Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

6 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Anyone have a chance to check out this video on YouTube?

Another initial hater bites the dust and becomes an Amico cheerleader. 


 

 

 

Saw it and thought ... Guy needs to do more homework before making a YouTube channel with a critical opinion. It's always ok not to be in favor of something.   But if you're going to be considered an opinion or influencer... Make sure you have your facts right and do your homework.  Until you called him out, I doubt anyone would have ever noticed his channel as he said early in his video.  Good job turning another clueless opinionater into a believer 

I wish I had the time and passion to do one of these videos myself... But my Long Island accent and overall scarcastic NY attitude would make me hated by all regardless of what I was saying.  Lol. 

28 minutes ago, IMBerzerk said:

Saw it and thought ... Guy needs to do more homework before making a YouTube channel with a critical opinion. It's always ok not to be in favor of something.   But if you're going to be considered an opinion or influencer... Make sure you have your facts right and do your homework.  Until you called him out, I doubt anyone would have ever noticed his channel as he said early in his video.  Good job turning another clueless opinionater into a believer 

 

I wish I had the time and passion to do one of these videos myself... But my Long Island accent and overall scarcastic NY attitude would make me hated by all regardless of what I was saying.  Lol. 

At least you can tell the ones that have some actual thinking behind them rather than just doing a dancing monkey show. With a dancing monkey everything will be the worst thing ever or the best thing ever because people love simple, black and white situations (which don't exist the real world - but who cares - isn't the monkey funny ). Smash JT and Turbo Joe were both willing to take a second look and change their opinions (even if they don't change their opinion - you got to respect the second look). Quite frankly Tommy went from idiot to genius in my mind too, mostly because of the stilted media that came out at launch but which got turned around in his interviews. Fortunately I didn't have a YouTube channel or you would have had to see me in a bad cheerleader Photoshop too ;).

As for Long Island accent and sarcastic NY attitude - you were MADE for YouTube.

59 minutes ago, GrudgeQ said:

Yes although actually that is a pretty good response - just ignore the AR part and work anyway. However I totally agree, also a long time software engineer and there has been more than one occasion that I got a cryptic error message back from a client, cursed the idiot programmer and the idiot programmer was me.

Lol. Yeah I’ve seen that fool in the mirror for a long time myself. ;)

6 hours ago, Blarneo said:

Can you sue the guy? Is he in another country, so it complicates copyright law?

I probably could have but it wasn’t worth it and I had no money to do so anyway. And yeah, different countries makes it tricky. It baffles me that neither Apple or Google gives a crap when a little guy’s IP is stolen and sold on their platform. Of course they care when it’s a big company. In fact, I had a game pulled from Google Play for having Mario Kart listed as one of the inspirations behind it - it was in no way a rip off.

4 hours ago, intvsteve said:

IMO that indicates quality work from a long-time software engineer. I.e. "error handling is hard" and too many programs are slapdash with it.

Yep!  That was something our internal team took care of.

4 hours ago, IMBerzerk said:

Saw it and thought ... Guy needs to do more homework before making a YouTube channel with a critical opinion. It's always ok not to be in favor of something.   But if you're going to be considered an opinion or influencer... Make sure you have your facts right and do your homework.  Until you called him out, I doubt anyone would have ever noticed his channel as he said early in his video.  Good job turning another clueless opinionater into a believer 

 

I wish I had the time and passion to do one of these videos myself... But my Long Island accent and overall scarcastic NY attitude would make me hated by all regardless of what I was saying.  Lol. 

Do it!!!  We need as many positive Amico YouTube videos as possible. 

1 hour ago, MantaNZ said:

I probably could have but it wasn’t worth it and I had no money to do so anyway. And yeah, different countries makes it tricky. It baffles me that neither Apple or Google gives a crap when a little guy’s IP is stolen and sold on their platform. Of course they care when it’s a big company. In fact, I had a game pulled from Google Play for having Mario Kart listed as one of the inspirations behind it - it was in no way a rip off.

Yeah... they'll protect the big companies, but ignore the smaller ones.  Total crap.

Another great thing about what we're doing at Intellivision is that we don't need any big game publisher to make games for us.  I'll pay for their licenses, but I dont need to hope they'll do something with us.  They'll only jump in after its a huge success.  Which is fine and totally understandable.  Besides,  better for us... I'll have the negotiating power at that point. 

