A month ago I blogged about the proposed Intellivision Amico game library and how it showed that Intellivision never had a serious business plan. Part of the purpose of that post was to lay the groundwork for this one, examining the same issue but from the opposite perspective. In other words, what’s missing from Intellivision’s announced lineup that should have been there if they had actually intended to follow their own announced business plan. Again, I will be judging Intellivision by its own criteria. I am not arguing that if these games had been present Amico would have succeeded had it ever launched. Instead I’m arguing that these are the kinds of games that Intellivision would have announced and focused on if they actually wanted to pursue their strategy of creating a family friendly console for casual players and local multi-player family fun. I want to look at how well they followed the path they set out for themselves and what they didn’t do that would have been expected for someone pursuing their goals.

For that reason I will not be addressing some obvious gaps, like asking why big franchises they couldn’t have gotten aren’t on the system, or why certain popular but mechanically complex genres like FPS games aren’t there. There’s no point in asking why GTA V was never going to be on Amico because even if Amico had been a good idea that was executed well that game couldn’t have played on it. Instead I’m going to look at things that would have been realistic to pursue but Intellivision just…didn’t.

AMICO HAD FEW ANNOUNCED GAMES THAT EVEN TRIED TO BE FUNNY OR EVEN CHARMING

This has always stood out to me as one of the most obvious gaps between what Intellivison said in its marketing and the actual in-progress games and products they showed off. One of Tommy Tallarico’s clearly stated guidelines for game design is that comedy sells to both men and women so Amico games should be funny. Intellivision then proceeded to tout a slate of games that were by and large humorless. From Missile Command (a game about failing to defend cities from nuclear to apocalypse) to Tank Battle to Breakout, Bomb Squad, Dart Frenzy and Night Stalker the vast majority of Amico games were totally humorless. The exceptions would probably be Earthworm Jim, a franchise with a very teen boy centric brand of humor that definitely would not appeal to moms and a game that never got past the pitch stage, and Evel Knievel, a game where the humor comes from watching your little dude get mangled in crashes. Maybe Emoji Charades and Backtalk Party could be “funny to play in a group” multiplayer games like the Jackbox games are but we didn’t see enough to know.

There are plenty of other games you could have tried to put humor into, but they didn’t. At most they made some of the art styles for games like Shark! Shark! kind of goofy and wacky in a lighthearted way, but that game is actually less humorous than recent shark games like Maneater or Hungry Shark World, which both feature comedic scenes of sharks flopping around on land and being equipped with wacky body modifications while facing off against comedic foes. Could Moon Patrol have had a wacky story like the Amiga Shmup Banshee where aliens attack Earth and kill your father because he refuses to invent the microwave oven? It could have. Instead it just had Star Fox text.

Additionally Intellivision games didn't really try to create charming, relatable characters that kids would like. Even Microsoft is aware that characters like Banjo-Kazooie and the Battletoads matter to people and it keeps doing things to try to keep them relevant. We don't even need to get into the Marioverse or Sony's various mascots like Kratos and Ratchet & Clank. We may be past the days of the mascot platformer but we are not past the days of characters mattering in video games, and Intellivision had such memorable characters as "unnamed Intellivision logo guy" and "tank from Tank Battle."

Intellivision calling out humor as one of the most important elements of game design and then not even attempting to use it shows just how little interest they had in following through on their own ideas. Say what you want about Gex, which was announced for re-release in between my writing and posting this blog (and yes the Gex reference was in before the announcement)but it’s funnier than all the games on Amico combined. And that was a 3DO title!

AMICO HAD ZERO TRADITIONAL PUZZLE GAMES ANNOUNCED

This is another omission that baffled me. When I think family friendly casual games I think Tetris. This is because my mother didn’t like video games when I was a kid but she was constantly borrowing my Gameboy to play Tetris. And she wasn’t the only one. Among my generation Tetris was famously popular among moms…and dads and kids loved it too! Puzzle games are the perfect “anyone can play” titles because the rules are clear, there’s no violence or conflict (except in VS mode) and they are simple and easy to control. This genre has remained popular in recent years too. Angry Birds is more or less a puzzle game. Candy Crush is entirely a classic puzzle game with a fresh coat of paint. These both became multi billion dollar franchises. I’m not saying that you can just make the next Candy Crush, since the genre is saturated with competitors, but if Xbox 360 could launch with Hexic then Amico could have launched with something. Even Nintendo’s Clubhouse Games package features a marble drop puzzle game among its selection. Rip off Puyo Puyo or something a little more obscure like Baku Baku Animal, I don’t care, just have something.

