Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

personally, I would like to see more demos. Realizing that some demos especially playing without the controller for now, might turn some people off, I would welcome as much content as possible. Even more screenshots would be great.

On 12/24/2019 at 12:50 PM, IMBerzerk said:

You bring up a good talking point... What is an FPS?  It dates back to Wolfenstein 3D as the first "official", but what about Treasure of Tarmin, and all the other Dungeon Crawler/D&D games that SSI made.  Not to forget the best of all, Dungeon Master.  We're these not FPS format?  

 

But I hope there is some wiggle room in the Amico's definition of FPS.  I agree, no COD type games, but it would be fun to have new versions of Battle Zone, Red Baron, Star Wars.. and some classic D&D games like Bard's Tale.

MIDI Maze/Faceball is a FPS from back in 1987 that is no more violent than some already planned Amico games. The controls are simple and straightforward as well.

I imagine that games with that kind of perspective and movement won't be ruled out and that the content/gameplay will be the real deciding factor.

I remember reading that the Amico will feature games licensed from Coleco. Am I remembering correctly? I'd like to see Berzerk or Jumpman make a comeback.

(Coleco apparently claimed Zaxxon for their ColecoVision compilations, but I have no idea how that is supposed to hold up if Sega is, obviously, still in operation.)

Hello from Germany,

I’m 50 years old videogame fan. I grew up with Atari VCS and C64.

As a child, I was very impressed by the sports  and Imagic games for the Intellivision system but I never had one, unfortunately. I played Intellivision games over the „Intellivision lives“ CD some time ago.

Amico ist very interesting for me, I have a 5 year old son and we play sometimes  Mariokart and  Supermario Brothers on the Wii U.

My best loved 4 and 5 player experiences in the nineties were: Bombeman 93, 94 and Final Match tennis for the NEC PC Engine/ Turbo Grafx . A perfected , easy to play version of final match tennis would be great.

I’ve read that the reimagined games for Amico will have better graphics and more options (of course).

What do you think , will a software developer of a reimagined sports game also try to check out  the best  and easiest sport videogames for other systems in the videogame history and adopt the best aspects  and compare the final product with the best other versions?

The playability of the Intellivision sport games like soccer  were great in the early eighties, but unfortunately that isn’t the case anymore.

I would like to play an easy  soccer game with only two buttons. The modern fifa games are to complicated for me.  (My best loved soccer game in the past was Commodore C64 soccer)

Best wishes for your system.

Holger

Final Match is awesome game, one of the most underrated sports games in the history of video games.

Much better that any 32 bits tennis game. Only Virtua Tennis can be compared to it.

1 hour ago, Battlefish said:

I remember reading that the Amico will feature games licensed from Coleco. Am I remembering correctly? I'd like to see Berzerk or Jumpman make a comeback.

 

(Coleco apparently claimed Zaxxon for their ColecoVision compilations, but I have no idea how that is supposed to hold up if Sega is, obviously, still in operation.)

Sega reclaimed the Zaxxon trademark, so that didn't last long.  Coleco Holdings also trademarked bumpnjump and a few Imagic titles recently.

Jumpman was made by epyx not coleco.  Atari had the home video game license for Berzerk but Coleco did have Frenzy.  I guess the original IP still belongs to Stern.  Amico will have Deadly Discs and Night Stalker, not sure if they're interested in Berzerk but it is a good title to have.

You can see some of the titles that have been licensed here.

https://www.intellivisionamico.com/press-releases/press-release-october-22nd-2018

11 minutes ago, mr_me said:

Sega reclaimed the Zaxxon trademark, so that didn't last long.  Coleco Holdings also trademarked bumpnjump and a few Imagic titles recently.

 

Jumpman was made by epyx not coleco.  Atari had the home video game license for Berzerk but Coleco did have Frenzy.  I guess the original IP still belongs to Stern.  Amico will have Deadly Discs and Night Stalker, not sure if they're interested in Berzerk but it is a good title to have.

 

You can see some of the titles that have been licensed here.

https://www.intellivisionamico.com/press-releases/press-release-october-22nd-2018

Isn't it funny how all these years nothing... suddenly the past 5 years all kinds of buy backs of trademarks and copywrites because they all know the retro industry is as hot, or possibly hotter than the console industry.  Just think of all the businesses that got started from MAME cabinets, let alone, RasberryPi's, Retroarch, Mini systems... etc...etc..etc..

I built my first MAME cabinet (IMBerZerK) almost 19 years ago... ROMs everywhere... all kinds of fledgling emulators... now.. forget it. Wow.

I don't think there was any buying going on regarding Coleco Holdings and these old games.

