Intellivision Amico’s trademark changed to ‘abandoned’

[+cvga]

8 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

You know,

 

If Tommy Tallarico came over to my house and told me it was raining outside,  I'd step outside and see if I got wet.

You're a RAINCIST!  Who cares if you get wet? There would be like 3 billion other people getting drenched at that moment.

[MrBeefy]

44 minutes ago, cvga said:

You're a RAINCIST!  Who cares if you get wet? There would be like 3 billion other people getting drenched at that moment.

Don't make fun of their target market. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo only target those who eat Dorritos and drink Mountain Dew. Amico is going to target the market of water drinkers! They only need 1% of that demographic. Think about how many water drinkers are not being targeted by the current companies? They have the data that those who don't like Mountain Dew as their beverage of choice have been left behind since the days of the Wii.

 

The water drinkers love Amico and our data and focus groups back that up. The design was made to appeal to water drinkers. They intended to make the console look like a footbath! When you think footbath what do you need? Water!

 

Everything we do has a purpose. Did you know when we put out a Switch, Amico, Xbox, and Playstation, that those who picked Amico as their favorite design drank water!?!? Same reason we designed the controller to look like a bar of soap! We really believe in clean gaming. See the innuendo there and how we know what we are doing? Those who want to say we don't know what we are doing just want to drink their Mountain Dew and destroy us! They just don't want to understand that the console is not for them because they don't like or drink water!

 

We want you to get on the ground floor of what we are doing. We are offering a special Flounder Edition. Because Flounder lives in the ocean and hey MORE WATER! Not to mention Ariel is good friends of mine who likes to give me lapdances. Anyways with each Flounder Edition you will get a special Swimming Man lenticular poster and a special vial of my own bath water! 

 

We are really doing something special and I never lose.

[Pink]

5 hours ago, Razzie.P said:

Well, he did say "I'm not saying this is happening..." and "25 people wanting to invest"

 

Maybe those were early iterations of his "Wouldn't That Be Something" nonsense where he'd heavily imply without actually committing

25 successful & smart multi-millionaires 🤣

[SteveTheColecoDude]

Yeah, Tommy liked to pretend that their investors were all super smart big shots, when in reality they were anything but. And to top it off, when he had no option but to try and trick the regular folks out of money, to try and sweeten them up he pretended that they were his first choice and he never wanted the big investors involved at all.

 

 

Edited March 24, 2023 by SteveTheColecoDude

[Rowsdower70]

20 minutes ago, Pink said:

25 successful & smart multi-millionaires 🤣

They seemed to be smart enough not to swallow the crap he was shoveling. 

[PlaysWithWolves]

On 3/23/2023 at 10:41 AM, Bill Loguidice said:

I would say bottom line is that empty boxes or no, selling them in that manner absolutely implied that all of those games were close to completion and fully playable with no potential for show-stopping bugs (I know that's why I ordered them). Based on all we know now, it's unclear how far along any of those games were and how stable and far along the actual platform itself was. That's bad faith business, period, and clearly borders on scam. It's just a question of how "knowing" the scam part was.

In July 2021 he claimed there were forty-two ratings approvals and showed a few in a graphic in his thread and elsewhere.  That's Tommy math that fourteen games got three ratings each; PEGI, USK, ESRB.  I don't know how complete a game needs to be to submit for ratings, but they weren't all 100% finished. That very day he posted a video showing they were redesigning pack-in game Cornhole's controls, and a later video had downgraded graphics. Around Crayola Experience time in late August, even Tommy and Mike Mullis were admitting bad lag in Dynoblaster. I'm not sure but I think I heard similar about Moon Patrol from a former fan, but by October's Thanksgiving Point show it still wasn't 100% (Starfox text). 

 I can believe some of the games were complete since IE got them in nearly finished states and tacked on multiplayer. Evel Knievel and Rigid Force Redux Enhanced come to mind. Brain Duel was probably a simple Einstein Brain Trainer reskin. It's indeed hard to tell because of the former CEO's penchant for embellishment and questionable relationship with the truth.

