Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

So I went on the Apple AppStore and noticed there are a lot of apps with the exact word Amico in it. Surprised by that!

2 minutes ago, Loafer said:

So I went on the Apple AppStore and noticed there are a lot of apps with the exact word Amico in it. Surprised by that!

The curse of using a common word (in Italian at least) for a name. If you noticed in the GameRome articles half the time Amico was translated to "Friend". At least Tommy didn't name it the exact same thing as a mega popular game console from 40 years ago *cough*AtariVCS*cough* which makes accurate Googling near impossible.

4 hours ago, Blarneo said:

They were responsible for Xbox Arcade's Atari classics that sold individually. Centipede, Missile Command & Tempest is what I remember, but there may have been others. The HD (evolved) versions were not all that impressive thematically compared to what could be done. They asked too much money for them as well. Minter's Space Giraffe on XB360 was much more playable & colorful than Stainless' Tempest.

 

They may be doing the Atari conversions for Amico. 

 

Yeah, here they are... The Xbox 360 ones.

 

I bought a couple of those. I was particularly keen on Tempest as I'm a massive Tempest 2000 (and 4000) fan. I was a little disappointed as it was really just a prettied up version of the arcade game (which I never liked). Not bad, but just not what I was expecting. I did enjoy Missile Command though with that game you can't beat the original with a trackball! Still, I'm interested to see what cool stuff they come up with for Amico. I imagine Tommy et al won't be allowing any shovelware on the console!

 

EDIT: Actually, is that Battlezone? That looks kinda rad...

ANOTHER EDIT: I just remembered I have it. Haha. Not bad, not bad.

Edited December 4, 2019 by MantaNZ

15 minutes ago, MantaNZ said:

EDIT: Actually, is that Battlezone? That looks kinda rad...

ANOTHER EDIT: I just remembered I have it. Haha. Not bad, not bad.

top down

Missile Command

Warlords

Battlezone- you're right

Centipede/Millipede

Tempest

Asteroids/Deluxe

 

They also listed Red Baron, but that's a beautiful looking game & not sure if it's related to the Atari Coin op. Stainless also does a lot of Magic: The Gathering games & card/parlor games are part of the Amico plan, so they may be doing a MTG game instead. Who knows!

1 hour ago, Blarneo said:

top down

Missile Command

Warlords

Battlezone- you're right

Centipede/Millipede

Tempest

Asteroids/Deluxe

 

They also listed Red Baron, but that's a beautiful looking game & not sure if it's related to the Atari Coin op. Stainless also does a lot of Magic: The Gathering games & card/parlor games are part of the Amico plan, so they may be doing a MTG game instead. Who knows!

I'm not familiar with Magic. A friend of mine is a top player, apparently (the tabletop version of course). I should check it out one day. All I know is it involves cards and is pretty big.

 

EDIT: I just thought - card games will be awesome on Amico! Your hand of cards on your own private wee screen... then you could flick them onto the TV

Edited December 5, 2019 by MantaNZ

On 12/3/2019 at 5:41 PM, GrudgeQ said:

Just to show what an international effort the Amico really is - here are the locations of the announced game developers (feel free to correct, just some quick Googling):

 

Other Ocean - California, USA
Digital Eclipse - California, USA
Concrete Games - France
Choice Provisions - California, USA
Playchemy - California, USA
React Games - France
Stainless Games - UK
WastedStudios - Germany
Bonus Level Entertainment - Germany
NeoBird - Germany
Aesir Interactive - Germany
Thera Bytes - Germany
Way Digital Studios - ?
BBG Entertainment - Germany
PHL Collective - Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA
Rogue Rocket Games - California, USA
Pixel Pug - Colorado, USA?
Quicksilver Software - California, USA
Tozai Games - Japan
Human Soft Inc - California, USA
Flashman Studios - California, USA
Spaceflower UG - Germany
Exozet Berlin GmbH - Germany
Independent Arts Software - Germany
Pool Legends - ?

Those are new for me.

I wish more familiar developers to make games for Amico.

 

Enjoy JP

Zen Studios 

Sega

Circle Entertainment

Ubisoft

Coderchild

Activision

Yacht Club Games

Konami

 

They can come out games without breaking Amico 10 commandments.

 

 

All those old names were new and unfamiliar to you once. 
 

