Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

33 minutes ago, martianman2012 said:

Good points. I was just thinking about the massive losses Microsoft has made to squeeze their way into the market with Xbox. They are doing it again with gamepass ($5/mo for AAA exclusives and awesome indie games). I'm running with it for as long as I can for that price.

 

For the Amico - call me crazy... But I plan to putt my credit card on file in the eShop and buy every single game as it comes out. Complete collect. Why not? $10/game, 4 games/month, $40/month, 1 new game typically $20-$60/month.... Sounds good to me. Now call me bias, but how many other geeks would do this? This is such an easy investment for parents also. How does revenue look then? I think the Amico will be OK.

Im.with ya. Some games i wont buy. Prob.most edutainment  titles unless  they.made some geared towards teens to adults.   (Not talking about gane age  rating but more type of efucational.content level)

@RxScram how will expandable memory work with regards to game backups?  Would you be able to pull the card and play the on another system?  Ideally this will be the case, but if so assume you have strong piracy checks in place as I could see that being hacked and exploited. 

2 hours ago, wolfy62 said:

I felt I had to buy the Evercade handheld gaming machine today.

This was mainly due to the fact that I searched through my entire game collection and I couldn't find a version of Earthworm jim for any platform.

I thought I owed it for the Sega Genesis but I guess not.

I know I never really played it and now I will be able to.

Looks like a fun little system and due to the fact I am really excited by what I saw of Earthworm Jim for the Amico,I knew I had to purchase it .Very easy decision for me,as I looked at Ebay securing an original copy of the game is kinda pricey. Gotta play the original Jim for a while!🤩👍

 

Guess I should have looked on me Sega Genesis mini first......😄

Wait a sec, I just figured out that whole NFC storage thing: just stick one of these on the other side of every card!

Probably much too late to introduce this idea, but oh well.

Hi Folks!,

Still a LOT of pages and questions and comments to get through.  Unfortunately it may take me awhile as I'll be going on vacation starting tomorrow for 9 days.

Will try to stop by when the insomnia kicks in.  

In the meantime... here is the most epic video you'll see all week.

5 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Hi Folks!,

 

Still a LOT of pages and questions and comments to get through.  Unfortunately it may take me awhile as I'll be going on vacation starting tomorrow for 9 days.

 

Will try to stop by when the insomnia kicks in.  

 

In the meantime... here is the most epic video you'll see all week.

 

 

Hey Tommy,

Have fun on your vacation.  You deserve it.  🙂

On 8/13/2020 at 8:12 AM, Steven Pendleton said:

I mentioned Herzog Zwei before once and I still think it would be great to see a remake of it here. H2 does have multiplayer and is definitely family friendly. It also has awesome music and is a lot of fun to play.

Love this game. Can be a bit clunky at times, but was really something special in its day. The music was exceptional! A modern version of this utilizing the controller screen would be the bee's knees.

Just now, popsicle said:

Love this game. Can be a bit clunky at times, but was really something special in its day. The music was exceptional! A modern version of this utilizing the controller screen would be the bee's knees.

 

Herzog Zwei is still a really special game. A remake or a sequel (Herzog Drei, I'd imagine) on Amico or any system would be great for sure. It's still never been ported or officially emulated, either, although it's getting rereleased for the first time as part of Sega Ages on the Switch eventually. It's been 31 years since it was released, so it certainly took a while.

2 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Still a LOT of pages and questions and comments to get through.  Unfortunately it may take me awhile as I'll be going on vacation starting tomorrow for 9 days.

Wheels up, never look back. Nothing should pull you away from family or a vacay. Enjoy!

On 8/13/2020 at 6:37 AM, ImmortalKing said:

Thanks intellimission for your input! What's great about forums is that their are many minds to throw your ideas off. Sometimes your so focus on your idea that you may not see the flaws in it. That being said my game still will works because theirs no need for fog of war because you only have partial control of everything. I think what makes those type of games I mentioned complicated is that they give you too much control over everything and you don't know what to do first so you start panicking. Any way in my game yes you build buildings and yes you build troops but you don't have control of the troops they automatically take a path to your enemies. Only thing you can control is the path they take to which enemy. But you need to do certain things to change that path. I don't want to go into to much detail because I don't want my idea to be taken. But I may have confused you with that selecting troops point I made. I just think that would be a cool feature with the touch screen. Thanks and all input is welcome.

Check this one out : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majesty:_The_Fantasy_Kingdom_Sim

A fun one I used to play back in the day on the PC, sounds very similar to what You are describing.

My apologies if I am off target, or someone else has gotten to this already, I'm quite a few pages behind.

Regards,

B

12 hours ago, Starpaddler said:

Today, there are

1) greater number of families (Bigger potential market)
2) more expendable income (Covid aside)

3) $249 today is much cheaper than when the Wii sold 14 years ago 

4) $10 games

5) quality of the team (not disparaging current manufactures, but am saying I’d pick IE against any of them)
6) 2 controllers 

7) 6 pack-ins (officially - note what number this one happened to fall on though - Coincidence?)

