Intellivision Amico’s trademark changed to ‘abandoned’

[Hydro Thunder]

Ya know...I'm kind of still in actual literal awe at how dumb and screwed up that company is.

 

Now, I'm not trying to take anything away from these folks because what they've done is fantastic, if not successful... But you know, the PlayDate came out.  Like, it got made, and games come out for it (some of which honestly look hilarious, innovative, fun, etc though I don't own one, bit pricey for me personally for what it is).  It had no Intellivison back catalogue, no fancy salesperson like TT at least first appeared to be.  And the PlayDate has been out for quite some time.  And it downloads games and apps.  And gets updates.  And has multiple developers.

 

And the Sinden Light guns came out.  Sinden is ONE GUY.  His name is Andy.  He had a great idea, worked it out, and got the product made.  And eventually into the hands of consumers.  He put in major effort, even going to the manufacturing plant in person regularly to oversee etc.  And then he got to supply the tech to Arcade1Up for some cabs, and they're still selling.

 

And the iiRcade entire home arcade cabinet got released, got placed in Best Buys, sold for a few years.  TBH I don't even know if it was a great idea (love mine but as a market thing, deeply questionable).  I won't go into the politics of the owner of the company which is now bankrupt, but they sold thousands of full sized arcade machines, it had well over 200 games for it, they got this thing into consumers' hands.  Yes there are tons of complaints now and always were...but the THING GOT MADE.  Sold.  Played.  And the owner was, to understate matters, not what I would call a person with good business sense.  At all.  

 

How do you screw up this system to the full FUBAR level?  I know, I know...the answer and blueprint is do everything as badly as they did, step by step.  You almost literally could not do any worse.  Like how do you lose that much money, make that many people upset at you, and at no point deliver any actual hardware / product that anyone can play or enjoy?  Not one, not a single end user.  Nothing.  

 

Just incredible.

[MrBeefy]

7 hours ago, Hydro Thunder said:

Ya know...I'm kind of still in actual literal awe at how dumb and screwed up that company is.

 

Now, I'm not trying to take anything away from these folks because what they've done is fantastic, if not successful... But you know, the PlayDate came out.  Like, it got made, and games come out for it (some of which honestly look hilarious, innovative, fun, etc though I don't own one, bit pricey for me personally for what it is).  It had no Intellivison back catalogue, no fancy salesperson like TT at least first appeared to be.  And the PlayDate has been out for quite some time.  And it downloads games and apps.  And gets updates.  And has multiple developers.

 

And the Sinden Light guns came out.  Sinden is ONE GUY.  His name is Andy.  He had a great idea, worked it out, and got the product made.  And eventually into the hands of consumers.  He put in major effort, even going to the manufacturing plant in person regularly to oversee etc.  And then he got to supply the tech to Arcade1Up for some cabs, and they're still selling.

 

And the iiRcade entire home arcade cabinet got released, got placed in Best Buys, sold for a few years.  TBH I don't even know if it was a great idea (love mine but as a market thing, deeply questionable).  I won't go into the politics of the owner of the company which is now bankrupt, but they sold thousands of full sized arcade machines, it had well over 200 games for it, they got this thing into consumers' hands.  Yes there are tons of complaints now and always were...but the THING GOT MADE.  Sold.  Played.  And the owner was, to understate matters, not what I would call a person with good business sense.  At all.  

 

How do you screw up this system to the full FUBAR level?  I know, I know...the answer and blueprint is do everything as badly as they did, step by step.  You almost literally could not do any worse.  Like how do you lose that much money, make that many people upset at you, and at no point deliver any actual hardware / product that anyone can play or enjoy?  Not one, not a single end user.  Nothing.  

 

Just incredible.

I think it comes down to they hoped to sell it off before they had to make anything. They still don't have many of the things finished that were supposedly ready for 2020 launch. Like how they are selling a demo of 1 level of Side Swipers for $5 (with the promise of free updates as they get more done).

 

There was word recently that they now want to open Amico up to any indie developers. In the beginning they wanted established studios. Well they probably needed established German game studios to use the grant money on. They used grants to make all these games/demos and raised money, while not following through with anything.

