Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

FYI Pete is doing a Q & A show to get people's questions answered about the Amico. If you have a question that keeps getting missed in live stream chats or you just have a question that other people may benefit hearing the answer to - now is your chance:

20 minutes ago, GrudgeQ said:

Tarmin (1983) was particularly amazing considering it was released *9 years* before Wolfenstein 3D (1992) (the pseudo 3d, first person game that most people remember). Can you imagine doing a 3Dish game in about 1K of RAM?

 

 

That is so cool!  Definitely the inspration of Bard's Tale (1985).

26 minutes ago, bigdaddygamestudio said:

i remember I owned this but it was a lil wonky and wasnt as cool as we hoped. 

Yeah, I was more of a Cloudy Mountain person myself BUT was always technically impressed with ToT and had some fun with it. For me one of those 'good not great' games on the Intellivision.

19 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

I don't think Wolfenstein 3D and Treasure of Tarmin play in the same league, as you can't move freely on the Intellivision title.

 

However, it's pretty cool that it appeared 4 years before Dungeon Master (1987). In the Wikipedia, they don't mention Tarmin as an influence on the developers. Was Tarmin real time or turn based when you encountered an enemy? The Wiki says DM was the first one with real time battles.

True, it is really primitive compared even to Wolfenstein 3D, which itself was blown out by the OG Doom eventually. However considering what you had to work with on consoles back then, even on the more advanced Intellivision system, it gets major geek chic points from me.

14 minutes ago, The_Analog_Kid said:

That is so cool!  Definitely the inspration of Bard's Tale (1985).

I think you are right and probably a lot of people remember Bards Tale too (forgot about that one). Also thanks for that 2nd video post - I had no idea about that Dungeons of Draggorath game (I wasn't into TRS-80). Yet another cool early 3D first person game.

Hey guys, the combat in Tarmin (1983) was not in real time, right? Or was it? Because that would have been an impressive "first" for that kind of game. As I said, Wikipedia says Dungeon Master (1987) was the first one. It looks like Bard's Tale (1985) did not have real time combat.

50 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

Hey guys, the combat in Tarmin (1983) was not in real time, right? Or was it? Because that would have been an impressive "first" for that kind of game. As I said, Wikipedia says Dungeon Master (1987) was the first one. It looks like Bard's Tale (1985) did not have real time combat.

Bard's Tale was turn-based combat.  Showing my age here...  

10 hours ago, mr_me said:

They must have played so much intellivision baseball during the creation of Signals that they gave it a credit on the album.  Was wondering if Curlyq knew this.  Wonder what Geddy Lee thinks of intellivision today.  Has he moved on to modern baseball video games.

I have a friend that knows Alex and asked if she could dig up a little backstory the next time they get together.

No, I didn't know about the liner note mentioning Intellivision Baseball. That was a nice find!

On 8/26/2020 at 5:08 PM, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.... I just have to do this...

coming to the Intellivision Amico, April 2021:

TUTANKHAM II - Pharaoh's Revenge!

"Think you can just waltz in and take Pharaoh's treasures? No, my friend. I'm afraid... Yul be sorry!"

...off to the corner to think about what I just did. Have a nice day, everyone!

17 minutes ago, GrumpyOl'Guy said:

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.... I just have to do this...

 

coming to the Intellivision Amico, April 2021:

 

TUTANKHAM II - Pharaoh's Revenge!

 

"Think you can just waltz in and take Pharaoh's treasures? No, my friend. I'm afraid... Yul be sorry!"

 

 

 

...off to the corner to think about what I just did. Have a nice day, everyone!

"Yul be sorry"...Yul Brynner currently spinning in his grave for the bad pun.  😄

19 minutes ago, The_Analog_Kid said:

"Yul be sorry"...Yul Brynner currently spinning in his grave for the bad pun.  😄

Que sera sera 

On 8/24/2020 at 11:28 AM, IntelliMission said:

We apologize for the interruption in Tommy's answers. You may notice he has stopped answering questions for a few minutes. When he finishes reading through 3 consecutive pages of offtopic messages that don't include any question (many of them mine), he will continue with the regular schedule.

