Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

2 hours ago, GrudgeQ said:

Yep my phone was become LESS valuable to me as nearly all apps/games have gone to subscription or tons of annoying ads. Even apps I have purchased (sometimes for large app prices) drop support for those versions and then release ones trying to suck money out of me each month. Even Amazon music where I *buy* $$$ music peppers me with wanting me to change to a subscription service - my response is I am looking for a straight MP3 player for my phone. The result - I depend on my phone for less and less for getting things done and even consuming some media. Makes me wonder if I should buy a top of the line phone next time since it is becoming more of a text, call & social media machine only. Their store app policies are literally driving me away from their products.

Totally agree. Used to have a bunch of apps that i used on the iPhone, but now beyond the apps related to other products I own (like my Chevy app) i pretty much stay out of the app store and my casual gaming is pretty much limited to Solitaire, which is one that actually works well with a touch screen. 

7 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

I don't understand why some of you seem to be amazed that most Youtubers don't do any research...

 

Youtubers are not journalists.

 

Actually, they're called vloggers because they're doing the video equivalent of a blog, and the point of a blog is to write about one's opinion. I run a retrogaming web site where I try to do research about what I write and I run a blog to talk about anything I want to talk about. Almost no one reads my blog but I don't care. It's not even for my brother and my friends; when you spend too much time thinking about something, you just need to write (or make a video) about it. It's like a personal diary, or rather a session with a psychologist since you need to talk to someone else. It's mostly cathartic, even though in the case of vlogs, there's also a (bigger) quest for fame.

 

There are tons of vlogs about cinema as well, done by people who apparently believe movies have been invented in the 80s and claim they know what a good screenplay is for instance, even though most of them are confusing screenplay and plot anyway. And they release countless 30' videos about their reactions to 3' movie trailers. Why would I need to watch that since I can watch trailers myself? Why do people need to know the opinion of guys they don't really know to decide, not if they like a movie since they haven't watched it yet, but if they're excited about a movie? T_T

 

Now about haters and fanboyism, I've read a great analysis about it at the GAF forums more ten years ago. Buying a new gaming system (or a new car or whatever) is expensive, so people often have to make a choice. Those who can afford every system usually don't get involved in console wars. But when you have to choose one system, you necessarily need to confort your choice, and that's why you will constantly try to look for evidence proving your system is better, and the others are not. And it's difficult to do that without being sometimes a little dishonest. That's why we see some convoluted reasoning from each camp I think. That's why I would prefer we try to explain what's great about Amico rather than bashing the other systems for instance.

You bring up a lot of great points.

One of the frustrating things for me with some of these vlogger folks is that they don't come across as they are giving their opinions.  Having an opinion and hating Amico is totally fine.  It's not for everyone. 

It's when THEY declare that NO ONE will like this or buy it while not doing enough research.  I think that is what rubs folks the wrong way sometimes.  They don't need to do research... that is correct.  But without doing research and then declaring that no one is going to like or buy this (except for a handful of 50 year olds) is not doing a service to their listeners.  Just say... we don't personally like it and here's why.  Or... we're disappointed in this because we feel this or that should be better.  That's fine.  That is their opinion.  Saying others are going to hate it or not buy it and then giving out bad information or not fully understanding what they are upset or bitching about... is a bit lazy IMO.

And ya know what...

This is just MY opinion too!

27 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Happy Easter everyone!  A lot of you may already know this, but just in case you weren't aware...

 

Did you know at one point there was an Easter Bunny game prototype in development for the original Intellivision!

 

Wouldn’t that have been something™

4 hours ago, Saldo said:

Good to know.  I placed an order about 2 1/2 weeks ago and I haven’t received a shipping e-mail yet.  I’ll reach out to customer service on the Intellivision website, Tommy has people for these situations!

Because it's made to order... we don't have anything to do with the production, manufacturing, distribution/shipping parts of it.  The website we use is Printful.com I would definitely try contacting them directly.

Thanks!

4 hours ago, timbofry1 said:

Hey Tommy - I don’t believe I’ve seen Antarctic Adventure mentioned. I had that for the Colecovision back in the day. Fun game, simple, old school. Any chance of that being reimagined on the Amico?  It was developed by Konami in 1983...

I'm not familiar with that one.  I loved ICE TREK from Imagic on my Intellivision!  Definitely want to bring that one back at some point!  But I'll check out Antarctic Adventure.

6 minutes ago, Starpaddler said:

Wouldn’t that have been something™

Hahahhahaa!!   That was perfect!!

Had to post this... this is SO GREAT!!

Is this some of you with your original Intellivision? Or maybe this will be you with your new Intellivision?

6 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Had to post this... this is SO GREAT!!

Is this some of you with your original Intellivision? Or maybe this will be you with your new Intellivision?

 

 

Def will be game nights with amico with friends  for sure.

18 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

The website we use is Printful.com I would definitely try contacting them directly.

