ashtonm

I totally agree. I just think we may need to wait until there is definite finality. Though also possible they will keep stinging people along forever.

Astrosmash, skiing, Shark Shark should be complete. This could be sold as an Intellivision pack. $20 I'd buy it on the Switch or Steam. The Breakout game was pretty good actually. Moon Patrol was ok. The only two I played because they had demos.

I think they were planning on releasing some of these on another system. Probably only a few are ready. Skiing and Astrosmash should be ready. The question is do they have enough money or motivation to fund such an effort?

If you look at the launch line-up, they could have done SO much better for the crowd they were going for. 1) No real puzzle games like Tetris, Bust a Move, Puyo Puyo, Zuma, Candy Crush, etc. Much of those could easily of had really cool multiplayer modes. Want to know what the majority of the 3 billion casuals play on their phones? Puzzle games. 2) games that benefit from the screen. Implementing a trivia game like the ones played in bars/Buffalo Wild Wings, etc...and could have implemented leader boards online for those. Bomb Squad may have been one game, but mostly they seemed to use the screen as a button. I will admit this is a limited thing that can be of use because looking up and down isn't good usually. A football game like Tecmo Bowl would be an obvious beneficial one. Card games were listed, but we didn't see a ton of this demonstrated (other than a few short trailers that were played over and over and were on the cell phone). 3) games that benefitted from the control disc. I never got to use the control disc, but I'd imagine it would be good for shooters (yes, the one good looking game Flying Tigers would have used it). Paddle like games may have worked well with it (4 player Warlords should have been a day one release). I never got enough information on how well the disc worked or didn't work. It sounded like it was OK from what I could tell. Still, was hard to tell because we didn't get enough feedback on it. 4) I still think they should have had an "adult" version of the system (or not limit it and have good parental controls). Reimagined beat em ups would have been a killer set of games. Really limited the genres possible. Also, I think Robotron 84 would have works with their control scheme. I suppose you could make a family friendly clone? Such a fun game. I'm sure I could go on and on...but the lack of puzzle games really stood out for me as a big miss. We have supporters talking about value. I say no...there is no value to what it became. Maybe at $149 with games 3-7$ that would have been a reality. But at $250 (now $339) and games around $10 it seemed. It was no longer a value. A switch with Clubhouse 51 by itself is value and has many of the same types of games. When that game came out, I was thinking...man. IE needs to change direction.

Can't say I'm surprised. I'm pretty sure he doesn't realize he's being a certain way (not all the time that is). Quite honestly it's an interesting psychology case study. One of the stranger personalities I've come across. The hate toward the system really started from him. In fact, I think it was more about him than it was ever about the system most of this time. Not handling criticism (even constructive criticism) from the very start. Trying to cover up issues with the system rather than being truthful. There are just a ton of interesting personality traits to unpack. Some of the big defenders have switched their tune. They claim they didn't realize the lies before. I say if that's the case they were pretty gullible. For the past 3 years it's been VERY obvious they were lying or not telling the full truth. Ever since the first delay it was clear they were not running things well or honest. That doesn't mean it was going to fail, but it was clear that it was going to be a tough road. Ultimately it turned out much worse than I expected it to. I didn't realize just how bad it had gotten. What does surprise me is that TT didn't put more of his own money into the effort. I thought he would have put just about everything into it to get it out there. The fact that he didn't put more money into it said to me that even he doesn't believe it in fully. I started to notice this change about half way through the effort.

As the great Bruce Dickinson once sang "The road to hell is full of good intentions Say farewell, we may never meet again" I think this was good intentions initially, gross mismanagement, lots of lying to get money to keep it going, continued poor management. Of course some unluckiness with the pandemic, but that was used way too much as an excuse. I never understood why (WHY!) did they have expensive offices. Or at least make it seem like they had expensive offices. If they did, it's no wonder they were hemorrhaging money. Makes no sense for a start-up. They almost seemed to want to cosplay being a big company for a short time on the backs of investors. Craziness.