Is it worth noting that one of my all time favorite puzzle games, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, is available for $2 on every major platform as part of Capcom’s Arcade Stadium 2 lineup? Probably not. But it is, and that game is incredible, and a better multiplayer experience than anything on Amico. If you don’t like that there’s also Pnickies for $2. But Amico was going to be your go to place for cheap fun casual multiplayer!

Now you can argue that Bomb Squad is technically a puzzle game, but it’s not user friendly in the same way that Popcap’s Bejeweled series (or a Zuma or Peggle game) is. Doing complicated and tightly timed bomb defusing and having the city blow up if you fail does not have the same appeal as throwing little balls at pegs and having Ode to Joy explode when you finish the level.

AMICO HAD NO “MAKE YOUR OWN FUN” PHYSICS TOYS

If puzzle games are my go to for “mom” games, then when I think kid games these days I think Minecraft. Of course I’m a little behind the times and from what my friends with kids say it seems like Roblox might have surpassed it, while Fortnite remains a behemoth, but one thing these games all have in common, beyond the online multiplayer that Amico did not offer, is that they’re all about building stuff and to some degree making your own fun. As @allthedinos said in my previous post many kids will treat basically any game this way, ignoring rules and directive to just play with them like a virtual toy, but obviously some games lend themselves more to this than others. I mentioned Angry Birds as a puzzle game previously, but it’s also a physics toy where even if you don’t beat the level you get to watch procedurally generated mayhem unfold. Consoles were simpler when I was young so they tended to not be able to support this kind of thing, but PC games like Lemmings and SimCity got at the same impulses. This type of gaming is dominant among the current group of young people, and to meet that appetite Amico offers…

Shark! Shark! And Astrosmash! The type of highly rules oriented games where if you try to do anything other than what the game wants you to you die. While you can argue that Amico’s ban on 3D games would make games like a Minecraft clone impossible, there are plenty of 2D examples like Terreria and Noita, both of which are very well regarded. When little Timmy says “Mommy I want a Switch so I can play Minecraft with my friends” what is Amico Mom supposed to say? “You don’t need that dear, we have Farkle at home!”

AMICO HAD ZERO STANDARD RACING GAMES OR KART GAMES

The only racing game announced or the Amico was that adapted from VR overhead racing game that we never saw much of. There was also a Hot Wheels slot car game built around making and activating traps to stop other cars, but it’s not clear if there was a racing aspect of that or not. What is clear is that the system had no traditional cockpit or behind the car racing games and no attempt at the Kart genre. In case you’ve been living under a rock during the Switch’s lifetime, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe remains the most popular game for the system and is still receiving DLC track additions over 9 years after its initial Wii U launch. The racing genre remains popular across all consoles (with Sony and Microsoft continuing their Gran Turismo and Forza series and plenty of third party offerings.) The genre is also popular in the mobile space, with numerous franchises on IOS and Android getting tons of entries. It may not be quite as hot as during the days of the PlayStation and PS2, but it’s still a staple genre. Intellivision offered zero games of this type. Racing games also have long established methods of rubber banding to make them fun for people of all skill levels, with kart games having even more tools, but instead Intellivision focused on niche arcade and retro throwbacks because who wants to play a kart game when you can play Nightstalker?

AMICO HAD ZERO FARMING GAMES

Remember Farmville? The Facebook game that every mom was playing in like 2010? Have you heard about Stardew Valley, the modern indie sensation? How about Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons? The farming genre is yet another that’s popular among people who may not love traditional video games but enjoy some light and casual fun. Farmville was genuinely viral among non traditional gamers, but you can argue that was because of its multiplayer nature. Stardew Valley was single-player for most of its existence, though and has sold approximately 20 million copies, while being made primarily by a one person team. Did Intellivision make an effort to offer something in this genre? Of course not. Instead you get multiple entries in the somewhat famously niche shmup genre and licensed remakes of 40 year old arcade games. Did Amico need a farming sim in its launch window? Not specifically. But some attempt to meet players where they actually are would have been appreciated. I like Missile Command fine but right now on my Xbox I can get the Xbox 360 Missile Command, The Atari 50^th collection with 5 different versions of Missile Command: Arcade, 2600, 5200, Lynx and Jaguar, and Missile Command Recharged, as well as other collections with 2600 and arcade Missile Command. Anyone who wants to play a version of Missile Command can do so easily. Nobody is going to buy a system to play Missile Command and they might not buy a system to play an unnamed farming sim either, but at least it would have given a little variety to a lineup that had far too many retreads of games that have been redone over and over.