 

It was I think mid-2021 in which they posted the job to help get the OS running on the hardware. The steps needed to make this happen were not taken in late 2019 or early 2020 to make it happen.

 

It wasn't covid and shortages that caused a delay. The delay was them dragging their feet because they wanted bailed out. Only after not getting bailed out did they start to do things like get thebOS finished. Which if my memory serves that job posting was after their second delay.

 

They had an opportunity to get parts sourced and the console made in February 2020, to where they could still sell it at $250 and make around $100 in profit per console.

 

They made a habit of doing just enough to give the appearances they were working, but not following through to get it done. Enough work to show game demos. What went from 35 games at launch is now two games and a high priced demo. Enough work to show an apk on a random Android board, but not finished on Amico hardware. Hardware designed but no parts ordered or finished certifications. They lost their contract for manufacturing because they didn't meet their milestones. It was all half assed. Why?

 

The only reason why is they never planned to finish it before selling to someone else. I'd say 95% or higher of their videos were to try and attract buyers or dumb investors, and not consumers. They knew no one wanted to buy the product (they had the numbers showing only 6000). Better to sell it off than close shop and get nothing.

 

Covid and part shortages isn't the reason. If it was you wouldn't have needed random YTers to test for the past year as it would have still be done in 2019 or 2020. More games would be complete as they don't need random chips or people in am office. The OS would have been ready to go before the Fundable campaign. They will say covid and supply chain, but that would literally only affect hardware. They still did not have complete games, OS/firmware, or backend finished. They wanted the appearance of having their stuff together so a buyer would think it was ready to go.

 

 

 

In other news. Karl Jobst mentions @Tommy Tallarico

 

 

[mr_me]

The lead programmer for the console firmware has been there since at least early 2019 if not 2018, he could have probably used more help.  A consultant did the initial version of the controller firmware by 2019.  They hired a firmware programmer in 2019 to do the second version of the controller.  And they've had other programmers on staff since 2018.  They ran out of money in early 2022, so that staff who worked on hardware, firmware, backend systems, testing are gone.  

 

Even before the pandemic they were behind schedule so going to manufacturing in winter/spring 2020 wouldn't have been possible.  In fact they lost over a million dollars in a manufacturing contract, part of the company mismanagement.

 

Not all game development had access to German grant money, e.g. Amico Missile Command, Astrosmash, Tank Battle, Back Talk Party, Spades, Blank Slate, Liar's Dice, Cloudy Mountain, Breakout are some examples that would have been done with investor and developer funding.  Amico Home is a different platform from Amico and can have a different game library.  I always thought sharing the controller api would have been a good idea, independent ideas for local multiplayer games using controller displays.

Edited December 2, 2023 by mr_me

[Wayler]

On 11/29/2023 at 1:58 AM, MrBeefy said:

Like use this reddit fan for example. 

I'm sure even our resident mr_me agrees with this sentiment. It's why he won't ever say the company or Tommy did wrong. THEY WERE ASKING FOR IT! Just like him accusing his band of committing a crime he committed was, them asking for it! 

As that the reddit fan in question and mr_me are the same person, I'm pretty sure he agrees with his own sentiment that Tommy is just a funny guy. 

[MattPilz]

13 hours ago, Hydro Thunder said:

And the PlayDate has been out for quite some time.  And it downloads games and apps.  And gets updates.  And has multiple developers.

I own one and it's a great throwback to the 80s Gameboy days. Rather than promising the world they did the opposite and worked the low tech specs and limitations directly into their marketing, self-mocking itself even. It worked and sold 4x more in its first day than what Amico had received in $100 deposits in three years, despite also costing as much as Amico's original announced price. They have done incredible things to make development for it accessible, with impressive online web tools for novice developers and IDE options for advanced coders. Making it as fun to develop for as it is to play on. And every month they send out a "What's New!" email that showcases a lot of new content. Just got the update this week with 10 new promoted (and affordable) games in it.

 

 

First Impressions of Amico Home

 

Apologies in advance for the long ramblings to come, just want to share my overall thoughts while fresh in mind. Yesterday I finally had a chance to test Amico Home with a friend. We used a Note 9 and Note 10+ for the controllers and a Tab A7 for the screen. Both of us are technically savvy users. And it was not easy to get going nor particularly entertaining. I redeemed Astrosmash through the Amico Club website and Google Play. After getting the controller apps on the phones and the Home app on the tablet, and then everything tied to the same WiFI and updated, I tried connecting. First it detected two different Home instances and then only allowed one of us to connect. After reopening it on my phone I was able to finally see the tablet's Home app from the controller.

