Lets take a look at one of the late comers to the early generation of consoles. The history of the company how they got into gaming and ultimately what lead to their demise!
I remember coming home from school one day and my mom told me I'm sorry but we won't be able to buy you the coleco vision for Christmas because we just don't have enough money. So I told my mom it's no problem. It's okay, I understand. I then went into my room to put away my shoes under my bunk bed when I realized I couldn't. So I checked under the bunk bed and lo and behold. There was a black bag in there and when I pulled it out it was none Other than the Coleco vision, I jumped for joy obviously as an 9-year-old kid and I immediately ran to my mother's room and gave her a hug. My mother's no longer with us. I lost her to cancer 10 years ago. May she rest in peace. The coleco vision remains my favorite system of all time because of her. Thank you so much for making this video. It really brought back some very beautiful memories.
Aww man thats a great story! I'm sorry for your loss but grateful you could share your story with me today and that I could help you remember some fond memories. Thank you again and I'm very happy you enjoyed the video!
One day, I came home from school. And my father bought us a CV. It was a happy childhood memory. I asked him why CV instead of 2600, he said "have you seen the graphics difference." He was a pro at Lady Bug. I loved Turbo and Zaxxon. Cheers! 👍
I worked hard at my paper route to buy my ColecoVision & all these years later I have a big collection on display in my home. So many memories, thanks for this.
I remember back Christmas of 82....it was about 3am me and my little sister heard video game music...we rushed down to the living room & there it was....my first console gaming system 😊 the "Collecovision" My mom & dad allow me to get in there game "Donkey Kong", "Pac Man", "Defender", "Star Raiders" & "Centipede"....I must of played that system all Christmas. So much right after the holiday & it was time to return to school I was the envy among my friends. I was the first out my friends to have that system. Thank you Collecovision for fine memories & a great childhood..... 😀😉😀😀😀😀😀😀
I was born in 1968 and my first home “console” was some Pong knockoff bought at our local farmer’s market in 1976 or ‘77. And by 1980 I bought my own Atari VCS with lawn mowing and snow shoveling money. But in 1983 when ColecoVision was released: oh my! 🤯 I sold my VCS to the local stereo shop and used the cash towards a ColecoVision and Expansion Module 1 (what my friends and I simply called “The Atari Adaptor” back then). 40+ years later the CV still ranks as my *NUMBER ONE* favorite console of all-time. Venture, Space Fury, Cosmic Avenger, Frenzy, Lady Bug, and Mouse Trap are all absolute classics that were just as good as their arcade counterparts. Thanks for this video: well done! 👍
dude thats awesome! I think the first console I bought myself was the N64 I saved up for ages on that one working part time retail.. I need to try Cosmic avenger I don't think I had that one I did have lady bug, Venture and Mouse Trap though great games!
It might have been a hand-me-down for me from my brothers 5 years after it came out but the ColecoVision was still my first console and will always have a special place in my heart.
The Colecovision was the Neo Geo of that generation. It had by far the most faithful arcade ports, and back then, arcade quality was the gold standard.
Nope. I had a cv and a 5200. Dk, ladybug… venture… some launch titles were excellent. Then the ports got shoddy…. Played awful.. choppy time pilot… subroc was a slide show. Meanwhile for the 5200 I had defender, centipede, joust, dig dug and others… played so smooth and were as close to the arcade as you could get.
I had the film adaptation game of the movie "2010". I was 8 when I played it, but I loved it. All the circuit repairs you make got me interested in electronics and shaped my career.
@@geekstorian This isn't the best review of it, but this gives a good overview of the unique gameplay it had, especially for mid 1980s. th-cam.com/video/uUKLBSNunko/w-d-xo.html
yes! I had a friend who had this game and we would take turns working on the circuits. he was an expert so we'd almost always always save the ship. I can still hear the sounds in my mind, even after all this time.
it's also too bad Coleco got severely distracted by the Home Computer market, they really should have dumped all their efforts into a more advanced ColecoVision 2 console...
In Hindsight I agree however a LOT of the console manufactorers were in the PC market at the time Atari being one of them so i can see why they wanted in. It was simply to much potential money to leave on the table!
