Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

3 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT I LIKE THEN YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG AND ARE GOING TO FAIL!"

I wonder if these people ever open a restaurant. There would be what?  one or two things on the whole menu since according to them in their all knowing power they know whats good, and everything else therefore sucks and only an idiot would order a different meal then offered.   Its gots to be tiring being that hateful and judgemental 24/7.

oh and thanks Tommy, when I saw your picture of you and your wife hiking to a 6 mile away waterfall, it made me get off my ass and go walk a nearby park which I like to do a 3 to 4 times a week, but lately Ive been finding to many excuses to not do it.  But seeing you can walk to a freakin waterfall in the forest, I could surely go walk one of my nice neighborhood parks.  so yeah, this forum is now officially good for your health..

6 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

It's the first time me, Dave, J & Hans did an interview all together.  Some really cool stuff.  It's almost 2 hours, but please let me know what your favorite parts were.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/fireside-cast-j-39172215?fbclid=IwAR1_AYmrZxX1ywSQRtvLxF7qi-AuCZ1wHLNqzBn3QC1YBuK_JZ-AcXKyBeM

 

Here is my stab at some highlights of the interview:

05:40 David Perry's experience with the party game You Don't Know Jack

09:15 J Allard Experiencing Amico Skiing with this family

11:27 Han Ippisch Intellivison's relationship with developers

13:50 Han Ippisch the difference for developers in working with Intellivision

30:54 Tommy & J Allard (34:50) : Go to market strategy & importance of an amazing experience, the lesson of Halo

38:08 Group: The importance of including women & girls into the marketing & product

45:00 David Perry: Experience with FIFA Soccer & simplicity in gaming.

47:40 Tommy & J Allard: How Easy is Hard (the challenge of making things simple to use)

50:05 Hans Ippisch: New market research on console usage during Covid still features the Wii

59:20 Tommy Tallarico: The lack of multiplayer edutainment games in the market

1:17:01 David Perry's experience with non gaming film executives & developing game properties

1:20:28 Tommy, David, Lars: Kid oriented licensed IP, parent attraction to 'safe' brands

1:28:14 Hans Ippisch experience with non gamer wife playing Cornhole

1:35:26 J Allard On why he left the gaming industry - shares a disturbing story about a major development house's attitude toward making games

1:37:10 J Allard His history of gaming & why and how he joined Intellivision. [Favorite quote on how J got onboarded: "Hey man, the team meeting is on Tuesday, I will send you an invite. And that was it, there wasn't an interview, there wasn't a job offer"]

1:41:00 J Allard The importance of passion, the challenge of simple, creating a standout product. [They should play this for every team in business that makes anything].

1:42:58 Hans Ippisch Why he resigned as CEO of Computec Media to join Intellivision

6 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Phew!  About 20 pages behind after my break.  Not too bad.  Lots to catch up on I'm sure.  Will start a few today.

In the meantime... Gamescom started last week and Intellivision has a bunch of really cool things going on.

 

We are official partners of Gamescom:
https://www.gamescom.global/gamescom-now/partners/

 

European president Hans Ippisch did a speech on the Main Stage at Gamescom last week:
https://tinyurl.com/y44vcvyt

 

The description of his talk was old and had to be different because of the launch delay, but according to Hans it was very well received and the public video will be posted soon!

 

In the meantime, last month... as part of the big online Gamescom developer program this year (Devcom), me, Hans, David Perry & J Allard did a fireside chat podcast which was the very first one to appear and kick off the program.

 

It's the first time me, Dave, J & Hans did an interview all together.  Some really cool stuff.  It's almost 2 hours, but please let me know what your favorite parts were.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/fireside-cast-j-39172215?fbclid=IwAR1_AYmrZxX1ywSQRtvLxF7qi-AuCZ1wHLNqzBn3QC1YBuK_JZ-AcXKyBeM

 

I want to make sure I phrase this question clearly.

I listened to bits and pieces including the part where you say if a game isn’t a 7 or higher, it either gets more worked or dumped. (And you’ve said that before in other interviews.)

I do understand that everything is relative and that a 7 for one gamer may be a 10 for another. And I know you want every game to be as “10” as possible.

But if you have a game that you think is a 7 (meaning it likely gets released) why not keep going until it’s a 9 or 10?

