We now live in a time where the Intellivision Amico has gone from upcoming and stuck in development hell, to being out and existing…although not in its originally intended form.
Amico Home is a virtual console platform based on the original Intellivision Amico software. It allows gamers to select and purchase games designed for the Intellivision Amico from a dedicated Amico environment.
In today’s discussion we’ll be taking a look at everything that has released for the Amico so far, including the hub platform app, the controller app and the library of games that it has built up to date. Let’s explore Intellivision Amico Home!
The day may come where the Amico console launches, and the idea of such is still in the publicly available Amico Roadmap, although from the Amico roadmap that has been floating about on the internet it doesn’t appear to be on the cards for 2024. That doesn’t mean it’s an impossibility, as the thing about road maps is that they can change, and the thing about announcements of games and consoles being released, we rarely hear about a whole year’s plan being laid out during the first half of the year.
One thing that is on the roadmap is for physical Intellivision Amico controllers to launch this year. I’m guessing that these will be compatible both with the actual Intellivision Amico console, and with various other devices via Bluetooth. At the time of making this video you can get Amico Home for Android and Amazon Fire devices, and it’s also planned to release on iOS.
I think it’s great that several of the planned Amico games have released now, and whilst this may seem like it’d kill off any potential sales of the physical console, I think getting the games into the public’s hands was absolutely the right decision at this stage.
It may be that a certain point that they will evaluate things and say that the physical console is cancelled and that enough people have bought the app and are enjoying it that way that the need to release the console physically has become redundant. That would be bound to upset some people, quite a lot in fact, but for me, as someone who didn’t invest in the console, and didn’t put money down for a pre-order, I’m just happy to see the games get released.
And yes, I completely appreciate that there are people who have lost money on this, and getting Amico Home on your mobile phones will surely now be a tainted and bitter sweet experience. I’ve previously backed indie projects that have never arrived to me and lost money, and for me, it’s once bitten twice shy about crowd funding. I’m happy to be a launch day purchaser and show my support that way when things can be in my hands the same day.
The library of games available so far are Astrosmash, Missile Command, Shark Shark, Side Swipers, Dart Frenzy, and Corn Hole, and so far only Corn Hole has released in the first quarter of 2024. Imminently we should have the games Back Talk Party, Finnegan Fox, Retro Force Redux and patently one of Evil Knevil Moon Patrol.
I’ve previously reviewed all the released games onto the channel, so if you want my review of them individually, please check out them on the channel, and I’ll link the playlist for Intellivision in the description.
But talking about the library overall, it is limited, and who knows how much it may grow by the end of 2024. If by the first half of the year we have ten or eleven games, it’s not much, but for me, the Amico project is currently about giving life to a bunch of games that seemed like they were cancelled, rather than this being the beginning of a brand new system.
I’ve spoken about this previously on the channel, but there is a similar psychology to buying a gaming console to what there is to supporting your favourite sports team. When it first launches you hope it gets a bunch of exclusives like signing all the best players and you don’t want those players playing for another team as well. Why not? Why shouldn’t gamers who own a different machine to you also enjoy the same games? The simple reason is that deep down you want others to be part of your team and join the same console community as you are in, otherwise you know that in the world of consumer electronics, there may not be enough reason for players to continue to buy the console you bought. If that happens, history has told us that the unsupported console will stop production and not get developers make new games for it.
Unfortunately, in the case of the Intellivision Amico, in order to build some money to continue the Amico project, Intellivision did already let some of its games appear elsewhere. Shark Shark was maybe the Amico game I was most interested in as I loved the original game on the original Intellivision console, and that along with Astrosmash and Dynablaster have been released on other platforms like the Nintendo Switch.
I, of course, stayed loyal to the Amico and got Shark Shark and Astrosmash for Amico Home, but with no sign of Dynablaster still coming to the platform I picked it up for the Atari VCS.
Speaking of which, the Atari VCS is another console which seemed to be of a similar mindset to the Amico, and I’d love to see Amico Home release for the Atari VCS as a way to let players experience the full Amico library on a home console.
I think I’m correct in saying that Amico as it has rolled out so far, is still seen as something of a test launch phase and maybe it’s that they wanted to fulfil actually having released something to the public before the end of 2023, and wanted to use players as testers, and wanted to have something to show to potential investors so they could swoop in and save the project.
With what has released so far it’s all been very lowkey and I’ve not seen any advertising for it. If physical controllers are being sold by the end of the year they’ll surely have to start to say we have an official launch, but my suspicion is that if the physical controllers do come out they’ll be advertised as compatible with Amico Home and I think they should make it so it comes with a code to download an Amico home game of your choice.
