Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

I've been finishing 2D platform games from my childhood over the last weeks (Prince of Persia, Blues Brothers, Titus the Fox, all for MS-DOS) and, compared to how I abandoned Spyro and Gex 3D about 7 years ago (it was supposed to be my 2nd time finishing them), it's interesting how the control in 2D games (or 3D games with 2D controls) is superior to the control in total 3D games.

The Amico will not have 3D controls to make games more simple for non gamers, but it's also great that you can play alone for big points, compare your scores with others, etc. in these games with (hopefully) precise 2D controls.

I'm still a big fan of the original Playstation, but I finally see the bad things that mandatory 3D have brought to gaming. Realistic 3D helped racing games, FPS, and other genres, but they took away:

- Pixel art

- Precise controls

And sadly brought:

- Having to turn the camera around at all times

- All games trying to be movies, the story over gameplay approach

After playing 2D games only (and Tomb Raider) for a few years, I noticed this while watching some gameplays from 2005-2021 games. I compared how the games offered the challenge to the players, how suddenly difficult, timed jumps were simplified to adapt to the lack of precision of analog sticks, and how virtually every combat consists of circling around the enemies (remember how this was a novelty in Tomb Raider and Ocarina?).

So yeah, I rather play some Prince of Persia, Astrosmash or Battle Tanks. I can see it now. I see the 2D light.

4 hours ago, Intellivision collector said:

As an Intellivision collector, I was excited to see Tommy coming out with the Intellivision Amico.  Intellivision had some of the most complex games for its time. I see previews of games geared toward preschoolers.  Where are the retro reimagined games - the Imagic games like Atlantis, Microsurgeon, Demon Attack, Beauty and the Beast, etc. and the serious Intellivision games such as B-17, Utopia, SeaBattle, Space Armada, etc.?  Yes, you have shown Nightstalker and Astrosmash and talked about B-17.  Shouldn’t they come out at least at the same time as Sesame Street, Care Bears and CornHole?  If this is truly a family system, what are you offering for the preteen and teens to play with Grandpa and Grandma, or Dad and Mom?  So, did I have it wrong?  Is this just going to be a system for the little ones, because, while laudable, my family is past that.  My three sons grew up with Intellivision, and they’re asking the same thing as their children are preteens and teens.  

There is a list here of all announced games. It seems comprehensive guessing game by title!

I presume there are could be even more unnanounced!

https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/intellivision-amico-update-everything-we-know-so-far/ 

1 minute ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Oscar's... Shmoscar's! Looking forward to answering questions live tonight with @OEB_Pete and the Amico All Access crew! Tonight at 8pm eastern /5pm pacific.

 

 

 

 

I will submit my question now . When are the April videos coming ? 😎

3 minutes ago, Cranker said:

I will submit my question now . When are the April videos coming ? 😎

 In May.

😎

2 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

 In May.

 

😎

Noooooooooooooooooo 😩

On 4/24/2021 at 10:39 AM, LePionnier said:

Which brings me to a question for Tommy :

If we don't have enough units available in October, will you probably put off all the marketing surrounding the launch of the console until later ?

Especially if the cost to manufacture is much higher, you could be able to compensate a little with that saved money, and word of mouth will be able to do some of the work !?

P.S. By the way, you have a private message from me ... 😉

Correct.  We would be pretty dumb to spend money on advertising and pull a lot of our special levers and partnerships and promotions if we didn't have anything to sell. 

On 4/24/2021 at 1:57 PM, Noah98 said:

This game looks perfect for the Amico and it's stuck on Apple Arcade now:

 

Sneaky Sasquatch

 

http://www.rac7.com/SneakySasquatch/

 

I think this would be really fun with the Amico controller due to the different gameplay styles.  What do you think Tommy?

Yeah!  I agree!  It was mentioned before and looks super cool and fun.  I passed it along to my team.

These are exactly the type of games we'd love to see on Amico.

On 4/24/2021 at 2:50 PM, Battlefish said:

I think it was mentioned somewhere that Intellivision has had to turn down certain developer applications, just because they already received so many.

That is correct.  We've easily received over 200 or so inquiries and most of our developers who are finishing up their games now are scheduled to move on to new products.  So it gets a little tough for us considering our size and focus right now to take on more devs.  We need to get to launch first.  But we look forward to becoming a potential destination for a lot of developers to make games for!

