Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

5 hours ago, RetroAdvisoryBoard said:

The whole thing. 

 

I love that they're not being formulaic.  We've seen so much innovation in controller design, but the manufacturing leaders just assume the form and function cannot be bested.  D-pads don't make for good driving games.  You don't enjoy skating on video game ice with a d-pad.  They're miserable in isometric games.  And a thumbstick is so overly sensitive to control, it isn't ideal.  We had trackballs and paddles, sliding wells because they perform really well in certain cases.  Arcades use a full joystick.  Why not see what mileage a disc can get you?

 

I'm excited about a screen on the controller.  Every.  Single.  Game.  .. can benefit from giving players extra information, extra help when they're the slower player in need of an assist.  Every game can incorporate withholding information in competitive play.  Strategizing and forming alliances in party games and board games, or even arcade games where you may hold back to help another player and secretly work together.  What if two players could discreetly send a truce in Shark Shark or in a racing game?  The other player(s) is blind to your scheming ways.

 

I think haptics can be very useful when using the screen as a firing button or set of buttons, help differentiate left from right or quadrant from quadrant.  That'll be pretty helpful in using a touchscreen as the face buttons of a controller if it'll work how I think it could. 

 

Super excited about the state of motion control with what essentially acts like a Joycon - Nintendo is moving away from the concept with the Switch Lite and non-removable joy-cons, I don't think any big games will truly try to think about motion control and the rumble effect.  Intellivision, the floor is yours.

 

Sorry, I know you asked for what one thing I was most excited for.  But I like the controller.  A lot.  It'll be a friendly little device in the hands of friends and families as I introduce the thing to them.

LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!!!

4 hours ago, CurlyQ said:

 

I am also super excited for the new controller and it will be interesting to see what game developers can come up with using this technology. The only thing I didn't like about the original controller were the small mushy side buttons. The keypad with the raised numeric buttons was a very innovative idea, it was kinda like having Braille with immediate feedback as to what button your finger was hovering over. When you got used to it you never had to look down at the controller to figure out what buttons to press. The Intellivision 2 got rid of the raised buttons (what were they thinking???).

 

I don't know much about the new touchscreen but it appears to have a tiny bit of raised glass in the very middle of the screen so you know where your finger is without having to look. Perhaps Tommy can elaborate on this?

 

Unfortunately the little dimple in the middle had to go.  It would have caused a LOT of potential manufacturing issues.  But don't worry... we have a solution.  All will be revealed in the summer. 

3 hours ago, LePionnier said:

 

LOVE THESE DUDES!!!!!!!!!

1 minute ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

OEB Pete... literally the EXACT OPPOSITE of Pat & Ian.  Hahhaha!

 

 

 

Pete is so great at showing happiness that if we could bottle it we could solve all the world's problems. 

I love when he gets slightly mad and then apologizes.

Canadians are so polite.

Pete you're awesome!

🙂

1 hour ago, AtariSociety said:

Since many of us are locked in, social distanced, quarantined, or just can't get out... have a laugh, smile, and have as good of a weekend as you can.  Thinking of all my Amico friends.  Thinking of good days ahead and wonderful Amico surprised in October 2020.

 

Let us keep positive and good things WILL happen.

 

 

 

TJ

LOVE TJ AS WELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My future Customer Service VP!

1 hour ago, Pathfinder said:

I think Intellivision are doing a fantastic job (I'm hyper excited!)

 

I will be buying new games that I would not normally consider trying.

 

I am interested in every release - especially the retro games, I am interested in the multiplayer aspect of the system and would look into the board game genre as well (as well as other genres the system makes).

 

I have a few questions:-

1)What will be the maximum storage capacity of the SD card and also the USB (if its used for storage) in gigabyte size that the Amico will take?

2)How will I be able to find out about the games on the Amico?

 eg on the Amico on-line shop:-

    - will there be a synopsis of the games

    - will there be user ratings for each game or a place for mini reviews

    - will there be game demos you can download

 

 

 

Hi!  Welcome to Atari Age and the Amico Q&A thread!  Great first post!  Hope to see you around these parts more often.

1.  Currently it is 16GB internal but you can add SD & USB on the back.  We are watching SD GB prices every week.  They fluctuate considerably (typically always going down).  We are hoping we can fit a 32GB internal OR... keep the 16GB internal and put either a 16GB or 32GB in the back!  Still watching and nothing confirmed except the 16GB internal.  That should hold at least 20 - 30 games (because our OS and the 5 or 6 pack-ins will be on it as well).

2.  Super easy to use and navigate online store!  I can't say much more about it right now because it's super cool and unique and we don't want to give it away just yet.  But to answer your question in a broad sense.  YES!  (except for the game demo part).

