Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

If you check the launch titles for some of the greatest consoles, the Amico is doing a really good job in its own style.

Some of the launch titles released for the PS1, my favorite console, looked pretty mediocre in only 2 years.

Yes, I know, Tommy says that all games will be curated and only 7/10s will make it to the eShop, but tastes vary from person to person and a 7 for Tommy and his team may be a 4 for others (especially the ones complaining about the graphics).

8 minutes ago, jerseystyle said:

I just wish they’d do more. I was picturing they’d be really hitting the pixel art hard,  Stardew Valley, or Owlboy.

So it’s not the level of graphic that you have a problem with then (since you like pixel art style), it’s more a question of taste, fair enough.

11 minutes ago, theswede said:

So it’s not the level of graphic that you have a problem with then (since you like pixel art style), it’s more a question of taste, fair enough.

Oh yeah it’s definitely a style issue. I don’t think the graphics on many titles showcased are bad, per se, they just don’t work for me.

18 minutes ago, Juicero said:

that Amico games gameplay is so simplistic, to the point that they seem like they'd be featured on tablets geared towards children 4-7.

Wait, are you copy & pasting from the Amico website 😉

2 minutes ago, theswede said:

Wait, are you copy & pasting from the Amico website 😉

Um, no, but I thought this console was supposed to be for everyone? Are you telling me this is meant for 4-7 year olds? Because I don't get that from Tommy or their marketing team at all haha, but nice try though! Maybe you'll get a gotcha in there soon enough 🥶

7 minutes ago, Juicero said:

Um, no, but I thought this console was supposed to be for everyone? Are you telling me this is meant for 4-7 year olds? Because I don't get that from Tommy or their marketing team at all haha, but nice try though! Maybe you'll get a gotcha in there soon enough 🥶

Oh, sorry, I thought you were joking around, so I played along with it. 
 

Yes, one of the target audiences for Amico is young families with kids between 4-7, but also people (of all ages) that mostly play casual games on mobile, that’s why so much effort is put into making the games simple to understand and play. 

30 minutes ago, Juicero said:

Um, no, but I thought this console was supposed to be for everyone? Are you telling me this is meant for 4-7 year olds? Because I don't get that from Tommy or their marketing team at all haha, but nice try though! Maybe you'll get a gotcha in there soon enough 🥶

Just curious if Juicero stands for Juice’s ro?  I hope it does, as I think you two would hit it off well, you seem to mesh with your thoughts. If not, I think he stated he was married, so in that case stay away from each other. 
 

I can’t speak for the company’s strategy, but I do think the Amico is for 4-7 year olds, especially when playing with their family. Well thought out, simple games are best when trying to attract many family members to play. That may mean many titles appear to be simplistic on their face, thereby not intimidating casual gamers to try and join in. 
 

I can’t guaranty the Amico will be successful, but I can guaranty I will be buying it (and one for my parents) with many, many games. The observation that the games may appear simple has further led me to be excited for this system and the enjoyment I will be having with family and friends. 

6 minutes ago, Oldfool said:

Just curious if Juicero stands for Juice’s ro?  I hope it does, as I think you two would hit it off well, you seem to mesh with your thoughts. If not, I think he stated he was married, so in that case stay away from each other. 
 

They could be the same person.  Juicero is a brand new account, just created a few hours ago.  You never know! 🤷‍♂️

4 minutes ago, IntyFanMatt said:

They could be the same person.  Juicero is a brand new account, just created a few hours ago.  You never know! 🤷‍♂️

To the best of my knowledge, no.

No guys. This is Juicero. 😁

https://fortune.com/2017/09/01/juicero-is-shutting-down/https://fortune.com/2017/09/01/juicero-is-shutting-down/

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/juicero-bare-hands/

1 hour ago, jerseystyle said:

Oh yeah it’s definitely a style issue. I don’t think the graphics on many titles showcased are bad, per se, they just don’t work for me.

It is a matter of style. When I see 16-bit pixel art, all I think is “blurry”. I appreciate the cleaner Wii/XBLA look more. 

6 hours ago, GrudgeQ said:

These game announcements got totally glossed over in the event so I wanted to do a little investigation on them. Telestrations & Blank Slate are super casual party games, Incan Gold is more of a causal adventure card game.