Yes, I think what happened was someone tripped over the power cord leading to Tommy while he replying to comments, and Tommy froze and shut down.  So now they are working very hard to get him rebooted, and functional.  Stay tuned.

I have weird imagination.

1 hour ago, GrudgeQ said:

Yeah, I was more of a Cloudy Mountain person myself BUT was always technically impressed with ToT and had some fun with it. For me one of those 'good not great' games on the Intellivision.

True, it is really primitive compared even to Wolfenstein 3D, which itself was blown out by the OG Doom eventually. However considering what you had to work with on consoles back then, even on the more advanced Intellivision system, it gets major geek chic points from me.

I think you are right and probably a lot of people remember Bards Tale too (forgot about that one). Also thanks for that 2nd video post - I had no idea about that Dungeons of Draggorath game (I wasn't into TRS-80). Yet another cool early 3D first person game.

You have to be into RPG for treasure of tarmin.  I never was, and I remember getting it in the later 1980s and realised that it wasn't for me.  Tower of Doom is similar, without the first person perspective.  The first ad&d suits me better.  Treasure of Tarmin battles are turn based but if you take too long the enemy won't wait for you.

That first person maze effect goes back to the early 1970s minicomputers and mainframes.  They were probably the inspiration to the programmers in the late 1070s and 1980s.  I remember playing something similar on a Commodore PET.   It's really 2.5D where Wolfenstein 3D and Doom are arguably real 3D. 

I tried the Missile Command Recharged app.  I thought it was okay.  Playing on a phone is not the best.  The Amico version looks 10x better.  I can't wait to play Missile Command on Amico.  Plus with the controller it'll be so much easier.

3 hours ago, GrudgeQ said:

Yeah, I was more of a Cloudy Mountain person myself BUT was always technically impressed with ToT and had some fun with it. For me one of those 'good not great' games on the Intellivision.

i was referring to the d&d electronic board game.  I never played ToT but I did play the hell out of Bards tale on our Apple 2c.  We had a whole notebook full of graph paper maps.

Only barely on-topic but I found myself watching some Cornhole matches on YouTube and didn't understand the scoring or the lingo - this video helped a lot:

5 hours ago, The_Analog_Kid said:

That is so cool!  Definitely the inspration of Bard's Tale (1985).

Tarmin is unfortunately passed over on many listings for first gen FPS RPG/Dungeon Crawl games and is rarely mentioned anywhere.  Mostly because it was on a less popular system than all the computers that began to hit the scene.  It set some very good standards for playability, atmosphere and depth.  It's a very good game for what it is, if you are into that style.  Up until I played Bard's Tale on my C64, which to me was an updated Tarmin, did I finally leave Tarmin behind.

But I do wonder what the inspiration for the graphics of the Bard's Tale series was...

Pedit5 was the very first computer based Dungeon Crawl style game.  Developed somewhere in the mid 70s, from there came Rouge and all the others behind it.

Tommy, I am sold and I am stoked. Where have I been for the past 904 pages? Ohh...I was playing with my original Intellivision

Pre-ordered the Atomic Purple GS exclusive tonight. Really great job!

16 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

The great thing about board games on the Amico is that you won't have to memorize the freaking rules: they will be automatically applied.

 

Also, some games give some secret information to each player, such as a card. To be able to see that on the controller screen will be cool.

 

An example of this is the game Lords of Xidit, which doesn't include dices: each player "programs" the direction of 6 "jumps" or "moves" of their figure in the map. They have to program it in advance and without knowing what the other players will do. 

That's a great recommendation, a similar mechanism is implemented at RoboRally (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/216201/robo-rally), a real classic from Richard Garfield with a fun theme that could look great in a digital product with animations.

BTW: The company behind Lords of Xidit also has some other games in their catalogue I would highly recommend: Dixit , which encourages creativity and storytelling being an extremely unique experience, and Diceforge, which has continuously changing personalized dice during each game. The artwork of their games is always top notch.

Not wanting to stick to boardgame themes only in my posts - I would also appreciate to see something like Parodius from Konami one day on the amico, maybe at a later time when their are enough other games out there to make some cool references.

19 hours ago, The_Analog_Kid said:

Tommy, just curious, why was the original AD&D Intelliviison game (one of my favorites!) later renamed Cloudy Mountain?  Was it a licensing/royalty issue?  Always wondered.