There are some excellent indie developers on the Amico list. Most of the people who made the classic games for Konami, SEGA, Activision et al have moved on. 
 

Small is often better for the kind of experiences this thing is trying to deliver. 

On 12/3/2019 at 3:49 PM, LePionnier said:

Intellivision is pleased to announce the first group of 25 world class developers working with Intellivision on Amico products:

Other Ocean

Digital Eclipse

Concrete Games

Choice Provisions

Playchemy

React Games

Stainless Games

WastedStudios

Bonus Level Entertainment

NeoBird

Aesir Interactive

Thera Bytes

Way Digital Studios

BBG Entertainment

PHL Collective

Rogue Rocket Games

Pixel Pug

Quicksilver Software

Tozai Games

Human Soft Inc,

Flashman Studios

Spaceflower UG

Exozet Berlin GmbH

Independent Arts Software

Pool Legends

 

Choice Provisions was the only one I suspected to be aboard !

It's probably for this game :

 

You may not know a lot of these companies by name but If you Google each one it's very exciting stuff 

3 hours ago, Blarneo said:

They also listed Red Baron, but that's a beautiful looking game & not sure if it's related to the Atari Coin op.

Yeah it's related. I own the "Classic Atari Flashback Greatest Hits Collection" (or whatever buzzwords they're calling it nowadays) on at least three different platforms, and Red Baron is always included. Battlezone isn't included anymore though, the company sold it off to an indie studio after their last bankruptcy. Battlezone recently got a brand new game that's apparently pretty good, which is definitely a better fate than anything still owned by Infogrames.

On 12/3/2019 at 4:03 PM, GrudgeQ said:

You probably should have gotten the email by now but if you want to see the official press release (contains some nice renders of the logo, controller and console) you can find it here.

 

They also released a 'now and then' of the first official free, pack-in game - skiing. I got to see an early development video but was pretty much sworn to secrecy except to say that I saw it. Now that a few photos has been released, you can see what I was impressed about: clean graphics, saturated color pallet and a surprising challenging game play with several different 'lines' you can take down the course.

They should have got the correct aspect ratio for the intellivision screenshots.

9 hours ago, mr_me said:

They should have got the correct aspect ratio for the intellivision screenshots.

This is pretty much what it's going to look like on the Amico considering it's being made for HD TV's.  Might as well get used to it!

They don't have to implement the wrong aspect ratio if they don't want to but I wouldn't be surprised if you're correct.  You can compare with any decent emulation project on other modern systems.

 

Edit: Looking at it again the aspect ratio of the lower screen shot might be correct, looks like it's just cropped to a wider aspect ratio.

Edited December 5, 2019 by mr_me

Surely they'll have the option for black bars on the sides, and maybe simulated scan lines, though. Right Tommy?

Surely they'll have the option for black bars on the sides, and maybe simulated scan lines, though. Right Tommy?

 

I personally can’t stand a 4:3 picture stretched to 16:9 - whether that’s a game, an old TV show, or output from a VCR on a widescreen TV. But I know it doesn’t bother some. For the old games on Amico, 4:3 will be the default, but 16:9 will be an option (for those who like their Running Men short and fat).

 

 

 

•Sent from my Intellivision keypad phone

34 minutes ago, nurmix said:

I personally can’t stand a 4:3 picture stretched to 16:9 - whether that’s a game, an old TV show, or output from a VCR on a widescreen TV. But I know it doesn’t bother some. For the old games on Amico, 4:3 will be the default, but 16:9 will be an option (for those who like their Running Men short and fat).

Thanks nurmix. So it's safe to say that marketing image was "for illustration purposes only." Glad to hear it's not a situation of "no news is good news." 😎

Thanks nurmix. So it's safe to say that marketing image was "for illustration purposes only." Glad to hear it's not a situation of "no news is good news." 

I wasn’t involved in putting together the Skiing pictures for the email, but I believe our amazing art director (Mike Dietz - interview coming soon to The Intellivisionaries Podcast!) cropped the original Skiing images to fit the layout (and gave them a slight skewed angle), but didn’t alter the aspect ratio, as Mr Me observed in his follow up post.

He’s very cognizant of things like this, in fact I’d call him a perfectionist. That said, I will ask him today and see what he says. If it is in fact stretched, I’ll give him a hard time about it.