8 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

Yeah... they'll protect the big companies, but ignore the smaller ones.  Total crap.

 

Another great thing about what we're doing at Intellivision is that we don't need any big game publisher to make games for us.  I'll pay for their licenses, but I dont need to hope they'll do something with us.  They'll only jump in after its a huge success.  Which is fine and totally understandable.  Besides,  better for us... I'll have the negotiating power at that point. 

 

 

No, keep them away! Haha. I got into mobile dev just after all the big boys started seeing how much money they could make. Another reason you get lost in the pile, haha.

11 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

 

Yes... we are HUGELY aware of this problem.  This is why it cracks me up when some of these know nothing industy inexperienced numbskull YouTubers or snarky moronic message board posters are so quick to say... "No one is going to make games for this because Intellivision wants exclusivity!".  Hmm... lets review... if you're a small indie developer... what scenario would you rather have? 

1.  Bootstrap everything yourself for zero money and then release on platforms that give away everything for free, have thousands of new games a month and no recourse for rip-offs

 

or...

 

2.  Get paid up front to fund your dream the right way, get marketing, audio, optimization/programing and art help from some of the most experienced people in the industry.  Have Intellivision go get the rights and pay for big licenses if needed. Then have your product be the ONLY one released during a certain window so that EVERYONE who owns a machine will see it front and center.  Hmmm... tough choice eh?

 

The "exclusivity will never work" arguement is almost as priceless as the "Who is this for??  No one wants this thing!"
 

 

And people call me the "stupid" one who is going to fail for saying all of our games are going to be exclusive and that there is a vast underserved market out there.

 

 

Um... I think I'll choose option two, lol. 

Speaking of 'free' games - the most disgusting use of IAP that has crept in recently is subscriptions. I was playing some side scrolling hill climbing/racing game that was quite a bit of fun... only when it came to hitting a pay wall I was asked to pay $9.99 PER MONTH to be able to continue playing. Suffice to say, I uninstalled it promptly.

1 hour ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Yeah... they'll protect the big companies, but ignore the smaller ones.  Total crap.

 

Another great thing about what we're doing at Intellivision is that we don't need any big game publisher to make games for us.  I'll pay for their licenses, but I dont need to hope they'll do something with us.  They'll only jump in after its a huge success.  Which is fine and totally understandable.  Besides,  better for us... I'll have the negotiating power at that point. 

For me most of those big development houses represent the issues that Amico is trying to solve. I would much rather see some innovative and hungry indies handle the coding and get the name recognition from older & non traditional IPs. Getting a license for the kids book series Magic Tree House or Captain Underpants would move a lot more units with moms than having Ubisoft on the dev list. Of course it would be great to have some of those old Activision IPs for re-imagining, but there may be even more popular name recognition in some older (and maybe a little beat up) IPs like He-Man, Archie, Popeye, Teen Titans, PowerPuff Girls or commercial tie-ins like Pez, Super Soakers, Kool-Aid, Captain Crunch, Chester Cheetah or Cool Spot. In other words, they are nice if you can get them - but there are other options out there.

12 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

2.  Get paid up front to fund your dream the right way, get marketing, audio, optimization/programing and art help from some of the most experienced people in the industry.  Have Intellivision go get the rights and pay for big licenses if needed. Then have your product be the ONLY one released during a certain window so that EVERYONE who owns a machine will see it front and center.  Hmmm... tough choice eh?

Does the developer keep the copyrights on their work?

13 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

The "exclusivity will never work" argument is almost as priceless as the "Who is this for??  No one wants this thing!"

And people call me the "stupid" one who is going to fail for saying all of our games are going to be exclusive and that there is a vast underserved market out there.

Might be a good time to point out that Tommy "Stupid" Tallarico has basically managed with a one man publicity tour to resurrect a brand that mostly only folks here remember. Plus he has managed to interest almost a quarter of million people in a brand new, totally different console in the face of the two reigning console leaders launching new products. Not to mention getting hundreds of people (including a bunch of YouTubers) to buy t-shirts for this new console and getting over 1000 Android users to download the app *the first day* for basically a 30 second demo (if you are familiar with Android development getting to that 1000+ designation in a *month* is a huge accomplishment). And he did all of this while heading the team to actually build the console and, as a side gig, still conduct a nationwide tour of Video Games Live.