By the way, has Berzerk appeared in any retro game compilations in any format?

Amico Tennis:  will the court orientation be vertical or horizontal?

3 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

Several items:

 

- About paprium_fiasco/SegaSnatcher: I haven't read every single reddit message from him, but some months ago he said "the biggest problem with the Amico is its price. If it was sold for $100 it would be an instabuy." I wonder what Tommy and the rest of the forum think about this (I don't think it's possible to lower the price that much?).

I guarantee that "Fiasco" (I always shorten for my personal gratification) would complain that $100 was too much if it actually was launched at that price. His strategy is always to post something somewhat sane like an actual question or semi positive statement and then make some totally unfounded, ridiculous statement like he has special knowledge about the subject.

For example he posted a 2d image with the Amico peeking out behind behind the new xBox series X to claim that the Amico was too large (of course ignoring that volume is width x depth x height), claimed that Tommy was *personally* designing the electronics & so it would be a disaster, that the Amico disc would fall inside the controller housing because there was nothing to hold it up (I guess springs haven't been invented in Fiasco's world), that there was no way you could optimize games for the Amico since Unity was already fully optimized (an actual Amico dev waded in on that one to try to explain that yes, you can optimize Unity a lot for a specific platform before realizing he was a troll), that the lack of a camera on the controller (there has *never* been a camera mentioned for the controller) was proof that Tommy was cutting back features and the list goes on and on. He would be irritating but his arguments are so nonsensically hate filled that they are usually just funny.

7 hours ago, LePionnier said:

I agree. I will even go further !
I think I can (and will) collect all Amico games if there is only 1 new game per week at a maximum price of $ 10 !!! 😎

(Apart from the ones that I will buy physically)

 

Tommy, speaking of that, from the 30-40 games available at launch, is it possible to know how many of them you think will be in physical form ?

Thank you.

Yeah, me too

2 hours ago, mr_me said:

Sega reclaimed the Zaxxon trademark, so that didn't last long.  Coleco Holdings also trademarked bumpnjump and a few Imagic titles recently.

 

Jumpman was made by epyx not coleco.  Atari had the home video game license for Berzerk but Coleco did have Frenzy.  I guess the original IP still belongs to Stern.  Amico will have Deadly Discs and Night Stalker, not sure if they're interested in Berzerk but it is a good title to have.

 

You can see some of the titles that have been licensed here.

https://www.intellivisionamico.com/press-releases/press-release-october-22nd-2018

I had only mentioned Jumpman because of its inclusion in recent ColecoVision collections. I presume either Coleco registered for that trademark, or licensed the Jumpman Junior game from Epyx's current IP owner.

(Meanwhile, a poke around online suggests Randy Glover reclaimed the rights at some point. Damnit, this is getting confusing.)

There is that one Kickstarter from back in August, where Coleco was trying to raise funds for a Berzerk mini-arcade.

As for this:

2 hours ago, GrudgeQ said:

since Unity was already fully optimized

You don't have to be an Amico dev to figure out that's wrong

3 hours ago, mr_me said:

You can see some of the titles that have been licensed here.

https://www.intellivisionamico.com/press-releases/press-release-october-22nd-2018

Thanks !

That's not the first time I am looking this press release. But this time, I decide to look at the titles that I know less, or even not at all.

In the 80s, I was not a computer player. I had my intellivision II, and I had friends with atari 2600 ( Pitfall was my favorite), and others with Colecovision. (Rocky, venture, ladybug, toutankhamon, mouse trap ...)
My intellivision was like a local team for me, but I loved and enyoyed playing with my friend who owned colecovision !! What an incredible video game console, that unfortunately arrived too late and too close to the video crash.
( But did I hate the controller ? Oh yeah ! )

One day, when I was about 13 years old, I entered a computer store for the first time in my life ! And I saw someone playing with Lode Runner ! (Did not know at that time the name of the game. I just learned it today !!!! 😮)

WoW ! Graphics with great resolution ! I was hypnotized ! And believe it or not, I never played that game !

But now it's coming for Amico ! What a great news for me. Great potential for versus mode, and why not cooperative.

Please Tommy, tell me it will be on launch day !!  I have looked on the internet, and like many games, there are many versions.

I hope Amico graphics will have great scale for this game. I am sure it will, it's better for multi player. What can you tell us about Lode Runner ?

Thank you very much. 😊

I will go back to this press release and keep looking for new treasure !

Pablum. Not Pabrium.😇

I wonder how many of those in that press release have already been axed? I know it was mentioned somewhere that they stopped on some games as they didn't think they were good enough.

I honestly think it would be good to create a thread with most up to date information. Like the press release says 149-179 but the most recent is under 200. It is getting hard to keep track of everything.