•Sent from my Intellivision keypad phone

On 12/3/2019 at 9:16 AM, IMBerzerk said:

Any chance to talk to Numskull and have them so some keychains?  They did an outstanding job on their Atari 2600 line.  They look fantastic!  Would be great to have some cool Inty keychains at this level of quality.

 

 

 

 

I saw those a few months ago and picked one up.  Been meaning to have one of my folks reach out to them.  Would love to do a series of old and new!  Thanks for the reminder!!

 

On 12/3/2019 at 9:38 AM, LePionnier said:

Me.
And my son at school !

Awesome!  I wanna see a pic of that!  Both of you together with the shirts!

 

On 12/3/2019 at 9:58 AM, deepwell67 said:

I'm wearing mine at the moment...may have to change in a bit though, my son is getting married this afternoon! Maybe I'll wear it underneath my dress shirt....

Hopefully you wore it under the tux!!  

 

 

On 12/3/2019 at 11:07 AM, MantaNZ said:

Just watched the vid. Man I had no idea the Intellivision was so impressive for the time. Makes Atari look like *remembers he’s at Atari Age* wow, great weather we’re having!

It's okay... you can go ahead and say it.

We're all thinking it!


 

On 12/3/2019 at 11:12 AM, Mike_2000 said:

I just watched the new controller overview video, and this looks unique in a good way. I like gaming socially and casually, so the Amico and its controllers look great for me. I want to buy the Amico on day one, but I'm going to be living abroad for almost a year, so I might have to wait until the summer.

 

Only partially related: Tommy, I know you said that we can't play CoD on the Amiico, but can I play Doom? Obviously it won't be on the Amiico Storefront, but I'm assuming that the OS is based on Linux or Android. How hard would it be to sideload a sourceport and play my all-time favorite FPS?

Hi!,

Glad you are liking the controllers!  Looking forward for you to see how they are incorporated into gameplay!  Then you'll REALLY fall in love! 

No Doom.  It breaks almost every one of our 10 Commandments.  

OS is Linux and Android based.  Internal hybrid.  Not set up for sideloading, etc. 

 

On 12/3/2019 at 11:33 AM, mr_me said:

The video has been up on youtube for a while just not in this quality.  You can see that at the time this was made the intellivision hardware wasn't finalised; specifically the buggy STIC.

The quality was "Never Before Seen!" 


 

On 12/3/2019 at 11:34 AM, atarifan88 said:

I know the day is not over yet (for most of us), but when is that playable demo of Moon Patrol being released that we will be able to play on our phones?  Is that still to come later today?

Issues with Apple (don't get me started)... Trying to get it ironed out today.  Been going back and forth with them all week.  So annoying.  Don't want to get into details right now... but we are on the case and doing everything in our power to get them to understand what it is and what "category" it fits into.  This is the issue sometimes when doing cool stuff that no one has done before. 

 

The good news is that because of the slight delay... I'm going to be releasing something else super cool that we weren't originally planning on showing!

News will be coming at the end of today or early tomorrow.  Exciting stuff that a lot of people here are going to love.

 

 

2 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Issues with Apple (don't get me started)... Trying to get it ironed out today.  Been going back and forth with them all week.  So annoying.  Don't want to get into details right now... but we are on the case and doing everything in our power to get them to understand what it is and what "category" it fits into.  This is the issue sometimes when doing cool stuff that no one has done before. 

 

The good news is that because of the slight delay... I'm going to be releasing something else super cool that we weren't originally planning on showing!

News will be coming at the end of today or early tomorrow.  Exciting stuff that a lot of people here are going to love.

 

 

I hate to do any Apple bashing, but what does this have to do with the app not coming out on Google Play?  Is there something going on over there too or does it have to be released concurrently with the Apple app?  Thanks for keeping us in the loop Tommy!

On 12/3/2019 at 2:03 PM, Battlefish said:

I figured Tozai was probably along for the ride. Thought I read somewhere that they and Intellivision were working together.

 

-----

 

On another note, is there a way that devs who've already applied can check on their status?

 

Sending a note through our website is the best bet for now.  It goes to all 3 of our current producers and they are making their way through a ton of stuff.

Thanks for wanting to be a part of what we're doing!