Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

On 2/23/2020 at 5:20 PM, Battlefish said:

Any talks with Bandai Namco?

Yes.  Been negotiating for months.

Hey Tommy,

Good to have ya back from Toy Fair!    What is the average file size you and the team are aiming for with games on the Amico, physical or digital?  I am a huge geek and this stuff intrigues me for some odd reason, especially since games in this current console generation normally clock in at between 5 to 100 GB.

Thanks,

Pete

On 2/24/2020 at 9:14 AM, Atari_Master said:

Here is the link for the free ebook

 

https://linktr.ee/IntelNation 

Thanks for reminding me!   Just downloaded and read it.

So cool!!!!!!!!!

Will make sure to post that link on all our social media tomorrow.

On 2/24/2020 at 12:23 PM, bigdaddygamestudio said:

its as if no one at microsoft watched Silicion Valley ( Loved that show) .  Well at least they havent scheduled a (Gavin Belson) signature series yet.  

 

I mean look at this thing, its a black rectangle, you could design it during a commercial break.

 

And some people made fun of us because of the shape of Amico!  HA!!

On 2/24/2020 at 3:24 PM, GrudgeQ said:

Just noticed that Tommy is at the NYC Toy Fair with the new Intellivision Head of Marketing (no press release yet, so not going to drop any names) however since she spent 4+ years at Mattel heading up the Disney Princess line I bet she knows the fair pretty well.

Yeah... she is AMAZING!  She is our internal VP of Global Marketing.  And a mom of 3!  Super cool and super talented.  You'll be seeing and hearing from her soon!

21 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

It went GREAT!!  Back to back meetings all day long and lots of great announcements coming.

Great meeting with the MLB folks and doing something really incredible with them that I can't wait to tell folks.  Probably announced at E3 in June.

 

EA has all rights to Baby Yoda and anything Star Wars unfortunately.  I tried. 

 

 

They will get on board once the Amico does well. 🙂

On 2/24/2020 at 6:34 PM, Atari_Master said:

Tommy,

 

Is there a chance that some starpath supercharger games might come to Amico, such as Dragonstomper and Phaser Patrol?

Not familiar with those games.

Just now, Swami said:

They will get on board once the Amico does well. 🙂

EA is super weird. I still don't know if they have released much on the Switch AKA the fastest selling console in NA ever because of... a reason that I don't know about.

On 2/24/2020 at 7:21 PM, Atari_Master said:

According to Wikipedia for Intellivision Amico, there's a game list and Cosmic Ark is one of the games that's been announced.

We have the rights, but haven't started working on it.

On 2/25/2020 at 6:18 AM, Steven Pendleton said:

Tommy, will there be Risk (the board game) on the Amico? This game is super awesome and I used to play it all the time when I was in the Marines with my friends. We used to start at like 1700~1800 and still not be finished until like 0300 when we all were super tired and decided to quit just so we could all go to bed. That's how awesome this game is! It takes forever to set this damn game up, though, so it would be awesome to see it make an appearance on the Amico so I don't have to set it up manually anymore!

Been going back and forth with them for over a year.  Still no deal yet.  Might need to "prove" ourselves in the marketplace first.

On 2/25/2020 at 6:53 AM, Steven Pendleton said:

Tommy, shogi for Amico? This game is super awesome, just like Risk (the broad game), and I really like it a lot more than chess, the game it is based on, because of its added complexity and therefore higher skill floor and skill ceiling. I played this one with my favourite band's bassist's father about 2 years ago and he barely beat me after I was winning the whole time because he was able to drop I think a gold general right in my face after I boxed myself in. Definitely a fun game, even for old dudes like him!

Never heard of it.  Will check it out.

On 2/25/2020 at 7:28 AM, Swami said:

If IE does Q*bert, where would Qbert go next and what would he need to accomplish, changing things up but keeping with the spirit of QBert and QBert's Qubes? Maybe add some mechanics like in Upmonsters (INTV) or Amoeba Jump (2600) where you have to do a little more steering to hit your targets and have some extras like the super bounce mushrooms in Amoeba Jump. Apparently, in the original concept of Qbert, Qbert could shoot the enemies using his nozzle. That could be added in as an option having spitballs or whatever placed on a few blocks as limited ammo (then you'd actually need a button). 

 

How could co-op be implemented? Obviously, some players could play the baddies, but could you have different colored Qberts working together? Konami produced a competitive 2-player Qbert type game for the MSX called "Q*bert" with a dragon replacing Qbert for some reason. In this one, each player has a different color change and tries to change more blocks than the other, but one could also have where each player is responsible for one of the two color changes to finish a block conversion and so forth.

 

There have been some expansions with levels added with the blocks in different arrangements and added enemies, as well as one where the blocks are hexagons with 6 ways to jump rather than four. Also, something I have to look into again called Faster, Harder, More Challenging Qbert.

 

Multiple colored Q*berts for sure!  That's what I would do. 

11 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

Been going back and forth with them for over a year.  Still no deal yet.  Might need to "prove" ourselves in the marketplace first.

 

So Hasbro is one of those types. Hopefully you'll get it eventually.