Talk about humble beginnings, sheesh. Lol its actually really impressive all the different markets they got into. I never had a Coleco and have zero history with it so its cool to see its rise and fall story.
Yeah it was a much wilder ride than i expected doing this one and i did have a colecovision as a kid. I learned way way more about the company than i expected to find glad you enjoyed it man!
That level of diversification was quite common in the 20th century. An important part of board game history was when 3M diversified and got into board games. They didn't stay in the market very long but they hired some important game designers and many of the games they produced became very influential. In fact, it helped spawn what would later become known as the Euro-style game.
Thanks for the video. I loved Coleco as a game company. The Colecovision was such a good console, with all kinds of very good games and a lot of high quality peripherals. Never owned one as a child but I bought one about 12 years ago and a bunch of games. I also have the handheld Coleco Electronic Quarterback. It still works and every so often I put a 9V battery in and play a game I originally started playing when I was ten. Retro-nostalgia is a helluva drug.
Yep nostalgia is a hell of a drug! I was talkong about that with friends last night about how you gergenerations dont really have that yet because their not old enough yet to be lookking back for things they miss. Also yeah the colecovision had some really slick stuff out for the time it was active and a LOT of the games hold up if your fonnd of anything back as far as even the NES!
Gemini was a stand alone system Coleco made that played Atari 2600 cartridges. Coleco's add-on to play Atari cartridges on the ColecoVision was not called Gemini, but Expansion Module #1.
cool thank you for the correction I knew Module 1 was one of them I thought they also had named it Gemini as the final name from what I read a lot of the old tech and even new ones go by project names before they get finalized consumer product names.
@@geekstorian I actually used to own a Gemini system back in 1985. Mine only played Atari 2600 games. I used to want a Module 1 to play my Atari 2600 games on my Colecovision but was never able to find one. I eventually got rid of my Gemini system (which I wish that I didn't) for an Atari 7800. I still have my original Colecovision which I got back in 1984. It still works too.
Correct. The Gemini was an Atari clone made by Coleco a bit later on. The one that plugs into the front of the ColecoVision was most commonly called “The Atari Adaptor” back in the day….but the official title was Expansion Module 1.
Great video. My dad would trade our Atari with a work pal for his Coleco Vision all the time as a kid. Loved Venture and The Smurfs. Love your channel!
The Colecovision still sold well as the 1983 crash unfolded. The poor quality, downright idiotic engineering, and exorbitant pricing of Adam were major factors, but there were three other important factors in Coleco's downfall: 1) They turned their assembly lines over to the Adam and stopped the manufacturing of the still popular Colecovision, leading to Colecovision supply shortages, 2) They failed to get Adam in the stores in adequate numbers for the Christmas buying season that year, and, 3) They had such issues with financing that they couldn't get short term loans to buy raw materials. So, their assembly lines would wind up being idled as they waited for retail sell-through to be completed, allowing them to eventually fund the purchase of more raw materials. This is, btw, the main reason for the notorious shortages of supply on their popular Cabbage Patch Kid dolls. That's what a bad reputation with lending institutions will get you.
This was the fourth console we got after the Sears Telegames Super Pong, Atari Video Pinball and Atari 2600 A. Picked it up used at a local pawn shop along with several games in 1985. I was able to add to the collection by finding new, unopened copies of games at toy stores which hadn't been able to sell out of them, such as Toys R Us where we acquired the roller controller and steering controller units (man, I miss Toys R Us) or at various pawn shops within a 50 mile radius of our home. I've seen a couple of games at local GameXChange stores over the years, but they never had any that I didn't already have in the collection. The main downside for me with the system was the design of the controllers: they weren't ergonomic and after an hour or so of playing, my left hand would hurt like hell. Managed to get 27 games for the system: B.C.'s Quest For Tires BurgerTime Campaign '84 Congo Bongo Cosmic Avenger Destructor Donkey Kong Donkey Kong Junior Frenzy Gorf Jumpman Junior Ken Uston BlackJack/Poker Lady Bug Looping Miner 2049er Mouse Trap Slither Space Fury Spy Hunter (favorite game and one of the best ports of it on any system) Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator Star Wars: The Arcade Game Tarzan The Heist Turbo Venture WarGames Zaxxon
thats a good list of games and yeah the controller could be tough to use, at the time most of us honestly were just happy to have it but its definatly a difficult controller to go back to for sure! Thanks for coming by btw!
