​

Earlier this year, we were teased at the existence of an upcoming Intellivision-based retro throwback system, and five months later, more information about the curious piece of hardware have been unveiled. This system now sports the name of the Intellivision Amico, with a few notable features and details. Firstly, the Amico will retail anywhere in the range of $149 to $179 dollars, when it launches two years from now, in 2020. A bold claim also states that the power within the system will offer "the most advanced 2D sprite-based graphics the world has ever seen", also putting above what either the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, or according to them, a 'PlayStation 5' could ever reasonably output in terms of 2D visuals. Games for the system are set to have prices from $3 to $8 apiece, with the available titles only being 2D-based games and capped at most at an E10+ rating due to the heavy "family focus" the system has. Its controllers are small, with a touchscreen built into them, while the system itself will have WiFi features, as well as an HDMI port. Games both old and new will be coming to the Amico, and will have updated visuals, multiplayer, and achievements. Development kits are due out in Summer 2019.

 

[Osha]

The moment when people are too twisted to understand a marketing joke.. (i mean the boldly claims that it'll have better 2D graphics than the PS4 or XB1 part~)

Don't bother, they're too busy circlejerking. GBAtemp is insanely cynical, and it's to a fault.

 

[wiewiec]

What's this a OUYA 2?

For me is is, but OUYA not give restrictions what genre games it must have - here with Amico there will be no ports (oh yeah all exclusives) but restricted to games for kids... so even not clone of street fighter game.

If I have kids better is to buy Android tablet than this crap

 

[olixus]

i think it looks more like a gimmick than. however it should be interesting if sales go well.

 

[smf]

Ok, my mistake to not specify that i mean the "boldly claims that it'll have better 2D graphics than the PS4 or XB1" part. Oh boi..

I knew what you meant, you have to be twisted to think that is a joke.

That's cool an all but can it outperform 2d graphics better than the sega Saturn? No? Check and mate.

A PS4 can do better 2d graphics than a Saturn. Why don't you think it's possible for a console that isn't going to be out for another two years to beat them both?

If I have kids better is to buy Android tablet than this crap

I reckon we'll move away from giving kids tablets. In the old days you had one tv and we couldn't play all day because we weren't allowed to monopolise the tv. Some idiot then thought the best idea would be to let kids use tablets 24 hours a day.

 

[AdenTheThird]

curioser and curioser...

 

[wiewiec]

I knew what you meant, you have to be twisted to think that is a joke.



A PS4 can do better 2d graphics than a Saturn. Why don't you think it's possible for a console that isn't going to be out for another two years to beat them both?



I reckon we'll move away from giving kids tablets. In the old days you had one tv and we couldn't play all day because we weren't allowed to monopolise the tv. Some idiot then thought the best idea would be to let kids use tablets 24 hours a day.

I said that i think that kid be more enjoyed using tablet than this console. Restricting genres by age also isn’t great marketing idea

 

[smf]

I said that i think that kid be more enjoyed using tablet than this console.

Or maybe they'd enjoy crystal meth more, but what they enjoy more is irrelevant as they aren't independently wealthy.

Restricting genres by age also isn’t great marketing idea

It seems to work well for children's cartoons, which I assume you also don't watch.

 

[wiewiec]

Or maybe they'd enjoy crystal meth more, but what they enjoy more is irrelevant as they aren't independently wealthy.



It seems to work well for children's cartoons, which I assume you also don't watch.

Their target is wrong, wii was underrated for some time by gamers as it was marketed as for family. But here, target as for family, but shuts door as it states that there will not be violence in their games...

 

[WhiteMaze]

But they don't, you're letting your ROLFLMAO cloud your logic.

Maybe, just maybe, this does have better 2d graphics than a PS4/X1 but worse 3d graphics.

How exactly would you expect them to sell you that?

"Hey look at our new console, it has worse 3d graphics than the PS4 or X1"?

or do you think, they would do what anyone with half a brain would say and make the claim they did?

If you can't comprehend that it's possible to have better 2d than PS4 or X1 then you have no idea about progress. You know the PS5 will have better 2D than the PS4 right?

Also it was common in the PS1 vs Saturn days to say that the PS1 was better at 3d and the Saturn was better at 2d. So it's not like they've come up with a new way of explaining things.



Maybe they just mean you don't have to software render it? Which from a developer point of view could be classed as better. We don't know enough about what they actually mean, to be able to work out whether what they claim is true.

The Saturn being better than the PS1 when it comes to 2D graphics, can be seen as literally a myth. It all depends on what you mean and what your wording is.

The Saturn was definitely known to be harder to develop for in 3D, and as far as my knowledge leads me, it was due to the Saturn working only with certain polygons in a 3 dimensional environment. So if you want to call the PS1 superior due to that, it's your choice.

At the end of the day, you can have 2 completely separate systems, with one of them having a faster processor, and better specs than the other, while having worse graphics than the less powerful system. And the opposite is also true.

So it all comes down to how much work is put in to each asset, especially when we talk about 2D graphics. In other words, this new console having better or worse 2D graphics, literally comes down to the amount of work put in developing those graphics and not so much in each systems specs..

