Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

On 2/8/2021 at 11:19 AM, Silverbot said:

Hi Tommy,

 

Are the islands on Utopia randomly generated, or are they a pre designed shape and size? So looking forward to this! 👍😀

We haven't made that decision yet.  I'm assuming they will be pre-designed so you can learn the best way to strategically place things (i.e. best place to put your towers).  Randomly generating may give unfair disadvantages to folks (a port in a place that sucks).  But it's worth looking into and we've spoken about the possibility.  It could introduce more problems than good though.  We're just not sure at this point.

On 2/8/2021 at 12:09 PM, Intellivision Master said:

In the Amico podcast yesterday Tommy showed images of the lanyards for the Amico controllers.  The lanyard color for the FE is gray.  Why not gold?  A gold color makes more sense, or perhaps brown to match the woodgrain.

 

Hopefully we can buy lanyards separately at retail.  And maybe there will be more color options too.

I believe I mentioned that the brown & gold one isn't final.  You can see it in the Office Tour video I did as well (and I believe I say it again there).  Also... the lanyard isn't grey... it's brown, but I'm guessing when I held my phone screen up to the camera it probably didn't come across that way.  Anyway... don't worry... it will of course be brown and gold.

Just now, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

I believe I mentioned that the brown & gold one isn't final.  You can see it in the Office Tour video I did as well (and I believe I say it again there).  Also... the lanyard isn't grey... it's brown, but I'm guessing when I held my phone screen up to the camera it probably didn't come across that way.  Anyway... don't worry... it will of course be brown and gold.

 

 

Good to know.  Perhaps I misheard what you said in the Amico podcast.  For some reason it looked grey.  Like you said the camera made it look grey.  But in the office tour video I did see the brown lanyard.  Then I was happy.  😀

On 2/9/2021 at 8:29 AM, Matt-H06 said:

Tommy, you still on track for the February update of the webpage?

I'm not sure I'm understanding the question.  Please give me more info.  Do you mean in regards to having all of our products available for pre-order?  If so, the answer to that is no because of our new launch date.

The new launch date will be revealed on Wednesday, February 17th.  A day before my birthday.  We decided with our retailers, distributors and manufacturers what the new date was going to be last week.  The next day we filmed a quick video that includes 6 different people on our team.  It is a positive vibe video and you'll never hear the word "COVID" spoken (I think we're all SICK of that word at this point!).  Our U.S. retailers liked end of summer but our European retailers definitely did not.  For those folks here who are in Europe, I'm sure you can attest to lots of people taking off the months of August.

More info on Wednesday but the reality is that it is going to be a positive thing albeit a longer wait than originally planned.

I welcome anyone to please google the electronic component situation that is happening in China right now.  Even though we started securing parts in November... we have over 100 electronic components to secure and things that were simple to get and inexpensive even a month or two ago have now been gobbled up and going to the highest bidder.  Unlike Sony, Apple, Samsung, etc. we can't play that game.

We have a lot of really cool things planned over the next few months and I look forward to sharing them with everyone.

On 2/9/2021 at 8:37 AM, Alpha82 said:

The USB port on the Amico is USB-C correct?

Correct!

On 2/9/2021 at 6:17 PM, Intellivision Master said:

Tommy,

We need this if you bring back the Vectrex.

 

Wouldn't that kind of defeat the purpose of bringing back the hardware? 

You need to sell the software in order to make the machine viable.  Not much profit margin in hardware.

On 2/9/2021 at 11:33 PM, Silverbot said:

Hi Tommy,

 

Is there any chance of a Pinball game like Devil’s Crush (Crash) on the Amico? 👍😀

 

 

Yes!  Not that exact one... but something similar.  I always loved Devil's Crush because it did something different that you couldn't do with a regular pinball machine.  That is the coolness of doing it digital! 

I'm just surprised that whenever someone does a pinball game they always try to make it as real as possible to a real pinball machine.  That's fine too I suppose... but I prefer to combine digital and physical together to make a unique experience and one that couldn't be replicated in real life (as much as I LOVE real life pinball). 

1 minute ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Wouldn't that kind of defeat the purpose of bringing back the hardware? 

 

You need to sell the software in order to make the machine viable.  Not much profit margin in hardware.

 

Yes, it would.  I wasn't thinking about that at the time, lol.  

On 2/10/2021 at 5:37 AM, GrudgeQ said:

Hey, Tommy's been nominated for an "Excellence in Entrepreneurship" Award by the Orange County Business Journal - very cool and well deserved:

 

 

Thanks!  It was quite the honor.  Especially here in Orange County where there are almost 100,000 incredible and successful high profile businesses and a very high tech environment.

On 2/10/2021 at 6:17 AM, Intellivision Master said:

Tommy,

 

I know you mentioned bringing Gateway to Apshai to Amico.  Are you also going to bring over the original as well which was Temple of Apshai? 

Of course!  Temple would come first!

Have had a lot of great conversations with the folks who now own the Epyx library.