Tommy,

Thanks for the info.  I will give it a little more time and then reach out to them.  With all that is going on I expected delays.

I wish we already could play Amico. Wii Sports Resort on Wii and Mario Kart 8 on Wii U are getting boring Those are the only games my kids wants to play.

17 hours ago, Starpaddler said:

It has really come to bother me with the recent complaints on the cost of the system (not that it isn't important, it will be super important to the final numbers sold), but that it is being vocalized by people who spend 100's and 100's of dollars on SW (games) alone a year, not to mention the cost of their HW.  It's not the intended consumers who are complaining (most of them do not even know of the system yet), and I get elitists may not be interested, but then why do some of them spend so much time and energy on something in which they "have no interest"?  

 

Here is something that many people may not give much thought to - the cost to deliver a system includes two main types of costs; Recurring costs which includes things like the per unit internal component procurement, assembly, distribution and other costs that have a somewhat fixed cost per Amico produced.  While somewhat simplified, if that cost is $50/unit, the approximate recurring cost is $5,000 for 100, $2.5M for 50,000 units, and so on.  

 

The 2nd type of cost is NRE (at least that is what it is called in my industry, and is Non-Recurring Engineering).  This includes things like the payroll for the time it takes to design, test and iterate the system, payments made for market research, fabrication of the test articles, programming for milling, creation of tooling and other costs to complete the design and get set for fabrication.  On top of this there are also facility, utility, insurance, legal, marketing and other buisness related costs.

 

The difference between the two costs are that the recuring costs are tied to each unit fabricated, whereas the NRE gets "buttered" or spread across the entire run.  So if NRE is $10M, and you have a run of 1, then your total cost to produce one article is $10,000,050.  The more units produced, the lower the realized per unit NRE cost.  Don't want to speak for Tommy, and I am not in retail, but I assume they base the cost of the unit with a projected number of units that will be sold.  While oversimplified, once that number of units are sold and the NRE is fully recouped, the price could be dropped.  This is of course not done at say unit number 100M, but rather on a curve with ever changing projections.

 

My point to all this?  Consider how long IE has been designing the system and how much cost has gone into NRE.  All of that money invested needs to be recouped from a sales.  All that payback needs to be added to the recurring cost of fabrication.

 

Now throw in development cost for 6 games...  - At $249 for an Amico, 2 controllers and 6 games - sounds like a steal to me.

 

In short, if its too expensive for your interest level - don't buy it - just like every other purchasing decision you ever make; but please keep your bitch'in to yourself, because there are people that are genuinely excited for this, and $20 or $30 is not going to sway a large percentage of people's purchasing decision; at least not mine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry to quote my self and get off-topic, but the above is also the cause for past military “$400 toilet seats!” comments. If I design, tool and fabricate a toilet seat sold Home Depot that sells 1/2 million units, the NRE gets lost in the noise. Now spend big bucks for tooling to make a couple of dozen and the per unit cost suffers. Now multiply that one part times all the unique parts of any given system... you start to better understand the reported costs for military assets. 

SP’s Treasure Hunt™ #1.  Guess, then find the yearly cost to the US for rust.

On 4/10/2020 at 5:23 AM, CurlyQ said:

This would be cool as a Trick Shot shirt...

Happy Easter to everyone here on AtariAge, thank you for being so kind, funny, sarcastic and down right amazing.  I will leave this right here since it is Easter !

So not sure if this was asked. The GTO red and galaxy purple editions when and where will those be available for preorders? 

Love to see this one 

Never actually played Trick Shot...  Just liked the box art. 

2 minutes ago, 1980gamer said:

Never actually played Trick Shot...  Just liked the box art. 

 

It's okay, I never played it either.  By the way I like your profile picture.

The interview with Tommy is up. This is my friends podcast. I am a guest halfway in. I tried my best but i was scared to death. lol

8 minutes ago, Intellivision Master said:

 

Not to be a downer, but I'd welcome the boring turn based gameplay over blowing up rats with dynamite. What am I missing here? 

23 minutes ago, Intellivision Master said:

 

I bought the Miner 2048er game from him for Intellivision

9 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

I don't understand why some of you seem to be amazed that most Youtubers don't do any research...

 

Youtubers are not journalists.

 

Actually, they're called vloggers because they're doing the video equivalent of a blog, and the point of a blog is to write about one's opinion. I run a retrogaming web site where I try to do research about what I write and I run a blog to talk about anything I want to talk about. Almost no one reads my blog but I don't care. It's not even for my brother and my friends; when you spend too much time thinking about something, you just need to write (or make a video) about it. It's like a personal diary, or rather a session with a psychologist since you need to talk to someone else. It's mostly cathartic, even though in the case of vlogs, there's also a (bigger) quest for fame.

