Intellivision Amico’s trademark changed to ‘abandoned’

[number6]

4 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

There were at least 2 other attempts at an "independent Amico discussion" with the intent of talking about the thing without the spamming CEO coming in to try and tell people what to think. Another one was about AirConsole, an Amico-like cloud service for cloud gaming. They were whacked at the same time as the big Q&A thread, which itself was renamed "fun Amico discussions," when it was clear that no further questions were ever going to be answered. That thread was tone-policed for positivity like the others. I wouldn't be surprised if someone backed them all up, it was all pretty egregious. 

Not that it matters, but I started my own thread on the trademark objection there in order to keep it away from the other discussions and clarify what had become a rather large pile of misinformation on utube channels.

 

#6

[MrBeefy]

45 minutes ago, Rev said:

This exact statement could of been said in summer of 2020.    Sad

I really could have swore someone was claiming they passed FCC because someone just said they did?

 

Do you remember that.

3 hours ago, SteveTheColecoDude said:

 

Among others, there was an "Amico constructive criticism thread" that was locked. There was an "Independent Amico discussion thread" that was locked. There was an "New Intellivision Amico Info and Discussion Thread" that was locked.

Yup that long one is a hilarious read. TT thought I was going to bash Amico after it was locked. He wanted to "refute" things I might have said on the Amico Oasis channel.

 

Lmao this is some thermal nuclear butthurt from the former CEO that you can tell he hates that thread exists. 

Anyone want to fact check that the pier even existed during that time frame? 🤔

[crade]

22 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

 

Anyone want to fact check that the pier even existed during that time frame? 🤔

Nah sounds legit, I distinctly recall walking along on the beach and being accosted by some guy with a crazy sounding rant asking me to invest in his upcoming console business and how he had no competition and already had a slew of investors.  

[Matt_B]

It reminds me of a guy I used to work with who lived in a cave on a Greek island for a year. When he got bored of it though, he just had to reach out to his father, who was a wealthy banker, and he could go back to living in a mansion again. There's a big difference between that and doing so out of necessity.

[jerseystyle]

1 hour ago, MrBeefy said:

I really could have swore someone was claiming they passed FCC because someone just said they did?

 

Do you remember that.

Yup that long one is a hilarious read. TT thought I was going to bash Amico after it was locked. He wanted to "refute" things I might have said on the Amico Oasis channel.

 

Lmao this is some thermal nuclear butthurt from the former CEO that you can tell he hates that thread exists. 

Anyone want to fact check that the pier even existed during that time frame? 🤔

It was like the hydra- we kept starting new Amico threads (The REAL, then the REAL REAL, then the new, then the memes thread…) and TT got them shut down one after the other. We were flying so close to the sun

[PlaysWithWolves]

1 hour ago, MrBeefy said:

Anyone want to fact check that the pier even existed during that time frame? 

 

Destroyed in '88 and started rebuilding in '90.  He got there in '89. Hmm, I'm starting to wonder... 🤔

 

 

[jerseystyle]

5 minutes ago, PlaysWithWolves said:

 

Destroyed in '88 and started rebuilding in '90.  He got there in '89. Hmm, I'm starting to wonder... 🤔

 

 

It ain’t over till Mr_Me explains to us what TT meant by “pier”.

[ColecoJoe]

23 minutes ago, PlaysWithWolves said:

 

Destroyed in '88 and started rebuilding in '90.  He got there in '89. Hmm, I'm starting to wonder... 🤔

 

 

 

There's also beach curfews and shit oh and HB cops are not the nicest

Edited August 12, 2022 by ColecoJoe

[Cebus Capucinis]

 

Did Tommy pull a LIVE IN A VAN BY THE RIVER?!

[jerseystyle]

38 minutes ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

 

Did Tommy pull a LIVE IN A VAN BY THE RIVER?!