 

I kept looking down at the controller like I would on Wii-U, expecting the mini touchscreen to compliment or mirror the tablet's screen. But the controller app screen has its own menu interface entirely unrelated to what's on the Home screen, and many of the options didn't seem to have any functionality. I didn't realize that while trying to navigate the controller menu using the on-screen controllers, it was doing different things on the Home app. The digital directional pad was confusing to navigate. I assumed rotating it continuously clockwise would iterate downward through all the menu options, and counterclockwise would iterate back up to the top similar to any other wheel/potentiometer type control I've ever used. Instead it only checked the physical position of your finger and if it was above the midway point of the wheel it'd go "up" on the screen and otherwise would go "down" but also added "left" and "right" into it depending on your finger's placement. Leading to a very chaotic menu navigation. I realized the proper way was to just tap the invisible quadrant on that spinner wheel to navigate a given direction. Pressing in on the middle of the directional pad didn't have any affect despite also being another "button" to press (this would've made sense to use as a confirm button). But if I'm able to spin the directional disc I'd expect the direction of spin to equate to direction of menu navigation, but I digress.

 

We also both found there were flaws with the automatic orientation of the controller's "screen" that would generally get fixed to portrait or landscape based on how it was when we launched the app, even though it is meant to be dynamically changeable including in game. I did get mine to alter a few times when testing, but not consistently. Astrosmash was not showing up under "My Games" in Amico Home so I had to click on it to "Buy" again. This took me back out to Google Play, which since I had already activated it apparently I needed to then install it direct from Google Play. After that, I had to tab back into Amico Home but it had disconnected both of our controllers and we needed to reestablish a connection. It still wasn't appearing under My Games so maybe I needed to do a force restart, or just some other bug. But I was able to finally launch the game from Amico Home. What I didn't try doing is launching it directly from my dock or from the Google Play app, but since Amico Home disconnected when I switched away from it I assume no controls would be possible without launching it from within the Home app--despite needing to navigate out of the app just to install and so on.

 

The game itself felt very bare-bones. There is no online score system, which would've been a minimal effort addition to provide a greater reason to replay the game. 12 years ago I developed a simple freebie app for a smart TV and the inclusion of a daily/weekly/monthly high score system has kept the game competitive all these years later (to the tune of millions of continual plays). Every game on Amico was originally promoted as including an online high score bracket; from a technical perspective it is not a complicated process. For the $15 valuation and a modern take, I had also expected more power-ups. You are limited to only the single fire or double-fire shot, shield and nuke. I've played many cooperative space shooters and part of the fun is discovery of new power-ups and upgrades (Gradius and even the Chicken Invaders series are great fun due to the power-up diversity). Moving around felt sluggish to us and with no tactile feel for the buttons it was easy to slip off the directional pad or forget about the hyperspace boost. I have not played the remade Shark! Shark! yet but knowing they completely removed the dash functionality so you can only drift aimlessly around using the directional pad does not sound fun to me and robs the game of its core mechanic.

 

In the end we reached level 4 or 5, died, and drifted back to Steam to play a bundle of funny co-op titles that cost $10 for the entire pack, and then to Mario Wonder on Switch. I'll play through Astrosmash again on my own eventually but without easy support for common controllers I'm not keen on the touch controls at all. I don't think the two released titles or the few upcoming ones, including the one level concept Side Swipers, will be enough to hold anyone's interest very long after the fatigue of setting it all up.

[jerseystyle]

5 minutes ago, MattPilz said:

I own one and it's a great throwback to the 80s Gameboy days. Rather than promising the world they did the opposite and worked the low tech specs and limitations directly into their marketing, self-mocking itself even. It worked and sold 4x more in its first day than what Amico had received in $100 deposits in three years, despite also costing as much as Amico's original announced price. They have done incredible things to make development for it accessible, with impressive online web tools for novice developers and IDE options for advanced coders. Making it as fun to develop for as it is to play on. And every month they send out a "What's New!" email that showcases a lot of new content. Just got the update this week with 10 new promoted (and affordable) games in it.

