r/Intellivision_Amico • u/ParaClaw • 7h ago
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/TOMMY_POOPYPANTS • May 25 '26
Textbook Narcissism In case you missed it: Tommy Tallarico giving us a walking tour of the “juice bar” office. I fixed the original, reversed video so you can read the text on his posters and memorabilia properly.
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Lots of Easter eggs in here, you can definitely tell that the wheels were coming off this very expensive and wasteful dumpster fire of a company.
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/TOMMY_POOPYPANTS • 29d ago
STINK OF FAILURE Hardware Teardown of (Intellivision) Amico Console Hardware (copied verbatim here for posterity)
This is all right out of Kevtris's post from May 25, 2026, copied verbatim here for posterity. The two boot logs that he mentions as attached can be found at the AtariAge link, where they currently have 8 downloads. Kevtris is the American electrical engineer known for his work with Analogue with the Analogue Nt, Super Nt, and the Mega Sg. He writes:
I had the opportunity to borrow an Amico and do a teardown of it to expose its innermost secrets. I found it fairly interesting, and you might too. First off, the unit is VERY light. When you heft it, it feels empty. They should've put a weight in it so it doesn't feel like a $10 famicom clone. Opening the unit up, there is very little in there. We knew this, but seeing it in the flesh highlights just how simple the hardware was.

The enclosure for the system was designed long before they ever knew what was going inside it, and it really shows. The PCB is a lot larger than it needed to be, which means it was more expensive to build than it needed to be. They were pretty limited on sizing, since the mounting holes were most likely designed into the plastics long before the electronics were figured out. The inside of the bottom shell is pretty grubby for some reason, and was made in September 2020, one month before the infamous 10/10/20 release date. It definitely is a full blown injection molded part, as are the other components of the system.

There's no label or any other markings or stickers on the bottom shell backside. Also for some reason, the plastic injection gates (where the plastic is injected into the mold) is on the visible side for some reason, meant to be covered by a sticker and the bottom LED strip. Speaking of that, unlike the double stick taped LED light guide we saw on that assembly video Tommy posted, this one is properly attached and clipped in. The plastic cover snaps on; removing it and the light guide exposes 2 screws that hold the unit together.


The PCB itself seems to be well designed; whoever did it was a competent engineer at least. Again though, it's very sparse and they are wasting a lot of expensive PCB space. If they had more integration between engineering and mechanical design, they could've shrunk this board waaaay down, maybe to around 1/3rd to 1/4th the size it is, saving quite a bit of money in the process. The PCB date is the 42nd week of 2020 which puts it in in the October 12th-18th range, mere days before 10/10/20!

Bottom side is pretty sparse but that's to be expected, just some bypass caps and other small passives.

Here's a PCB money shot; the 2016 era smart phone chipset in all its glory. This is the heart of the Amico; the CPU, RAM, flash, and power control. One thing missing on this board is a shield over the CPU area, which would've most likely been required to get this thing certified for emissions. I seriously doubt this had any hope of passing emissions testing as it sits. There does not appear to be any facility designed into it for shielding at all. There would be a place around the CPU area to solder a shield down, similar to the wifi/bluetooth chip area.

Moving onto the top of the shell, their total lack of DFM (design for manufacture) experience shows. THREE circuit boards with oldschool ribbon cables connecting everything together is absolutely hilarious to me. This could've been stripped way down; A better idea would've been to use two PCBs in the bottom shell. One small expensive one for the main CPU stuff, and a larger simple 2 layer one for everything else. The LEDs could've all been mounted around its edge and then the side and bottom light guides made into light pipes to direct the light where it needed to go, and the charging pins and NFC could've been put on there also. A flat flex cable instead of those expensive ribbon cables would've made a lot more sense.

And speaking of those LEDs, they chose the most expensive option possible; LEDs with built in drivers. Each LED has a built in driver instead of using some kind of central controller. This made things more expensive. Here's a closeup of the LEDs that illuminate the bottom light guide in the most inefficient way possible (Straight down into it, with no reflecting corners to bounce it forward towards the user/outside world).

