The continuing saga of the Intellivision Amico keeps chugging along as a popular thread on the AtariAge forum has been removed. This thread was called “Tommy Tallerico Q&A” which saw Intellivision CEO and video game composer Tommy Tallerico answer questions throughout the development of the Amico and considered by some to be a “safe space” for fans of the Amico.
When asked why the thread was removed, AtariAge owner Albert replied:
I have removed the Amico forum. A new Amico forum will return if and when the Amico is actually released and starts arriving in customers’ hands. I had already considered removing the forum for various reasons, but Tommy’s two posts tonight just cemented the decision, not only because he made these posts to promote his Facebook group, but also stating, “no ding-a-lings allowed” (“ding-a-ling” being a “nicer” way of saying “dicks”). While stating in one of the posts, “it’s best to try and keep the drama out of Atari Age”.
And this after he previously proclaimed (not publicly) he would no longer be posting on AtariAge, which I was perfectly fine with. Well, there won’t be any more drama about the Amico on AtariAge for the time being, so he was right about that.
Tallerico has since taken to a private Facebook group and issue his own statement on the events:
Friends of AtariAge. Just wanted to let you know that Albert and I were planning on shutting down the Amico fun conversations thread months ago when the Amico forum was moved to new consoles from the original Intellivision area. But he decided to keep it open while we started opening up this group and moving interested folks over here.
My original thread was getting to big and massive. ABOUT 1.5 MILLION VIEWS! Pretty amazing! Not only was it getting to big as he preffered that people to make a seperate thread for each topic, but the thread was also attractive a bunch of unwanted drama from the bad hombres and concerned trollers.
This wasn’t fair to AtariAge, Albert, and all the mods who constantly had to monitor the place because of drama and”jerks.” AtariAge ended up shutting down the entire Amico area and will more than likely start a new Amico area section when Amico FINALLY comes out.
Anyway, just wanted to give you some context to anyone who may have come from AtariAge to this new group. This group had noticed that my Amico Fun Conversations thread was closed and Amico area is gone. Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions about AtariAge and I’ll try to answer them to the best of my abilities.
When the news surfaced Pat Contri reached out to Albert directly and received the following reply:
Yeah no. I’ve only spoken to Tommy once in all of 2021 regarding the Amico forum and that’s when I wrote to him in August and told him I was likely going to nuke the Amico forum as I was tired of the shit. I most certainly never agreed to shut down the Amico Fun thread although he did suggest I ignored that.
I just looked at the conversation again to verify that I didn’t say anything close to that. I did suggest that he create his own forum and that looks like that may have been the impetus to create the Facebook group that he has been promoting.
When asked if this was the final straw, Albert replied:
I’m not even sure why he said that. It’s something that makes it sound like we recorded in crap regarding the forum. That certainly wasn’t the case.
And for the record I nor anyone else associated with AtariAge has ever received any compensation from Intellivision Entertainment or Tommy regarding the forum nor has been offered or asked. In hindsight, I should have removed the forum when I initially threatened to. I thought locking that fun thread and then the general threads would calm things down which they did a bit.
Albert did go on to say the the thread is not deleted, but is just hidden from the public and that he would consider making it public again in read-only mode once the console comes out.
The Intellivision Amico is currently slated for release in Q1 2022.
