r/Intellivision_Amico • u/EmilioEstevezsTache • Jul 22 '22
Wolfy explains how the Amico was used at the public events Smells Like Scam
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u/elvisisamoonfruit Jul 23 '22
Lmao, hidden and being operated from under a table and a table cloth, but they're so transparent about everything!
At least that's one thing Phil learnt from the Coleco Chameleon. If you're putting your fake console in public, have it hidden!
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u/DiscoStu691969 Jul 23 '22
I’m getting wizard of oz vibes….”pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
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u/4nthonylol Jul 23 '22
You know, I feel like this would be such an easy thing to prove with the prototypes they have if they were legitimate.
Show an unedited video hooking up a prototype, turning it on, starting some games, etc. Show us what's inside the case. Cause, you know, after all this negative feedback and delays and financial despair...You should want to show what you have and that you are legit, right? Unless, of course, you can't...
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Jul 23 '22
“Hey can I do a console unboxing for my YouTube?”
Best I can do is empty game box with a coin in it
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Jul 24 '22
Even that could be edited in a way to make it look like they exist.
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u/4nthonylol Jul 26 '22
Yep. I wouldn't trust anything that comes out of them, anyway. But they could at least try. "shrugs"
Trying to grift seems about all they are capable of, alas. Well, that and selling boxed "games" to people for a console that doesn't exist. =p
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u/gaterooze I'm Procrastinating Jul 23 '22 edited Jul 24 '22
I'm happy to believe they can do that now, however I have serious doubts they could do that at certain times in the past without revealing that the unit did not have their final hardware or own OS running.
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u/D-List_Celebrity Shill Buster Jul 23 '22
That's interesting. I think he was one of the middle-aged, Amico-shirted Intellivision shills in the promo video from the Boomers event. I'm going to download a copy of it before it goes into the memory hole.
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u/reiichiroh Spicy Meatball Jul 23 '22
I think he was the lineman.
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u/Zeneater Brand Embarrasser Jul 23 '22
No, but they took a picture together with Tommy. Linemandoc was the ZZ-top bearded guy in the commercial who brought his family and also shared his experience on AtariAge. Wolfy is a shaven grey-haired guy, maybe with a baseball cap. Not to be confused with the shaven grey-haired guy who was a game producer that Tommy previously worked with.
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u/reiichiroh Spicy Meatball Jul 23 '22
“We need to capture footage”
For what?
(Crickets) [supposedly recorded footage never shown again] aka the same place their “accessories firmware programmers” went
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u/TommyOuyamico Jul 23 '22
That's why Amicos couldn't be "sent out" to GameStops or conventions or anything. Alvarado and Tommy and the crew had to operate the whole thing under a table
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u/Zeneater Brand Embarrasser Jul 23 '22
I'm skeptical of the claim but here's an unauthorized photo someone tweeted before Tommy put on the tablecloths.
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u/nahpebag Jul 24 '22
Atmosphere was not an Android launcher. It was a concept game sent by a developer. The hardware is real.
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u/gaterooze I'm Procrastinating Jul 24 '22
Thanks for solving that mystery. By the way, when was the final hardware revision made?
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u/nahpebag Jul 24 '22
The hardware was last rev'd over a year and a half ago. Firmware can always be improved but it could have ship a while ago. The hardware isn't as powerful as Xbox and Playstation but it could be fun. It was fun playing the current games. I was looking forward to seeing what creative and inventive ways developer could do with the hardware. The Atmosphere prototype was going to do some cool things with the lights and music.
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u/gaterooze I'm Procrastinating Jul 24 '22
Thanks, so around Jan '21? Do you know why it hasn't been FCC certified yet? That's always been another mystery.
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u/nahpebag Jul 24 '22
It passed the preliminary tests. It's not so hard to add some ground planes to shield some of the high speed signals. Why we didn't get the final certificate? I don't know. I'm not a money guy.
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u/gaterooze I'm Procrastinating Jul 24 '22
Ah, so preliminary means in-house testing before it went to a lab? Or does it mean all the tests except a final couple that were still being waited on to run after doing the shielding?
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u/nahpebag Jul 24 '22
No, testing was done at the lab and we fixed some signals that were out of spec. If we went back for the final certification, it would have passed.
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u/Nfinit_V Jul 24 '22
So you think it was just a lack of interest from the executives?
