Intellivision Amico - Tommy Tallarico introduction + Q&A

3 hours ago, haplo13 said:

Tommy, question about Breakout. We've been playing the demo and really enjoying it (I'll admit more than I expected). My 6yo son really wants to play too but the game is just too difficult with the current paddle size. Will the Amico version have a difficulty setting to allow for larger /smaller sizes? 

I'm not involved in the development of Breakout, but all of our games utilize our Karma engine, which has adaptive difficulty... so that people who don't play as well or react as fast will get advantages... such as bigger paddles. There will also be smaller paddles for the player who is doing great (in multiplayer) to try to keep things equal. 

Ok I want to start that I'm a hugh fan of Break out, and any block breaking game. When I 1st saw the demo of the Amicos Break Out I was immediately  hooked. I still enjoy playing block buster on my microvision. And this has been above and beyond my expectations.  This will have my attention till its launch. Im not kidding.  Thank you Tommy and everyone involved with team Amico.  This is what I'm excited about most with the Amico.  These kinda of games. Jump in try to beat your score for an hour get your family involved and then hop off. 

I wasn't 100% sure if this console would get me this excited but this game sealed it for me. And if the other games are this fun my xbox one x is going to be collecting dust lol seriously.  

On 10/11/2020 at 9:58 PM, popsicle said:

Oooo ooo ooo Sinistar while we're dealing with games that used 49-way joys of yesteryear

 

edit : Thought the Monroe sticks were the 49-way sticks, but basically 8 way leaf sticks with round restrictor plates. My Sinistar suggestion stands. 

 

I HUNGER...

15 hours ago, wolfy62 said:

New Wave Toys has this one I charge 6 mini arcade machines at once with for $60.

Its awesome!

I bought that too Dale. It's awesome. 

16 hours ago, bigdaddygamestudio said:

yeah I know I'll have one of those nights where Im just like, hey its only 8 bucks, and thats only 9 bucks and thats only 8 bucks and I'll just keep buying and buying since hell its only 8 or 9 bucks.  I dont have a whole lot of self restraint on this stuff, its one good things about being older though, I buy stuff on amazon and ebay late night and by the time it comes a few days /weeks later I usually totally forget what I ordered and its like xmas       then Im like, Oh yeah, awesome, I forgot I ordered that.  Being old and up late has some benefits at least.

Until you ordered the same thing twice !  lol  😆  (Already happened to me ! 😬 )

On 10/12/2020 at 8:21 AM, save2600 said:

Watched the latest video Saturday and noticed a couple of things as they've been evolving...

 

1) certain games seem to be a lot more "busy" graphics or camera wise, especially Breakout and Missile Command. Borders on distracting IMO. 

 

2) Bi-planes screen zooming in/out too often IMO. Rather see more of a static, zoomed out perspective on such a game. Of course, when a plane appears from either side of the screen, camera would quickly zoom back out - just seems there's too much camera play going on. 

100% agree!  I noticed this with the racing game.  I hope people in the test groups are saying the same thing.  Keep the screen static with little to no camera movement.  What I have seen so far borders on annoying and may even cause motion sickness.  I hope this is not the case in the final version.  If there is already a lot going on on the screen, adding camera movement will just complicate gameplay.

9 hours ago, Relicgamer said:

Ok I want to start that I'm a hugh fan of Break out, and any block breaking game. When I 1st saw the demo of the Amicos Break Out I was immediately  hooked. I still enjoy playing block buster on my microvision. And this has been above and beyond my expectations.  This will have my attention till its launch. Im not kidding.  Thank you Tommy and everyone involved with team Amico.  This is what I'm excited about most with the Amico.  These kinda of games. Jump in try to beat your score for an hour get your family involved and then hop off. 

I wasn't 100% sure if this console would get me this excited but this game sealed it for me. And if the other games are this fun my xbox one x is going to be collecting dust lol seriously.  

Great Score !

I really like the Demo. The sound and music building depending on where the ball goes, etc.

Relicgamer, I don't know what you will think about my next comment (I hope it's constructive comments)

When our paddle is firing, I don't like the sound of it ! I would like a sound that could "match" with the music.
I am sure with a different sound ( not so sure, should be tested ! lol ) it could be cooler ! Right now I hate it when I am firing. 🥺

It spoils the beautiful relaxing music!

My second comment looks more like a question.

Could it be a good idea to have a bonus score depending on how many time left to when you finish the level ! (and how many balls are still remain)

Sometimes I am doing it rapidly and perfectly and my score is not really good ! Lol

Thank you for everyone who can give me their thoughts on those two comments.

