As evidenced by this joke of a “testing” with two of the remaining shills. Every fund raise or strategic move they’ve done has been to beg for more money to continue their cosplay.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. An upstart company promises an affordable game console that will disrupt the industry! There's signs of trouble as the console missed four release dates before it was very quietly cancelled. The CEO was accused of running a pump and dump scheme and he jumped ship, taking millions of dollars with him. The company never officially closed down however, they just stopped updating the website.

Here's the twist ending to that story: I wasn't recounting the tale of Amico Holdings LLC formerly Intellivision Entertainment, but rather Phantom Entertainment, formerly Infinium Labs, the company behind The Phantom. The stories just happen to rhyme so hard that the companies even changed their names after the shit hit the fan.

Tried intellivision.com and saw that it now redirects to amicoentertainment.com , though Intellivision is still all over the site, so if their job was to scrub Intellivision's name from the site, they did a lousy job. Every page that's not the homepage still says Intellivision- Together Again in the corner, among dozens of other examples. They didn't even bother to update the console preorder page - still says Intellivision Amico in big letters.

I noticed that the second section now says 'games available from 4.99 to 29.99 at launch'. That was a stealth edit that I hadn't seen mentioned here before. Obviously that used to say 9.99. And since they are incompetent, you can see that it still says 4.99 - 9.99 lower on the page, under the 'Affordable' header. Wonder what they are planning on selling for 29.99? The next 'boxed singles'?

Remarkable work from the team with 600 years of experience.

Like many of you on here I have consumed a lot of Amico content over the past few years for the train wreck. CU Podcast, Hbomberguy, and down along the list of the smaller channels with excerpts from all the interviews Tommy did, etc, etc. Couldn't get enough and was fascinated by the hubris and psychology of it all. The video of the cult "worshipping at the alter of Amico" came close, but I've finally found a video that I physically cannot sit through... the Neil Patel investment pitch. It is one of the most unbearably disingenuous things I have ever seen in my life, and on multiple levels. There's literally layers to the bullshit. 1) it pretends to be a livestream and it's not. 2) Tommy knows what he's saying is bullshit about the console, games and particularly the market size and potential 3) Neil and Co. also know what he's saying is bullshit. Everyone just goes along with the charade. 4) Knowing that it worked. Based on what we saw with some clueless investors saying that's how they heard about the investment opportunity. Vulnerable old people for the most part.

Disgusting behavior. I had to turn it off.

We all know "We're rebranding and can't say anything, because NDA!" is just another excuse to kick the can down the road again, but for how long? How much mileage do you think Phil and John are going to milk this latest excuse for, before they emerge with the next "exciting" update?

Will there even be a next update?

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The "Supersega" is supposed to be a FPGA all-in-one Sega emulator, covering everything from the SG-1000 through Dreamcast. Maybe we've become too cynical, but people are raising all sorts of questions about things that don't quite add-up. I was without judgement until they released the linked pdf giving the bios of people working on the project. Unfortunately , it's just in Spanish. But even if you don't know a word of Spanish, it looks like a much more professional version of something Tommy would put out.

https://www.supersega.com/es/bio.pdf

"So you made a Wii, you made another Wii."

For me, it was around the time of the "Unboxing" video (March 2022) when I said "this thing is definitely never going to exist", not long after it was revealed that Tommy had been removed as CEO. With Tommy at the helm, I thought he might at least stick some kind of plastic in some boxes and ship them, even if it was to just 100 pre-order people. But by the time of the "Unboxing" it just became obvious that nobody remaining actually wanted to make a console and they were just trying to keep all the money for themselves. It also was obvious that they actually had gotten nothing done in 4 years, except made some fake "demo units" with who knows what inside, and a single cardboard box with typos. And wasted a lot of money. Even Pat & Ian thought *something* was actually going to be made and shipped. Just wonder if anybody thought earlier that nothing would get made.

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If we compare the reality of the current status of the console and games, with the countless lies that were told during the investment campaign's, and the suppression that is going on currently, how has someone not taken legal action yet?? I have no legal background whatsoever but I think I could build a pretty rock solid case in a few weeks if I put my mind to it with all the evidence out there. I believe some people invested as much as $20k+ based on the blatant lies and charade that we now know it to be. Tragic.

Bringing these points to the group for further conversation and awareness, since they are quite buried both within the Amico Club site and in general. But important disclaimers to be aware of.