Yeah you really wanted to have the Super Action Controllers, so much better than those car-phone wannabes. It was also possible to use a Sega Genesis controller, providing there wasn't a selection screen at the start that required keypad (skill, etc.)
Colecovision was our family's first system too. we got it from an uncle who worked for Toshiba in Japan. He got it with a whole bunch of (probably) illigal copies of games. We had to actually put the diodes (3:15) of the games on the fitting socketboard and he gave along a whole load of games just existing of loose diodes and socketboards wrapped in styrofoam. I remember my parents only being allowed to change the diodes as the teeth of them were very fragile. (10:00) We had the steering wheel too and the spot where you put the gas pedal is actually meant for the controller to sit in and u can use the control stick as a shifter. The gas pedal is meant for under your foot but we used to put in under a pillow as kids and sat on it for constant throttle. (true story lol)
HAAHAHAHA I love that you were sitting on the gas! I don't think I ever let y my foot off when I played either! Thats crazy how you got ahold of one of them and how much work you did to get some of the games working , awesome story! Thanks for coming by btw!
Having been born in 1978, I was 4 years old when my dad brought home the ColecoVision, so being my first console, I still have fond memories of playing Mouse Trap, Looping and Donkey Kong. While I ended up being more invested in the NES in the years to come, the Coleco box still has a place in my heart.
yep 1977 here so I was only slightly older and took almost the same path Colecovision into the NES from what I can tell it seems sort of a natural progression for most Colecovision fans heh.
Yeah that steam deck os great for emulation i love mine i havent done any colecovision on it yet thats not a bad idea! Thanks for coming by and hanging out!
I bought a colecovision 2 years ago with both donkeykong,donleykong jr,popeye,turbo space panic among others and as a nintendo fan,i am very happy with it😁👍
I just found your channel great channel love the content. keep up the good work. You gained a subscriber. Was born in 1976 had most of what you went over.
The importance of the Colecovision in the gaming world cannot be overstated. For the first time ever you got arcade style games at home. It didnt destroy the arcaid coin-op industry but it smacked its eyes good!
Id argue you got arcade style games from atari and intellivision as well but graphically this is as close as we had gotten to the arcadss to date absolutely!
I agree. My family owned an Intellivision and while it was way ahead of the Atari 2600, it was the Colecovision that had games that more closely resembled the arcade originals. This was such a huge part of the early console market as the majority of people learned about new games through the arcades. My family never purchased a Colecovision, but I played them at friends' homes... it was such a great console.
I was born in 1974 and remember visiting my dad and grandparents during Christmas in 1982. I opened up a CV and some games. It was my first game console. Looking back how much the console was back then vs todays dollar amount, it's crazy to me to think how expensive that was for my dad and grandparents but it's a memory I'll always have. Ladybug, turbo (with the steering wheel and pedal), zaxxon, donkey Kong, and venture were my favorites. Then got the 2600 adapter and added even more versatility
yeah the income vs the cost of consoles is kind of insane. Income was somewhere around 20 to 30k and consoles costing 200 dollars at launch the same price a NES or SNES would cost. Thanks for coming by and sharing some of your own gaming history!
I had a ColecoVision and an Atari 2600.. Loved the Coleco. Wish I still had it Favourite games... Venture.. Ladybug. Zaxxon, Moon Patrol, Bump n Jump, Dukes of Hazzard.. Carnival!!! Space Fury! River Raid!!!!
Those are some good titles, I had ladybug, Zaxxon and Venture out of those all great games. I honestly didn't learn about Dukes of Hazzard till recently and was shocked how good it looked!