AMICO HAD NO GAMES SPECIFICALLY AIMED AT GIRLS OR WOMEN

I’ve talked a lot about moms in this post, but Intellivision talked a lot about moms. They even went to the Moms 2.0 conference to hawk Amico. Moms were a major marketing target for this machine. And yet Intellivision made no games specifically aimed at moms, or even daughters. You can argue that Emoji Charades and Backtalk Party might skew female, but those are more gender neutral than anything else. And yes, women play all kinds of games and make up a majority of Switch owners so obviously there are some women who want to play the kinds of games that Intellivision was offering, but while the game industry has continued to do a poor job of serving women’s interests there are definitely lots of popular games that are clearly aimed at a primarily female demographic. Intellivision had none of them. Social games like Animal Crossing are definitely female friendly and the game does well among women. Hidden Object games skew heavily female and are popular among older women (a game for grandma!) Intellivision had no interest. Visual novels? More like Visual nope(l)s! Moms play lots of games and while some moms might like Moon Patrol or Dart Frenzy (nobody would like Dart Frenzy) if their preferences ran more towards story-based games Amico had literally nothing for them. I am not going to get into RPGs here, even though that’s a genre popular among many women, because good RPGs are expensive to make and don’t sell for $10, so I’ll admit that they probably wouldn’t fit in Intellivision’s business model, but you could at least have a horse-girl game in there! A pet simulator? A point and click adventure game? Something?

AMICO HAD PALTRY SPORTS OFFERINGS

But don’t worry dads, unless you’re a hardcore gamer Amico has nothing to offer you either! If Tetris was THE game for the non-gamer mom when I was growing up then the dad equivalent was sports games in general. Often but not always golf (could be baseball or tennis depending on the dad) sports games offered dads games with rules they understood, celebrities they already followed, and a more “grown up” presentation that helped them feel like the games were aimed at them specifically. Many is the dad who brought home a Genesis and only played NHL hockey on it, or had Links golf as the only game just for him on the family computer. My dad loved tennis and while he did play other video games with me I think Tennis was the only NES cartridge he bought specifically for himself (though I was allowed to play it too), and he loved it. To get dads on board Amico offers…cornhole, darts, and an MLB game we didn’t see much of. Cornhole and darts make for bad video games because they are games you can play in real life with minimum investment.

I know that Intellivision couldn’t afford an NBA or NFL license, and the major golf courses are also probably expensive, but even unlicensed sports games can be great. I always think back to the Neo Geo sports arcade games, most of which did not have any licenses but were still really fun. The Baseball Stars series is better known but I think Street Hoop is an underrated arcade basketball game in the NBA Jam mode (it’s not as good as NBA Jam but that game made a billion dollars in quarters, so it’s pretty hard to match.) Maybe I’m biased because my dad and I played NES Tennis more than any other multiplayer game, but I think for a “local multiplayer family fun machine” sports are a must and Amico had almost nothing. A little known hidden gem called “Wii Sports” would back me up here.

As a bonus sports games are another genre where the “Karma” engine can be used to great effect. We all know about NBA Jam’s rubber banding, but other sports games have used the same type of technology. What’s more effective at evening the odds; making it so the losing team gets a boost in the percentages of their shots that go in or putting a hint on the controller as to which clam will have the next bonus pearl in Shark! Shark!?

THE AMICO HAD NO FIGHTING GAMES

This is maybe a little unfair because mot fighting games are aimed at a hardcore community and the Amico controller seems tailor made to be horrible for fighting games, but when I think of casual local multiplayer fun I think Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, and then later Smash Brothers. Certainly the current market provides some support for this given Super Smash Brothers’ runaway sales on the Switch and the fact that we’ve seen so many attempts at Smash clones in recent years, as well as Street Fighter VI selling well and Mortal Kombat continuing to be a consistent performer. Obviously a traditional fighting game would not work with the Amico’s innovative controller, but some kind of combat game like boxing or a Smash clone would have been doable. And there are plenty of these games that are rated E10+ (such as Them’s Fighting Herds and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl.)