8 ) Family friendly, safe space (more pertinent today then in the Wii days)

9) simple - turn on and play; no minutes to hours long updates, no dlc’s, no adds, no micro transactions, no loot boxes

10) share-ability

11) no time investment required to train (or relearn) a game

12) every new game supports single player - Wonder if original games will be updated to add AI...

13) every new game supports multiplayer

14) up to 8 players out of the box, no additional investment required (assuming tablets or phones already available)

15) Games that focus on FUN (imagine that, seems so simple)

16) and finally, while IE may not have the name recognition of Nintendo, we do have C-mart

Great summary, I would only ad the curating the game library as one very important USP on the Amico. Because even the games I’m not really “hyped” about for the Amico, will probably be fun games to play in a coop and/or vs mode. 

When I first saw the Amico controllers and compared then with the original Intellivision controllers and smartphones, my first thought was that Tommy was doing a "Homer Simpson custom car" product trying to include distinctive elements of both devices.

My views changed when I learned more about the console, of course. And today, especially after seeing Tommy's last interview, I think it's impossible for the Amico to fail. Tommy was really convincing there.

4 hours ago, theswede said:

Great summary, I would only ad the curating the game library as one very important USP on the Amico. Because even the games I’m not really “hyped” about for the Amico, will probably be fun games to play in a coop and/or vs mode. 

Thanks, that indeed is an important one. 

8 hours ago, Barley Farquahr said:

Check this one out : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majesty:_The_Fantasy_Kingdom_Sim

 

A fun one I used to play back in the day on the PC, sounds very similar to what You are describing.

 

My apologies if I am off target, or someone else has gotten to this already, I'm quite a few pages behind.

 

Regards,

B

No not really though I didn't give you much to go on. It's going to be a hero, building sim, tower defense, pin ball game all rolled into one. It sounds way more complicated than it is. Essentially theirs 2 planes a pinball plane and a gauntlet type plane instead of a ball it's your hero bouncing off the buildings you built that's how you make the creep to run the gauntlet to reach your opponents base. The more times you hit certain buildings without dying and before the creep spawning time is up the better the creep you have to make through your opponents gauntlet to kill their base. The idea is to push the lane. Your hero has spells to help manipulate the direction of him. He also has spells to hinder opponents hero so he can't make the better creep to make it through your gauntlet. You also have ability to change direction of your opponents creep to another opponents base if you are able to hit certain things in the playing field It's kind hard explain. But that's my idea.

On 8/14/2020 at 7:56 PM, GrudgeQ said:

Well actually it won't because you always have the 6 (or maybe 7) games that are built in. Also since the estore will be the last thing to close you are basically only talking about sales off craigslist or something after it has left stores for a long time.

 

Even that assumes the machine isn't hacked and people side load stuff (which has happened on every discontinued console so far, so the chances are pretty good).

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the pack-in games lol.  If I remember correctly now that you reminded me, three of the games I'm interested in are included, namely, Astrosmash, Shark Shark, and Skiing, right?  (The others I'm interested in are Cloudy Mountain Crown of Kings, Major League Baseball, and hopefully Tron Deadly Discs.)

23 hours ago, Oldfool said:

I was hoping I could hook mine up in the family room. Is it possible to get a version that also works in the family room?

 

Oh wait a minute, I see what he did here. It was an extremely clever way to make me not want to buy the system. I’ll probably cancel my orders. 

Yeah, I know the target audience is local family multiplayer, but I was just alluding to the fact that I'll probably be playing this when friends come over to my house and Ill have it in my room lol.

1 hour ago, MASTER260 said:

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the pack-in games lol.  If I remember correctly now that you reminded me, three of the games I'm interested in are included, namely, Astrosmash, Shark Shark, and Skiing, right?  (The others I'm interested in are Cloudy Mountain Crown of Kings, Major League Baseball, and hopefully Tron Deadly Discs.)

Oh, wait, I forgot to mention Night Stalker lol.

---never mind, I'm retracting my post--

1 hour ago, flickertail said:

[some stuff retracted, but good points on all-family gaming]

I'd mostly in agreement with your observation, so count that as two persons.   

My understanding is the kind of all-family experiences I think you're thinking of, are something really geared to showing non gamer audiences.  The board game announcements (the licenses they're holding onto at the moment, we've been told we've seen about half of their partnerships), the titles really aimed at young children, games along the lines of gameshow formats, party games.. some of these have slipped and have been hinted at, but not really shown.