On 2/10/2021 at 7:41 AM, Intellivision Master said:

This is funny.  Had to share it.

 

That was so great!  I bet a small handful of people were so excited to see the headline... and then 5 minutes later their dreams were crushed.

On 2/10/2021 at 8:37 AM, Cranker said:

Warlords Warlords Warlords Warlords 😎

It's going to be AMAZING!!

Starting soon!

On 2/10/2021 at 12:40 PM, woobman said:

To quote a few people from the video. I"m being sold on this".... "That's awesome "... "Gotta love seein' what we are seein"...   I've been sold for quite a while and this is just confirming what I already knew.  Can't wait for the next reveal! 

 

Any chance of seeing physical packaging soon? Easter egg some box art into a video maybe?  I know you are saving up some of the Wouldn't That Be Somethng^tm payoffs until after you start marketing, but some more hints would be amazing!!!!

 

On a side note:  Is it me? Or is most art from modern games just, meh? 

 

Physical media reveal will be something on a much bigger scale as an exclusive and closer to launch.  Need to keep big reveals happening when there are over 10M or so viewers.  Big content makers (whether it's on TV, Twitch or YouTube) want exclusivity so their content is "first".  

On 2/10/2021 at 4:08 PM, LePionnier said:

If I had to take a guess... On February 18, we will have our next big video from Intellivision Entertainment. It will be Tommy's birthday !

I see 2 possibilities.

1) A video named "Moving into our new office".

2) An announcement regarding the new launch date !

 

What's your guess ?

 

 

Well... you got the first one a week early!

And #2 will be the day BEFORE my birthday.

How about 4 more gameplay videos next week as well?  That would be my guess.

On 2/10/2021 at 6:57 PM, popsicle said:

Starball on the Atari ST has a very similar feel, with the mini games and vertical playfields. And, it was a freeware/shareware title. Maybe the author, Dave Oldcorn, can finally get paid for his underappreciated masterpiece!

 

Cool.  I'm not familiar with that one.  I'll check it out.

1 minute ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

How about 4 more gameplay videos next week as well?

Sounds like a plan.  More videos are always welcomed.

On 2/10/2021 at 7:15 PM, wolfy62 said:

I just saw this and looked for one of these.

They sold out within an hour.

I did however just order the second version of the Sean Kelly multicart,the 3.0 a couple days ago.

But I still want one of these too!

I have Sean's first one that I purchased from him in person at one of the first conventions he helped to put on in Las Vegas.  I LOVED those shows and hope to see them come back someday!

Sean is great and super talented and passionate about retro!  Love him.

On 2/10/2021 at 7:28 PM, Intellivision Master said:

If Pac-Man doesn't come to Amico, what about...

 

I would imagine Namco would sue us in a second.  

On 2/11/2021 at 3:04 AM, nightmonkeyii said:

Hi tommy,

I was wondering if you know the legendary David Whittacker, and if he will be involved with amico in any way. 
 

here is some of his music

 

The name doesn't sound familiar off the top of my head... although I'm pretty crappy with names.  I did some work with Encore back in the early 90's so we probably crossed paths at some point.

1 minute ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

I would imagine Namco would sue us in a second.  

 

 

Not if you get the license.  

On 2/11/2021 at 6:38 AM, Hwlngmad said:

David Whittaker was the man and could really get those 8-bit and 16-bit micro computers humming.

I just checked out his Wikipedia page and he has quite the career!  Very impressive!

I'm sure our paths probably crossed at some point, although his focus seemed to be the early computer stuff while I was more doing the early console stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Whittaker_(video_game_composer)

On 2/11/2021 at 10:21 AM, bigdaddygamestudio said:

funny stuff, but things are about to get really weird.. the line between whats real and whats not is about to get really blurred soon

 

 

WOW!!!   Insane!

They are finally getting the eyes right!  And the lines/pores in the skin.  Incredible. 

THIS was what I was hoping NEXT GEN consoles we're going to bring.  And hopefully they will over the next few years.  When I saw the Unreal 5 engine running on the PS5 it was mind-blowing and definitely NEXT GEN!

Yet we got nothing like this on launch and I'm still a little underwhelmed with what I've seen so far.  I know that is going to change!  But does anyone else feel like Sony & Microsoft pulled the trigger a year too early on releasing the next round of Next Gen consoles?  I personally do.

Shouldn't we have gotten something like THIS on launch?  Now THAT is next gen.

That would have been amazing!

 

46 minutes ago, GrudgeQ said:

Wow stay safe and watch out for those aftershocks 

I will do my best to not die~

There was a small aftershock maybe 15 minutes ago or so. Noticeable earthquakes are basically at least a weekly or sometimes daily occurrence here and this aftershock wasn't anything bigger than the larger small earthquakes. I should probably pick up some of my piles of stuff that fell over before I go to bed, now that I think about it...

1 minute ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

But does anyone else feel like Sony & Microsoft pulled the trigger a year too early on releasing the next round of Next Gen consoles?  I personally do.

Yes, I think they should've waited until this fall.