I feel like I said this before but this was a fun family multiplayer on the NES from Data East. My family played a lot of Caveman Games it would be cool to see it again reimagined.

6 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

Several items:

 

- About paprium_fiasco/SegaSnatcher: I haven't read every single reddit message from him, but some months ago he said "the biggest problem with the Amico is its price. If it was sold for $100 it would be an instabuy." I wonder what Tommy and the rest of the forum think about this (I don't think it's possible to lower the price that much?).

Actually, it would be an insta-failure at $100 because people would perceive it to be super cheap or just a flashback/mini type deal.  It would also be a failure because we would probably go out of business as the machine costs a LOT MORE than that to manufacture!  

6 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

 

- About the Amico competition: A recent research has shown that 40% of {Unnamed Hybrid Console} owners in the USA also own a second, current gen, more powerful home console. It's clear that these are hardcore gamers, and a great portion of the remaining 60% are probably hardcore gamers too. This seems in line with the theory that {Unnamed Japanese Company of the Plumber}'s customer base are mostly hardcore gamers and there could be an opportunity for other systems aimed to casual/non gamers.

You should see some of the data/research/numbers we have in regards to similar type stuff.  It's pretty obvious there is a room for another console that if offering what we are offering. 

6 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

 

- About sports in the USA: I'm sure the Europeans reading this thread will agree, but I don't understand how you guys can prefer baseball over soccer. 👼 We delicate Europeans find American Football and Ice Hockey too violent too. I do however must recognize that your leagues work much better than ours with the draft systems and other business aspects, giving each team opportunities to become one of the big ones. Here we have very powerful teams playing against very weak ones that can even disappear when they don't find investors.

What is this soccer you speak of? 


 

6 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

 

- About poutine: I only discovered this recently in another American forum, but it looks delicious... Is the rest of Canadian cuisine like this?

No.  This is a hidden Canadian gem.   Lots of maple syrup up there too though!  btw... I don't recommend combining the 2. 

6 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

 

- About the 8 bit central article: Really cool to see more bloggers/analysts joining to the optimism! However, we must take it with a grain of salt: The guy who wrote that says that he bought an Ouya and he loved it (he even goes on to say that the Atari VCS will be much worse than the Ouya, but that's probably for another, more gastronomical thread).

Yep.  I try to take everything like that.  Good and bad.  I'm just glad there is a lot more good than bad lately.  

5 hours ago, Jeffrey Bouchard said:

personally, I would like to see more demos. Realizing that some demos especially playing without the controller for now, might turn some people off, I would welcome as much content as possible. Even more screenshots would be great.

Yeah... will definitely be doing a lot of gameplay trailers/screenshots etc. starting soon.

5 hours ago, Battlefish said:

I remember reading that the Amico will feature games licensed from Coleco. Am I remembering correctly? I'd like to see Berzerk or Jumpman make a comeback.

 

(Coleco apparently claimed Zaxxon for their ColecoVision compilations, but I have no idea how that is supposed to hold up if Sega is, obviously, still in operation.)

No.  We've never said anything about Coleco.  We looked at their catalogue, but to be honest... they don't really own anything.  I loved Looping (for example) but they don't own it.  Same with Berzerk, Zaxxon or stuff like Smurfs, Rocky boxing, etc.

4 hours ago, Spaceharrier69 said:

Hello from Germany,

I’m 50 years old videogame fan. I grew up with Atari VCS and C64.

As a child, I was very impressed by the sports  and Imagic games for the Intellivision system but I never had one, unfortunately. I played Intellivision games over the „Intellivision lives“ CD some time ago.

Amico ist very interesting for me, I have a 5 year old son and we play sometimes  Mariokart and  Supermario Brothers on the Wii U.

My best loved 4 and 5 player experiences in the nineties were: Bombeman 93, 94 and Final Match tennis for the NEC PC Engine/ Turbo Grafx . A perfected , easy to play version of final match tennis would be great.

I’ve read that the reimagined games for Amico will have better graphics and more options (of course).

What do you think , will a software developer of a reimagined sports game also try to check out  the best  and easiest sport videogames for other systems in the videogame history and adopt the best aspects  and compare the final product with the best other versions?

The playability of the Intellivision sport games like soccer  were great in the early eighties, but unfortunately that isn’t the case anymore.

I would like to play an easy  soccer game with only two buttons. The modern fifa games are to complicated for me.  (My best loved soccer game in the past was Commodore C64 soccer)

Best wishes for your system.

Holger

 

Hi!,

Glad to have you here!  Thanks for joining the conversation!