So, that's basically a bunch of words to say, "I don't know either!" 

[jerseystyle]

13 hours ago, Matt_B said:

How could they be short of money, when they had huge investors like this Texan Billionaire?

 

 

 

 

THAT right there is when I knew for sure he’s lying. No intelligent investor would be happy with that answer. So you’re gonna take my 100 million and spend 75%-90% to build a factory and hire workers? You’re gonna delay the release by 3-5 years while you get that up and running? And if you can get systems going now, without the factory, then you don’t need the factory!
 

There is no universe where that is the right answer to a start up business question. It proved to me that the CEO and his CHUD force knew nothing about business.

[MattPilz]

39 minutes ago, PlaysWithWolves said:

I don't know how complete a game needs to be to submit for ratings, but they weren't all 100% finished.

They can still be in conceptual state and receive ESRB ratings. The rating system relies on a simple questionnaire about content of the game and a video of relevant gameplay.

 

The majority of those boxed games already existed in some prior incarnation (Rigid Force, Dynablaster, Evel Knievel, Brain Duel, Finnigan Fox) and at least a couple had ESRB ratings already on other platforms. Missile Command and Biplanes were very simple coffee-break style that presumably could be considered finished at any moment since there just isn't much to them. That leaves only Moon Patrol as a more complex and original game of those eight, and since there was an early demo and previews of different levels I would assume it was decently far along although they did still use Star Fox placeholder text far along into its development...

 

 

[Pink]

7 hours ago, Rowsdower70 said:

They seemed to be smart enough not to swallow the crap he was shoveling. 

Assuming Tommy wasn't actually lying and that there actually were 25 potential investors present.

[Flojomojo]

On 3/23/2023 at 10:41 AM, Bill Loguidice said:

I would say bottom line is that empty boxes or no, selling them in that manner absolutely implied that all of those games were close to completion and fully playable with no potential for show-stopping bugs (I know that's why I ordered them). Based on all we know now, it's unclear how far along any of those games were and how stable and far along the actual platform itself was. That's bad faith business, period, and clearly borders on scam. It's just a question of how "knowing" the scam part was.

Bill, I remember the Ars Technica feature about how you liquidated your massive video game collection in order to get some space back in your life. 

 

What in the world were you thinking when you bought this “physical product” that required the buyer to accept an “e-commerce policy” that said they had no release date on the actual (downloadable) games? 
 

Did you want to “own a part of gaming history?” Or maybe just have them to review on your site? 

 

I’m sorry if I sound facetious but I know you’re smarter than to buy into this. 

[Flojomojo]

On 3/23/2023 at 12:57 AM, MattPilz said:

If we define them as what he promised in 2018-2019, then no that wouldn't count either. Originally they were supposed to include artwork posters signed by the developers and for a long time were definitely implied to contain a physical copy of the games on SD or some other compatible media. That would've been nice.

Tallarico was very cagey about the “physical media” details for a long time — possibly for as long as years. He teased about how they were going to get a very big celebrity to drop the announcement, but only when the time was right, and it was going to be different t from anything anyone had ever done before. 

 

There was a shill video with the usual suspects (Atari Creep, Cyrus Martin, OEB Pete, Retro Bro) oohing and aahing about how amazing it was and how they couldn’t wait to share it with the world. 

 

Then many months later, John Riggs was the celebrity and uploaded this. I guess 22K is a lot of views for an Amico video, and likely a much bigger number than the quantity of units what actually sold. 
 

 

[Flojomojo]

9 hours ago, Pink said:

Assuming Tommy wasn't actually lying and that there actually were 25 potential investors present.

He wasn’t in the room, and for all he knew, none of them were actively laughing in his face. Huge success! 
 

Remember when Mike Kennedy shared out his emails with Konami as “proof” that they were interested in putting games on the Coleco Chameleon? (They said no such thing, they were polite blow-offs)

 

The name-dropping and empty promises from Tallarico were off the charts, but very similar to Kennedy’s amateurish stumbling. 

[Bill Loguidice]

33 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

Bill, I remember the Ars Technica feature about how you liquidated your massive video game collection in order to get some space back in your life. 