CONCLUSION: INTELLIVISION DID NOT ACTUALLY TRY TO TARGET THE DEMOGRAPHICS IT CLAIMED IT WAS AFTER

The point of all this is not to say that if the Amico had targeted the above types of games and genres it could have been a success. It was a dumb idea to begin with and, of course, all those genres are well represented on the Switch, PC, and other platforms. It was never going to be a success. The point is that if the Amico had actually been a product meant to provide multiplayer fun for the whole family it would have made some kind of attempt to meet the market where it was. Instead Intellivision just claimed that today’s kids were clamoring for games like Shark! Shark! and Astrosmash and ports of failed mobile games and mid-tier indies like Fox ‘N Forests and Rigid Force Redux. You can argue that’s all they could afford (in part because they spent so much money on office space and staff who didn’t end up doing anything) but at the end of the day that’s Intellivision’s problem, not that of its critics. It was the company that decided to try to launch an ambitious console instead of publishing games on the Switch or do something else, and other companies like Ouya and Blaze Entertainment at least managed to get consoles into the market place. Blaze has just announced new hardware, its 4^th Evercade compatible hardware format and plans to have 45 cartridges and over 500 games available by the end of the year. That’s what a company with similar or less financing than Intellivision was able to accomplish with a business plan that made sense and a focus on delivering product rather than endless hype cycles sputtering off into oblivion.

So we are left with one of two conclusions. Either Intellivision was completely delusional and out of touch with every level of its own business or it was a scam. I have long believed the first to be true but I think that the longer you consider what actually happened the more likely the second is. At some point someone had to realize that they weren’t going to sell 10 million consoles off Shark! Shark! And that point had to come pretty early. But they kept on lying about how far along they were in the production process, offering up totally unrealistic sales projections, and pretending that they really believed this thing was going to be a hit even though we’ve now seen a lot of the games and they are just as bad as we all thought they would be. But bad games just speak to poor execution. The fact that they didn’t even try to appeal to the gamers they claimed to want speaks to something more sinister and fundamental. The Amico may have started as a poorly conceived attempt to make a console but at some point it changed into an attempt to collect money for a console they knew was either never going to come out or never going to amount to anything, and the only remaining question is when that change happened. I think that the proposed library points to that being early (if it wasn’t the intent from the start) and at least before they sold those packs of “physical product” games that look like they will never be playable.

They took millions of dollars from investors to produce nothing and they didn’t even have the courage of their convictions. Just a shameful, sordid, affair all around.

Thanks for the shout! I continue to look at the games advertised from a parent’s perspective and think about how my daughter wouldn’t give a shit about any of them. Also thinking about how Grubb and Patrick Klepek have both talked about their kids making Link die for fun in TOTK, and how children will come to well-made games meant for all types of people instead of garbage made for specifically kids. My daughter spent most of a plane ride last year intentionally fucking up in some Duplo game because all the people looked shocked every time she placed a block wrong intentionally. Kids absolutely love finding boundaries in a game and blowing past them.

Perhaps I’m just oversensitive to this trend as someone who believes entertainment for kids and “for kids” can always be high quality, but the Amico’s insistence that it was “for families” always felt like an excuse for its terrible content. I’ve had discussions with my friends about some popular property (probably Star Wars) being underwhelming, to which they responded it was really for kids and we shouldn’t expect much. When something is purportedly for children and looks as bad and bland as the Amico’s games, it’s a deflection and should be called out as such.

This is getting a little rambling but here’s a final stray thought. Kids pick up signals from adults to a huge degree. If you play something with them and are clearly thinking it sucks, they are going to want to do less of that thing. If you’re lucky, it just means they will want to play a different video game with you instead of not wanting to play at all or playing alone because you’re bumming them out. The Amico’s strategy was clearly built off selling lots of games, and the thing seemed destined to be a dust collector after a brief introductory period in its best case.

@allthedinos: Video games are teaching your daughter to troll! Did you shed a proud parental tear? Whoever said you can't learn valuable skills from games?

One of the fascinating things about the Amico is that it didn't really have any games specifically for kids except for the Care Bears/Sesame Street shovelware. Everything else wasn't for modern kids it was for Tommy Talerico when HE was a kid. It was all stuff that he thought was fun when he was 10, but slightly modernized.

So you're absolutely right about kids media but I mean...look at what they were actually putting out. An Evel Knievel game. In the Year of Our Lord 2020 (when this thing was originally supposed to launch.) It was for 10 year old boys in 1979, not children today.