I think this goes to the development process that I wouldn’t know not being a developer. Do some games get to a point where it’s only going to be a 7 and to make it a 9 or 10 would mean starting over and making different decisions? Is it a timing issue where going from a 7 to 9 would take a few more months you don’t feel you want to commit to? 

Or when you say 7 (or some other number) is it referring to it’s appeal? Obviously certain games will primarily appeal to a specific type of gamer. 

I always feel I’m missing a bit of your thinking when you talk about this topic and was hoping you’d clarify.

@Tommy Tallarico hehe if you get a call or email....its not me.... they  responded.  They  go to kickstarter 9/1 make them follow the light to amico......only. .  

Btw

A physical copy with a collectable  keychain and poster  and comic book .inside a vhs style box would be neat....  

2 hours ago, GrudgeQ said:

 

Here is my stab at some highlights of the interview:

 

05:40 David Perry's experience with the party game You Don't Know Jack

09:15 J Allard Experiencing Amico Skiing with this family

11:27 Han Ippisch Intellivison's relationship with developers

13:50 Han Ippisch the difference for developers in working with Intellivision

30:54 Tommy & J Allard (34:50) : Go to market strategy & importance of an amazing experience, the lesson of Halo

38:08 Group: The importance of including women & girls into the marketing & product

45:00 David Perry: Experience with FIFA Soccer & simplicity in gaming.

47:40 Tommy & J Allard: How Easy is Hard (the challenge of making things simple to use)

50:05 Hans Ippisch: New market research on console usage during Covid still features the Wii

59:20 Tommy Tallarico: The lack of multiplayer edutainment games in the market

1:17:01 David Perry's experience with non gaming film executives & developing game properties

1:20:28 Tommy, David, Lars: Kid oriented licensed IP, parent attraction to 'safe' brands

1:28:14 Hans Ippisch experience with non gamer wife playing Cornhole

1:35:26 J Allard On why he left the gaming industry - shares a disturbing story about a major development house's attitude toward making games

1:37:10 J Allard His history of gaming & why and how he joined Intellivision. [Favorite quote on how J got onboarded: "Hey man, the team meeting is on Tuesday, I will send you an invite. And that was it, there wasn't an interview, there wasn't a job offer"]

1:41:00 J Allard The importance of passion, the challenge of simple, creating a standout product. [They should play this for every team in business that makes anything].

1:42:58 Hans Ippisch Why he resigned as CEO of Computec Media to join Intellivision

 

I think there were too many highlights in this interview to mention. It was easily one of my favorites. Though, I hesitate to call it an interview as it seems as though Tommy was leading the conversation. It was a great panel though on how this idea of an easy to use gaming console brought all these people together. And since I've heard so many of Tommy's stories in all his interviews, it was really cool hearing J and David Perry's view on things. 

If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend you do.

8 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

That interview was a blast. You 4 together with all of that enthusiasm for this console and what its about was alot of fun listening to and gets me even more excited for the Amicos debut. 

FYI Gogamego interview coming up:

Join us this Wednesday at 7pm CST as we interview Tommy Tallarico, CEO and President of Intellivision Entertainment. We will be talking all things Amico!

23 hours ago, nightmonkeyii said:

The day the amico hits the shelves is the day that their final self discredit takes its final form, and their own followers will desert them, leaving them with a empty husk, and a room full of shit they cant use anymore

Don't worry, they always find a way 

Tommy,

I listened to the Devcom interview.  It was very good.  Also, it was nice getting to hear from J. Allard.  

This looks neat.  Its coming to Intellivision.  I think it's a homebrew.  Would be cool to get this on Amico.

6 hours ago, Intellivision Master said:

This looks neat.  Its coming to Intellivision.  I think it's a homebrew.  Would be cool to get this on Amico.

 

its a remake of rick dangerous. I posted a video of it in one of my earlier posts. One of my favourite games of all time! Excellent port i must say
here it is again:

 

 

Amiga’s kicked ass for their day. Before doom, and the snes, the amiga was king!

spanish for ‘female friend‘, it shit on pc’s and consoles alike. They used motorola’s 68k processors, like the early macs, and the higher spec amigas performed better than macs

https://youtu.be/Jph0gxzL3UI

I dont think the commodore amiga really caught on in the states. Shame, you guys missed out!