[MrBeefy]

1 hour ago, PlaysWithWolves said:

 

Destroyed in '88 and started rebuilding in '90.  He got there in '89. Hmm, I'm starting to wonder... 🤔

 

 

 

48 minutes ago, ColecoJoe said:

 

There's also beach curfews and shit oh and HB cops are not the nicest

No way! You all are suggesting his story may be less than honest?

 

41 minutes ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

 

Did Tommy pull a LIVE IN A VAN BY THE RIVER?!

Is it da Nile?

[MrTrust]

11 hours ago, mr_me said:

Early on, in the Q&A thread, I personally pointed out things that were said that I thought were wrong.  Sometimes the CEO agreed sometimes he didn't, nobody got upset or acted unreasonably.  I look more at results than talk.

 

So, I've got Asperger's, or ASD or whatever they're calling it now.  I can't really internalize the way other people hear, and use, and process words.  It's tough, because I end up causing offense a lot, and I have difficult empathizing with others for similar reasons.  And it wasn't until recently that I even conceived of this being the case.  I really thought I was normal and everyone else, literally almost everyone else I ever encountered were messed up.  Extraordinary thing to think, I know, but I'm just normal enough that I wasn't able to see it.  Though, I should have noticed something was up after 30+ years of nobody quite seeing things the way I do ever.

 

Point?  Words have semantic freight wholly independent of their technical, strict meaning, which is something you just do not seem to be able to wrap your mind around.  I sympathize, because I struggle with this all the time, and I'm not accusing you have having the same kind of disorder I do, or of being deliberately dishonest or mendacious.  What I am going to say is, dude, when everyone but you gets a different impression of a statement from Intellivison than you do, then guess what; you are the weird one, not them.

 

 

When Intellivison says they're going into production on Amico, what people hear, whether you do or not, is that they are starting to manufacture consoles.  Okay?  Not that they are starting this or that prerequisite process to having the components necessary to start the process of starting to hopefully manufacture Amicos in the future.  It means that somewhere in Wangzhou province, there's conveyor belt spitting out Amicos.  Grab any random sampling of 100 people and 99 of them will say that is what it means.  The fact that you don't hear that, and the Wikipedia article says something different does not change the fact that in Man on the Street World, production = conveyor belt.  Period.

 

So, no, technically speaking.  This whole affair probably did not rise to the level of fraud, or maybe even scam.  Not technically.  What it actually is, though, is snake oil that has been sold on a million different "exciting announcements" and plausibly deniable suggestions, all of which were clearly and obviously intended to give people impressions that were not true.  If you can't see that; it's you who is weird here; not literally everyone else.

[mr_me]

38 minutes ago, MrTrust said:

...

When Intellivison says they're going into production on Amico, what people hear, whether you do or not, is that they are starting to manufacture consoles. 

...

 

This is what I wrote yesterday:

"I'd say that towards the end of 2021, there were some misleading things said about production, ..."

[MrBeefy]

5 minutes ago, mr_me said:

This is what I wrote yesterday:

"I'd say that towards the end of 2021, there were some misleading things said about production, ..."

They've been misleading for way longer than that. Remember they were "on the launchpad", wouldn't use crowdfunding, would refund money, Yada Yada yada...

[+Lathe26]

5 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

...

Anyone want to fact check that the pier even existed during that time frame? 🤔

At this point, it might necessary to confirm whether California even existed during that time frame.

[Cebus Capucinis]

California didn't EXIST per se, but it was definitely on the Launchpad.

[MrTrust]

38 minutes ago, mr_me said:

This is what I wrote yesterday:

"I'd say that towards the end of 2021, there were some misleading things said about production, ..."

 

And towards the end of 2021, when people were, rightly, saying that was bullshit, you were on here correcting all of them and explaining that "production" isn't coterminous with "manufacturing".  Now, I understand that is technically true, and you may have only been saying just for the sake of everyone else's edification, but what it comes across as is you spinning for a bunch of flim-flam men.

