He thinks a worldwide Youtuber unveiling is where it’s at.
He could have done that a year ago. No need to wait til the day of release.
Dummy Tallarico showed off boxes.
And the same single-screen game (bite-sized gameplay!) that still isn’t finished after 20 months, Astrosmash:
Looks like the much hyped LED lights are non functional.
The missing chips have been found! Amico manufacturing to start imminently! No more delays! Christmas is saved!
FUCK I’m old. The time from the IGN retro review (2003) of Intellivision’s AstroSmash to today is almost the same time as original Intellivision to then.
For the first 7 minutes of the video they just show the Crayola Experience video as validation despite the whole thing behind an astroturf setup with Amico YTers and their friends and family.
It’s looking more and more like an investment scam.
Who is the large fellow stuck in the corner? What is his role besides to eat chips?
This thing is just crazy. Are the other two dudes actually playing Astrosmash? Is that a Space Invaders kind of game?
Not joking: AstroSmash was created when they (the original Intellivision and Mattel in the 70s-80s) didn’t get the Space Invaders license. I played and loved the 2600 version and it was frenetic.
They are selling ports of games from 1982 with the spin that they are “simple” gameplay experiences without any gameplay innovations that have been staples of indie and mobile games in the last 4 decades. Tommy hates pixelated graphics for some reason so where his shoestring budget allows and makes charming pixelated games into glossy artless Flash-style games with smoothed over graphics. AstroSmash and Finnegan Fox are examples of this.
Note: the Amico AstroSmash is a single-screen game that remains unfinished after 20+ months.
I am completely saying this with a straight face: Tommy really believes “moms and grandparents today” are too simple to figure out gameplay and UI conventions established in the last 40 years and believes after 1.5+ years of coronavirus pandemic, getting people together in close quarters physically is the way to pitch a 2013 Android set top box that plays Android game ports.
It’s the sanitized “family friendly” stuff that right-wing evangelicals and purveyors of Christian rock, Christian music etc believe in and this thing, if it ever launches and isn’t a money laundering grifting scheme to enrich their own pockets without launching (like the Infinium Phantom and Coleco Chameleon), it will be destroyed before it sells on OAN/Fox News infomercials to the its base that buys the huge rip off of the Freedom Phone.
I thought that was a woman in the background but it appears to be RetroManSven in from the first batch of photos.
The two are actually watching uninterrupted the same astroturf video Tommy Tallarico and his Internet goon squad staged (it was full of friends and employee families) last month at a Crayola learning centre type bingo hall and using it as “evidence the public wants his junky new console he can’t get produced.”
Hans is one of the many execs worldwide (Amico has European, Middle east and Japan) for some inexplicable reason and brags all of his employees have 6 figure salaries.
After building his brand as a game reviewer (on various G4 TV shows with Victor Lucas) that always wanted the most realistic 3D graphics, gore, sex and violence where he regularly mocked Nintendo games for being kiddy, he has done an aboutface later in life launching this console. He calls Nintendo seller of “child rape” games for their inclusion of the Japanese visual novel type games.
So he’s launching this Amico console into a world where he ignores the existence of the Nintendo Switch and all Nintendo’s legacy brands (Mario, Pokemon etc. etc.) .
What’s TRIPLY strange in Tommy Tallarico’s mind are all the fake relationships he builds and claims to have built with big visionary industry figures. He resents not getting a credit for doing early sound preproduction work on Retro Studio’s Metroid Prime but he routinely now claims he has been buddy-buddy with Miyamoto himself where he learned Nintendo game design secrets from his close personal friend Shigeru Miyamoto which have been applied to the ugly reskinning of a $20 indie platformer “Fox n’ Forests” turning it into an easier “Finnegan Fox” - the flatship platformer for Amico.
German translated summary from Facebook:
Soft launch confirmed
Founders and VIPS targeted this year
Physical media is RFID cards
Physical media will include 3 'goodies' for collectors
Physical media cases appear to be similar in size to Evercade cart boxes, but as thin as a DVD case
Astrosmash has 10 levels
The 6th pack in game is most likely 'Back Talk Party'.
Hans (the fellow on the right, their President of European Operations) looks incredibly nervous at the start and continually keeps beaming a big smile towards the camera. There are a few moments where he is noticeably shaking and seems completely out of his element.
After the Crayola event video, what I managed to translate (with auto translate and a Polish friend who speaks some German), Hans is giving the exact same excuses that Tommy does about how they’re number 5,000 in line after other big companies that are also having problems with manufacturing, etc… He’s much more nervous at delivering that line, though, and it’s noticeable. He also lets the interviewer say that Christmas looks hopeful, and doesn’t correct him. There’s also a bit about they wanted to get it out during the pandemic because it was the “perfect pandemic console” or something.
And then they go on for 20 minutes to play a single screen shooter we’ve seen for a year and a half.