1 hour ago, Michael Garvey said:

Tommy Tallarico, 

 

I believe I spelled your last name right this time. (I just have to remember how "tall" you are and I get that extra L in there)

 

Hope you and everyone in the company are doing well.

 

You mentioned you may have to limit on or you will cut short the time for the VIP preorders if they reach a certain amount.

 

Above you mention just mentioned that the woodgrain are more expensive and you need to order a lot to bring the cost down.

 

Are you hoping for a lot of woodgrain units to be in this new wave of preorders?

 

Do you have a range of how many you can reasonably create and if so is that in the thousands or in the tens of thousands?

 

You don't have to answer but just something I was wondering. 

Yes... we are hoping for a lot of woodgrain VIP orders.  And White.... and Black! 

We can do a run of 35,000 machines a month on one line.  Easy to have multiple lines going... but better to have just one if you can (many upsides and cost reasons)... most of all... you don't need to redo your tooling, which for a machine like Amico runs around $150,000 - $200,000!

10 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

LOVE THESE DUDES!!!!!!!!!

 

Second that - these guys are hilarious and their videos are like sitting around with your buddies drinking some beers and talking video games. They should have WAY more subscribers:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRVA6jDD5x_GG45Dan-S-Q

1 hour ago, cmart604 said:

Part of me thinks that you should send them a free unit to review when it comes out....🤔 and tshirts. 😂

I TOTALLY want to send them t-shirts... that would be so hilarious!

But then they would just turn it around (not getting the irony or the joke) and say I'm trying to bribe them.  Then they would burn them on camera.

1 hour ago, cmart604 said:

I will be holding you to this....we Canadians take that pretty seriously. 😂

Don't worry!  Me & Paul will make sure you are one of our game testers for this product!  @OEB_Pete too!  Another fine Canadian!

46 minutes ago, Michael Garvey said:

I'm going to buy every game the Amico puts out.

 

I don't care if Tommy knows that or not.  I'm doing it because I love to collect and think It'd be cool to have a complete set.

 

I'm thinking of starting an Amico only channel on YouTube.  My kids have equipment and they said they'd help me with the production.

 

I think it'd be fun to play and rate 1 game a week.

 

I'm going to wait until we know almost everything about the system (which would've been at E3) since I kind of want it to be less speculation and more about the games.

 

I kind of want to collect all we know in one place on YouTube and have links to Pete, TJ and the Creep to promote their channels. Also promote this forum. Also other's channels (sorry if I missed any I'm new to these things)

 

I don't know if it will work out but my sons and I will have fun together and I'll certainly learn a lot from them.

 

🙂

That would be SO COOL to see you and your family review games!!!  Exactly the kind of content we'd love to see and would want to promote!

35 minutes ago, OEB_Pete said:

OMG too funny, How do they explain me then, I have a tiny little channel, never met Tommy, bought a ton of merchandise with my canuck funny money and discovered Amico all by myself.  I will always make Amico videos I don't care if Amico only sells 100000 units or 100 Million. I don't care if niche YouTube Retro Elitist hate on it or love it.  It makes no matter as I believe in the concept, the retro re-imagined love for the history of games, the family/friends focus and the fact that he promised to make me Pitfall.  jk

We gotta do a video together!!!  Have me on and interview me!  Would love to answer your questions.  Would be GREAT!

And I promise I won't bribe you with merchandise you already have.  

1 minute ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

We gotta do a video together!!!  Have me on and interview me!  Would love to answer your questions.  Would be GREAT!

 

And I promise I won't bribe you with merchandise you already have.  

 

 

You two should watch that Intellevison logo cup reveal video together. 

Hahahaha.

The anticipation of seeing the logo slowly reveal as Pete smiles gleefully and Tommy bangs his head saying "come on already!!" Would be priceless 

About Hockey that we really like... did the team doing the reimagined hockey game learn some hockey rules since 40 years ago ? 🙄

Like before the faceoff in the center of the ice, all players on the same team must be in their own zone ! 😂🤣😅😊🙄 lol

Edit : It was not the case with the original game !

But no problem if it's 3 against 3 instead of 5 against 5. It's faster that way ! 😀

24 minutes ago, GrudgeQ said:

38 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

LOVE THESE DUDES!!!!!!!!!

 

Second that - these guys are hilarious and their videos are like sitting around with your buddies drinking some beers and talking video games. They should have WAY more subscribers

I second the man that second that ...  
That's why I shared their video.  There were 5 of them when they interviewed Tommy.

2 dudes are doing video while they are playing games in co-op or versus mode.

It will be really cool when they will play all the Amico Games !