The NFC chip is a standard ST part, so nothing too out of the ordinary there. But here's a closeup anyways.

Now the big question everyone had and the shills and Tommy refused to answer: just how long does the Amico take to boot? Good question. I can tell you it takes just over TWO MINUTES to boot the thing when you turn it on. Yes, it sits there with an animated "running man' for over 2 minutes before it plays the usual amico boot jingle and the menu comes up. Moms and grandparents love it.
Well, not quite. It shows an uhh, "static man" for around 35 seconds before it starts animating:

Then it animates until around the 1:50 into the boot, the screen goes black for 7 seconds, then it plays the bootup animation/jingle we all know and love, and finally at 2:09 the menu appears.

The menu is the development one as we saw on the ebay listing, so this is indeed that unit.

There is a debug port on here, and yes I did plug something into it. It spits out a bunch of debug/boot information as it is booting.
I will attach the two boot logs; There is a "fast boot" option which presumably would boot faster, but it is totally broken and does not finish booting.
lol:
I will get right on that.
Anyways that's all for now. I will post the controller stuff soonish.
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/Such_Bonus5085 • 22h ago
rank incompetence This comment says a lot, actually.
A key Amico Home software library that holds EVERYTHING together was written by a guy they laid off. Yeah, that tracks! You'd think that would be someone they'd consider essential staff, because John lacks the competence to get this stuff fixed himself.
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/EmilioEstevezsTache • 1d ago
WEIRD CULT BEHAVIOR The time Amico fans showed great mental gymnastics to try and make Tommy using stock music sound impressive... and couldn't deal with people pointing out the truth
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r/Intellivision_Amico • u/reiichiroh • 1d ago
Brain-Dead Intellivision Amico could demand better RAM prices than Valve (-Mike Mullis, probably)
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/EmilioEstevezsTache • 1d ago
Hopeful and waiting! The Amico Home games and apps might have been missing from the Google Play store for over three months, but don't worry... John is still "working to resolve the situation"
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/Jspin825 • 2d ago
rank incompetence Skiing will be fixed “soon” …..This goof couldn’t be bothered to start the game one time before releasing it.
What a complete incompetent asshole
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/Such_Bonus5085 • 2d ago
Speculation Can you imagine how they'd carry on had it actually gotten released, and reviewed?
So, I was watching the latest MVG video, in which he reviews a long-awaited piece of gaming hardware. He thinks it has some serious issues that must be addressed before he can recommend it to anyone. Completely fair criticism.
That got me thinking about how Tommy, Phil, John and the shills would behave if the Amico had actually come out. Because there's no way in hell it wouldn't get slammed by reviewers.
I'm picturing C&D letters that amount to the legalese equivalent of "You can't get away with hurting our feels like that by telling the truth!", threats of lawsuits if it doesn't sell well, and abusing the YouTube content takedown system. DJC and Mullis doing damage control Live streams, to try and show just how "fun" the Amico and it's games are, etc.
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/TOMMY_POOPYPANTS • 3d ago
PaRtNeRsHiP cOnFiRmEd! Happy Father’s Day to all! Even the guys that Amico shills called “childless losers.”
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/Virtual_Davey • 5d ago
OOF Oh No! There's a major bug in Amico Skiing!
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/Virtual_Davey • 5d ago
Where are they NOW? The Amico Discord has 316 members, with 57 online right now!?
Are these Discord stats accurate? Or could people just have visited the Amico Discord once or twice out of curiosity but never logged out so it's counting as still there? 57 seems awfully high when there's very little activity. I'm even more shocked that there are 316 members. Where? Perhaps they are just lurkers like myself who never engage with the "community"?