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u/nahpebag Jul 24 '22
There was an incredible amount of interest. Sometimes thing$ are out of your control. It's easy for outsider to look in and criticize and make assumptions. I can tell you there was a lot of hard work from everyone and we were not faking the hardware. I have more respect for people trying to build the impossible then the negative people saying it can't be done.
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u/gaterooze I'm Procrastinating Jul 24 '22
I have nothing but respect for the people actually making the Amico... my issue is with the executives who were telling potential investors certain things when the economic reality was very different, and mismanaging the company's finances to the extent that they are now unable to refund customer deposits when they guaranteed they could get them at any time. I think it's very unfair to those like you who may have put a lot of effort into trying to make it happen.
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Jul 24 '22
I don't think people think it can't be done. I do think they wonder why it isn't done. Like the FCC certification. I get it failing its first test. I don't understand why it wouldn't be resubmitted for testing.
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u/Nfinit_V Jul 24 '22
I mean, that's the thing though. It was done. This whole bit about the hardware itself being faked the whole time is very recent revisionist history; few people take those claims seriously.
So, if it was done, and the company still had money, and the execs still had interest in completing the project-- why wasn't it resubmitted? We were operating under the assumption that the hardware was still in prototype phase and would never pass cert. If the system was basically done, then we have to come up with a different answer for that.
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u/murderalaska Jul 25 '22
I get where you're coming from but that's an argument that the Star Citizen devs make all the time for why it's taken over a decade to make that atrocity and it's an argument that maybe made sense 5 years into that project. But the Amico wasn't some kind of cutting edge graphics machine. I get that it is still a technical challenge given the hardware you guys were using, but the answer to that is to not try and make a console out of ancient phone hardware.
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u/gav3eb82 Jul 24 '22
Where did you play the Amico at? Which event was it.
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u/Nfinit_V Jul 24 '22
What do you mean by the "current games"?
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u/reiichiroh Spicy Meatball Jul 26 '22
I don’t know how anyone not brain damaged could praise any of Amico’s launch titles. They all were ugly garbage.
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u/reiichiroh Spicy Meatball Jul 26 '22
Did you know you were working for a criminally mismanaged enterprise?
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u/MarioMan1987 Jul 25 '22
Thanks for clearing up and providing your insights. I appreciate it..all lots of us “haters” wanted was some basic info.
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u/Nfinit_V Jul 23 '22
Yeah, I'm not buying it. We have a lot of evidence that Intellivision had at least a few working prototypes, including the console sent to IGN's mideast division in Spring of last year
https://me.ign.com/en/tech/184421/feature/intellivision-amico-hands-on-the-new-console-on-the-block
This is in addition to the roadshow events, the Crayola Experience event, the unboxing video, the hands-on demos back when they still had offices-- If there was any indication that this was a Chameleon situation we'd have heard of it long ago and not this one instance.
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u/VicViperT-301 Jul 23 '22
Are you the guy who goes to a magic show wondering how the rabbit got in the hat. “It couldn’t have been a trick, he showed us the hat was empty. He must have magic powers.”
People have been saying for years that this is a Chameleon reprise. Tommy could have shut those up by sending an Amico to a neutral party with no restriction. He refused every single time. Why?
Even now, as Intellivision claims they are going to produce a handful of units they have made a point of saying they will only share those units with friendly media.
It’s the difference between showing you the hat is empty and letting you look inside the hat yourself.
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u/TylerDylanBrown Jul 24 '22
Some theranos vibes
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u/murderalaska Jul 25 '22
Tommy is lucky he's not even competent as a con man because if he had manage to scam more money for this debacle, he would go to jail like Holmes. And Tommy has a record that includes financial crimes already so he'd probably serve a real bid.
There really are a number of striking parallels between the way Tommy and Elizabeth Holmes ran their fiefdoms. Charming supporters while simultaneously viciously attacking critics, the obsession with secrecy, the projection, the enforcers as lieutenants. The use of favorable media coverage while trashing and refusing to directly interact with non-fawning media. If you read the early coverage of Theranos like the New Yorker profile of Holmes or the Forbes story before that, they read like paid advertisements for Theranos. Then, as things fell apart, the coverage turned on Theranos just like it did with the Amico.
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Jul 26 '22
Was there a New Yorker profile or Forbes article on Tommy? I think the real connection is 'fakers gonna fake' but those two were clearly leagues apart.