There was one part of the video I did not like! You didn't show enough footage of Cloudy Mountain. 😞

Just now, poconojo said:

There was one part of the video I did not like! You didn't show enough footage of Cloudy Mountain. 😞

Omg I wanted to see like 15 minutes of that one.  I ended up watching someone play the original on YouTube since I'd never heard of it.  Looks great.

More please. 

😍

31 minutes ago, poconojo said:

There was one part of the video I did not like! You didn't show enough footage of Cloudy Mountain. 😞

I understand ! But it was a last minute update ! So we are lucky ! 😉

We know it will not be ready at launch, but I wonder if we could play it later in 2020 ?

I haven't been here for a few days since I've been giving the new PC Engine mini some very rigorous testing. Looks like this place and the independent discussion thread got a bit messy, and that's all I'm going to say about that. If anyone is interested in the PC Engine mini for whatever reason, I'd say that I can recommend it since it is extremely good so far aside from some strange game choices. Since it's been delayed in the rest of the world, I wrote what might or might not be the world's first post-release English language review for all of you non-Japanese speaking humans in two massive posts over in the TurboGrafx thread.

On 3/20/2020 at 12:15 AM, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

Thanks for helping to spread Intellivision in the East! 

Amico selling in certain countries (especially in Japan) won't have anything to do with the name Intellivision.  It's cool that we have a legacy, but we're not relying on name recognition in order to be successful.  It's a great "perk" for parts of the world... but Japan isn't really one of them.  As you're aware more than anyone else... Japan is a very different market when it comes to gaming.  And although we have a strong team on the ground over there (including the former president of Xbox Japan) it definitely isn't our focus until 2022.  So we have a ways to go and need to succeed in other places first before we start thinking about Japan. 

 

When the time comes for us to start thinking about Japan... I'll need to hire folks like you who know a LOT about the industry over there!

 

Now that I look at it, I did word that post rather poorly. I know of at least one person who was initially interested because of the Intellivision name. Maybe it's cheating since that one person is me, but I guess it works. I imagine there are more, but I guess I meant that due to that not really being present here, it's not something you can rely on, and as you said, it is basically a bonus even in the USA.

The Japanese market is definitely different from the rest of the world, and it's really interesting. The Xbox basically doesn't exist, as you know, I think the Switch outsold the PS4 here some time ago, Sega Saturn outsold the N64, stuff that sells really well in the rest of the world gets ignored by the Japanese, and stuff that gets ignored by the Japanese sells really well elsewhere. Nobody here really cares about Zelda at all, for example (Breath of the Wild is an outlier), and first person games tend to make Japanese people motion sick for some reason. Call of Duty generally sells well here for some reason in spite of this.

I've honestly generally seen the video game industry as mostly, but not entirely, being run by a bunch of morally corrupt people who care about money, not making good games, which is why I never got into the industry. There are exceptions (Kojima comes to mind instantly), and I must also say that thankfully Intellivision doesn't seem this way and I think I'd enjoy working at Intellivision, so if you're serious, I'll be here if you guys want me! And an edit: I'm not just saying this because you're here in this thread, either, before someone says/thinks otherwise.

Finally, a question: someone a while ago (forgot who. Sorry!) mentioned tax and you said yes, tax because of the law. Question is if the tax is included in the price. So like you guys are targeting $9.99 and below, so I'm curious about if that will that exceed $9.99 with tax or be $9.99 with tax included maximum.

3 minutes ago, Michael Garvey said:

Omg I wanted to see like 15 minutes of that one.  I ended up watching someone play the original on YouTube since I'd never heard of it.  Looks great.

 

More please. 

 

😍

Awesome game! I have been playing this game for over 35 years and never get tired of it. Definitely purchase the original if it comes out for the Amico.

1 hour ago, Michael Garvey said:

Oh you know I'll be reaching out to you.

 

Maybe you could even give me tips on how to play Super Metroid. 

 

😄

LOL, man that game got the best of me, thanks for reminding me

Just now, poconojo said:

Awesome game! I have been playing this game for over 35 years and never get tired of it. Definitely purchase the original if it comes out for the Amico.

It's a game I NEED and never knew it.

It hits all the marks for me.

I will pick up the original on Amico. 

I can't wait to play both back to back and compare and contrast them.

🙂

47 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Don't worry!  Me & Paul will make sure you are one of our game testers for this product!  @OEB_Pete too!  Another fine Canadian!

 

 

 

I would be honoured...

20 minutes ago, Michael Garvey said:

Omg I wanted to see like 15 minutes of that one.  I ended up watching someone play the original on YouTube since I'd never heard of it.  Looks great.

 

More please. 

 

😍

I am working on a 2 hour video breaking down that 2 second clip 

1 minute ago, OEB_Pete said:

I am working on a 2 hour video breaking down that 2 second clip 

Hahaha!!