 

 

First Impressions of Amico Home

 

Apologies in advance for the long ramblings to come, just want to share my overall thoughts while fresh in mind. Yesterday I finally had a chance to test Amico Home with a friend. We used a Note 9 and Note 10+ for the controllers and a Tab A7 for the screen. Both of us are technically savvy users. And it was not easy to get going nor particularly entertaining. I redeemed Astrosmash through the Amico Club website and Google Play. After getting the controller apps on the phones and the Home app on the tablet, and then everything tied to the same WiFI and updated, I tried connecting. First it detected two different Home instances and then only allowed one of us to connect. After reopening it on my phone I was able to finally see the tablet's Home app from the controller.

 

I kept looking down at the controller like I would on Wii-U, expecting the mini touchscreen to compliment or mirror the tablet's screen. But the controller app screen has its own menu interface entirely unrelated to what's on the Home screen, and many of the options didn't seem to have any functionality. I didn't realize that while trying to navigate the controller menu using the on-screen controllers, it was doing different things on the Home app. The digital directional pad was confusing to navigate. I assumed rotating it continuously clockwise would iterate downward through all the menu options, and counterclockwise would iterate back up to the top similar to any other wheel/potentiometer type control I've ever used. Instead it only checked the physical position of your finger and if it was above the midway point of the wheel it'd go "up" on the screen and otherwise would go "down" but also added "left" and "right" into it depending on your finger's placement. Leading to a very chaotic menu navigation. I realized the proper way was to just tap the invisible quadrant on that spinner wheel to navigate a given direction. Pressing in on the middle of the directional pad didn't have any affect despite also being another "button" to press (this would've made sense to use as a confirm button). But if I'm able to spin the directional disc I'd expect the direction of spin to equate to direction of menu navigation, but I digress.

 

We also both found there were flaws with the automatic orientation of the controller's "screen" that would generally get fixed to portrait or landscape based on how it was when we launched the app, even though it is meant to be dynamically changeable including in game. I did get mine to alter a few times when testing, but not consistently. Astrosmash was not showing up under "My Games" in Amico Home so I had to click on it to "Buy" again. This took me back out to Google Play, which since I had already activated it apparently I needed to then install it direct from Google Play. After that, I had to tab back into Amico Home but it had disconnected both of our controllers and we needed to reestablish a connection. It still wasn't appearing under My Games so maybe I needed to do a force restart, or just some other bug. But I was able to finally launch the game from Amico Home. What I didn't try doing is launching it directly from my dock or from the Google Play app, but since Amico Home disconnected when I switched away from it I assume no controls would be possible without launching it from within the Home app--despite needing to navigate out of the app just to install and so on.

 

The game itself felt very bare-bones. There is no online score system, which would've been a minimal effort addition to provide a greater reason to replay the game. 12 years ago I developed a simple freebie app for a smart TV and the inclusion of a daily/weekly/monthly high score system has kept the game competitive all these years later (to the tune of millions of continual plays). Every game on Amico was originally promoted as including an online high score bracket; from a technical perspective it is not a complicated process. For the $15 valuation and a modern take, I had also expected more power-ups. You are limited to only the single fire or double-fire shot, shield and nuke. I've played many cooperative space shooters and part of the fun is discovery of new power-ups and upgrades (Gradius and even the Chicken Invaders series are great fun due to the power-up diversity). Moving around felt sluggish to us and with no tactile feel for the buttons it was easy to slip off the directional pad or forget about the hyperspace boost. I have not played the remade Shark! Shark! yet but knowing they completely removed the dash functionality so you can only drift aimlessly around using the directional pad does not sound fun to me and robs the game of its core mechanic.

 

In the end we reached level 4 or 5, died, and drifted back to Steam to play a bundle of funny co-op titles that cost $10 for the entire pack, and then to Mario Wonder on Switch. I'll play through Astrosmash again on my own eventually but without easy support for common controllers I'm not keen on the touch controls at all. I don't think the two released titles or the few upcoming ones, including the one level concept Side Swipers, will be enough to hold anyone's interest very long after the fatigue of setting it all up.