The Nick Richards interview was the best in the 4 years of this development. I think if Tommy would have been less of an arrogant douche I think it may have had a chance. Some of the decisions that proved fatal were suggestions from the community. The better screen on the controller is an example. Scope creep that proved to be a mistake. But honestly there were ton of mistakes. It was a crazy effort.

I have to admit, now that I cancelled the founders...the price now is WAY WAY too high. It was way too high with the founders. So I guess I'm out of interest in getting one unless they bring those costs way down. Quite frankly, I can't see how any are going to move at the prices they mentioned recently. This should have been $199 at the very max.

Yeah, I got the impression it was going to be more than what it became. I would guess they cut corners to get it done as cheaply as possible. It's something, but in my opinion those should have been $5 each for what it became. They wouldn't have been able to make enough of them to sell them at $5. So maybe $10 would have been more reasonable. But $20...yikes. This coming from a guy that wastes money on quite a few things.

My impressions from that timeframe is he probably didn't see eye to eye with TT. Decided not to follow through with being part of the team. And it appeared to only last a very short timeframe. So I can't see how he provided much help. All of this is speculation though. Probably didn't think it was a good fit.

I personally think everyone is disappointed it didn't come out (well, I guess we are still in the didn't come out yet). While I was not particularly impressed with the first line of games, I think over time it could have had some cool games. I still would have gotten it after following it so long. I was kind of happy to get a founders after so many people dropped out...but then it really took a dive and I decided to get my money back finally. Luckily I was able to after some craziness. But sounds like quite a few people still have not gotten their money back. I feel somewhat bad for the investors. I think the initial investors were not making a great decision (the investment details looked like a bad deal). But at that time I thought it would come out. Any investment after they delayed I think was just pretty poor decision making. But unfortunately people are suckered by these types of things. I do think many people are complicit in pushing this system and going along with what was pretty clear lies. If that influenced people to invest, they should feel bad about doing that. Still, this system actually did appeal to me. I'm an arcade style gamer with small kids and primarily play simple pick up and play games at this point of my life. However, I feel like I am in a group of a very small amount of people...this system always seemed like a very niche system to me. And I think it would have done better if it would have just stuck to retro-reimagined and included cartoon style violent games like classic beat em ups. The new Turtles game on the switch and other systems is awesome. They could have created some cool retro reimagined and included family friendly games. Limiting themselves to me was a mistake. That's why Nintendo has loosened up on being strictly family friendly and why they are doing better after that.

I think they are collectable because, if the system never does come out, it's a reminder of a failed system...where they sold games before the system was created and the system never delivered. That in my mind makes them kind of a cool collectable. However, they were pretty expensive. More than I was willing to shell out for what could be an interesting piece of history. Honestly I was pretty disappointed in what was provided. I would have liked a nice color manual (even if it was only a few pages). And they should have made a replica cartridge (actual cartridge shape, not just a card) which had the RFID in it...just like a Nintendo Amibo. Or even a figurine for some of the games. But I know they didn't have a ton of money and they took a lot of short cuts on it.

Typical deflection...we're all on a forum here. What are forums for? hmm...

She didn't seem to last long either. Not sure what was up with all that. Seemed strange to me at the time. Like a bad sign. but also could have just been for marketing purposes. I've seen that before in work I do. People have a proposal and list a bunch of names...but when they win the proposal 50% of the big names never come on board. IE also seems to have a lot of unpaid advisors who did very little work for them. Again, probably just getting names to put on marketing. Honestly I would not doubt a lot of people invested because of the big names they had on board which left soon after.

They certainly picked a few big names early on and many of them jumped ship. Either they were just brought on for name recognition to get more interest in funding (many companies do this type of bait and switch). Or the people saw the effort as not good and left early. J Allard was certainly one of the worst offender situations. Because they were touting him in investor pitches even when he was pretty much gone. And he was probably the biggest name they had.