We all draw upon what we liked as kids when thinking about what kids today might like. I'm certainly guilty of it in my post. My mom liked Tetris so moms like puzzle games. My dad liked Tennis so dads like sports games. I think that market demos do support this, and puzzle and sports games are definitely popular genres unlike, say, Space Invaders clones, but we all have our intuitions from our own childhoods.

Tallerico, however, didn't take 10 seconds to think "wait, is 'Dart Frenzy' really the game families want right now?" And people went along with him. To the tune of millions of dollars. Or maybe they were all just lying and none of them cared at all about what they were doing. I don't know which is worse.

I need to go back and watch that E3 pitch video where Tommy was rattling off features like he was trying to lease you a car. "...And we have haptic as well.."

This thing started off as a strictly retro revival console. Tommy loved Intellivision, he bought the brand, and wanted to bring back those old games he loved. Nothing wrong with that other than the fact it was destined to only be a niche of a niche, and that wasn't good enough for Mr "I never lose", so he tried a half-assed pivot to a "family" focus.

He targeted Atari Age, the YouTubers he sought out were those into old systems, it was clear as day that this was supposed to be a retro themed console. Presumably, the amount of people who actually wanted that to be a thing ended up not being enough for Tommy, so he dreamt a bit bigger and started wishing to The Secret for things to work out and make it a "family" system. Signing up a couple of free flash kids-themed games is about as far as he went with it. The rest of his dumb commandments list was just telling the older guys what they wanted to hear in regards to no online patches, no DLC etc.

As time wore on, and he got increasingly desperate to sell himself as a big-boy CEO - and his company as bigger than it actually was - and just started promising the world to whoever would ask.

"Could *Insert popular retro IP here* appear on Amico Tommy?"

"Sure little buddy, we're actually already in discussions with Konami/Disney/Capcom etc".

Amico started as a retro revival and became a scam the second that Tommy decided to artificially inflate the thing into something he clearly didn't envision it to be. As we saw from the leaked exit plan that was circulated, they were looking to sell the whole kit and caboodle to a bigger company - the likes of Apple and Microsoft were listed as potential suitors - and he started trying to make themselves appear larger than they were by piling up debt in order to play CEO dress-up. Anyone pointing out the obvious issues were gone after and attacked, called haters, called "gaming racists", had a crew of his weirdo online sycophants go after them in attempts to dox them etc.

A book needs to be written about this mess because it's a heck of a story with one of the more absurd main characters to ever exist in reality or fiction.

@dennett316: I wasn't really aware of the Amico at the earliest stages, but by the time they were raising serious money they were already pushing the "family, together, couch-cop, family" line. This was always absurd because local co-op was never even endangered and Nintendo has been pursuing it with all of their recent systems. The Wii U had games built around one person on the big pad and others using Wii-motes or other controllers, and the Switch Joy Cons are designed, in part, to facilitate having as many local players as possible without having to buy a ton of controllers. The Switch launched with 1-2-Switch and Snipperclips as family oriented local co-op games. It was just an insane premise. Tommy tried to cover for this by pointing out that the Switch also has M-rated games, but Nintendo learned as far back as the SNES that even families who don't want M-rated titles don't really care if the machine can play those games. That's why Mortal Kombat II had blood on the SNES, because some parents don't want their kids playing Mortal Kombat but they don't really care if other people's kids play it.

But a retro console with all original games is in many ways an even worse idea. The market is tiny. Blaze has created a niche with Evercade by focusing on physical media and licensing whatever they can get cheap to throw on the thing, but it would not be sustainable if they were making all their own games. Most "retro" style original games just go on PC and the main consoles because everyone who cares enough about games to be spending real money on them at least has a PC or a Switch (and pretty much all the Amico Youtubers had something modern already.)

Ultimately that's why they pivoted to the "unique" controller, I guess, but that never made sense either and they never had a use case.

Just a series of attempts to justify why this thing should exist when it clearly shouldn't, and thanks to mismanagement of funds it never will (they definitely had enough money to get something to market if they hadn't spent it all on offices and E3 slots and salaries for people who never did anything of note.)

A book or documentary would be great, but you really need some of the key figures to talk in order to make something like that work and so far nobody has. The big question is "what were they thinking? How did they think this was going to work? Did they think it would work?" We'll never get those answers most likely, at least not while the threat of lawsuits or even criminal charges is out there.

Visual novels? More like Visual nope(l)s!

I humbly submit for your consideration: Naw-vels.

Miserable naw-vels.

Or, books. They're just books.

@jeffrud: It's better. I don't like admitting being beaten, but you've won this round.