Thanks for the review. Amico Home looks like hot garbage and anyone who is involved should be embarrassed. 

[MrBeefy]

20 hours ago, Wayler said:

As that the reddit fan in question and mr_me are the same person, I'm pretty sure he agrees with his own sentiment that Tommy is just a funny guy. 

17 hours ago, MattPilz said:

I own one and it's a great throwback to the 80s Gameboy days. Rather than promising the world they did the opposite and worked the low tech specs and limitations directly into their marketing, self-mocking itself even. It worked and sold 4x more in its first day than what Amico had received in $100 deposits in three years, despite also costing as much as Amico's original announced price. They have done incredible things to make development for it accessible, with impressive online web tools for novice developers and IDE options for advanced coders. Making it as fun to develop for as it is to play on. And every month they send out a "What's New!" email that showcases a lot of new content. Just got the update this week with 10 new promoted (and affordable) games in it.

 

 

First Impressions of Amico Home

 

Apologies in advance for the long ramblings to come, just want to share my overall thoughts while fresh in mind. Yesterday I finally had a chance to test Amico Home with a friend. We used a Note 9 and Note 10+ for the controllers and a Tab A7 for the screen. Both of us are technically savvy users. And it was not easy to get going nor particularly entertaining. I redeemed Astrosmash through the Amico Club website and Google Play. After getting the controller apps on the phones and the Home app on the tablet, and then everything tied to the same WiFI and updated, I tried connecting. First it detected two different Home instances and then only allowed one of us to connect. After reopening it on my phone I was able to finally see the tablet's Home app from the controller.

 

I kept looking down at the controller like I would on Wii-U, expecting the mini touchscreen to compliment or mirror the tablet's screen. But the controller app screen has its own menu interface entirely unrelated to what's on the Home screen, and many of the options didn't seem to have any functionality. I didn't realize that while trying to navigate the controller menu using the on-screen controllers, it was doing different things on the Home app. The digital directional pad was confusing to navigate. I assumed rotating it continuously clockwise would iterate downward through all the menu options, and counterclockwise would iterate back up to the top similar to any other wheel/potentiometer type control I've ever used. Instead it only checked the physical position of your finger and if it was above the midway point of the wheel it'd go "up" on the screen and otherwise would go "down" but also added "left" and "right" into it depending on your finger's placement. Leading to a very chaotic menu navigation. I realized the proper way was to just tap the invisible quadrant on that spinner wheel to navigate a given direction. Pressing in on the middle of the directional pad didn't have any affect despite also being another "button" to press (this would've made sense to use as a confirm button). But if I'm able to spin the directional disc I'd expect the direction of spin to equate to direction of menu navigation, but I digress.

 

We also both found there were flaws with the automatic orientation of the controller's "screen" that would generally get fixed to portrait or landscape based on how it was when we launched the app, even though it is meant to be dynamically changeable including in game. I did get mine to alter a few times when testing, but not consistently. Astrosmash was not showing up under "My Games" in Amico Home so I had to click on it to "Buy" again. This took me back out to Google Play, which since I had already activated it apparently I needed to then install it direct from Google Play. After that, I had to tab back into Amico Home but it had disconnected both of our controllers and we needed to reestablish a connection. It still wasn't appearing under My Games so maybe I needed to do a force restart, or just some other bug. But I was able to finally launch the game from Amico Home. What I didn't try doing is launching it directly from my dock or from the Google Play app, but since Amico Home disconnected when I switched away from it I assume no controls would be possible without launching it from within the Home app--despite needing to navigate out of the app just to install and so on.

 

The game itself felt very bare-bones. There is no online score system, which would've been a minimal effort addition to provide a greater reason to replay the game. 12 years ago I developed a simple freebie app for a smart TV and the inclusion of a daily/weekly/monthly high score system has kept the game competitive all these years later (to the tune of millions of continual plays). Every game on Amico was originally promoted as including an online high score bracket; from a technical perspective it is not a complicated process. For the $15 valuation and a modern take, I had also expected more power-ups. You are limited to only the single fire or double-fire shot, shield and nuke. I've played many cooperative space shooters and part of the fun is discovery of new power-ups and upgrades (Gradius and even the Chicken Invaders series are great fun due to the power-up diversity). Moving around felt sluggish to us and with no tactile feel for the buttons it was easy to slip off the directional pad or forget about the hyperspace boost. I have not played the remade Shark! Shark! yet but knowing they completely removed the dash functionality so you can only drift aimlessly around using the directional pad does not sound fun to me and robs the game of its core mechanic.