 

Off topic, I sent you a PM here about 2 weeks ago on a separate topic; not sure if you got a chance to read.  Thx.

Yo!,

I saw that others answered the Cloudy Mountain question correctly. 

Sorry... been way behind on PM's here.  Will check it out.

15 hours ago, The_Analog_Kid said:

Bard's Tale was turn-based combat.  Showing my age here...  

I worked on remake of Bard's Tale (2004).  Really fun game that I would suggest people checking out!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bard's_Tale_(2004_video_game)

I wrote a bunch of really funny lyric songs and hired my buddies from LucasArts who did all the great music in those games over the years.  Was a great collaboration... we had so much fun doing the songs for that one.

You can hear the entire soundtrack here:

This one had my lyrics in it.  
 

Can you tell I love Wonka?

14 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

Hey guys, the combat in Tarmin (1983) was not in real time, right? Or was it? Because that would have been an impressive "first" for that kind of game. As I said, Wikipedia says Dungeon Master (1987) was the first one. It looks like Bard's Tale (1985) did not have real time combat.

To answer my own question: it looks like Treasure of Tarmin has an interesting mixture of the system in Bard's Tale and the one in Dungeon Master/Eye of the Beholder. Just like Bard's Tale, it's turn based, but the visuals look like Dungeon Master/Eye of the Beholder as you can see the scenery at all times.

I don't like RPG games, but if I had to play one I would definitely choose an Eye of the Beholder type of game. I love the graphics and the sound of those.

So it looks like Treasure of Tarmin is superior to Final Fantasy VII in at least three things:

1) It has 3D movement

2) The combat happens in the same normal view, adding to the immersion

3) It doesn't have a pretentious story that nobody who has seen a few classic movies can take seriously

20 hours ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Thanks!

For those of you who missed it, I announced the ultra portable Amico Lite! Great for doing your taxes on!! 🤣

 

 

My first two questions are:

1)When do Pre-orders begin?

2)How many (car) batteries does it take?

3)When do we start to shill for this?

2 minutes ago, woobman said:

My first two questions are:

 

1)When do Pre-orders begin?

2)How many (car) batteries does it take?

3)When do we start to shill for this?

1) 10.10.2020

2) 1 + 12 D batteries

3) T-shirts being made now.

9 hours ago, eightbit said:

Tommy, I am sold and I am stoked. Where have I been for the past 904 pages? Ohh...I was playing with my original Intellivision

 

Pre-ordered the Atomic Purple GS exclusive tonight. Really great job!

Thank-you!  Appreciate the kind words and support!

12 hours ago, Intellivision Master said:

I tried the Missile Command Recharged app.  I thought it was okay.  Playing on a phone is not the best.  The Amico version looks 10x better.  I can't wait to play Missile Command on Amico.  Plus with the controller it'll be so much easier.

It's a really fun game!  Especially with others in either co-op or versus modes.

Using the controller screen as the input makes a huge difference.

On 8/11/2020 at 4:19 AM, theswede said:

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?

Well said.  Thank you.

From the start I wanted to take people on a journey with us.  Wanted folks who were interested to see the PROGRESS of the console and games as they were being made.  We've been showing gameplay footage for over a year.  Each time we show a game it looks better and better.  Missile Command, Shark! Shark!, Skiing, Moon Patrol and Astrosmash are just a few examples.

We will NEVER be on the same level as PlayStation or Xbox.  If anyone is waiting for that... please don't.  That day will never come.  It's not what we're about.  Never was, never will be.

Gameplay mechanics, controls, simplicity, multiplayer and FUN are the main goals with Amico games (and kick-ass audio of course!) 

Our target audience actually loves the graphic styles they have seen so far.  So in that regards (the only one that really matters in fact) we are winning big time in the graphic category. 

I'm not going to try to convince Classical music fans that they must also love Rock n' Roll music.  If folks don't like the style of the art (even though we offer many different styles)... that's totally okay.  They don't need to purchase Amico.  If they really wanted to purchase one but are disappointed with the graphics... that's okay as well.  As we all know, it's impossible to please everyone.  But what I do know is that our target market is loving what we're doing and to us (and no offense to anyone else), that's all that really matters.