 

Telestrations (usaopoly): Like the game telephone but you switch between words & hand drawn pictures as you swap between players. The fun of the game is basically reviewing the disastrous mis-interpretations of other's drawings. Telestrations is especially a good game to adapt to the Amico because the fun of the game is looking at the pictures people made. Having, say, 6 people look at a little drawing from across the table is not going to be nearly as fun as having your picture blow up on the family TV to be seen in all it's stick figure detail along with the associated word or phase it is supposed to be.

 

This game's pricing on Amazon is all over the place even pre-Covid but it goes for between $15 and $30, usually around $20ish

 

Blank Slate (usaopoly): Similar to the TV show Match Game except you are trying to match the other players by filling in the blank to prompts such as "House _______". Like Telestrations this game really needs a local screen for each player so is a great fit for the Amico.

Pre-Covid this game went for about $22 on Amazon so will be a good value on the Amico

 

Incan Gold/Diamant (Gryphon Games): Kind of a simple random adventure card game.

Pre Covid this game went for about $20 on Amazon, so again a good value for the game

 

On 5/6/2020 at 9:21 PM, popsicle said:

Hey That's My Fish! We have that one. Like to play it once in a while with the kids, but it's kind of a pain to set up (cough, cough, Amico, cough). It'd be neat to see this as part of a 'modern board game compendium' with other really light and quick board games -

 

Las Vegas - 2-5 player dice roller. Roll all of your dice, and place matching dice in a 'casino' until your dice are gone. Amount of dice at end wins the point value (cards that are dealt at the start of each). Players that tie are cancelled, and can't win. This often leads to strange upsets, and adds strategy to where to place your dice. The thought of 'dice chuckers' with the Amico controller is exciting!

 

Raj - 2-5 players card game. My wife found this game in a garage sale for $1.00. Turns out to be one of the go to games I introduce to non-gamers. Everyone gets 15 cards numbered 1-15. There are 15 tiles 1 through 10 and -1, -2, -3, -4, and -5. These are face down at the start. Each round flip one over and each player chooses a card to play, revealed at the same time. The high cards takes the tile, and ties are cancelled. Simple, but incredibly fun! Looks like it has been published under many different names. So easy to implement this on the Amico controller. Simply have a grid of 15 numbers and you select one that is removed after you pick it. The tiles could be beautifully displayed on the main screen, with themes for different tile sets to unlock.

 

Incan Gold (aka Diamant) - plays up to 8. Each turn, players play one of two cards - keep exploring or go back to camp - again revealed simultaneously. This is a push your luck game. As cards are turned over in the 'temple' treasures or hazards show up. Players split treasures equally, with remainders staying on the path. If one person heads back, they keep all of the treasure they earned plus all that was left on the path. If two of the same type of hazard shows up all players still exploring get nothing! Another game that is fun to play but kind of annoying to operate, with the constant dividing and passing out of little treasure pieces during play. 

 

Let us know all about your first multiplayer Crokinole happening!

 

 

 

In my mind, I am solely responsible for the addition of Incan Gold to the Amico lineup

Apologies if this one was already posted. For those who like to multitask, it's basically audio only:

12 hours ago, Juicero said:

I agree with many of your points here, the biggest being the way that the games look. As you said, many of them look like games my younger brothers would download and play on my phone when we were younger. Also, funny comparison grudge, but I don't think comparing Amico games in 2020 to games from the 80's is a good thing haha, that's more like pointing out that the Amico games are of low quality in 2020 😅

You have your opinion and I have mine; and my opinion is that your opinion is wrong. 
 

I’d normally assume that if you've made up your mind on Amico, you’ll be moving on, but some how I doubt that. 

Sad to hear the Amico is pushed to April, but, hey, at least that's before the next Intellivisionaries episode 😉

12 hours ago, Relicgamer said:

Yeah whos going to pay money to play pong Geez........... Oh whats this? Nice coffee table you have there. What does it do? 

Plays pong you say.....$3000 interesting tell me more...........😂🤣😂🤣😂

They have one of those at the arcade at Super Potato. It looks really cool and I'd love to try it. Too bad I was the only person there the other day besides the one dude working there.

20 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

22 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

As I said on the "What game would you make if you were a game designer?" topic, the only reason for me to buy a PS5 or PS6 or PS7 would be if there was some sort of ultra-realistic simulation of things like exploring a natural environment (without missions) or the actual moment of a natural disaster/terrorist attack (i. e. a buliding collapsing and you're inside) that you can customize to try to escape.

 

Instead, escape-the-disaster games are usually pretty mediocre versions of Resident Evil replacing the zombies with earthquakes.