 

And, honestly, what in the world have these clowns done to earn this much good will from you or anyone else here?  I mean, at least with the YouTube peanut gallery that Tommy had amassed, he was giving them interviews and driving traffic to their channels.  What's he done for you?  

 

You're not getting your Amico.  Even if, miraculously, you do, it's going to be way more expensive.  It's not going to have Tron and BurgerTime and Something Even Bigger Than Earthworm Jim That They Can't Tell Is About Right Now, or any of the other 100 games that were being "worked on" or were "happening right now".  You're not getting your certificate for being the best time on Skiing out of everyone else who lives in Sheboygan.  You're not getting a controller screen that can do much of anything besides display buttons.  You're not getting a ML-assisted, dynamic handicapping scheme to keep all your games competitive.  You're not getting true motin-controlled Cornhole.  You're not getting so much as a "Thanks for the money, sucker!"

 

They took your money, and a whole bunch of other people's money, and in return gave you a bunch of bullshit, and maybe a plastic envelope with a pretty picture on it and a Chuck E. Cheese token inside. Why bother?

[+Lathe26]

1 hour ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

California didn't EXIST per se, but it was definitely on the Launchpad.

I literally laughed out loud at this!   🤣 😂 

[Rev]

Proof Cali exists. 

 

 

[+the1hatman]

5 hours ago, PlaysWithWolves said:

 

Destroyed in '88 and started rebuilding in '90.  He got there in '89. Hmm, I'm starting to wonder... 🤔

 

 

Hard to say about the timeline. An LA Times article from 1997 makes it sound as if he arrived in 1991 although it could be read as his arrival and start of his work in video games were actually at 2 different times (arrival 89, start date 1991)...

 

Enter Tallarico, who in 1991 was a struggling musician and avid video game fan. Hoping to crack into the recording industry, he left Springfield, Mass., and came to Southern California with $500, a bag of clothing and his keyboard stuffed into his beat-up Pontiac Fiero. A month later, he had no money and no job.

“I was sleeping on the sand at Huntington Beach, eating whatever I could get for free,” Tallarico said. “It was getting pretty bad, then I landed a job selling keyboards at a music shop in Santa Ana.”

 

So that could coincide with the pier being rebuilt by 1991 and him living there after 2 years of trying to get a foothold into the industry. The living on the beach aspect of the story appears to have been around since at least 1997 though, for what it's worth.

 

4 hours ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

 

Did Tommy pull a LIVE IN A VAN BY THE RIVER?!

Looks like it may have been a Pontiac down by the ocean 

[+CurlyQ]

 

"I have what doctors call a little bit of a weight problem."

- Chris Farley, 'Tommy Boy'

 

[MattPilz]

14 hours ago, mr_me said:

The thing with that image is that it shows the company has an FCC grantee code. You have to get that directly from the FCC which can take time.  Once you're in the system the authorised lab handles the certification.

 

How much time does it take? My understanding is you submit the form online and the grantee code is generated immediately, and activated when you pay them $70 (which can also be done online). Perhaps there is some additional review involved, I'm not sure.

 

But also the company on file (Intellivision Entertainment LLC) is technically suspended and inactive as a California business. And Intellivision doesn't have an FRN on file, which seems necessary for most aspects including updating of administrative details.

 

One related example as I've seen the hardware brought up on occasion: Panic Inc, makers of Playdate, had their FRN registered on Dec. 12, 2018. This was five months before they announced Playdate publicly, but after they already had various test units manufactured in a factory as early steps. They submitted their actual applications and had them approved months before accepting pre-orders. It took them 3.5 years of refinement from those early 2018 test units to reach the point of completion and shipment and it is a strikingly more simplistic piece of tech. This is why even if Intellivision does complete their early first production run test units and send some to affiliates, I can't imagine anything else coming from that for a very long time just given the scope of these commitments as seen by other companies. Unless of course the Amico test units from 3 years ago align with those of Playdate and by now they've done all the mastering and refinements, but I didn't quite get that vibe from Phil's email.