 

In the end we reached level 4 or 5, died, and drifted back to Steam to play a bundle of funny co-op titles that cost $10 for the entire pack, and then to Mario Wonder on Switch. I'll play through Astrosmash again on my own eventually but without easy support for common controllers I'm not keen on the touch controls at all. I don't think the two released titles or the few upcoming ones, including the one level concept Side Swipers, will be enough to hold anyone's interest very long after the fatigue of setting it all up.

Anyone remember when Tommy claimed more knew and cared about them than the Panic Playdate? I 'member.

 

That experience sounds horrid. I also find it interesting that they've removed power ups. I know they showed power ups like a laser shooting out. I remember because it seemed very similar to the power ups from the Mike Kennedy Gen2 games.

 

If they were expecting to make any real sales they would have released their trash on Google Play itself. This is just a way to act like they are doing something, not refund people, and to say they released something before closing shop, paying themselves off, and selling the bones of whats left.

 

Well at least I would not be surprised to see the games sold off more than what they are now. Night Stalker is the only IP that might have any real name recognition. 

 

17 hours ago, jerseystyle said:

Thanks for the review. Amico Home looks like hot garbage and anyone who is involved should be embarrassed. 

They aren't embarrassed. They made bank off using grants and crowdfunding money. They pulled down salaries for a whole 3 years time when they knew it was dead in the water. This really summarizes Amico from Intellivision's side.

As I noted by Amicolytes in this thread and elsewhere. If they had money taken THEY WERE ASKING FOR IT! 

 

🤡🤡

[Matt_B]

The Amico did sell considerably better than the PlayDate if you count those 100,000 purchase orders though. 😄

[roots.genoa]

2 hours ago, Matt_B said:

The Amico did sell considerably better than the PlayDate if you count those 100,000 purchase orders though. 😄

And what about the 3 billions interested customers?! 😤

[MGG]

I did as unbiased a review as I could on this showing everything, warts and all.  Hopefully it helps people decide if they want to try it or not before dropping US$15 per game on this.  Long story short though, if you want to play Astrosmash, get it on Steam. Missile Command is actually pretty good with the trackpad controls, although I'd like it more at $10.

 

 

[mr_me]

On 12/3/2023 at 9:55 AM, MrBeefy said:

...

Well at least I would not be surprised to see the games sold off more than what they are now. Night Stalker is the only IP that might have any real name recognition. 

...

 

They aren't embarrassed. They made bank off using grants and crowdfunding money. They pulled down salaries for a whole 3 years time when they knew it was dead in the water. This really summarizes Amico from Intellivision's side.

...

Not sure if Amico Night Stalker even belongs to them.  It may have been developer funded.

 

According to the financial disclosure shared in 2022, only two of the four founding partners had salaried positions among 50+ employees.  Those two salaries paid in 2020 and 2021, company running out of cash in 2022, with the new CEO being paid in shares.  Those salaries were offset by personal equity investments, outstanding loan principal (no interest paid according to the disclosure), and other personal financial commitments.

 

German grant money went to German developers.  They did sell Amico Shark Shark,  unknown if any cash involved in the terms, insignificant to what they owe anyway.

[MrBeefy]

Who is ready for some good Intelly "stick photos"?

 

I'm feeling like some pizza....

[MrBeefy]

This is so cool!

 

Who doesn't love having Gino's pizza as a skin for their controller?!

 

[Flojomojo]

On 4/27/2023 at 8:08 AM, Rowsdower70 said:

This is the environment Tommy demanded be curated for him.   He tried to have me removed as a Moderator of "Intellivision Invasion" facebook group because we refused to censor our users like AtariAge gladly did for them.   We kindly invited the entire Amico team to leave the group, and talk of Amico was banned completely (and still is.)  It wasn't hard, we didn't lose members (just the handful of Amico shills that were never Intellivision fans to begin with.) 