 

What in the world were you thinking when you bought this “physical product” that required the buyer to accept an “e-commerce policy” that said they had no release date on the actual (downloadable) games? 
 

Did you want to “own a part of gaming history?” Or maybe just have them to review on your site? 

 

I’m sorry if I sound facetious but I know you’re smarter than to buy into this. 

Collecting for me has always been about experiences as much as anything else. I wanted to experience this, good or bad. Honestly, this being a scam never fully crossed my mind until some time after I received the empty boxes (although there were certainly rumblings and second thoughts prior).

 

I'm never too proud to admit my mistakes. I definitely feel like I made a mistake both with getting the empty boxes and with not getting a refund on the founder's edition when I still had a chance. With that said, I can chalk this up to another of those "experiences," albeit a bad one. Still, lesson learned, and I'm a little more wary of getting in on things too early, although I'm still not perfect with it with the occasional Kickstarter or other crowdfunding.

 

In terms of my past collection, I still collect, even though my expectation was I wouldn't really do it anymore after selling off the original collection. It was more of a reset then a stoppage in retrospect. I'm more organized and more focused with it, but it's certainly not perfect. Collecting first-hand experiences could certainly be a compulsion with me and perhaps an ADHD thing as I constantly move from project to project and want to keep doing new things before I sometimes even finish the other things.

[Sir Guntz]

Still blows me away this forum could defeat Mike Kennedy's RetroVGS aka Coleco Chameleon, but fall for the Intellivision Amico. Absolutely pathetic. Literally the same thing as a cartoon where the hero defeats the villain, who then returns barely disguised and the hero doesn't recognize them at all.

[MrBeefy]

4 hours ago, Sir Guntz said:

Still blows me away this forum could defeat Mike Kennedy's RetroVGS aka Coleco Chameleon, but fall for the Intellivision Amico. Absolutely pathetic. Literally the same thing as a cartoon where the hero defeats the villain, who then returns barely disguised and the hero doesn't recognize them at all.

AA didn't need to defeat Tommy. He was pretty amazing and tanking the company on his own. It was like the only thing he ended up doing effectively.

[Bill Loguidice]

5 hours ago, Sir Guntz said:

Still blows me away this forum could defeat Mike Kennedy's RetroVGS aka Coleco Chameleon, but fall for the Intellivision Amico. Absolutely pathetic. Literally the same thing as a cartoon where the hero defeats the villain, who then returns barely disguised and the hero doesn't recognize them at all.

Other than being associated with deceptions and most likely the end result, there really wasn't a lot that was the same between the two projects in terms of scope and ambition, particularly until some of the more obvious issues presented themselves on the Amico side of things. The Amico did have bigger names attached, far more money behind it, licenses in place, retailers in place, and some type of demonstrations. If instead the argument is that the Amico is like the Chameleon project on steroids or something, I suppose that's fine, but I'd still argue that it was easy to be duped by the Amico for quite a while as they said, presented, and arguably accomplished all the right things early on in the process, so there was really nothing to set off any red flags or be concerned about potential gotchas. It was difficult to ever have the same confidence at any point in the Chameleon project, particularly since step 1 was "we got the Jaguar tooling for the console cases."

[MrBeefy]

5 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Other than being associated with deceptions and most likely the end result, there really wasn't a lot that was the same between the two projects in terms of scope and ambition, particularly until some of the more obvious issues presented themselves on the Amico side of things. The Amico did have bigger names attached, far more money behind it, licenses in place, retailers in place, and some type of demonstrations. If instead the argument is that the Amico is like the Chameleon project on steroids or something, I suppose that's fine, but I'd still argue that it was easy to be duped by the Amico for quite a while as they said, presented, and arguably accomplished all the right things early on in the process, so there was really nothing to set off any red flags or be concerned about potential gotchas. It was difficult to ever have the same confidence at any point in the Chameleon project, particularly since step 1 was "we got the Jaguar tooling for the console cases."