Meanwhile James is frantically typing yet another OuyaTwoYa comment from his mom's basement. Keep up the good work James.

After playing the Moon Patrol demo I admit it made me want to play with the Amico controller even more. I’d like to use the directional pad for speed up/slow down and either the touch screen or buttons for fire and jump.

I’ve always thought if Tommy & Team can just get the new console in peoples hands they will be won over! Console and controller look odd(which I like as a collector) and that could be big barrier for skeptics.

Tommys grass roots “pre” marketing is working..those numbers Grudge pointed out proves his strategy is working. 
 

Exciting times await!

1 hour ago, GrudgeQ said:

Meanwhile James is frantically typing yet another OuyaTwoYa comment from his mom's basement. Keep up the good work James.

 

I found a picture of James.

Also, on that 100+ downloads on Google Play, I imagine that number easily doubles if added to the IOS app store.

I was telling my 69 year old mother about Amico. She said "Yes! I miss playing those simpler games!" She used to have a PlayStation and "gave up when things started getting too complicated". She did love Oddworld though.

Anyway, I described Intellivision Skiing and she really wants an Amico now. Might have to be her Christmas present next year!

3 hours ago, MantaNZ said:

She did love Oddworld though.

Interesting. I bought the Steam rerelease a few years ago, started it and abandoned it the same day. I found it "too complicated".

18 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

Interesting. I bought the Steam rerelease a few years ago, started it and abandoned it the same day. I found it "too complicated".

Hehe a I’ve been enjoying it on the PSX mini but yeah, it gets bloody hard! Surprised my mum liked it, tbh. But simplicity wise, it’s a straightforward platform puzzler. Not too many buttons to learn and no extra crap like “crafting”. WHY IS THAT A THING IN EVERY ACTION GAME THESE DAYS? I want to shoot my guns, not build the bloody things! Lol. RPG elements should stay in RPG games, thanks.

In fact, I had considered changing my company name to Jump, Shoot, Magic as I wanted to create games that utilised no more than three action buttons. But my mate pointed out that’s JSM. Say that as a word 😂😂😂
 

Anyway, another ‘game’ Mum loved was Music 2000. Now that IS complicated but she’s into making electronic music so was a piece of cake for her. Definitely simpler than what she uses these days, haha.

But yeah, now I have to buy two Amicos. THANKS, TOMMY 🤪🤪🤪

4 hours ago, MantaNZ said:

I was telling my 69 year old mother about Amico. She said "Yes! I miss playing those simpler games!" She used to have a PlayStation and "gave up when things started getting too complicated". She did love Oddworld though.

Anyway, I described Intellivision Skiing and she really wants an Amico now. Might have to be her Christmas present next year!

47 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

Interesting. I bought the Steam rerelease a few years ago, started it and abandoned it the same day. I found it "too complicated".

I find both things surprising. Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exodus are too hard for most 60+ yo players, but at the same time people used to 8 bit computers usually fall in love with the games.

roots.genoa, I know it's not 1998 anymore, but this is my advice: persevere with Abe's Oddysee. It was an amazing experience for my 18 year old self only months after I bought the first Playstation.

I played the PAL version, 15% slower but dubbed into European Spanish (I should have played the US version with original speed, but I didn't know back then). The main problem with Oddysee (corrected in Exodus) is that it takes too long to reach a checkpoint to save your progress, but I remember "enjoying my suffering" with the game. I don't know, perhaps the gameplay and atmosphere were so captivating that I didn't mind repeating the same section over and over until I cleared it.

For roots.genoa and anyone that hasn't played both Abe's Oddysee and Exodus: Play them from start to finish. You will thank me later.

1 minute ago, IntelliMission said:

 

 

I find both things surprising. Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exodus are too hard for most 60+ players

She was only in her 40s then, haha. Crap... that makes me feel old... I’m 44 in a couple of months...

As for the difficulty and lack of checkpoints... SAVE STATES! Haha.

12 hours ago, MantaNZ said:

Um... I think I'll choose option two, lol. 

 

Speaking of 'free' games - the most disgusting use of IAP that has crept in recently is subscriptions. I was playing some side scrolling hill climbing/racing game that was quite a bit of fun... only when it came to hitting a pay wall I was asked to pay $9.99 PER MONTH to be able to continue playing. Suffice to say, I uninstalled it promptly.