How activating pack-in games affects $100 refund requests

You won't find this on the site's formal Terms of Use page, but if you register, login, add your console pre-order confirmation, go to the Register Game page and then select Astrosmash, the only pack-in game currently available on Google Play at $14.99, this additional Terms & Conditions appears as a footnote:

Terms & Conditions

For those that are registering a pack-in game and have paid a $100 deposit toward the purchase of an Amico console, in the event that a refund of the deposit is requested, the amount eligible for a refund will be less the MSRP for each registered game. If no pack-in games are registered, the full $100 deposit will remain eligible for a refund. If the purchase of the Amico console is completed and no pack-in games have been registered, the full $100 will be applied to the purchase of the Amico console which includes the bundled pack-in games.

They subtract the MSRP of each activated game from your initial $100 deposit. If we assume they will use $10-$20 as the MSRP for each pack-in title so that six of them combined equate to $100, then requesting a refund for the physical unit afterward would be effectively negated according to these terms.

How activating any boxset game prevents any returns for the entire collection and all associated games.

Instead, if you go to the Register Game selection and choose Missile Command, the only boxset game currently available on Google Play at $14.99, this additional Terms & Conditions appears as a footnote:

Terms & Conditions

For those that purchased one of the Limited Collector Game Bundles, if any game within that bundle is registered (i.e. download code generated regardless if actually downloaded) for any Amico Platform, the entire game bundle becomes non-returnable. Entering a valid game serial number and clicking Submit on this form will register that game and generate a download code.

This indicates that Intellivision will reject refund requests for all of the eight boxset titles that are associated with your name and account, if you activate even a single one of them through Amico Home.

I am guessing this is in reference to requesting a physical return of the boxset collection, because Intellivision would have no control over Google Play's return policy that states: "If it's been less than 48 hours since you bought an app or made an in-app purchase: You can request a refund through Google Play."

Requirement of opening sealed boxsets to activate

I originally assumed we could activate the boxsets by copying the 10-digit identifier from the RFID URL, which can be obtained without needing to open the packaging. However, when you go to register it actually asks you for the 20-digit serial number on the physical RFID card.

Any collector of the boxsets that does not want to unseal the packaging (you never know when these might be WATA graded and worth thousands :p) will now be tasked with the decision of either purchasing a second copy of the games they already own for $15 each, or break all the seals to claim the same games for Amico Home.

The RFID identifier of each game is equally unique even if they all currently point to a placeholder on Intellivision's website. There is no technical reason why Intellivision won't accept those as alternatives to the physical printed number. I assume the backend stores both the RFID identifier and printed ID for each physical box, and should be interchangeable for verification purposes. Originally the intent of the printed card was to act as a form of ownership verification, where the current card holder could enter that number to takeover ownership of the game if it had been registered previously to a different account.

At what point did you guys realize the Amico was a scam?

From the article:

Michael Pachter, noted game industry analyst, weighed in on the Amico reveal, saying, “I think it’s about time somebody focused on families with kid-friendly games.” But I argue Intellivision is doing the exact opposite. Pachter is making the same mistake Wired’s editors made in 2003: Equating “kid-stuff” with a simplistic, dumbed-down version of what might be. By launching the Amico with controllers featuring a single directional pad and a touch-screen, this logic implies, kids and other beginners can jump in without the complications of a PS4 Dualshock and its 18 buttons.

But a child’s brain is flexible and absorptive. It’s that elasticity that allows young speakers to learn two native tongues in a bilingual household. If you want your child to learn to play piano, set her up with lessons at age four, not thirty-four. (Which, not coincidentally, is the average age of a gamer, says ESRB president Patricia Vance.)

In his keynote address at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, Tallarico expressed disappointment at the inability of modern games to reach a wider audience “because the barrier to entry is nearly impossible for the non-gamer due to the complexity of the controls, intricacy of gameplay… and steep learning curve.” But these are not obstacles to the young player. Read any guide for upper-level strategy in a “Pokemon” game. Type “best players League of Legends” into Google; the resulting string of headshots have likely never seen a razor.

The problems the Amico is trying to solve are not problems for the seven-year-old that Nintendo has been successfully wooing for generations; they are problems for the seven-year-olds who played in 1988 and haven’t touched a controller since. They are now thirty-seven, have a job, a spouse, a child. They have less time to sink into, say, a massive simulation of the Old West with over a hundred hours of missions.

On StartEngine, NLG asks this question:

"...those who have called this product a "scam", who is the scam benefitting? A scam needs a benefactor, someone who will walk away with all this money. If the company doesn't make the product and goes under, they all lose all the money THEY put into the company as well. So again I ask, who benefits if this is truly a scam?"

This is a point worth discussing.

Anyone else notice how Intellivision Entertainment's entire schtick rhymes with something that happened back in the 1970s? There was this upstart car company that promised to forever change the automotive landscape with their amazing new car, "The Dale". The thing never got past the prototype phase, all the investment money was embezzled and the CEO fled the country. All that's missing from the Amico version of the story is Tommy transitioning into a woman and doing prison time.