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I think this is a fitting tribute given the Amico is swirling the drain.

I tried arguing this on quora and all I got one person to bite and he just said stop playing video games. I actually like the intellivision Amico being a pro-consumer system. With features like forbidding paid downloads, fairly well balanced multi player games, $10 us maximum price tag on games (to discourage those games which start at $60 and can go up to $200 if you buy all the DLC) Tommy Talarico is positioning himself to be the Anti Big Boy or the Rebel of the video game industry. I remember the story of the Xbox 360 where Microsoft made a pledge where all games on the 360 that don't have a physical disk equivalent in the market that are available for download must have a try before you buy free sample portion. That was pretty Pro consumer. I was more willing to try games if I didn't have to make the initial investment in the blind. And the ones I wanted right then and there I bought right away immediately like Super Meat Boy, Limbo, Braid. And usually they were full price if it was that good of a game. Some games I waited to see if they came on sale to see if I could buy. I would have never been exposed to those games if it hadn't been for Microsoft's try before you buy requirement. Unfortunately developers and publishers complained that their work was being played for free without them getting paid. I understand that all the parts have to be willing to play with each other in order to get something going. It's that developers didn't have the right to have their game being in the shadows, and have a caveat emptor policy at the game store. (which you can thank 2600 Pac-Man and 2,600 ET for. Before, these stores had very liberal return policies and were very rarely acted upon. That's when Video Game Exchange came into business. It wasn't until later that Funcoland came in our region .) So I thought how do you get the developers that publishers get their money for the work they did on the demo while at the same time removing the shadows that are underneath the game shops? I thought advertising would be a way to do that. If you play the demo version of the game you get an ad. Play the demo version over and over, play different ads each time and give the devs and pubs more money. Interestingly enough one of my friends says that ads are very anti-consumer. I told him I thought the policy of unreturnable items that are caveat emptor is a worse consumer policy than no ads. I asked him if he bought a game that was download only for 60 bucks played it like literally one time and hated it, how would he fee? He just said "I'd say oh well". a logical argument that apply to a lot of people but not to me was that a lot of people have a lot more money than time and are willing to pay to skip ads. And I said well if we gave the consumer the choice whether they wanted to pay with their dollars or pay with their eyeball time, if the game plays the same both ways how does that affect you as a paid consumer of a game? He couldn't give me an answer I'd understand. I do agree that there are abuses of ad policy. like I know they cut the full original length of the first broadcast and the disc version of a tv series just squeeze in an extra commercial to make it more enticing on second run syndication and basic cable. I pointed out a successful example of an advergame on the 360 when they had the "no shadow" policy. It was 1 vs 100 Online. Every 10 questions they take a 2 minute break and 1/4 of each of those 2-minute breaks was always a Sprint commercial. The only reason it suddenly stopped was because using cellular internet as a primary home internet and or gaming internet was being discouraged by the FCC at the time. Sprint had no reason to offer the game as a way to spread their message because the exact people they were targeting became illegal to target / were no longer worth targeting in this distorted marketplace. Why are cable tv plans so expensive?Because people are using DVRs to skip the commercials. Guess why commercials would bring in more money for less occurrences on games than cable TV? Because in order for a game to make sense the game has to be played live. You cannot digitally delay or time advance a particular playing of a game. You could not download the future opponent inputs for game. Those inputs have to happen in real time. If not, then we discovered data time travel and would get negative ping times, and then finally satellite internet would be a viable option for gamers. But since I haven't seen any news about data time travel, I'll assume it's impossible until it's proven possible. Actually it's much harder to take a pee break in the middle of an online game than it is a linear piece of entertainment that could be paused backed up and resumed. If you're not back in 30 seconds you could be a sitting duck. However I agree that mid-gameplay commercials would ruin online gaming especially if they paused to break and cliffhanger like they do linear entertainment. And one final thing that's interesting to note, some people are afraid to give their credit card numbers. So free advertising funded gaming can actually help bring those people too. And the thing is money is made on a per credit basis, not a per license purchase basis. If Tommy Talarico thinks his games are going to be played many times, and his games will be played way longer in history than a typical "movie games" that PlayStation and Xbox seem to cater to, then wouldn't it be to the benefit of the new Intellivision Company if they make more money with never asking for credit cards and having all games be free with ads, than they would make by asking for credit cards and charging them once and having the games played over and over with no constant stream in? Of course you got to tighten your belt on day one. But that's perpetual residual income if it gets played over and over and over. and when your money gets bigger you could like all for a certain percentage for an annual Online Tournament of Champions. since you don't have to pay for the ROM in order to be eligible to win because the game is free then you can get away with more luck elements than you could with a pure skill game where you have to pay to enter, and it would be legal in more jurisdictions than such a skill game. Also that's how devs and pubs get extra money to pay for new features. That's also the cure for both downloaditis and sequelitis, the disease of malignantly growing paid DLC / a sequel of something as a quick cash grab. Since the money is there a certain budget could be made for upgrades. I understand that all parts have to work with each other for the boat to get moving. I think this advergaming model might be beneficial to everyone. Are there still people who preferred pay yet you don't want to abandon the Advergaming model? Have a purchasable no-ad forever license/ timed no-ad license rental. unless someone could show how someone has a ludistic advantage by either being an advergamer or a cash license gamer, giving the customer the choice to either pay with dollars or minutes of ad time gets more people playing and more money made with less money taken from the customers should not harm gaming. I agree that Tommy Talarico opposes ads because they can be abused. But he does have policies that he said he's not going to flinch. If he opposes excessive/experience-ruining/ unfair uses of ads, but not ads in principle, he could make some decrees that would discourage cheap advergaming. by the way ever since one versus 100 left Xbox 360, try getting an advertising funded game on either Xbox Nintendo or Playstation. most of their "free games" are those that are "free until it becomes painfully impossible to complete forcing you to buy something that all but the top one out of a million need in order to complete" games. I don't know if a declarative automatic no ads ever statement is exactly going against the grain of Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft. I think that's more "with the grain thinking" than it is "against the grain thinking". You could make certain ad policies like "maximum 5 minutes of ads per hour of time" (which compared to syndication which could be 24 minutes of ads per hour of time is great.) "Hardwired ads in game must make sense in the experience", like Budweiser Tapper, (wait would alcoholic mention rate it T or M automatically? Not exactly that, unless it's Pepsi Max Tapper.) Just because you offer ads as try before you buy sample doesn't mean you have to have every single one available 24/7. You could have a gaming Network called INTV. We're either every hour or every day one game would rotate in as the free Advergame. also if you eventually add online, that would concentrate more people into that server therefore no one would be sitting there waiting for an opponent which is a general positive experience if you funnel everyone through that one hour a day. also there could be schedules like a regular TV show so that if you could play online you can find more Network users of the game. The worst thing that could turn people off to a game is crickets and tumbleweeds in the online waiting room. I'm just spitballing a couple suggestions.