AS a kid who grew up with Atari 2600, I was blown away by games like Donkey Kong Jr., Zaxxon, and Montezuma's Revenge on my uncle's ColecoVision.They were so obviously superior. I wonder how things might have been different had they not succumbed to the video game crash.They seemed really innovative and forward thinking.
I think it could of gone a few ways but in my mind they could have fought off sega and held second i dont see them taking nintendos first offering without a rethink on how they approach game development and a second console to push their specs up a bit. If you scan through the comments there are some pretty deep discussions on just that. Be warned you might want some solid time set aside some of the replies get pretty long winded!
I never owned a Colecovision, but I certainly heard about the graphics and games it offered. I'll never forget while living in an apartment complex, I was passing by a door that was open when I heard some familiar-ish sounds. It was someone playing Donkey Kong....at home!! I couldn't believe what I was seeing because it was the closest to the arcade game I ever saw. I just stood there watching, wishing so bad that I could get one. Sadly, I was only 13 years old and my family couldn't afford any video game system, but it certainly blew my mind to see a home console capable of producing rather impressive arcade translations for its time. GREAT video, by the way!
lol , I'll be honest I learned almost all of this doing this video and I had a colecovision as a kid! It was wild seeing all the twists and turns the company made from leather good to electronics and toys! Thanks for coming by and checking this one out!
I had a ColecoVision as a kid. It was one of the demo models from my dad's old computer shop. I loved that thing, though it did not survive my childhood. I found one at a flea market a few years back and snapped it up. $85 for the unit, the 2600 module, and uh...parts of the steering wheel. The thing is spotless. I was shocked, given that that particular flea market is filthy, lol. I had no clue they made that Alf plush. I had that too. Selling off a profitable leather goods company to get into snowmobiles is quite an odd shift to say the least.
Thats awesome uou gound a colecovision in that good a shape! Pity anout the steering wheel though. Also yeah the weird twists and turns coleco took as a company is bizarre to say the least. Thanks for stoppoing by btw!
if I had a nickel for every leather company that eventually became a computer / electronics company... well I'd have 2 nickels, it's just weird that it happened twice (the other one is Tandy)
I had most of the popular games of the time. The VCR Rental place up the block rented ColecoVision, Atari and Intellivision games. My father would let me rent 2 things a week so I usually chose 1 game and 1 movie. Through this I was able to figure out what games I wanted and what I did not. I had Spy Hunter, James Bond 007, Frenzy, BurgerTime, Lady Bug, Looping, Popeye, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., BCs Quest for Tires, BCII: Grog's Revenge which had amazing art. Looked just like the comic strip, Buck Rogers, Bump and Jump, Space Panic, Congo Bongo, Choplifter, Carnival, Dukes of Hazzard, Frantic Freddy, Frogger, Frontline, Galaxian, Gorf, Jungle Hunt, Miner 2049er, Mouse Trap, Mr. Do, Mr Do's Castle, Omega Race, Slither, Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle, Space Fury, Root Beer Tapper, Time Pilot, Turbo, Venture, Zaxxon, and my all time favorite, Fortune Builder. It is the Sim City of the time. You had a large sprawl of land that ranged from an island in a harbor, all the way into snow topped mountains. You would build infrastructure and then strategically place stores, entertainment venues, toll booths and every type of house, condo, apartment, and so on. I would list it all but it was a large manual, the game used every single button on the controller and used the two fire buttons for different purposes. The goal was to reach a certain amount of revenue by a certain amount of time, dictated by the skill level from the skill select at the beginning. This was another cool thing about ColecoVision. Most games had 10 skill levels. I could beat Fortune Builder on 10. I played and loved it that much. It played one of Vivaldi's Spring from the four seasons and it would be interrupted by quarterly reports, a year end report and news flashes. The news flashes could make you money or they could cost you money. What a gems. You'd see periods (.) that represented people and they would travel around your new towns, cities and resorts and bring you in revenue. I remember it looking like it was gridlocked by the end of a level 10 run if I were successful. Most of the games were arcade ports and were as faithful as they could be. The early stuff was always really good. Not perfect, but always the best port on any system. Until Nintendo rolled into town. The Commodore 64 also picked up major steam during this time and the games on the C64 started looking and playing better than the ColecoVision