Eh I think it was obvoous in 2020 before Covid was a thing that they were struggling. By the time they got around to selling you your trinkets in biodegradable boxes there was even less excuse. 

 

Amico and Chameleon - both focus on color shells and variations before finalizing hardware.

 

Amico and Chameleon - both promise on not DLC and patches. Basically games with no bugs. Simple as that.

 

Amico and Chameleon - both appeal to retrogamers to get that warm nostalgia feeling going. Both said yes we are in talks on many old IPs with very little evidence on any of those going forward. I mean let's just think about how Amico went backwards on this. Both promised physical media.

 

Amico and Chameleon - both ran by arguably a narcissist who couldn't take criticism.

 

Anico and Chameleon - Both crowdfunded.

 

Amico and Chameleon - both had Phil Adam

 

Amico - more money than Chameleon

 

Amico - showed some games but most were ports easily done on Android.

 

Totally not the same at all...

[kevtris]

9 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Other than being associated with deceptions and most likely the end result, there really wasn't a lot that was the same between the two projects in terms of scope and ambition, particularly until some of the more obvious issues presented themselves on the Amico side of things. The Amico did have bigger names attached, far more money behind it, licenses in place, retailers in place, and some type of demonstrations. If instead the argument is that the Amico is like the Chameleon project on steroids or something, I suppose that's fine, but I'd still argue that it was easy to be duped by the Amico for quite a while as they said, presented, and arguably accomplished all the right things early on in the process, so there was really nothing to set off any red flags or be concerned about potential gotchas. It was difficult to ever have the same confidence at any point in the Chameleon project, particularly since step 1 was "we got the Jaguar tooling for the console cases."

They threw up several large red flags to me in early 2020;  specifically they needed to have the design 100% locked down by march-april time frame, and tommy then instigated a redesign of the controller to change out the resistive touch screen with a capacitive one.  And when I made some comments about the production timeline, tommy said I was wrong and didn't know what I was talking about.  That was all I needed to know to understand that the project was doomed in early 2020.

 

Interestingly, in december of 2019, tommy posted a video from their then literal back room office, and hanging on the cube wall was two revisions of the main amico board.  This seems to be about the last time the hardware was actually worked on.  In early 2020, the brakes slammed on the hardware train, and it never restarted.  From 2019 to 2021 it seems they only managed to do one final main board spin and little else.  Something like a month of work stretched out over the course of a year and a half.  Their "system assembly" time lapse video showed just how non-production ready the system was in 2021, with parts being held together with double stick tape, and no shielding.  The controller assembly video was pretty funny too; a lot of it was cut out that would've shown incriminating evidence about the hardware and just how underpowered it was (hint: they attempted to run the entire thing using a single ESP32).

 

I've been through the process of launching a lot of hardware now, and I know how this particular sausage was made and could see from a mile away that tommy was just trying to bullshit his way through the process and didn't really understand what he was doing.  And in the end I was exactly right.

[roots.genoa]

I agree with Bill to the extent that the Chameleon looked way worse and was DOA from the beginning to me. There was no way that concept and economic model would work, and I was pretty sure any crowdfunding campaign would fail. While the Amico, at least early on, looked to have a clearer vision, a more achievable goal (even though I never saw it as being as successful as the other three, just a niche success like the Evercade for instance), and better resources (team and money).

 

That being said, if I probably was still cautiously optimistic in early 2020, I had serious doubts at the time and didn't pre-order (well, maybe if the red model was available and most of all a proper European SKU, I would have - difficult to say in retrospect). Again, at the time I didn't see this venture as similar to the Chameleon, but I started to think it would not end well either, even before COVID.

[PlaysWithWolves]

I think you guys are forgetting that Kennedy got to start with a completely clean slate with Chameleon, despite having basically the same idea with RetroVGS.  And while the Amico should have been easy from an Android box perspective, they designed (then redesigned) the controllers, wanted custom guts and some 60-odd or so LED lights; that is to say unlike the Chameleon, his challenge was mostly in the hardware itself.  Atari was headed down the exact same path until they got an eleventh hour influx of cash. 