What a shit show.
Funnily enough, he repeatedly uses the word “gimmicks” - not exactly the phrase one might want to go for.
Also points out how the US HQ is “50,000m²” - which translates to about 538196 square feet for you US weirdos. Is that the space the building is on? Is it a warehouse? What do you do with so much space for such a small team?
Sidenote: Hans used to be the CEO of one the big publishing houses of games magazines in Germany (Computec). The guy doing the interview with him used to work at one of magazines published by that company. Unless there’s a longer version of this video around, there’s no disclaimer pointing this out.
Of course, the stream carries the label “Dauerwerbesendung” which basically means it’s all one big commercial and the companies covered there purchased slots. Hans also says they’re targeting sales of 100,000 units (hardware) within the first quarter.
Physical media is RFID cards
Also, the games sold via their digital Amico shop will cost the same (18 euros…) despite there not being any packaging or “gimmicks”.
- Edited since GY had pointed that an additional zero had snuck into the figure.
Who in their right mind picks a name for a game console that’s only one vowel off from a national chain of gas stations?
There is no way that’s an office. Assuming there’s not an extra zero, as the misplaced comma suggests, it could conceivably be a factory/warehouse, but I assume these are being built in China or similar. So maybe a logistics hub with a bit of office space attached. To put it in perspective, 50,000 sq m in office terms is a medium sized skyscraper. It’s about the size of the Gherkin in London.
Not a misplaced comma or something. At around 5:06 they’re talking about the impact of the pandemic and he says: “Wir hatten gerade ein neues Headquarter in Amerika eröffnet, mit 50 Tausend Quadratmetern tatsächlich, und die Leute durften dann 6 Monate gar nicht rein.” (Translation: We just had opened a new headquarter in America, 50 thousand squaremeters actually, and then people weren’t allowed to enter it for 6 months.) Maybe he got excited and mispoke, but that’s the number he says.
OK, so an extra zero then. 50k is a decent sized but not too large warehouse, so I can imagine they have their HQ in some office space as part of that, if they have a central hub in the US for distributing the products. Hard to imagine they’d need that big a warehouse for a few thousand units though.
Whoops, you’re right. Didn’t notice. Square foot number was correct though.
The office building is owned by their CFO so that’s kind of a conflict of interest shady. In an office tour video they show hardly any people but the CFO storing his old cars there. Looks more like a boiler room type of operation.
Someone who is vain enough to want it to rhyme with their last name.
The pandemic being blamed for “lack of parts” is a red herring.
Sounds like the CFO is commingling his personal and business finances, which is one of the ways you can actually pierce the corporate veil in a lawsuit.
What’s co-mingling? Like hiding a slush fund? Is using crowdfunded money to prop up an exec’s underutilized office building in a pandemic illegal is it?
They finished the external and internal design of the base unit and still were hiring for firmware designers in mid-2020 and haven’t finished any actual games (mobile-type games whose development cycles should realistically be under 6 months each) so their continued, repeated instance things are “ready to go” appears to be a sham. They still haven’t showed off anything to do with eShop, online download infrastructure or the UI of the game console itself. Or any games that use its lights, spinner or shoddy controller screens.
They haven’t spent any of the millions on securing parts or assembly or manufacturing so it appears to all gone to lining their own pockets since they are now begging for more funds to “finish it” with falsified info on their crowdfunding solicitation page on Fundable.
commingling
n. the act of mixing the funds belonging to one party with those of another party, or, most importantly with funds held in trust for a another. Spouses or business partners may commingle without a problem, except that a spouse may thus risk turning separate property into community property (transmutation), and a business partner may have to account to the other. However, trustees, guardians, or lawyers holding client funds, must be careful not to commingle those funds with his/her own, since commingling is generally prohibited as a conflict of interest. Use of commingled funds for an investment, even though it benefits both the trustee and the beneficiary, is still improper. Inadvertent commingling or temporary commingling (say, upon receipt of a settlement check in which both the client and attorney have an interest) require prompt separation of funds and accounting to the client or beneficiary. To avoid commingling, trustees, lawyers, guardians and those responsible for another’s funds set up trust accounts for funds of another.
Copyright © 1981-2005 by Gerald N. Hill and Kathleen T. Hill. All Right reserved.
3. Failure to maintain separate identities of the company and its owners or shareholders.
This factor is somewhat similar to number two listed above but instead of the intertwinement being with other companies, this is an intertwinement with the owners or shareholders of the company. The factual circumstances where this may arise are where the owners create a corporation or LLC but continue to operate out of individual checking accounts, fail to recognize corporate formalities, and use the company’s assets as if they were individual assets.
Again, the business tip is to ensure distinctness in the company and the owners. Owners, shareholders, and officers should avoid commingling funds and must treat assets of the business separate from personal assets.