Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

30 minutes ago, Starpaddler said:

Yep, my first example was off-roading in the Intellivision Auto Racing.  I like searching for the lanes that allowed you just drive straight forever. Wondering if that puts INTV’S Auto Racing as the worlds first “open world” video game? 🤔

Awesome! I also spent tons of time bashing around the Bush just to find stuff and remember odd bits of random track...like a drag strip.

While some controversial youtubers have serious view count problems, others achieve a much deserved increase: Sega Lord X videos are now getting 50K views.

I'm so happy for him. These are the kind of people that Youtube needs, hardworking and positive people that care about the things they talk about, in this case video games. I hope he keeps growing.

5 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

While some controversial youtubers have serious view count problems, others achieve a much deserved increase: Sega Lord X videos are now getting 50K views.

 

I'm so happy for him. These are the kind of people that Youtube needs, hardworking and positive people that care about the things they talk about, in this case video games. I hope he keeps growing.

I completely agree. His channel is Outstanding! 😁👍

 I came out of watching this just as clueless as I was when I went in.   I kinda skipped around a little, because most of it is about everything but the vcs.  The last few min he says  developers are making games as well as new versions of classic atari ip.    .

My opinion. Cool I wish them luck.... I guess

Still no release date.. but aiming for 2020 still.

Reassuring. It is not.

But here's my fav.   Previously we got  "it's called hardware,  be cause its hard"

Well fred dropped this one "it's a computer it's in the name, "  says this multiple times. 

But so much of it is tallimg streaming from your pc to your living room or using li ud or windows  in sandbox. While potentially stuff in an Atari environment. 

I just dunno How to feel , but I do know my Confidence isn't very strong in them at least right now.

But I'll be honest.  Amico i'm excited for and will pre order soon ( just waiting on city to open up so im.back to work)

But no interest in the Atari as no way am.i pre ordering that......but honestly if after a year whenever it releases... if its worth it....for it's own  games.. (I could care less about sandbox)  then sure id consider.     But it's a total stand back and wait approach.  

But amico has a level of excitement from me that I havnt had since the dreamcast or original xbox launch.

But while I'm totally laughing at the Atari right now I am.open minded enough to  play a wait and see approach.... but i have no real expectations.. just hope they suprise me.    But they need to do a better job and building interest in the project. 

Show us one or 2 games..

 Heck a still image would be cool . Or  even say we have  this title planned for launch.  Yet everything is so vague. 

I do hope the backers get so ething worthy of money they paid.

1 hour ago, IntelliMission said:

While some controversial youtubers have serious view count problems, others achieve a much deserved increase: Sega Lord X videos are now getting 50K views.

 

I'm so happy for him. These are the kind of people that Youtube needs, hardworking and positive people that care about the things they talk about, in this case video games. I hope he keeps growing.

I'm a fan of his channel

3 hours ago, Starpaddler said:

Yep, my first example was off-roading in the Intellivision Auto Racing.  I like searching for the lanes that allowed you just drive straight forever. Wondering if that puts INTV’S Auto Racing as the worlds first “open world” video game? 🤔

Cool! I remember reading somewhere that there was a path that allowed you to drive straight through all of the tracks. I'll have to give that a shot, hopefully it goes better than my first attempt at Auto Racing. I'd never played the original, but the steering on the port for the PS2 compilation seems a little rigid. Then again, my controllers are pretty old, and I am the worst at racing games.

what is the intellivision "rebel" symbol supposed to be a depiction of? i can't tell if it's some guy holding a handlebar or some tripped out flamingo or what?

Hey Tommy, here's an idea for you.

I believe you said that you've never even tried drinking alcoholic drinks and, of course, gotten drunk. I think many people will agree with me that it's something you must try at least once before you die. So here's the deal: When/if the Amico sells its first million, drink 2 or 10 beers to celebrate it. Premium quality beers, of course. And not too close to a meal so you don't mess with digestion (those are tricks many of us have learned over the years). 🤓

31 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

Hey Tommy, here's an idea for you.

 

I believe you said that you've never even tried drinking alcoholic drinks and, of course, gotten drunk. I think many people will agree with me that it's something you must try at least once before you die. So here's the deal: When/if the Amico sells its first million, drink 2 or 10 beers to celebrate it. Premium quality beers, of course. And not too close to a meal so you don't mess with digestion (those are tricks many of us have learned over the years). 🤓

No need for it.

I think it's great that he never need to try it. 😌

He can have other ways to celebrate ! 😃

4 hours ago, CurlyQ said:

Love these. It's like playing Where's Waldo trying to find all the details.

1 hour ago, sanguinesonata said:

 

what is the intellivision "rebel" symbol supposed to be a depiction of? i can't tell if it's some guy holding a handlebar or some tripped out flamingo or what?