9 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

Never heard of it.  Will check it out.

 

 

It's a Japanese chess variant based on Chinese chess. Every unit you take can be put back in play as your own unit almost anywhere you want on the board as long as they have a legal move from that position (basically no moving off of the board as the only option). Also almost every unit can promote! Wonderful game.

Also forgot that there are older variants that have support for more than 2 players, as well! Different pieces for some of these variants, though.

On 2/25/2020 at 10:21 AM, mr_me said:

Sky Diver, Pong, Math Fun perhaps.  I think it's a good question.  We know the Atari properties they licensed are limited to those named; is it possible more can be added?  But all of the Imagic, Mattel, and INTV properties are available to them.  Activision properties will have to wait.

PONG will be on launch.

On 2/25/2020 at 12:18 PM, Swami said:

Maybe this was brought up 100 pages back, but the mention of "crew" made me think about how the 2-8 player aspect and Amico/phone controllers would be great for various paddle/rowing/rafting or swimming/climbing-type games. It would probably take too many controllers, but I can see how a climbing game could be very co-op in terms of helping get each other over impediments to scaling cliff-walls, etc.. Also, obstacle courses like helping each other over walls or or pulling  someone over something, like in those Survivor challenges, if anyone is familiar.

We have one game where you use both controllers in each hand that represent your "hands" in the game!

On 2/25/2020 at 12:39 PM, RetroAdvisoryBoard said:

I trust there'll be several surprises in a few months, just thinking aloud.

True dat!!

On 2/25/2020 at 2:28 PM, vongruetz said:

Sony tried to do a reboot of Q*Bert already, and based on how often it has been on sale, I'm guessing it didn't sell very well.  I would think that if IE wanted to get the rights for it, they'd have to talk with Sony who probably isn't interested in licensing it out.

They actually reached out to us!

On 2/25/2020 at 12:50 PM, mr_me said:

Those thirty-somethings with young families will like the childrens titles.  Maybe it's better they focus their efforts, they don't have unlimited budgets.  Who knows but we shall see.

Our launch is:

20% Sports/Recreation

20% Original IP's

20% Retro Reimagined

20% Card/Dice/Board

20% Edutainment

The focus here has always been the Retro Reimagined... but that is only 20% of our line-up!  So many other cool things coming at launch!!

 

On 2/25/2020 at 6:20 PM, Blarneo said:

I specifically asked for it NOT to be made. Tommy said "Too fu%#ing bad!"😂

I've actually renamed it.  I'm now calling it...

Blarneo's Math Fun!

🤣

I am really looking forward to Cloudy Mountain re-imagined. How is that game coming along?

On 2/25/2020 at 10:10 PM, Papy said:

If Amico creates this kind of segregation between players, it will fail.

 

The key for the success of Amico is not to have a handful of games intended to combine audience, it is for the vast majority of games to be for everyone, with at most only a handful of games for a particular audience.

 

A lot of people here say they want remakes of old arcade-style games they played when they were children. I can certainly understand that, I'm one of those, but if we get what we want, I doubt many will actually play those remakes once the novelty wears off. We now have so much choice in video games that replaying the same game over and over and over simply to get a higher score is something only a handful of gamers will do.

 

If I were a developer creating a remake of an old shooter, I'd ask myself one question : why would someone replay my game? What is the reward? If the only answer I can think of is to get a higher score, then I would simply scrap the game.

 

Nostalgia or brand recognition can make someone buy a game, but it can't make someone play a game. The reason very few people will play with old arcade game remakes is not because of an IP recognition problem, it's because that kind of gameplay has been mostly superseded.

 

It's OK for IE to use those IPs. Again, nostalgia or brand recognition can make someone buy a game. However, the core mechanics of the game should be almost completely different. Reimagined games are a great idea, but remakes are a very bad idea.

 

The core idea of Amico was to bring families and friends together. Everything should be made to stay on this path.

We will have something for everyone as individuals... AND... for families/everyone. 

It truly is a very unique line-up in that sense in regards to where our focus is.  Just like in the 80's. 

On 2/25/2020 at 10:16 PM, Papy said:

I'm guessing that was me. And yes, I do think Math Fun could be a great party game.

 

I have Brain Age and Big Brain Academy for the Nintendo DS. With those two games, there are simple maths mini-games. On a few occasions, I did play those game with some friends and we had a lot of fun trying to have the "youngest" or the "biggest" brain possible. (It was even more fun when it turned into a men vs women competition.)

 

Brain Age is the 4th best-selling game on the DS. Brain Age 2 is in 7th place. Big Brain Academy is in 15th position.

We have a similar game... probably on (or around) launch.

Great for senior gamers as well.  They LOVE that stuff.

On 2/25/2020 at 10:17 PM, Papy said:

There is no chance Amico will be able to compete with Facebook.

Our games will sure be a helluva lot better! 

On 2/25/2020 at 11:11 PM, Steven Pendleton said:

I'll just leave this here for everyone

 

 

Haha!

Looking forward to the Amico foot massager video at some point! 

Will you be testing the games from third parties in house for playability before approving them or going on demos they send?