Yes... I fully intend on bringing back SIMPLE sports stuff!  Intellivision Soccer is one of them!

Thanks again for joining us and looking forward to sharing more info with you over the next 10 months. 

Please feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

Thanks!

4 hours ago, mr_me said:

Sega reclaimed the Zaxxon trademark, so that didn't last long.  Coleco Holdings also trademarked bumpnjump and a few Imagic titles recently.

 

Jumpman was made by epyx not coleco.  Atari had the home video game license for Berzerk but Coleco did have Frenzy.  I guess the original IP still belongs to Stern.  Amico will have Deadly Discs and Night Stalker, not sure if they're interested in Berzerk but it is a good title to have.

 

You can see some of the titles that have been licensed here.

https://www.intellivisionamico.com/press-releases/press-release-october-22nd-2018

Does anyone know what original games Coleco actually owns?  Tradmarking the names doesn't make them theirs.

We were asked what Coleco games we wanted... but I just didn't see anything that they actually owned the rights to.

4 hours ago, IMBerzerk said:

Isn't it funny how all these years nothing... suddenly the past 5 years all kinds of buy backs of trademarks and copywrites because they all know the retro industry is as hot, or possibly hotter than the console industry.  Just think of all the businesses that got started from MAME cabinets, let alone, RasberryPi's, Retroarch, Mini systems... etc...etc..etc..

 

I built my first MAME cabinet (IMBerZerK) almost 19 years ago... ROMs everywhere... all kinds of fledgling emulators... now.. forget it. Wow.

My first MAME cabinet was 21 years ago!  I know have a custom Video Games Live cabinet that was built for me about 16 years ago.  We also having an Intellivision MAME cabinet in the office, but I've never even turned it on as I typically use the one at my house.

3 hours ago, mr_me said:

I don't think there was any buying going on regarding Coleco Holdings and these old games.

 

By the way, has Berzerk appeared in any retro game compilations in any format?

 

Amico Tennis:  will the court orientation be vertical or horizontal?

Berzerk would be totally fun to remake!  But yeah... we would need to get Night Stalker out there first!  And TDD.  But could use the same engine for sure!

RUNNING MAN in Berzerk!!  

We haven't spent too much time thinking about Tennis quite yet.  I'm guessing because of the 16:9 orientation we would probably make it horizontal... like we did with Breakout.

40 minutes ago, LePionnier said:

I saw someone playing with Lode Runner !😮

Please Tommy, tell me it will be on launch day !

Potentially.  Not sure at this point.

9 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

50 minutes ago, LePionnier said:

I saw someone playing with Lode Runner !😮

Please Tommy, tell me it will be on launch day !

Potentially.  Not sure at this point.

So at least it's not cancelled !!

30 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

I wonder how many of those in that press release have already been axed? I know it was mentioned somewhere that they stopped on some games as they didn't think they were good enough.

26 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Yeah... will definitely be doing a lot of gameplay trailers/screenshots etc. starting soon.

 

 

Good to know. Keep up the good work and updates.

20 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

Like the press release says 149-179 but the most recent is under 200.

Actually... when we launched the new website everything now says "around" $200.  It is a constant moving target.  Upgrading the screens, other stuff I can't mention and the amazing packaging and extras we are putting together will potentially drive the MSRP past $200... and we still don't know about the tariffs (although it's looking like they will not happen).  But I'm also trying to keep as much stuff as I can in the Americas... which costs a little more as well.

These are issues we discuss every single day with our team of people, the retailers, focus groups, our manufacturer, etc. 

The machine quality and build of the machine we have now is actually a lot better than we originally planned for 2 years ago when we made those first press releases. 

The goal was to let people know that we are going for AFFORDABLE here without sacrificing quality.  Upgrading the screens on the controller (and wait everyone sees the super cool and unique packaging) was a big deal and a lot more costly for manufacturing.  But it HAD to be done as it makes such a huge difference.  Everyone will thank me later.  

We won't know the final retail price until the beginning of April.

Also important to note that the Special Limited Editions will be at a premium because they cost a lot more to make.  

We are also considering doing a special FOUNDERS EDITION in the Vintage Woodgrain.  A special hand numbered signed version with a TON of extras (so much cool stuff that you could only get with the Founders Edition).  Thinking about launching that program at the end of this month.  Would only be limited to a few thousand machines.  We would do the Vintage Woodgrain as a normal Special Edition as well... but the Founder's Edition version would be the most special and unique and HUGE value (i.e. tons of free games, etc.).  Just a way to thank all the folks who are currently watching and supporting us.  We must get at least 10 or 15 e-mails a day for people asking us for this.

Would be interested in hearing peoples thoughts.