Freed from the albatross of Intellivision, Amico is set to soar to new heights of success.

Fellow Amicoans. By now you have heard the news. If you’re anything like me your initial reaction was abject horror. I felt like a beloved family member had suddenly died. Like a massive terrorist attack had wiped out thousands of lives. Like my doctor had called to tell me I had stage 4 cancer. We have all built our lives and identities around the Intellivision Amico and to hear that the Intellivision name and library had been sold to our hated rivals at Atari was more than I could easily bear. I wept and held my Amico branded t-shirt close to my breast, remembering all the good times we’ve had with Amico. The big announcement. The rocket ship getting its fuel in the form of a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign. The wonderful E3 presentation that filled the world with excitement for Amico. Playing Cornhole for 8 minutes before getting bored and doing something else once the app launched after we were finally able to get it running after only 2 hours of setup. All those memories that have made Amico the cornerstone of our existences.

I won’t lie. In a moment of pure weakness I thought about destroying my most precious possessions in the world. The physical products that show that I got in to the Amico experience on the ground floor. My boxed copies of the greatest games in the world, some of which even exist. I almost let the darkness win.

But as I stood holding a bronze bust of Tommy Tallarico I had commissioned with my inheritance from my aunt poised above my head ready to smash the copy of Biplanes that meant so much to me I paused. Not only because the bust is very heavy and I couldn’t hold it up, but because I had an epiphany.

This is a good thing.

Let’s be honest. Intellivision has always held Amico back. Amico was not built around the past. It was not some cheap attempt to cash in on Intellivision’s past glories. Amico was a vision for the future. A vision of a world where families and friends can come together and play games in the same room. A vision of a different kind of game, a game that is a reskin of a previously released game but with tacked on multiplayer and uglier graphics. A vision of father and son, brother and sister, greatuncle and grandniece sitting down together and playing Shark! Shark! for 11 minutes before someone quits because it’s impossible to play Shark! Shark! for over 10 minutes without wanting to quit.

Amico was never about retro reimagined. If it were then there would be hundreds of documented uses of that term by the ex-CEO frontman. It was never about Intellivision. If it had been they would have dangled follow ups to beloved Intellivision properties as important releases and modeled the controller over the old Intellivision one. It was never about some ancient console or its legacy. Intellivision was a mistake that was holding Amico back. It made people think that one of the most innovative and forward thinking products that has almost been developed in the last 50 years was tied to a brand from the distant past.

But now Amico is free. Free to soar to fantastic new heights. Who knows what it could achieve? It might even end up existing! Wouldn’t that be something? It’s a new chapter for Amico, where it can put itself forward as the product it actually is. A footbath looking shell wrapped around the guts of a budget cellphone from 8 years ago with a barely usable controller, none of which is actually ready for manufacture because the company spent its money on fancy offices and E3 presentations instead of nailing down the hardware and software and actually getting it made. Oh, and salaries and predatory loans too. A lot of money was spent there. Not on making payments on office furniture leases though. That’s not where the money went.

So now Amico is free to perform on its own merits. Flush with cash from this sale who knows how the company will use it. New offices? Paying off debt? More executive salaries? The sky is truly the limit for what they can achieve. Not making a console, though. That’s not on the agenda.

My fellow Amico fans I can honestly say that I’m more excited than ever about the future of Amico. Wipe your eyes and dry your tears because we are only now entering the true age of flourishing for this incredible machine. Our little community of the best that humanity has to offer; scammers, fanboys, trolls and bottom of the barrel hangers on will soon welcome new members with open arms when people flock to the rebranded Amico and the excitement that only its library of half-finished shovelware can bring.

Amico will rise like a phoenix from the ashes. But not the game Phoenix. That’s owned by Square Enix, an actual company that makes video games. Like a mythological phoenix. Because that’s something that doesn’t exist. Like the Amico. The parallels are endless.

The Intellivision Amico is dead. Long live the new age of Amico. Amico is forever. Which is also how long it will be until it comes out.