games. But they crashed occasionally. ColecoVision almost never crashed. I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to have no connectivity and needing a patch to fix a game. The internet has made most coders (not programmers) lazy in that regard. But then E.T. for the 2600 would have been fixed if we had had connectivity lol! I also had the steering wheel (Never used it), The super action controller and the Atari 2600 expansion which allowed me to sell my two Ataris for more games. All in all this was the system to have. This was the Playstation of it's time and nothing could compare. Atari looked like a pixelated, blocky mess and the Intellivision wasn't much better, although it had good sound. Fun fact: The intellivision had a 16-Bit processor. It was the first 16 bit console per se lol. If you want descriptions in my own words about any of these games, just ask. I played the tail off of that system and knew all the games I owned till boredom. And just like the video says, it was cheaper to own a C64 and a ColecoVision and that's what I did after seeing the Adam at a friend's house and playing both the expanded Donkey Kong and Buck Rogers and although a bunch of the features that were missing from the arcade were in both, the conveyor belt level was still missing from Donkey Kong. That and the lack of a disk drive sealed the deal for me. I already had a Vic 20 with a Datasette and the Datasette was painfully slower than disks, let alone cartridges. My Coleco served me well until the NES arrived. I find it funny that the NES wasn't much more powerful than the Colecovision and had Coleco created a proper expansion for it, and not the Adam, it might have lived into the NES days alongside the first NES games (Alot of which came from the C64 and ColecoVision).
wow man you had a huge history with this sytem! I think you had more games than I did and a ton more experience in the PC market then than I did. I don't think my parents got a computer till DOS was the main standard for non MAC machines and even then we didn't use it for that much overall! Love that you came by and hopefully the video did the console justice!
Coleco was based in West Hartford, CT. On launch day or soon there after of the Adam they did a demo at the small indoor mall on the corner of N. Main St and Route 44 in West Hartford. Forget the store they were in. All I remember was the printer "Arms" on the daisy wheel printer jamming up. After Coleco was floating in the bowl, the outfit I worked for in Avon hired a guy from there. Wasn't an engineer but did work on the project. "They were garbage. We knew it was going to be a failure". I remember the printer being one of the biggest problems as far as making customers mad.
Yeah the ADAM was do umentsd in several places i looked as having multiple issues the printer being one of them. Its a shame as the console itself was really good i enjoyed mine during my time with it.
I don't remember ever having the printer jam up, but I remember it used a very unusual ribbon, which was almost unobtainable with Coleco going out of business. I think at one point we even opened it and rewound it so we could use it again. It wasn't a printer like we think of them today, it was basically a typewriter really. When you turned on the Adam you could type just like a typewriter, with the letters coming out instantly one at a time. You could switch to word processing mode, type your document, and then have it all come out at once. I don't think it could even print graphics other than ascii art since it was basically a typewriter.
@@joestupar827 Yep, daisy wheel printers were basically big automated typewriters. The arms jamming up in the manner described wasn't uncommon. What's crazy to me is how long they were in use. Advance Auto Parts and O'Reilly Auto were still using them up until a few years ago to print out quotes.
Atari was in talks with Sega to distribute the upcoming Megadrive/Genesis in the US around 1986 because Sega wasn't pleased with Tonka's handling of the SMS in the US market and they managed to drop the ball on that one too. Sega finally decided "screw it we'll just do it ourselves" so again it was actually a blessing.
In some ways yes sega wss never grest st managing the hardware side of their business they had a mess on their hands by the Dreamcast heh. But yeah its likely better than having atari working on it!
yep that was a mistake on my part I made while I was looking things up from what I read it seemed like it was the offiical name for the module instead of module 1. Thank you for catching it though.
Small correction, friend: Gemini wasn't a Colecovision add-on, it was a complete stand-alone Atari 2600 clone. The Colecovision add-on was simply called "Expansion Module #1", as far as I ever heard. I still have a Colecovision, with Driving Module, Expansion Module#1, Roller Controller, and Super Action Controllers.
yep I've had a few people mention this I plan on doing something on the gemini and the telestar arcade as part correction and part expansion thank you for mentioning it though.