And don't get me wrong, I really like the game ! 😃

Oh here is a last one ! Could have been cool to control the paddle with the scroll wheel !

(You see Tommy, I can be a good video game tester  lol 😉). I have already done it for Eidos ! If you want to send me Amico for December or January I will be ready to test it with my family.

I have a 70 year old mother who never played video game ( But she bought me Intellivision II 38 years ago ! ) She also have no computer and no cell phone! I am really curious to see how she will react when I will let her try it with his younger boyfriend ! 🙄

20 hours ago, theswede said:

Yes, we actually suggested this some time back (a “buy all” button), considering there is about 30 games at launch and 6-7 are already packed in, and for the FE/VIP orders there is another 3-5 games extra (gift card), so it will be about 18-20 games left, if all of them are 9,99 it will be less than 200$ to get them all. That way they would secure an incredible attach rate in the first days and get a great boost from the word of mouth marketing. Doesn’t have to be with a big discount, people would just do it for the easiness of pushing the “buy all” button instead of going through the purchase process 20 times.

That could be a good idea. But if you want some physical game, you will pay twice for the same game !?

For my part, I will play with every game already on Amico, then I will choose one game to buy, try it, buy another one, buy it, etc.   😀

It is also important to prevent a person from pressing this kind of button by mistake ! 🤪 lol

Moon Patrol contest info coming today via video!

At the end of the contest info I go through some of my more important  and rare game consoles in my collection.  I think a lot of folks in this group will find it interesting.

1 hour ago, atarifan88 said:

100% agree!  I noticed this with the racing game.  I hope people in the test groups are saying the same thing.  Keep the screen static with little to no camera movement.  What I have seen so far borders on annoying and may even cause motion sickness.  I hope this is not the case in the final version.  If there is already a lot going on on the screen, adding camera movement will just complicate gameplay.

Early builds.  Camera angles still being worked on.

In regards to some of them looking too busy... I purposely chose that type of footage because it's a LOT more exciting on screen.  Having one or two missiles come down and one player firing at it is weak for a trailer (and then I could see people potentially commenting that Amico isn't capable of a lot of things on screen at once). 

So it's always a never win thing in these scenarios. 

All the games certainly start off a lot more "easy" and less chaotic and then work their way up from there with a great curve.  Of course if you're only playing any of those games by yourself... they get a lot less hectic as well.  But people have been begging to see the multiplayer stuff, so I decided to go in that direction.

7 hours ago, cmart604 said:

I bought that too Dale. It's awesome. 

And me as well!  I even show it off in the Moon Patrol contest video that is being dropped today.

24 minutes ago, LePionnier said:

Great Score !

 

I really like the Demo. The sound and music building depending on where the ball goes, etc.

Relicgamer, I don't know what you will think about my next comment (I hope it's constructive comments)

 

When our paddle is firing, I don't like the sound of it ! I would like a sound that could "match" with the music.
I am sure with a different sound ( not so sure, should be tested ! lol ) it could be cooler ! Right now I hate it when I am firing. 🥺

It spoils the beautiful relaxing music!

 

My second comment looks more like a question.

Could it be a good idea to have a bonus score depending on how many time left to when you finish the level ! (and how many balls are still remain)

Sometimes I am doing it rapidly and perfectly and my score is not really good ! Lol

 

Thank you for everyone who can give me their thoughts on those two comments.

And don't get me wrong, I really like the game ! 😃

 

Oh here is a last one ! Could have been cool to control the paddle with the scroll wheel !

 

(You see Tommy, I can be a good video game tester  lol 😉). I have already done it for Eidos ! If you want to send me Amico for December or January I will be ready to test it with my family.

I have a 70 year old mother who never played video game ( But she bought me Intellivision II 38 years ago ! ) She also have no computer and no cell phone! I am really curious to see how she will react when I will let her try it with his younger boyfriend ! 🙄

Yes.  You'll get bonus points by how much time is left.  You'll also notice that we turned off the timer.  In the normal game if you don't make it to the end of the countdown, you lose the level and need to start over.  But we shut it off for the demo. 

 

9 hours ago, Relicgamer said:

Ok I want to start that I'm a hugh fan of Break out, and any block breaking game. When I 1st saw the demo of the Amicos Break Out I was immediately  hooked. I still enjoy playing block buster on my microvision. And this has been above and beyond my expectations.  This will have my attention till its launch. Im not kidding.  Thank you Tommy and everyone involved with team Amico.  This is what I'm excited about most with the Amico.  These kinda of games. Jump in try to beat your score for an hour get your family involved and then hop off. 

