Activision's 2600 games online without their permission, even though Netrogames doesn't use individual game code.

This song is not related in any way to the long messages posted recently:

Tommy,

Since Amico means friend in Italian, perhaps on the console box it can have this: "Say hello to my little friend".  LOL.

On 11/26/2020 at 1:06 AM, DJC said:

Lock n chase is one of my favorite games I still wish I could find the cart that has the full Lupin animation death where he collapses in hat like the arcade 

This is one of the true gems from my collection....

Tommy, will it be possible with Amico, before buying a game on the Amico store, to know if a game have a physical release ?

Let say I am looking to buy a game, I see Breakout, ant I have the information that I already own the game. Perfect.

Next one, it's Night Stalker for 9.99$. But if this game as also a physical release, I would like to be informed when I am looking at what to buy.

This way, I will not buy the digital Edition, and I will go at the nearest store to buy the physical media for this game !

Thank you.

3 minutes ago, LePionnier said:

Tommy, will it be possible with Amico, before buying a game on the Amico store, to know if a game have a physical release ?

Let say I am looking to buy a game, I see Breakout, ant I have the information that I already own the game. Perfect.

Next one, it's Night Stalker for 9.99$. But if this game as also a physical release, I would like to be informed when I am looking at what to buy.

This way, I will not buy the digital Edition, and I will go at the nearest store to buy the physical media for this game !

 

Thank you.

He said there will be a list showing which games are getting a physical release.

Another idea for an Amico game called Where's Tommy?  A spin off of Where's Waldo?  Oh oh, I'm doing it again with more game requests, lol.  It's just like Steve Urkel would say...

On 11/25/2020 at 8:05 AM, Tommy Tallarico said:

Unfortunately they don't. 

 

Instead, they love feeding my ego. 

 

It's kind cool having obsessed online stalkers. 

 

It means I'm important.

🤣🤣

Wait do haters say the same thing about me 😬