So yes, I do think this claim is ridiculous. It doesn't matter what horsepower you got in there if you don't work your graphics enough in modelling/developing of a game. 2D is still 2D, and 8-bit is still 8-bit. How you work them is what defines better or worse graphics ..

 

[wiewiec]

The Saturn being better than the PS1 when it comes to 2D graphics, can be seen as literally a myth. It all depends on what you mean and what your wording is.

The Saturn was definitely known to be harder to develop for in 3D, and as far as my knowledge leads me, it was due to the Saturn working only with certain polygons in a 3 dimensional environment. So if you want to call the PS1 superior due to that, it's your choice.

At the end of the day, you can have 2 completely separate systems, with one of them having a faster processor, and better specs than the other, while having worse graphics than the less powerful system. And the opposite is also true.

So it all comes down to how much work is put in to each asset, especially when we talk about 2D graphics. In other words, this new console having better or worse 2D graphics, literally comes down to the amount of work put in developing those graphics and not so much in each systems specs..

So yes, I do think this claim is ridiculous. It doesn't matter what horsepower you got in there if you don't work your graphics enough in modelling/developing of a game. 2D is still 2D, and 8-bit is still 8-bit. How you work them is what defines better or worse graphics ..

Thant why now often we have 2.5D games than for me is far superior to pure 2d.

 

[BlackWizzard17]

A PS4 can do better 2d graphics than a Saturn. Why don't you think it's possible for a console that isn't going to be out for another two years to beat them both?

Issa joke, oh course it's entirely possible but really not necessary.

 

[DSAndi]

Well the Intellivision from the past is more for older people that are 45+.
I dont really get what this new thing should be. The Controllers look similar to the old ones. 16 dircetions to go, but then again analoge sticks can do the same or not ?

EWhat games will it offer ? The old intellivision ones ? New 2D games ?
Then the price, well i got thouse flashback controllers and USB Adapters for em. I can use a raspberry pi, or a PC and thouse controllers and have great emulation of the intellivision.

For what i need this Amico ?

 

[smf]

The Saturn being better than the PS1 when it comes to 2D graphics, can be seen as literally a myth. It all depends on what you mean and what your wording is.

It's not a myth. It doesn't depend on what you mean.

Saturn has tile maps in hardware, PS1 has to use the GPU to render it.

You can do it, but Saturn does it better. For 3d the Saturn is terrible though.

You can do it, but PS1 does it better.

 

[Pickle_Rick]

Maybe they just mean you don't have to software render it? Which from a developer point of view could be classed as better. We don't know enough about what they actually mean, to be able to work out whether what they claim is true.

Not really, the game engine will take care of that. It's not like there aren't a ton of 2D game engines (or plugins for 3D ones) that make working with 2D on 3D hardware easy as hell. Just as easy as dedicated 2D hardware. (Probably even easier because the engines probably have better tools.)

 

[Saiyan Lusitano]

Looks like two fuckin' iPods on a dock station. Another 'classic' console, eh.

SEGA started the trend but it was Nintendo that made it popular and now Nintendo gets all the fame for being 'the first' and whatever small figures are released by Sony or etc they're 'amiibo ripoffs'. Nintendo fanboys. lol

 

[HEADBOY]

This ought to be interesting, I wonder if the OS is going to be Linux based so modern game engines and frameworks can work on it without much effort? Or will it be based off of AOSP?

 

[Saiyan Lusitano]

This ought to be interesting, I wonder if the OS is going to be Linux based so modern game engines and frameworks can work on it without much effort? Or will it be based off of AOSP?

Possibly.

Amazon uses the Fire OS but in reality it's just the Android OS with added intrusive ads and a shitty home launcher. Thankfully you can customize it.

 

[smf]

Not really, the game engine will take care of that. It's not like there aren't a ton of 2D game engines (or plugins for 3D ones) that make working with 2D on 3D hardware easy as hell.

Right, layers upon layers of abstraction for kiddy programmers which wastes processing resources.

This ought to be interesting, I wonder if the OS is going to be Linux based so modern game engines and frameworks can work on it without much effort? Or will it be based off of AOSP?

Or maybe it's based off something else. If it's Linux or Android based and can run existing tools, then it will be hugely boring & will fail hard. I'd rather something innovative & you can't get that going down the boring out of date Linux route.

 

[HEADBOY]

Possibly.

Amazon uses the Fire OS but in reality it's just the Android OS with added intrusive ads and a shitty home launcher. Thankfully you can customize it.

Right, layers upon layers of abstraction for kiddy programmers which wastes processing resources.



Or maybe it's based off something else. If it's Linux or Android based and can run existing tools, then it will be hugely boring & will fail hard. I'd rather something innovative & you can't get that going down the boring out of date Linux route.

You make a good point, the only way I can see developers bother to make games if they make something completely different is if they either make a toolset like Microsoft did with XNA(Does anyone remember that?), or have popular middleware like Unity, Unreal Engine and Game Maker develop a special version for their platform (not too different from Unity for Wii U in hindsight).

 

[olixus]

i do think it is a lot of bullshit 2d graphics are basically just 2d

 

[SonicfanCEMUTesting]

Looks like a bootleg.