Tommy's response to them being booted out, I kid you not...  "The haters win again" 

A friend just quoted this to me -- it's bizarre but not surprising considering what we've seen from @Tommy Tallarico, who hasn't been around much lately. There were a whole bunch of Amico-only shills here, too. They only posted in that one crazy thread, and when their leader went away, so did they.

 

WHO WERE THEY?

 

They probably weren't fans of the 1979 Mattel Intellivision. Intellivision Amico hadn't done enough to justify such a following, except for the gauzy promises of making video games for families and stuff. 

 

Do you think they were paid off by the company to astroturf here? To give the impression that there was a rabid base of hungry Amico consumers? 

[Wayler]

Hmm. To open the threads and posts to be transparent, to learn and remember how to not let this happen again vs hide everything because it makes the site look stupid and complicit. Yea, easy to see how the scales go in this one. So stupid. 

[MarioMan88]

On 12/14/2023 at 6:24 PM, Flojomojo said:

A friend just quoted this to me -- it's bizarre but not surprising considering what we've seen from @Tommy Tallarico, who hasn't been around much lately. There were a whole bunch of Amico-only shills here, too. They only posted in that one crazy thread, and when their leader went away, so did they.

 

WHO WERE THEY?

 

They probably weren't fans of the 1979 Mattel Intellivision. Intellivision Amico hadn't done enough to justify such a following, except for the gauzy promises of making video games for families and stuff. 

 

Do you think they were paid off by the company to astroturf here? To give the impression that there was a rabid base of hungry Amico consumers? 

Hard to say but I would imagine they were paid in “promises”. I can see TT puffing the newly registered rabid fan base with allll sorts of things from money, shares of company to even job titles. People around here know, but are unwilling to speak on it.

 

I finally registered on AtariAge because of TT. My fondness for the original Intellivision led me to believe this revival would be a fun retro reimagined system my brother and I could pick up and play. Maybe even play with my kids.

 

Literally none of what TT promised non shills like myself came true. So it is fascinating to speculate on what he actually told the shills who showed up in full force. I vividly remember Grugde fella describing in painstaking detail about some Amico bag. Maybe he was an actual paid shill…that or he was bored beyond belief.

[Bill Loguidice]

A big part of it too I'm sure was wanting to get in on something at the ground floor and be part of a unique community versus the larger mainstream ones that are out there for Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PC. It was also a play for the same type of people, us basically, who are still active enthusiasts for one or more retro platforms, but moreso the tiny subset who also eschew most, if not all, modern platforms. It was telling how tribal things got with an us versus them mentality, when it was Amico fanboys against the VCS, a battle not of titans, but of relative fleas, and how even that backfired spectacularly.

 

The hypothetical book on the disaster would not only be a fascinating study of how not to do business, but also the psychology of the most ardent fans.

[rayik]

Is there anything at all that Tommy Tallerico said that was actually true about the Amico?  Interesting challenge if someone wants to take it up  

 

Amico games can only be experienced with the Amico controller

Simple for grandma to set up and play

Karma engine to balance gameplay for different skill levels

Amico games are not mobile games

50 hand picked developers working on games

20 games at launch with 40 to follow soon

All games at least 7 out of 10 

 

And on and on and on

 

Amazing all that BS had moderator support here

[roots.genoa]

2 hours ago, MarioMan88 said:

Hard to say but I would imagine they were paid in “promises”.

To be fair, in terms of promises, Tommy was loaded. 😎

 

2 hours ago, MarioMan88 said:

I vividly remember Grugde fella describing in painstaking detail about some Amico bag. Maybe he was an actual paid shill…that or he was bored beyond belief.

Yeah, I think Grudge has been strongly suspected to be an employee, actually.

[MrBeefy]

3 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

To be fair, in terms of promises, Tommy was loaded. 😎

 

Yeah, I think Grudge has been strongly suspected to be an employee, actually.

Yup. He ran the corporate reddit and he disappeared as mod after they fired basically everyone. It is pretty easy to see him astroturfing. They astroturfed on Reddit to having employees act like they weren't. I think it was RXScram or whatever who almost seemed to accidently out themselves as an employee here. It has been a while since I looked at that.

 

This does remind me of something.