10 hours ago, Relicgamer said:

That interview was a blast. You 4 together with all of that enthusiasm for this console and what its about was alot of fun listening to and gets me even more excited for the Amicos debut.

100% agree, but does anyone else feel a sting of jealousy every time someone from IE talks about how they are already playing the Amico with family and friends (and probably have done for over a year), I know Tommy has done it in many interviews in the past, but it felt even stronger hearing the other guys pitch in with their stories about playing with their kids and the grandparents for Mother’s Day holidays and what not..it just makes the remaining 7+ months wait feel even longer😩 
 

17 hours ago, A Concerned said:

@Tommy Tallarico

 

 

I have two questions about Amico controller use that, depending on the answer, may result in criticisms. I imagine that these issues came up in R&D or in whatever focus group testing Intellivision has been performed.

 

1.     Will any Amico game require the player to quickly look back and forth between the television and controller screens? By ‘quickly,’ I mean more often than once or twice a minute. If ‘yes,’ will this requirement be common in games where there is a good deal of motion on the television screen, controller screen, or both? If ‘yes,’ how will the Amico mitigate multiple-screen eyestrain issues (see https://time.com/4171966/digital-device-eye-strain-screens/). This is something I worry about with child and elderly eyesight especially, and, given that this console is designed to be safe and family-friendly, I would like to know how it will be addressed.

 

2.     Will any Amico game require the player to quickly press the touch screen? By ‘quickly,’ I mean in the range of every couple of seconds. If ‘yes,’ how will the Amico mitigate stress or strain injuries to the player? Without the travel of a button (which is not perfect to begin with), I worry that quick presses of the touch screen could be bad for fingers, thumbs, wrists, etc. (see https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/01/17/188347/can-touch-screens-hurt-you/).

 

While these issues are not unique to the Amico, the console’s focus on being a safe, family-friendly machine means that they apply to the Amico. Certainly, the references that I include are not the final say on these issues, but they do make me reticent to get a console like this for my nieces. 

You're probably waiting for an official answer but I couldn't help commenting.

The solution to any repetitive motion injury is reducing the amount of time doing the activity.  Amico games are designed to have shorter play sessions than many of the popular games on other systems.

The article referenced in the linked article talks about people using excessive force with touchpad keys.  They say audio and vibrate feedback is the solution.  That could be true but I find regardless of the interface, excessive force happens more with inexperience and with more experience force is optimised.  I find audio and vibrate feedback unnecessary but that's my experience. 

The Amico touchpad also gives the opportunity for designers to use swipe gestures.  And the article says "most gestures don't require too much force, so you're usually safe as long as you don't bend your wrist excessively or repeat gestures too rapidly."

There is an interesting point in the articles about the strain with holding your thumb/finger above the surface of a touchpad.  This could be addressed with programmed pressure sensitivity allowing the resting of your thumb/finger on the surface.  We'll see how it is on Amico.

Regarding having to switch focus between the TV and the controller screen, I know some Wii U games were bad for this.  So far with Amico it looks it's not like that, but more like playing cards and having to look at the cards in your hand as well as the cards on the table.  Shark Shark is an example where occasionally you'd get a vibrate cue and you look at your controller for information.  Having said all that forcing your eyes to occasionally switch focus away from the TV is actually good for your eyes.  But yeah, an official answer would be better.

3 hours ago, nightmonkeyii said:

I dont think the commodore amiga really caught on in the states. Shame, you guys missed out!

They weren’t super popular in the US but they definitely represented. I had a couple of them over the years and yes they were really advanced for the time with custom graphics & sound chips (plus I loved that clean 68000 instruction set). TJ here even has a modern X5000 unit!

It was also the platform of the NewTek VideoToaster card which as the first semi consumer TV production system brought cheesy graphics to many a video in the 90s.

The only bad thing about being an Amiga owner is typing Amico correctly now  

I wanted an Amiga when they came out in the mid 1980s but couldn't afford one.  Had they made a more inexpensive consolised version they might have done better.  But here in north america video games were dead and computers were the future, so it seemed.  The problem with Amiga video games is the lack of a standard controller resulting in mostly single button games.