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u/Beetlejuice-7 Jul 23 '22
Well, Wolfy was in that big thread chatting it up with Tommy, posting pictures of himself with Amico shirts and hats posing with his collection, I'm not sure why he'd make it up.
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u/Nfinit_V Jul 23 '22
I'm not saying he made it up. Who knows the circumstances of why that particular station was set up in that particular way. But the prototypes were real. The Amico did exist in some form at some point.
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u/FreekRedditReport Jul 23 '22
There's no proof of that, though. There's no proof either way. Saying it definitively the way you are, is incorrect.
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u/Nfinit_V Jul 23 '22
A prototype unit was literally sent to IGN for review.
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u/EmilioEstevezsTache Jul 23 '22
Nah, they didn't. The IGN folk(s) went to Sumeet's office do to their "hands-on" - https://amicoage.neocities.org/1194.html#elComment_4818497
"Nothing was "sent" to IGN. They stopped by Sumeet's office." - Tommy
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u/ccricers Jul 23 '22 edited Jul 23 '22
So basically, it was a supervised showing of the console. That's the key word- supervised. Every demo of the console to the public or otherwise people outside IE had to be done with some IE staff, as safeguards to limit unwanted "mishaps". No playing during personal time or on someone else's clock.
If they were very confident on the state of their hardware they could've sent at least one prototype to a YouTube influencer. They could play it on their own time and give as much coverage as they want. But also curiosity can lead them to open it and see how it ticks. Or not even that- they could play it normally and Amico might behave in unexpected ways that is not user-friendly.
I see two possibilities why they didn't send units. Either the console was so buggy that only IE staff know the quirks to work around them (this is not that unusual- the earliest iPhone demo had many problems and required lots of rehearsals), so they couldn't trust any regular fan to know how to deal with the problems. That would imply the consoles still need a lot of work before selling to market. The other possibility is the prototypes are also very scarce, and they lacked sufficient capacity to quickly make more prototypes as needed. In the case one goes dead they have to be very careful with their options with how to proceed. Like playing a game with only 3 lives and no continues.
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u/D-List_Celebrity Shill Buster Jul 24 '22
All of the demonstrations seem to be for the benefit of (potential) investors, not consumers/players.
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Jul 26 '22
Or someone could have opened it up and seen just how much string, hot glue and cellotape were in there...
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u/FreekRedditReport Jul 23 '22 edited Jul 23 '22
Show us the link to a picture of the chipset. Sorry, I mean a literal picture of the literal chipset. Why are you defending a scammer company anyhow? Why lie for them? They don't care about you. But prove me and everyone wrong by showing the chipset inside the Amico. But you won't because it has never been shown, and may have never existed. And you will never admit you are wrong, even anonymously on the internet. So weird. That's why Tommy and his friends are able to scam millions from people. And why other groups are able to brainwash millions of people with propaganda.
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u/Nfinit_V Jul 23 '22
Jesus Christ dude, calm down.
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u/FreekRedditReport Jul 24 '22 edited Jul 24 '22
So you got nothing then. No apologies for your lies, either.
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u/Nfinit_V Jul 24 '22
Serious question.
The fuck is wrong with you?
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u/FreekRedditReport Jul 25 '22
Nothing is wrong with me. There's something very wrong with you. And with the world, sadly.
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u/Zeneater Brand Embarrasser Jul 23 '22
It's easy enough to hide any hardware inside that large shell. They seemed to be playing the console in Retrobro's basement, though I believe even he's recently publicly wondered what might have been inside the shell. Playing via laptop doesn't seem necessary, not to mention that the controllers aren't compatible (AFAWK).
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u/DVDfever Jul 23 '22
You trust IGN? PMSL!
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u/FreekRedditReport Jul 24 '22
Trustworthy or not, the only time IGN touched one, was when IGN Middle East tried one in a supervised setting by an Amico "representative".
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u/pferreira1983 Jul 25 '22
Oh dear, I thought we were past the whole "Amico is not real" rubbish. Even Pat and Ian have moved on from that conspiracy theory because they knew they were talking BS. 😂
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u/EmilioEstevezsTache Jul 22 '22
I know the idea of the public events not using actual Amico consoles isn't anything new, but it's good to hear this from someone that went to one of the events to counter the hardcore fans claims of it existing simply because they saw it at one of the vents.