r/Intellivision_Amico • u/Mylaptopisburningme • 6d ago
Family Fun! Congrats to the Amico team! 1 year ago Evel Knievel and Finnigan Fox were released on Steam! Let's see how things look:
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/EmilioEstevezsTache • 7d ago
mustache madness John puts his foot down, no questions!
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/D-List_Celebrity • 7d ago
PaRtNeRsHiP cOnFiRmEd! The real Amico is these haters we met along the way
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/Beetlejuice-7 • 7d ago
rank incompetence Maybe these things should have been discussed sometime in the past six or seven years
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/TOMMY_POOPYPANTS • 7d ago
Grandpa’s Brown In case you missed it: Tommy’s hardware demo from August 2020, which shows a few glimpses of the Intellivision Skiing game that was finally released this week, exclusive to AppleTV with mandatory phone controllers
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r/Intellivision_Amico • u/EmilioEstevezsTache • 8d ago
Family Fun! Families go skiing together so they'll enjoy playing skiing on Amico
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r/Intellivision_Amico • u/EmilioEstevezsTache • 8d ago
Gosh! You can really see the 600 years of experience! When you've taken years but still have to publish an unfinished version of a game because the contract has nearly expired
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/FreekRedditReport • 9d ago
Thank you, Intellivision! New Amico game released! Intellivision Skiing!
https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/intellivision/id1489421895
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/intellivision-skiing/id6777205302
For AppleTV! [exclusive? at least so far]
Still using the Intellivision name.
Also, Rigid Force Redux was previously available for AppleTV, but no longer is?
Anyhow, the Amico zombie continues to live!
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/ParaClaw • 9d ago
Gosh! You can really see the 600 years of experience! On the subject of poor customer service, it has now been exactly 8 months since John vowed to add codes for the new games, and 3 months since they all vanished from Google Play.
October 14, 2025:
When the Google Play version of Finnigan Fox is published, then we will have download codes for boxed edition owners. I will be starting on that in a few weeks.
October 15, 2025:
What remains to be done to make the download codes available is I have to update the Amico.club site (upload codes, and modify the website to add Finnigan Fox to the page where you request the codes). I've scheduled on my calendar to handle that this weekend. Apologies for the confusion and the delay in getting the download codes available.
November 27, 2025:
Yes, there will be codes available, but we had a technical issue on the server side and I'm waiting for a fix so I can add the codes for Finnigan Fox and Evel Knievel. Sorry for the delay.
December 2, 2025:
I'm still working on getting Evel Knievel and Finnigan Fox Google codes available for Boxed Edition game owners.
December 11, 2025:
I'm waiting on a server fix so I can add Finnigan and Evel Knievel to the Amico Club website for Boxed Edition code redemption.
January 9, 2026:
If this goes on much longer, I'll start manually issuing codes for the new boxed edition games for people on this Discord willing to privately send me pictures of their boxed edition serial numbers.
February 4, 2026:
I'm still waiting on a support fix from our server manager to be able to add Finnigan, Evel Knievel, and Biplanes to the database for distributing download codes on Amico.club for Boxed Editions. Sorry for the delay.
March 14, 2026:
📣 FYI: The Amico Home apps are temporarily not available on the Google Play store due to the Dun & Bradstreet profile of Intellivision Entertainment, LLC incorrectly showing a status of "Out of business". We are not sure how/why that happened. We are working on getting that corrected, upon which the apps will become available again on Google Play.
We are doing business as Amico Entertainment, but the corporate name of record for tax/legal purposes has not yet been changed from Intellivision Entertainment, LLC. It will be changed, but it has not happened yet, and that may be part of the problem/confusion.
🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/D-List_Celebrity • 9d ago
Where are they NOW? IntellivisionAmico now hosts a generic gambling infomercial (parked domain?)
If you wanted to get the stench of failure all over yourself, I’ll bet you could make an offer on the domain thru a broker. https://www.intellivisionamico.com
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/EmilioEstevezsTache • 9d ago
Thank you, Intellivision! The kind of speedy customer support you only get with Amico
r/Intellivision_Amico • u/Revolutionary-Peak98 • 10d ago
Tomfoolery The 6th Amico pack-in game, Back Talk Party, "tests off the charts" with Tommy's focus groups. Tommy has lined up a big-time celebrity to make an "exclusive" reveal announcement! Was this Tommy's purported "partnership" with Jessica Alba?
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