@Albert any thoughts on reinstating the old threads as read only now that Amico Home has released?

Quote

When the Amico actually ships, I'll create a new Amico forum so people can discuss the console and games.  The decision to remove the Amico forum was entirely my own, although I have had input from various moderators, all of whom agreed removing the Amico forum was the best decision at this time.  When I create a new Amico forum, it's possible at that point I will also put the old forum up as a read-only archive. 

I know carts are still being worked on. I was thinking after that got wrapped up.

[Matt_B]

Amico Home running on a Rasberry Pi:

Now, all that's left is to install the Pi in a footbath and the consoles will be ready to ship!

[Flojomojo]

I just finished watching this entertaining video. Some new info in here I hadn’t heard before. 

 

[MrBeefy]

3 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

I just finished watching this entertaining video. Some new info in here I hadn’t heard before. 

 

It's just a reminder as to how innept and big a liar @Tommy Tallarico was. What was sad is how many were too stupid to look beyond it, because they got excited over a possible return of a pixilated running man.

 

Before it got nuked for the 3rd time, I had probably the most conservative list of games being worked on compared to other places. And even most of the ones I had weren't being worked on.

Quote

Confirmed games being worked on: 

 

Still being worked on:

"Animal Fighting Game"

Armor Battle/Tank game/Combat?

Asteroids

Astrosmash

Auto Racing

BackTalk Party "Ice Cream Recording game"

BINGO

Bi-Planes

BurgerTime

Breakout

B17 Bomber

"Carnival game" person shot out of a cannon game

Cloudy Mountain

Cornhole

Dynablaster "Bombmerman"

Farkle

IntellivisionPool

Missile Command

Moon Patrol: The Milky Way Chronicles

Night Stalker

Nitro Derby

PONG

"Running Man Game"

Shark! Shark!

Skiing

Slot Racers?  SideSwipers

The Big Blue? / Ecco? name unconfirmed

ToeJam & Earl

 

Questionable status (games started but maybe not finished):

Snafoo (formerly SNAFU) [status alluded to as not going as planned]

Frog Bog [mentioned as possible pack in but not referenced recently]

 

Completed games being ported/updated/reworked:

Evel Knieval (Google Play $1.99, iOS $0.00) - Game Review [Footage may have been from mobile version and may not represent reworked Amico version]

Emoji Charades (Google Play, iOS, Steam $9.99 ) - Game Review [Footage may have been from mobile version and may not represent reworked Amico version.]

 

Other:

Earthworm Jim (shown Jim moving animation, https://youtu.be/CaogPd_Eu40)

 

Other interesting things:

Will include the jzintv emulator. It has not been specified as in how it will work. Original Intellivision games not to be released until 2021. Will most likely come in 'bundles' with multiple games.

It is pretty obvious what they did was dig demos out of the dumpster or beg for brief demos or game ideas to show off. "Working on for Tommy," meant he talked about it. A couple of the people Slopes talked to basically have confirmed that.

 

The fact they don't have all these games ready to go, but have controller app skin options just shows how stupid and misaligned their priorities are.

[SteveTheColecoDude]

6 hours ago, rayik said:

Is there anything at all that Tommy Tallerico said that was actually true about the Amico?  Interesting challenge if someone wants to take it up  

 

Amico games can only be experienced with the Amico controller

Simple for grandma to set up and play

Karma engine to balance gameplay for different skill levels

Amico games are not mobile games

50 hand picked developers working on games

20 games at launch with 40 to follow soon

All games at least 7 out of 10 

 

And on and on and on

 

Amazing all that BS had moderator support here

 

Tommy once said that if they put out gameplay videos people will think they look like mobile games that suck.

 

 

So he was right about one thing at least.

[MrBeefy]

1 hour ago, SteveTheColecoDude said:

 

Tommy once said that if they put out gameplay videos people will think they look like mobile games that suck.

So he was right about one thing at least.

Well they needed complete games to show off too.

 

Think about how those Deep Dives were suppose to be of completed games. Then Battle Tanks Tanks Armor happened. 🤣

 

Really people have earned their willy wonky Amico Home experience to keep supporting them after blatant theft of other IPs. Don't forget about the Star Fox text in Moon Patrol too.