6 hours ago, Intellivision collector said:

As an Intellivision collector, I was excited to see Tommy coming out with the Intellivision Amico.  Intellivision had some of the most complex games for its time. I see previews of games geared toward preschoolers.  Where are the retro reimagined games - the Imagic games like Atlantis, Microsurgeon, Demon Attack, Beauty and the Beast, etc. and the serious Intellivision games such as B-17, Utopia, SeaBattle, Space Armada, etc.?  Yes, you have shown Nightstalker and Astrosmash and talked about B-17.  Shouldn’t they come out at least at the same time as Sesame Street, Care Bears and CornHole?  If this is truly a family system, what are you offering for the preteen and teens to play with Grandpa and Grandma, or Dad and Mom?  So, did I have it wrong?  Is this just going to be a system for the little ones, because, while laudable, my family is past that.  My three sons grew up with Intellivision, and they’re asking the same thing as their children are preteens and teens.  

It's funny because I was just reading somewhere else where someone was complaining that there are too many retro reimagined games so far.  

Night Stalker, Missile Command, Skiing, Astrosmash, Biplanes, Bomb Squad, Cloudy Mountain (aka AD&D), MLB Baseball, Soccer, Battle Tanks, Shark! Shark!, Moon Patrol, SNAFOO, Dynablaster (aka Bomberman), PONG & Breakout are just a few of the games that will be available on launch or slightly after.  Whereas we've really only shown Care Bears & a few of our Sesame Street packs for kids.

Round 2 will consist of titles like Microsurgeon, Utopia, B-17 Bomber, Safe Cracker, Asteroids, Beauty and the Beast and many more.

If you're into simple to understand and pick up and play with the entire family... then you've definitely come to the right spot. 

Make sure to check out a bunch of these from our gameplay trailer from 10/10 of last year.
 

16 minutes ago, Cranker said:

Noooooooooooooooooo 😩

Sorry!  We have a LOT going on right now.

Choice:  Shipping console or more videos?

14 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Sorry!  We have a LOT going on right now.

Choice:  Shipping console or more videos?

 

 

 

Shipping console 👍

It would be neat to find out what the launch games are.  Perhaps Tommy could show the list a week or so before launch.  Or maybe it's better to just wait and see what they are once the console is out.

Tommy, you have said that on Skiing there are 10 slopes, is there just one course per slope, or multiple courses on each slope like the gates are in harder/closer positions, easy/medium/hard on each slope? Thanks 😀👍

I am only half keeping an eye on the Amico as it is still a long way off from arriving, but I saw in the thread here the link to an article claiming 80 games have already been announced, and I noticed that a lot of them seem to be the "Data East license stable" of games like Bad Dudes, Burning Rubber, etc. that can be found on quite a few recent retro mini device releases. Is the Amico "just" getting the Data East Collection, or are these remakes specific to the Amico? Getting the DE collection is cool, just wondering if I'll be replaying the roms that have been distributed in recent years or if we're talking re-imagining. 

The article: https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/intellivision-amico-update-everything-we-know-so-far/

8 hours ago, Intellivision Master said:

It would be neat to find out what the launch games are.  Perhaps Tommy could show the list a week or so before launch.  Or maybe it's better to just wait and see what they are once the console is out.

We'll definitely be releasing a list of all the launch games prior to launch.  Probably a month or so before I would imagine.

3 hours ago, Silverbot said:

Tommy, you have said that on Skiing there are 10 slopes, is there just one course per slope, or multiple courses on each slope like the gates are in harder/closer positions, easy/medium/hard on each slope? Thanks 😀👍

10 courses total.  No easy/medium/hard.

4 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

I am only half keeping an eye on the Amico as it is still a long way off from arriving, but I saw in the thread here the link to an article claiming 80 games have already been announced, and I noticed that a lot of them seem to be the "Data East license stable" of games like Bad Dudes, Burning Rubber, etc. that can be found on quite a few recent retro mini device releases. Is the Amico "just" getting the Data East Collection, or are these remakes specific to the Amico? Getting the DE collection is cool, just wondering if I'll be replaying the roms that have been distributed in recent years or if we're talking re-imagining. 

 

The article: https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/intellivision-amico-update-everything-we-know-so-far/

They would all be reimagined games.

54 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

They would all be reimagined games.

 

 

Excellent! Count me down as very excited then for Burning Rubber, one of my all time favorites from the arcade and NES (those versions in particular). 

1 hour ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

We'll definitely be releasing a list of all the launch games prior to launch.  Probably a month or so before I would imagine.

 

 

That's great to hear.  Thanks.

On 4/21/2021 at 9:02 AM, Tommy Tallarico said:

@CurlyQ:  We need to make a Puffy shirt!!