In the Intellivision game Utopia, you could purchase 'rebels'.  Instead of improving your island, they landed on your competitor's island and could potentially mess things up.  I always saw it as a person holding a gun, or bow and arrow, and causing unrest.

As a side note, we had a house rule for Utopia:  No rebels allowed.

1 hour ago, GrumpyOl'Guy said:

Cool! I remember reading somewhere that there was a path that allowed you to drive straight through all of the tracks. I'll have to give that a shot, hopefully it goes better than my first attempt at Auto Racing. I'd never played the original, but the steering on the port for the PS2 compilation seems a little rigid. Then again, my controllers are pretty old, and I am the worst at racing games.

Thumbsticks are terrible for Auto Racing.  Use the dpad if you can.  Down-right and down-left for hard turns.

1 hour ago, sanguinesonata said:

 

what is the intellivision "rebel" symbol supposed to be a depiction of? i can't tell if it's some guy holding a handlebar or some tripped out flamingo or what?

Probably holding a rifle like the box cover.

14 hours ago, bigdaddygamestudio said:

Screw haters, how about some fun..... this pict needs a caption... suggestions...  I'll start

 

 

 

 

 

Ohhhh, yeahhh.... time for some couch co-op gamin'.  Now where my couch at?

On 21/4/2020 at 23:19, Tommy Tallarico said:

Ho sempre voluto chiederti come hai ottenuto la tua maniglia qui!

Che ne dici degli altri qui ?? Raccontaci il significato del tuo nome che usi in AA.

 

Ecco il mio ...

 

I miei genitori.

 

 

 

Crusader comes from the group of fans of the soccer team of my city.  The team jersey is white with a black cross.  The team took the cross from the city municipality flag which is yellow with a blue cross.  The municipality took the cross as a symbol because when the city was founded by the Romans in 183 before Christ, it had 2 crossed roads and the settlement was in the shape of a shield.  Hence the name Parma which in Latin means shield.  In practice, Crusader because of the first settlement of my city, while 71 is my year of birth.

5 hours ago, CurlyQ said:

CurlyQ,that is priceless!  Thank you!!!😄

9 hours ago, MantaNZ said:

Hey Tommy, sorry if this has been asked, but the thread is now massive so - has the virus altered the release date? I ordered the founders' edition for the man cave but pretty certain I'll pick up a black one for the lounge too

 

I haven't been this excited about a console launch since the original Xbox. It's always fun to have a "new player"! Not that you guys are new but you know what I mean

Hi!,

It hasn't been asked in a few weeks, and here is the exact up-to-the-minute update.

At this time we are still on target for 10/10 but with a lot less machines in the market that we were hoping initially (and have the purchase orders to fulfill).  We have already started the tooling process a few weeks ago.  This process is taking longer than original expected because of corona delays.  Once tooling is complete (hoping by mid May) we will be manufacturing 100 machines.  Some of those machines will be given to developers (especially the ones who are working on the pack-in games), but most will be used for extensive testing.  Both in-house and more importantly big out of house companies that do this kind of thing all the time for complex electronics.  This process can take about 2 months.  Examples of what happens... extreme heat, extreme cold, pushing the buttons and disc and screen 10 million times, dropping the controllers or the base unit from different heights, keeping the machine on for extended periods of time, battery life (charging and recharging), etc., etc., etc., and that's just the hardware side.  On the FIRMWARE side it's even more complex (yet easier to fix).  Every possible scenario has to be tested and tested and tested.  This is no small task.  Now... if we need to change something in the hardware (lets say we want a button to be 1/20th of a millimeter longer or something), then we only need to remake THAT specific tool.  The total cost of tooling for our machine is in the $250,000 range.  A simple button tool could cost $3,000 - $5,000... so we wouldn't need to redo all the tooling... just the parts we want to change.  But if things are slightly changed... we would need to quickly do that tool, make the part, switch out the part and then test the crap out of that specific part.

We can create 35,000 units per month with one set of tooling.  It takes 1 month to ship from the factory in China to the shores of the U.S. 

So going backwards, just to get 35,000 machines by 10/10 it looks like this...

October 1 - product hits U.S. shores

September - product ships from China

August 1 - manufacture 35,000 units

June 1 - start 2 month testing.

May 15 - start manufacturing 100 units and then FedEx them to the U.S. for testing.

So you'll see that right now we are already dangerously close to our deadline.  Any one of those things could go longer and put 10/10 in jeopardy.  BUT.. any of those things can also go FASTER and give us back some time as well.

But the biggest issue is that the U.S. as we all know is still pretty much closed down.  If the shutdown continues into mid May, there will be nothing we could do to stop a slip.

I think you all know the significance and importance of the October 10th release date (in honor of my sister Karen)... so you know me and team are doing absolutely EVERYTHING in our power to hit it.  But so many things are out of our hands at this point that I feel a little helpless.  But all we can do is keep working 1000%.