I like the design and simplicity of the user interface of Amico Home. It gives an idea of what we would have seen if we’d had the actual console, and is simple enough to launch games from, although I’ve always gone directly to the google play store and downloaded the games from there. Partly because I don’t trust doing anything directly from the Amico App and at least if I purchase anything from google play I can then contact google support.
Truthfully, all of the games could just release to the google play or Amazon fire or Nintendo Switch stores and there would be no need for this hub app. You can launch them without opening Amico Home, although you may need to have it for it to register the device you’re using as a controller.
And this brings me to the elephant in the room. The baffling choice that they made to make players need to use two mobile phones to play a one player game. In one sense I get it, one device acts as your console and another device acts as the controller, but you could literally need five mobile phones to play a multiplayer game with friends.
To me the choice was done just to preserve the idea that the Amico exists as its own platform. It seemed unnecessary as they could just release the games individually, as evidently can be done and demonstrated with Shark Shark and Astrosmash on the Switch. If there was at least Achivements or trophies, or high scores that could be accessed in Amico Home it would make more sense for the platform to exist, and maybe those ideas could be implemented, but as it is, Amico Home feels like an extra unneeded step to just playing the games.
Even though Amico Home has been available for around six months on the Google Play Store, it has gone this long without coming to iOS. Not sure of the reason, but bizarrely you can get the controller app for both android and iOS. The controller app, just sets your smart phone as a touch screen equivalent of the Amico controller, and again, I think the games could have all been designed to play on a single phone, or with a Bluetooth controller. Some games do work with the backbone and other controller attachments but it may be that they work as much as you can use the analogue stick but may need to still press the touch screen for some functions.
You can change the design of your controller, so it looks like a slice of pizza or other themed ideas. This is a nice touch, but you basically won’t be looking at it during gameplay.
The Amico concept somewhat followed the groundwork set out by the Nintendo Wii and Wii U, and unfortunately, they’ve picked up some of the bad points of those console experiences.
Dart Frenzy and Corn Hole are both motion controlled game and in my experience, these are tricky to get used to. The games still show signed of just being developed for the Amico Home Console and ask you if you’re using a lanyard, which would have come with the Amico controller. The games literally won’t let you play them if you say you’re not using a lanyard, but who has a lanyard for their smart phone?
And then the idea that the original Amico Home controller had a touchscreen hasn’t proven to have been a good idea at all. Considering that many have pointed to controller lag and issues with the tech as the main reason the Amico Console stalled and didn’t launch I have to say that I’ve not seen a single reason for why having this motion controller with a touch screen has been justified. As Nintendo learned the hard way with the Wii U, having a separate screen in your hands doesn’t work with a home console like it worked with the Nintendo DS.
On the Nintendo DS, having two screens worked great, but that is because they were so close fighter they were effectively one screen just split in the middle. Case in point I think the Nintendo 2DS may literally be a single screen with a plastic divider across the middle. But as discovered with the Wii U, looking down to your hands to look at action on the screen and then back up to your tv is cumbersome. Your neck will hurt if you have to do it too often and even if you held your hand up in front of the tv, it’s simply that human eyes cannot focus on both at once and there is no real benefit to having it.
At best something like a card game would give each player a private screen, but I’m not sure what games are planned for the Amico to justify it.
In the case of the Amico, even if there are plans to release in 2024, I can understand based on all the delays of Amico over the years that not saying it’s coming out until it’s known for certain is the most sensible approach at this time.
I think one of the main things for Intellivision was that they really wanted to get something out to the public by the end of 2023, and they achieved that. There were five games released, and the Amico Home app and controller app. Considering many had given up hope, or felt burned by the Amico experience, I see it as a huge positive that we have got this far.
I know that there are many in the Amico and the retro gaming community that feel that the delays, crowd funding and issues over pre-orders and refunds have tarnished everything surrounding the Amico beyond repair, but that is something I’ll mostly park to the side as a conversation for another day. Despite all these issues, I’m pleased that we’ve reached the stage where something has released and will primarily look at what we have got rather than what we haven’t.
That said…we haven’t got the console yet. At least not physically. The roadmap shows that there are plans to get Amico controllers released this year, and that in itself is both bizarre at first glance, but just as I have physical Amico games, these may prove to be something of a random and cool collectors piece of a system that you could get games and controllers for, if not the actual console itself.
To me, Amico Home is like the WWE Network. For years it was said that the WWE would launch their own TV channel, but it took so long to the point that an actual TV channel became an outdated idea and instead they just released an app. If you want to see what I thought of all the released Amico games to date check out the reviews of the individual games that I have on the channel.
I will be there with coverage of the likes of Finnegan Fox and Moon Patrol, so do make sure you smash that subscribe button here on the Geek Battle Gaming YouTube channel to see our video coverage or just out the written articles here on xstreamed.tv.
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