I wasn't 100% sure if this console would get me this excited but this game sealed it for me. And if the other games are this fun my xbox one x is going to be collecting dust lol seriously.  

Thanks for the awesome feedback Relic!! 

Yeah, it's one of the big reasons why I keep telling folks that if they are at all interested in Amico... WAIT TIL YOU PLAY IT!  

The amount of fun people have with games like Biplanes and Evel Knievel are hard to put on screen.  You saw a little bit of it when we did that Side Swiper video earlier in the year, or the people playing during our hardware video.

But for a trailer where you are only showing game clips... the co-op aspect is difficult sometimes to show.

Talking about Breakout, I am really curious to see how it will play in Multiplayer.

Will it be only versus, co-op ?

For the co-op part, it could be cool to have different color balls.

Then when you hit the multi ball, you can say to player two to concentrate on the blue ball, etc.

Just an idea ! Like I said, I am really curious to see how it will work with more than one player !

It's really exciting !

10 hours ago, RxScram said:

I'm not involved in the development of Breakout, but all of our games utilize our Karma engine, which has adaptive difficulty... so that people who don't play as well or react as fast will get advantages... such as bigger paddles. There will also be smaller paddles for the player who is doing great (in multiplayer) to try to keep things equal. 

Jeff is correct.  Breakout paddle will adjust to your playing ability... and/or give you more power-ups depending on your skill level.

22 hours ago, theswede said:

It looks even more impressive when you see all launch titles listed like that, and the only “disappointment” for me was that the dolphin game was not on there. 
 

FYI, the “Asteroids” time stamp is actually Astrosmash. Anyway thanks for making the work of listing and time stamping it all👍

Dolphin Quest (current working title) wouldn't be coming out in Q2 of 2021.  The video description mentions that all of the games shown are currently scheduled to release in Q2 of 2021.  The reason we didn't show Earthworm Jim either.

4 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Yes.  You'll get bonus points by how much time is left.  You'll also notice that we turned off the timer.  In the normal game if you don't make it to the end of the countdown, you lose the level and need to start over.  But we shut it off for the demo.

Yeah that's right ! I remember finishing it one time with the counter at zero ! But I was not sure if it was because my ball was still alive ! 😊

21 hours ago, Intellivision Master said:

Tommy,

 

Whenever new T-Shirts are in the IE shop, we need one with Puffy.  I think this was mentioned before.  Probably by me, lol.  But I was thinking that the design of Puffy on the shirt should be how he appears big like in the new trailer.  It's funny to see how he blows up.  🤣

Maybe a small version on the front and the big version on the back.

1 minute ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

Dolphin Quest (current working title) wouldn't be coming out in Q2 of 2021.  The video description mentions that all of the games shown are currently scheduled to release in Q2 of 2021.  The reason we didn't show Earthworm Jim either.

Great ! But maybe we can have more game not showed yet that will be ready for launch !? Something like Burger time ! 🙄

2 minutes ago, Tommy Tallarico said:

 

Maybe a small version on the front and the big version on the back.

 

 

 

That would be fine.

44 minutes ago, LePionnier said:

Oh here is a last one ! Could have been cool to control the paddle with the scroll wheel !

I have yet to download the Breakout Demo.  Is the control only with a mouse?  What if you don't have/use one?  Can the keyboard be used?

Tommy, will the Karma Engine be activated by default also on single player modes? I suppose it will be, but... is this really a good idea? Wouldn't that make the online rankings a bit boring? Maybe you could disable it by default or create a separated ranking for "professional players" without Karma Engine.

2 minutes ago, IntelliMission said:

Tommy, will the Karma Engine be activated by default also on single player modes?

No, Tommy said it only works in multiplayer.  I wish it did work for single player though. 

I don't really plan to play the single player modes, but I personally prefer them without the Karma engine (even if the game destroys me every time).

But this is an interesting design choice. I guess some games will be more difficult than others (the ones more aimed to hardcore/retro fans will be harder). I remember they already said that the first player modes will ALWAYS start super easy on the first levels so hyper casual and non gamers will not be scared. It makes sense!

I also remember (this was months ago in this same thread) to think "I hope hardcore gamers don't get too bored on those first easy levels".

Another approach for single player modes would be to use an infinite lives system so that every single attempt can finish the game if the player spends some time, with lives wasted seriously affecting the final score for the rankings.

Since we are seeing a demo of Major League Baseball, I hope they just stick to using the team names only and not the player names.  I don't want to see Intellivision fall into a trap that EA set with releasing a new game each year with updated rosters.  I would be surprised if Intellivision went that route.  Stick to simple game play that is fun and it will be a winner!