Hopefully folks respect (as always) are complete transparency about everything from the beginning. 

It's funny to see people calling me a "liar" because of things like the retail price and crowdfunding.  This is what happens when immature hateful bullies try their best to destroy and tear something or someone down.

If you meet any of these ding dongs on the internet feel free to remind them of the following.

They say I lied about the price.  Um no... never.  In our very first reveal trailer 2 years ago we gave a "price-range" of $150 - $180.  And in every interview I've ever done I've always said... we are trying to get the product within a certain "range".  We ALWAYS used words like "around $200" or whatever.  Along the way we've massively upgraded the controllers and now with a worldwide pandemic and component and memory prices rising because of scarcity... yeah... we may need to go to $249 at first and then bring it down to the $199 range when feasible.  Almost every electronic product does this.  Comes out at one price... and then a year or so later the retail pricing starts to drop.

But the main point is that I've NEVER said in ANY interview or video or press release what the price was going to be.  I always just gave a range that I was HOPING to achieve.  That isn't LYING.  It's actually the exact opposite.  It's being 100% open and honest and trying to give folks as much information as we had at that time.  People should appreciate and recognize our honest and up front nature instead of calling us "liars".  But they will never do that... because it doesn't fit their narrative.

And we've been over a few times already here, but just to once again reiterate...

We are NOT using FIG as a crowdfunding site.  Not a single "campaign" on their website is a pre-order, has a $1 goal and is only a portion of the cost of the product ($100) which is 100% refundable. 

But the biggest nonsense is that if people INVEST in something they are calling that crowdfunding.  So I guess EVERY company that has ever been listed on the Stock Market over the past 100 years are nothing more than crowdfunding?  The logic is completely flawed.  They are grasping at straws.  The product is already made, built and we've gone into the tooling stage 3 weeks ago.  We already have a $150 million line-of-credit for manufacturing.  The product is already being built and in production (not mass production yet... as we still need to test all the machines for a month or two when we get the first run).  Roblox is a $4 billion company yet they raised $150 million a few months ago for investment:   https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/26/roblox-raises-150m-series-g-led-by-andreessen-horowitz-now-valued-at-4b/
 

Point being that even massively successful companies are constantly raising money for different things.  Their crowdfunding argument is completely flawed.  Especially considering we're not even using the website like others do.

But as we all know... it will always be something with these hateful elitist narcissistic fascist bullies. 

Having doubts, concerns, etc. is one thing.  I get it... Amico isn't for everyone. 

But what they do has nothing to do with that. 

7 hours ago, Relicgamer said:

I feel the original xbox is still a very capable console.  And it only had a 733mhz 64mb of ram 233mhz gpu vs the 1.8ghz 8 core 2 gb of ram the Amico.  So to me its going to be plenty powerful to do alot of amazing stuff.

If I remember correctly... I also think you needed a special $30 extra cable to run it component to get it up to 720p.

6 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

While some controversial youtubers have serious view count problems, others achieve a much deserved increase: Sega Lord X videos are now getting 50K views.

 

I'm so happy for him. These are the kind of people that Youtube needs, hardworking and positive people that care about the things they talk about, in this case video games. I hope he keeps growing.

Cool.  I'll need to check him out.  Is he someone who would potentially cover Amico as well?

I see his channel looks to be mostly Sega related... but a few SNES things on there as well.

Thoughts?

He mostly likes Sega, but he has covered Nintendo and Turbografx too. He has covered retro stuff on the Switch too, arcade machines... When the Amico is out, there is a high chance he will review the thing when it has some reimagined 8 bit/16 bit classics. He has never done an interview, but I used him as an example of how sometimes hard work pays off, even in Youtube. He doesn't need to do click baits to get 50K views.

Perhaps this is old news, but I just noticed the homage to the original Moon Patrol title screen complete with woodgrain TV and bunny ears on the title screen of the re-imagined Moon Patrol for Amico.  Love it!  It would be cool to have easter-eggs in each re-imagined game where some element of the original appeared.  A title screen for Moon Patrol.  Maybe the old-style Alien ship comes in every once in a blue moon on Astrosmash.  Maybe the original dragon breathing sound on Cloudy Mountain...

37 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

If I remember correctly... I also think you needed a special $30 extra cable to run it component to get it up to 720p.

 

 

 

You are correct.  And there was only a couple of titles that would output 1080i stillframe type of games

4 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

Hey Tommy, here's an idea for you.

 

I believe you said that you've never even tried drinking alcoholic drinks and, of course, gotten drunk. I think many people will agree with me that it's something you must try at least once before you die. So here's the deal: When/if the Amico sells its first million, drink 2 or 10 beers to celebrate it. Premium quality beers, of course. And not too close to a meal so you don't mess with digestion (those are tricks many of us have learned over the years). 🤓

Nah.  I want to keep my perfect record in tact.