Personally, I always knew the Amico wasn't for me but was happy watching the process.  I didn't even care if Tommy Tallarico--who I'd never heard of before--embellished too much, because I knew one day the product would have to stand on its own. A CEO who couldn't take criticism while promising the world just added to a growing sense of something not being right.  I also tend to care less if someone lies to venture capitalists than "Regular Joes" who send pre-order or crowdfunding monies, just because the latter is rife with problems.  

It's basically the "Duck Test". If you don't want to be called a duck then stop looking, sounding and acting like one. And boy was he a loud quacker.

[MrBeefy]

3 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

I agree with Bill to the extent that the Chameleon looked way worse and was DOA from the beginning to me. There was no way that concept and economic model would work, and I was pretty sure any crowdfunding campaign would fail. While the Amico, at least early on, looked to have a clearer vision, a more achievable goal (even though I never saw it as being as successful as the other three, just a niche success like the Evercade for instance), and better resources (team and money).

 

That being said, if I probably was still cautiously optimistic in early 2020, I had serious doubts at the time and didn't pre-order (well, maybe if the red model was available and most of all a proper European SKU, I would have - difficult to say in retrospect). Again, at the time I didn't see this venture as similar to the Chameleon, but I started to think it would not end well either, even before COVID.

Being optimistic is different than ignoring warning signs. I liked the idea (not execution, since execution was different than the idea), but that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore the verbal diarrhea the CEO was spouting.

 

You could tell he thought all families were dumb, and I didn't even have a Switch at the time and could tell he was reaching with talk about that. Not to mention he focused more time and effort on Pat and Ian than the console.

 

They should have been able to shit out a basic android board, but the warning signs in the previous paragraph were signs he had no idea what he was doing or going on. He was all bluster and no show. Which is what the Amico was. All bluster and a no show to the starting line.

[roots.genoa]

Also I must remind you I already knew Tommy Tallarico and had a negative opinion of him, mostly because of his interview in which he (ironically) trashed the Wii. So I was very suspicious regarding his idea of a Wii successor, and for a while I wondered if he had indeed changed, but realized quickly he was the douche I always thought he was. 😉

[MrBeefy]

2 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Also I must remind you I already knew Tommy Tallarico and had a negative opinion of him, mostly because of his interview in which he (ironically) trashed the Wii. So I was very suspicious regarding his idea of a Wii successor, and for a while I wondered if he had indeed changed, but realized quickly he was the douche I always thought he was. 😉

You are just imagining that he trashed the Wii. You must be one of those haters that thinks and spreads the lie that he gave Smash a 2.5 rating.

[Matt_B]

15 hours ago, kevtris said:

The controller assembly video was pretty funny too; a lot of it was cut out that would've shown incriminating evidence about the hardware and just how underpowered it was (hint: they attempted to run the entire thing using a single ESP32).

I'd think that the ESP32 would have been fine if they'd just stuck to recreating the original Intellivision controller in modern hardware, so all it had to do is display a static picture on the touch screen at start-up as the number pad overlay, and then read a bunch of inputs and transmit them to the console over Bluetooth while the game was in play. It's used in a lot of DIY game controller projects, and that shouldn't have been beyond it. I've a sneaking suspicion that that was the original brief when it was selected.

 

They just then saw fit to overload it with a ton of extra functionality because it also had to work like a Wii-mote or a mobile phone for particular games, and that's what made it such a risky technical proposition.

 

Given the arrogance and ignorance Tommy showed towards you, I can only imagine what the conversations with his own engineers were like.

[number6]

Probably of interest to practically no one:

Re:

Former link to abandonment notice for trademark "Intellivision Together Again"

 

Update:

Notice Of Revival filed

And just prior:

Petition to Revive Abandoned Application - Failure to File Timely Statement of Use or Extension Request

Quote

Applicant has firsthand knowledge that the failure to file an SOU or Extension Request by the specific deadline was unintentional, and requests the USPTO to revive the abandoned application.

Hmm...you might recall in a prior post I asked why they replaced their trademark attorney recently. I wonder if there is any connection.

 

#6