No spoilers, but Arma 2 Eagle Wing. Yeah. Didn't see that coming...

Thanks for the recommendation. However, I just checked and it only seems to contain a few seconds of a natural disaster that don't really affect gameplay. Perhaps I didn't find the good part?

14 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

 

Thanks for the recommendation. However, I just checked and it only seems to contain a few seconds of a natural disaster that don't really affect gameplay. Perhaps I didn't find the good part?

It's advertised as a helicopter mission to avoid spoilers, but it switches from helicopter to on-foot. You're a helicopter pilot and your first mission is actually a helicopter mission and you get to do helicopter things. Your helicopter gets damaged by a nuclear explosion and crashes and the game switches to survival. You have to survive on foot with literally just about nothing while the enemy infantry can kill you from like 500 meters away.

1 hour ago, Steven Pendleton said:

They have one of those at the arcade at Super Potato. It looks really cool and I'd love to try it. Too bad I was the only person there the other day besides the one dude working there.

Imagine how impressive it would have looked if you could run fast enough to play both players.

2 minutes ago, RREDDWARFF said:

Imagine how impressive it would have looked if you could run fast enough to play both players.

Actually, it's not very long from what I remember. I might be able to operate both sides at the same time if I stand on one side of it, but I'd have to go back to check.

18 hours ago, Lord Thag said:

I'll chime in as well. I found the latest presentation really disappointing. As others have said, many of the games look like something from an old flash website like Newgrounds or Android shovelware. I was at the initial launch event at PRGE and there was much talk about this amazing, custom designed 2d chip with millions of sprites. I'm not really seeing that here. A couple of the games look decent (mostly the one that use the neon 'Jeff Minter' style graphics), but outside of that, I'm not seeing anything that gets me even remotely excited outside  Cloudy Mountain, Nightstalker and maybe Breakout.

I'm rather shocked at how bad the graphics look on many titles, and most of the games suffering from bad graphics don't seem to be demonstrating anything new or particularly revolutionary in terms of multiplayer. Astrosmash is positively embarrassingly bad.

This system has so much promise. I love the passion Tommy and the team have for this, and I genuinely think a system catering to local co op that anyone can pick up and play is an untapped market. This last presentation has me worried though. Getting unpleasant whiffs of the Ouya.

I mentioned a year ago that the Moon Patrol port was concerning, and I'm sad to see a huge number of games suffering from the same issues (bad graphics, boring gameplay). Nightstalker and Cloudy Mountain both look great, they seem to be modern updates of the originals that add new/interesting spins on the source while staying true to the source material. Breakout as well. BUt most everything else looks like something I'd get for free on the Android app store with lots of ads.

Hopefully it's just early days, and my concerns will prove unfounded. I really want this to succeed.

I honestly wasn't expecting a post like this after almost everyone here seemed to praise the presentation and the game footage. Like someone else said (sorry, I can't find the post anymore), after Tommy announced the new release date it was such a downer for me that I soon fast forwarded to the part where the games were shown. I expected a delay, but was bummed when it got pushed back that far. Was still hopping for Christmas, though. 

I wonder how so many people here would state the games look great when a lot of them don't? Moon Patrol was mentioned in several posts as a negative example and Nitro Derby is another. Something isn't right with the colors, the palette or whatever, the background (the track) looks dull and the cars look like someone did a copy and pasted them into an unfitting image. I truly hope those tracks were just placeholders for revised versions to come. I am well aware that this is all a work in progress, but those games still need a lot of adjustment and fine tuning... they really do! 

Am I the only one reading this topic who has never played pong? I played a number of breakout clones as a kid, but not a single pong clone. The most similar game I've played is the Crash Ball minigame in Crash Bash. By the way, Crash bash is a great semi-underrated 4 player game that everyone should try.

3 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

Am I the only one reading this topic who has never played pong?

No.

25 minutes ago, N0mi said:

I wonder how so many people here would state the games look great when a lot of them don't?

Well, many of the games (the ones that are more close to be finished) looks great in my opinion (skiing or cornhole). But as you know, everyone is pushing them to show more gameplay/footage, so they have been showing a lot of games that they hardly started working on, or just have some early test/placeholders (for example fox game), just for us to get an idea of what games will be coming in the future, so what would you prefer, that they keep all those games under wraps until 99% finished, or give some work in progress shots and info a long the way, you can’t have it both ways?