You know... some Intellivision Cartridges would make an awesome ramp for an Evel Knievel to make a new historic jump over not 1, not 2, but 3 Intellivisions! Or a jump over tons of Carts lined up in a row. I hope to make this happen in 2021... This is just one of the things I noticed while doing a HUGE Unboxing video today, a wonderful gift from Casey Nydahl. He gifted me a huge assortment of Intellivision goodies and I made a 20 minute video unboxing it all. This is when I stumbled across the angle of an Intellivision Cartridge could make a great ramp for Evel. Now.. to buy a new Evel Knievel and stunt cycle so I can make this jump later this year. LOL. Of course I may need to make a real ramp as odds are the cart will just make Evel endo! Until then, come along for a humble and exciting unboxing... one I will remember forever in my Intellivision Life.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families. In a year that seemed like everything went "south", let's all find the time to be thankful and enjoy the time we can with family and friends. Best wishes to you all. Enjoy! A little "FD humor" to set the tone.. lol.

I know Star Strike isn't the most playable of the classic games, despite its top notch graphics for its time. But i think the concept of a Star Wars inspired Trench run space battle game always has potential to be fun. You could even have a vector like level as a homage to the Star Wars arcade game. Anyone else onboard?

I just found out about this game, announced this week even though the page and the video were online since August 1st. It's coming october 8th. https://marvelousgames.com/blogs/games/burgertime-party What I find strange is that it looks like it was designed for Amico, even more than the new Bubble Bobble for Switch: We already know a 'reimagining' of BurgerTime is coming to Amico It's 2D but not pixelart it's clearly geared towards both cooperative and competitive multiplayer Your thoughts?