Edited August 13, 2022 by MattPilz

[roots.genoa]

3 hours ago, the1hatman said:

So that could coincide with the pier being rebuilt by 1991 and him living there after 2 years of trying to get a foothold into the industry. The living on the beach aspect of the story appears to have been around since at least 1997 though, for what it's worth.

I guess he started to claim he lived on the beach rather than under a pier when he realized it could give him away as a troll. 😉

[mr_me]

3 hours ago, MattPilz said:

How much time does it take? My understanding is you submit the form online and the grantee code is generated immediately, and activated when you pay them $70 (which can also be done online). Perhaps there is some additional review involved, I'm not sure.

 

But also the company on file (Intellivision Entertainment LLC) is technically suspended and inactive as a California business. And Intellivision doesn't have an FRN on file, which seems necessary for most aspects including updating of administrative details.

 

One related example as I've seen the hardware brought up on occasion: Panic Inc, makers of Playdate, had their FRN registered on Dec. 12, 2018. This was five months before they announced Playdate publicly, but after they already had various test units manufactured in a factory as early steps. They submitted their actual applications and had them approved months before accepting pre-orders. It took them 3.5 years of refinement from those early 2018 test units to reach the point of completion and shipment and it is a strikingly more simplistic piece of tech. This is why even if Intellivision does complete their early first production run test units and send some to affiliates, I can't imagine anything else coming from that for a very long time just given the scope of these commitments as seen by other companies. Unless of course the Amico test units from 3 years ago align with those of Playdate and by now they've done all the mastering and refinements, but I didn't quite get that vibe from Phil's email.

The first thing you get is the ten digit FCC registration number (FRN), that's immediate.  Then you can request a grantee code.  It could be quick, in Canada there's a review process to get the equivalent company number. You can change the company name or other details in the FCC system.  You can even transfer the file to a different company in a sale/merger.

 

I suppose you can call anything a test unit, even an early prototype.  In manufacturing and generally speaking because we don't know what's going on with Amico, test units are the result of successful pre-production at the manufacturer.  In pre-production, the manufacturer sets up manufacturing for the product and can even request changes to the product to optimise manufacturing, a process that can be iterative and take time.  After that setup the first test units are produced. If satisfied with the test units they can submit one to an authorised fcc lab.  Certification might take a few weeks or less, depending on their schedule, and the lab would already be familiar with the company and product from preliminary testing.  If they have the components, the manufacturer can begin mass production.  Product could be shipped to customers pretty quickly if manufacturing is local in North America.

 

With Amico I don't think there's any question they announced the product way too early, same goes for preorders.  Although we don't know what happened with their manufacturer, they did give them $1.35M in a deal that went wrong. Playdate preorders are a little different as they're a prepayment in full vs a deposit with balance owing.  Not sure what happened at Playdate but you can make changes anytime during the manufacturing process, even after customer units have shipped. Depending on the changes you might have to resubmit for certification.  There could also be problems with test units.  There could be problems with component supply.

 

 

7 hours ago, MrTrust said:

...

And, honestly, what in the world have these clowns done to earn this much good will from you or anyone else here?  I mean, at least with the YouTube peanut gallery that Tommy had amassed, he was giving them interviews and driving traffic to their channels.  What's he done for you? 

...

It's pretty rare that a youtuber makes much money from their videos.  Some might be working towards that, others do it purely as a hobby.

 

I'm not expecting anything from Amico.  I'm just one guy in this group exchanging ideas and knowledge.  Might not get everything right but that's what discussion is for.  That's what I get out of it.

Edited August 13, 2022 by mr_me

[Wayler]

35 minutes ago, mr_me said:

I'm not expecting anything from Amico.  I'm just one guy in this group exchanging ideas and knowledge. 

The problem is, the ideas and knowledge you are exchanging are proven lies and regurgitated word vomit from TT and the Amico team. 

 

Or has this been already discussed?