For me, Rick Dangerous will always be more of an 8 bit game than a 16 bit one. All 8 bit computers, hugely popular when it came out, received a port. The Intellivision clone is outstanding and proves that you could probably port some Larry style adventures too.

When I was 9-12 years old, "Amiga" was a word that appeared under the video game screenshots in magazines and boxes when the screenshot had lots of colors and more resolution than usual.

My computer, the Amstrad CPC, had a 16 color mode at 160x200 (very similar to the Intellivision resolution); but Amiga had 320x200 and 2 times the colors on screen, so video game companies often added the Amiga screenshots in the back of the box (sometimes saying "Amiga", others not). That would probably be illegal today.

An example of this is this "Hollywood Collection" (De cine in Spanish) pack: the Amstrad CPC box features Amiga screenshots (in the 8 bit ports, there is not a pseudo 3D stage in Batman "the movie", Indiana Jones is black and white and Robocop and Ghostbusters 2 run at a lower resolution on the CPC).

Looks like rick dangerous needs to continue his mission on amico, take back what tomb raider ran off with

I have good news and bad news about Pat & Ian.

The good news is that they just discovered that there are 3 billion gamers out there (they previously described that as a "niche").

The bad news is that, according to a nonexistent research they just pulled out of their asses, "they're not going to pay hundreds of dollars to play".

In each of their videos, they have to repeat that there is no market for "some new console for casual gamers".

It looks like someone is salty.

52 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

I have good news and bad news about Pat & Ian.

It is really best just ignore these two.

They keep setting things up and they keep getting knocked down:

However they aren’t going to stop until they are so obviously proven wrong that they switch to minimizing it and then just refusing to talk about it at all.

In fact, we all should feel bad for them considering they will definitely have back problems in their later years from all of the baggage they carry around and the endlessly moving of goal posts. The strain has to be taking a toll on those lower lumbars.

6 hours ago, nightmonkeyii said:

I dont think the commodore amiga really caught on in the states. Shame, you guys missed out!

On of my best friends and Business partners was CFO for Commodore. Oh the stories he can tell.

On 8/10/2020 at 8:49 AM, Lord Thag said:

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.

That is quite a strong statement and I can understand if you feel that way.  Our graphic capabilities and art styles aren't for everyone.

I'm curious to know... would you agree and recognize that art is subjective and many people actually love the more simple style graphics (especially our family/non or casual gamer audience). 

The overwhelming majority of people actually love the look and style of Astrosmash.  But don't take my word for it, you can check out the hundreds of positive comments on the first look Astrosmash video we released earlier this year (which shows the game at about 50% graphically complete).  And those comments aren't even from our target market.

Around 26,000 views and only 53 down votes (54 after you watch it maybe).  

That translates to about .2% of people who watched it and disliked it enough to down vote it.  2 tenths of 1%.  I'd say that's pretty good odds and would support a claim that you may be in the minority.  Which again... is totally fine.

Can you give me an example of game graphics that you would prefer to see in Astrosmash?  Again, I'm curious to understand what and why you despise the graphics so much.

It's an interesting conversation to have.

p.s.  I appreciate that you are hoping that Amico succeeds so I hope my response doesn't come across as negative or being a smart ass... I am genuinely interested in understanding your thoughts.

Thanks!

On 8/10/2020 at 8:57 AM, 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

 

Thank-you for highlighting this.

Really great stuff that we didn't show too much of during the Event but test very highly among our target audience.

These are the types of games that people "won't see coming" in regards to making Amico a family/friend co-op success.

On 8/10/2020 at 9:25 AM, Nolagamer said:

https://comicbook.com/movies/news/disneys-tron-3-jared-leto-director-garth-davis/

 

I hope @Tommy Tallarico can get that tron license  especially with a new movie coming out

It definitely makes our chances better.  I've worked with Disney on different projects (video game, music and show related) for about 30 years.  Was hired as a Creative Director on one of their big symphony tours that I helped to create and produce and I can tell you that their library of incredible content is so vast (especially with the addition of Marvel & Lucasfilm) that sometimes the only reason they will do certain "older" license deals is when they have something new to promote.  Their is definitely interest and we're hoping to have some great news someday.