 

There are tons of vlogs about cinema as well, done by people who apparently believe movies have been invented in the 80s and claim they know what a good screenplay is for instance, even though most of them are confusing screenplay and plot anyway. And they release countless 30' videos about their reactions to 3' movie trailers. Why would I need to watch that since I can watch trailers myself? Why do people need to know the opinion of guys they don't really know to decide, not if they like a movie since they haven't watched it yet, but if they're excited about a movie? T_T

 

Now about haters and fanboyism, I've read a great analysis about it at the GAF forums more ten years ago. Buying a new gaming system (or a new car or whatever) is expensive, so people often have to make a choice. Those who can afford every system usually don't get involved in console wars. But when you have to choose one system, you necessarily need to confort your choice, and that's why you will constantly try to look for evidence proving your system is better, and the others are not. And it's difficult to do that without being sometimes a little dishonest. That's why we see some convoluted reasoning from each camp I think. That's why I would prefer we try to explain what's great about Amico rather than bashing the other systems for instance.

Well this is where I dont agree.  1st off the reasons people around me, family friends and coworkers trust me is because I dont make up stuff or spout off an opinion without having done my homework.  And they also know if I'm wrong I'll be the 1st to admit to it. Now in respect to these YouTubers or vloggers they can and very well do spout off nonsense and your correct they do it often without research. And thats their choice.  But keep in mind a session with a psychologist is private and diary is private.  A YouTube video is not private.  So you will always get guys like me that lives and breaths on facts and research that will be piping in. And if they dont like it then a notepad is where they should have started with.  Also I will add this. When these people use a platform like YouTube they are sending a negative message to people based on just an opinion based on zero facts that can ultimately effective a fledgling company and their future. The future of their families future. So for me I take that very seriously. 

25 minutes ago, Relicgamer said:

Well this is where I dont agree.  1st off the reasons people around me, family friends and coworkers trust me is because I dont make up stuff or spout off an opinion without having done my homework.  And they also know if I'm wrong I'll be the 1st to admit to it. Now in respect to these YouTubers or vloggers they can and very well do spout off nonsense and your correct they do it often without research. And thats their choice.  But keep in mind a session with a psychologist is private and diary is private.  A YouTube video is not private.  So you will always get guys like me that lives and breaths on facts and research that will be piping in. And if they dont like it then a notepad is where they should have started with.  Also I will add this. When these people use a platform like YouTube they are sending a negative message to people based on just an opinion based on zero facts that can ultimately effective a fledgling company and their future. The future of their families future. So for me I take that very seriously. 

It's kind of like inception if you've seen that movie.

So many impressionable or uneducated people may be looking up things about the Amico or just typing it in on Youtube or Google randomly and they will be bombarded with negative videos and negative impressions. The majority of them will be haters who are spouting literal nonsense - not nonsense like I disagree and am angry with their opinion - nonsense as in actually making things up and stating it as fact. Pat and Ian are heavily guilty of this and because they do have a small following have spawned a dozen imitators who go around that are part of their fanbase and use the anger that Pat and Ian channeled as their impetus for also hating on the Amico. 

A lot of people who may have no opinion or a totally netural opinion on something will look it up, see someone they like saying negative things, and then they have cemented their opinion based on that. Suddenly a few dozen 400-500 viewed negative videos has swayed 400-500 people's opinions that they are going to hate this thing that the Youtuber also hates. And that can totally begin to shift the perspective of a new device. I've said it before but in a market that was dominated by negative press due to Ouya and Coleco Chameleon, anyone with any influence should tread very lightly when talking about Amico. Pat and Ian who pretty expertly researched the Chameleon are using that same kind of hatred and vitriol against the Amico when the two devices - if you even call Chameleon a device - are not even in the same wheelhouse.

The vloggers end up making videos that come off like they need help more than anything. I hate to talk about Pat and Ian again but in the latest video talking about Wii Sports increasing in price during the lockdowns, Ian just looks unhinged and full of negative energy to the left. He's doing that thing where the person constantly shakes their leg up and down and it's vibrating his whole body while he sits there. Too much caffeine potentially or he's in pain. I don't know, but these negative unhinged people sit online spewing this stuff 24/7 as their careers and it spreads like an opinion virus.

It's not about censoring anyone's views or correcting "wrongthink," it's about battling against literal nonsense and uneducated hatred for no reason or just hating on something for personal petty reasons. You may have issues with Rich from Reviewtech or issues with Tommy Tallarico, okay! That's fine. But openly state your problems up front. Those people won't do that because that would be a disclaimer that their video is opinionated bias from the get go. And they're all trying to appear like professionals who aren't just needlessly hating on things.

Obviously, this doesn't end with the Amico. It's in every single products realm and all new releases are subject to this kind of crap. Even Animal Crossing: New Horizons was hit by people complaining and hating without even playing it. Ironically, now that some of those haters have played it - they've gone silent, no more of their previous criticisms are present. I wonder...

1 hour ago, Intellivision Master said:

 

This is the one they released as an intellivision  homebrew.id love to.plsy the new one on amico.  @Tommy Tallarico