Yeah... Nintendo does that on mobile as well.  Pathetic.

11 hours ago, GrudgeQ said:

For me most of those big development houses represent the issues that Amico is trying to solve. I would much rather see some innovative and hungry indies handle the coding and get the name recognition from older & non traditional IPs. Getting a license for the kids book series Magic Tree House or Captain Underpants would move a lot more units with moms than having Ubisoft on the dev list. Of course it would be great to have some of those old Activision IPs for re-imagining, but there may be even more popular name recognition in some older (and maybe a little beat up) IPs like He-Man, Archie, Popeye, Teen Titans, PowerPuff Girls or commercial tie-ins like Pez, Super Soakers, Kool-Aid, Captain Crunch, Chester Cheetah or Cool Spot. In other words, they are nice if you can get them - but there are other options out there.

I just want Activision to give me Pitfall!  I have the original folks lined up to do it as well.  But Activision isn't interested until the machine is released.  I'll get it.  Will just take more time and not available on launch.  Maybe Christmas of 2021.  Same time the new and exclusive Earthworm Jim will be out. 

10 hours ago, mr_me said:

Does the developer keep the copyrights on their work?

Depends on the deal.  Sometimes yes and sometimes no.  If we're spending a ton of money to fund the entire project, market the game on tv, ads, online, etc., create the audio, help with the art... then it would be fair for us to own part of the original concept as well (typically a 50/50 deal).  But if something is pretty much already finished and we don't do much... then we don't deserve any of the ownership.  But if we take a concept/idea to a developer to make... then we would own it 100%.  So it's really different for every game depending on how it's presented. 

10 hours ago, GrudgeQ said:

Meanwhile James is frantically typing yet another OuyaTwoYa comment from his mom's basement. Keep up the good work James.

Yeah... that James C. guy is super creepy.

For 2 years now he responds to every YouTube video in a hateful and typically disgusting and foul way (most of his responses are normally taken down).

No joke... the guy has serious issues.  Although I must admit... I do find it somewhat hilarious that everyday he thinks about me and Amico and goes online to see if there is somewhere else to post his vile hatred.  He literally can't stop thinking about us.  Must be doing something right eh?


 

8 hours ago, MarioMan88 said:

After playing the Moon Patrol demo I admit it made me want to play with the Amico controller even more. I’d like to use the directional pad for speed up/slow down and either the touch screen or buttons for fire and jump.

 

I’ve always thought if Tommy & Team can just get the new console in peoples hands they will be won over! Console and controller look odd(which I like as a collector) and that could be big barrier for skeptics.

 

Tommys grass roots “pre” marketing is working..those numbers Grudge pointed out proves his strategy is working. 
 

Exciting times await!

 

Yeah... the game plays AMAZING with the controller!  It's really great.  And again... still haven't revealed everything yet about the controllers. 

1 hour ago, IntelliMission said:

 

 

I find both things surprising. Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exodus are too hard for most 60+ yo players, but at the same time people used to 8 bit computers usually fall in love with the games.

 

roots.genoa, I know it's not 1998 anymore, but this is my advice: persevere with Abe's Oddysee. It was an amazing experience for my 18 year old self only months after I bought the first Playstation.

 

I played the PAL version, 15% slower but dubbed into European Spanish (I should have played the US version with original speed, but I didn't know back then). The main problem with Oddysee (corrected in Exodus) is that it takes too long to reach a checkpoint to save your progress, but I remember "enjoying my suffering" with the game. I don't know, perhaps the gameplay and atmosphere were so captivating that I didn't mind repeating the same section over and over until I cleared it.

 

For roots.genoa and anyone that hasn't played both Abe's Oddysee and Exodus: Play them from start to finish. You will thank me later.

Lorne Lanning (creator) is a very dear friend of mine for over 25 years.  I knew him before he entered into the video game industry.  In fact, he sometimes credits me with showing him his first video game studio (back when I worked at Virgin!).  We've spent holidays together and he's one of the smartest industry people I know.  He LOVES what we're doing with Amico.  Also... I worked on the cinematics for Munches Oddysee! 

His next game looks AMAZING!!!!!!!!!