And for two reasons.  One, they want to make an announcement out of them.  You don't slip or show, let's say, Hasbro board games, then issue a press release and try to create an event tying into Toy Fair when the product is no longer news.  You save it, announce it, showcase it and get some articles, influencers and attention on it in a single shot.  And two, (critically) these games aren't going to blow up the retro or tuned-in gaming audience.  Let's say Amico releases the coolest version of Pictionary ever created on a system, one where team members can use their touchscreens to scribble independent drawings to piece together a phrase on the screen for others to guess. Maybe the opposing team can try to scribble on that image (in another color) to divert the picture to something else.. all in real time.  Something your PS4 touchpad isn't really created to do.  Something your WiiU tablet wouldn't have allowed you to do like that as teams.  It's rather unique in the market space, and would be costly for the owners of Pictionary to create the hardware to sell families.  I highly doubt a good portion of gaming content viewers are motivated to even roll an eye at Pictionary.  Some of them, sure - but the large body write this sort of thing off.  And perhaps the art style will look a bit.. ooh, what's the word people like to use as a dagger in Amico's heart.. mobile.  Yeah, probably met with less enthusiasm from this crowd than it would be with a parent influencer crowd, at Toy Fair, at a convention on Aging and Inclusion.  There are audiences in mind for the pieces we want to see.  I think they're there in the amount you want to see (I want to see them too!) - with the new timeline we just have to wait for that stuff.   

Should they show more now?  That's a debate, but I get the strategy here.  And if I'm wrong, if the launch line-up looks to be something like 3-4 family oriented games and dozens of retro-reimagined, bookmark this entry and I'm happy to stand corrected.  I would add, for me, Farkle, Cornhole, Skiing, Liar's Dice, Intellivision Spades, Nitro Derby, SideSwipers, 4p Missile Command, Pong, Battle Tanks, Breakout, Shark! Shark!, Astrosmash, 4p Space Strike, Blank Slate, Telestrations, Incan Gold.. there looked to be a good number of games already announced and several teased that I'd wonder if they aren't filling out that "all-family experience".  These are inherently simple concepts that don't need much explanation, so it's going to be easy to hand the controller to a total novice and tell them what to do - buttons to shoot, disc to move around, get the meteors before they get you/shoot before you get shot/swing balls into the goal.  Some are frenetic, some more laid back and casual - some more abstract, others far less.  But they're not quests, not narrative immersions, not fantasy fulfillments that most casuals (all-family content consumers) might shy away from.  A couple I named like Battle Tanks might not fit into all-family.  Though when I think back to Combat and Armor Battle - these were easy enough to rope game-averse family into a quick couple rounds in my experience.  Night Stalker, Moon Patrol, Cloudy Mountain?  Not so much.  Some of these will appeal to casuals while others - might be more of a stretch to get the game adverse grandparents in a game of Space Strike.  Now we haven't seen the full range of the co-op experience for any of these (again, those reveals they want to spread over the next 6 months), and we haven't seen the marketing begin for family audiences.  Assuming with that ramping up in Q1 (I'd love sooner but may not get too much of this stuff then), the gameplay and announcements you'd want to see to bolster those early claims should make large announcements. 

19 minutes ago, RetroAdvisoryBoard said:

I'd mostly in agreement with your observation, so count that as two persons.   

Though I retracted my post, I appreciate the comment anyway.

I'm not trying to be hyper critical of Amico, and so I don't think I'm going to post in this thread any more.

I appreciate Tommy's story and unlike the Atari folks, I think Intellivision has a plan that will be successful with Amico.

I especially feel for his family loss and his reasons for the 10/10/2020 launch date that he talked about in their last promotional announcement. For that reason, I wish he could have mad the original launch date.

I lost a sibling years ago, and that's why I hang out here on the boards and dabble in classic game development... just trying to recapture something I lost. I can understand why he wanted to make the launch date and how hard it must have been to let it go.

Memories of an "Atari Fund" my brother and I started as kids to save up for an Atari, and fought over... until our mom got tired of us fighting about it and told us we were getting one for Christmas. Or when my brother got his first job and ran out to buy an INTV 2. We played that thing for hours. We didn't always get along, but we did when we were playing games.

I don't know... I want the Amico to be successful. I'm not here to offend anyone or insult anyone.

https://www.ign.com/articles/three-billion-people-worldwide-now-play-video-games-new-report-shows?fbclid=IwAR1vkd-pwYticRLLyCTprSICnyxzQthdrIzAtyieSzsj9m9_L5k6qq7NhDM

@Tommy Tallarico

22 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Hi Folks!,

 

Still a LOT of pages and questions and comments to get through.  Unfortunately it may take me awhile as I'll be going on vacation starting tomorrow for 9 days.

 

Will try to stop by when the insomnia kicks in.  

 

In the meantime... here is the most epic video you'll see all week.

 

 

That is a solid video. I tried interjecting some perspective, but I guess it may have not been welcome 😆 #shill2020 #itried

2 minutes ago, martianman2012 said:

That is a solid video. I tried interjecting some perspective, but I guess it may have not been welcome 😆 #shill2020 #itried

 

 

 

 

2007 humor

17 minutes ago, Battlefish said:

2007 humor

Haha yep I got burnt old school style. I'm sipping some cold water now to recover. I bet he wrote that reply, put his phone down, and started to raise the roof in joy.