I had a Coleco with both the steering wheel and roller controller. Some of my favorites were Donkey Kong, DK Jr, Turbo, Descructor, Victory, Wing War, Cosmic Avenger, Front Line, and War Games. Such a great system.
I still remember walking into sears with my mom and brother. We went to the third floor electronics department and got our Colecovision. Then we went to the 4th floor where Sears had a great lunch counter and we had burgers. I can still smell that day, it smells like victory! ❤ The super action controller was awesome.
Yeah I have a lot of fond memories of it myself. Not as many as the NES thats the first one I remember heavily latching onto but I have a lot of fun memories of the Colecovision too!
Yep and that was the goalpost for the most part the. Replicating the arcade experience as closely as possible! Thanks for coming by btw its always appreciated!
I did indeed have a ColecoVision as a kid. Turbo, Pepper II, Cosmic Avenger & BC's Quest For Tires were my favorite games. Oh, and that darn penguin game who's music is now stuck in my brain again...... darnit! (Antarctic Adventure)
the main one of those I remember was Turbo and I really enjoyed that one. Sorry for getting Antarctic Adventure stuck in your head heh. Thanks for coming by!
I never had a ColecoVision, only having discovered its games library through emulation. The games are quite fun, a charming color palette and the music and sound are great. I don’t consider it in the same generation of consoles as the Atari 2600 because its graphics and sound capabilities are far better.
whats funny is its still considered second generation of consoles. The third doesn't start till the NES days. I agree though for second generation its a very very advanced system and a wide range of consoles with atar 2600,5200,7800, intellivision and colecovision and multiple revisions of even the intellivision in that range!
@@geekstorian Well, the Famicom (which is basically the NES in Japan) came out a year later after the ColecoVision in 1983. Defining timelines for generations are an arbitrary thing anyway. The Atari 5200 was clearly meant to be the next-gen successor to the 2600 (it is basically an Atari 400/800 in terms of graphics and sound capabilities in video game console format), but it also gets lumped in the same generation as the 2600/Odyssey2. Call me autistic or nitpicky, but they really need to recategorize this "in-between" generation (2B?) that occurred just on the cusp of the video game crash.
As someone that was there, I feel obliged to paint a picture for people that didn’t grow up in the 80s. It was MILES better than the 2600 or Intellevision (both being the only other consoles that people tended to own at the time). I would compare it to knowing nothing but a PS1, and then seeing a PS5. Mind blowing.
Got my 2600 ‘late’. Dec of 1982. One year later my best friend got a ColecoVision. I was super jealous! Oddly, my friend spent tons of time on my unit as there were so very many games. Honestly, I just waned to play WarGames. I loved it so much! Haha! Also we were ALL (not just he and I, but ALL our friends at the time) absolutely zero aware of any crash. We just played in arcades or at home happily until around about 1985 or so….and then were all very weirded out by the nigh alien thing that was the NES…..
Yeah i think all of us as kids had no idea i played my colecovision till i saw a nintendo in a local store and begged my mom for one. Eventually we came home with the kit that had the nes two controllers and the zapper! I think thats ahat got me really hooked i loved the colecovision but i have more clear memories of the NES in part because i was older and could remember it easier. Thanks a ton for coming by and sharing btw!
The Super Action Controllers were great, so much better than the car-phone-esque stock set. They worked quite well for most platformers and various arcade type games in general; the third and forth triggers were mainly used for SAC specific titles. And one of the most unique with the fencing-foil grip that made you feel like a Musketeer. There were also some games, sych as Pitfall, that started without a skill selection screen, where you could use a Genesis controller.
see I never had that controller I don't think I even knew about it at all till I was working up this video, in part because I wanted it on my channel and in part I was doing a podcast on the channel with a friend talking about the colecovision. I'm not surprised the genesis controller worked with the colecovision. I think it worked with a lot of atari consoles to the 7800 I think? Primarily because they use the same pin out.
Frontline was actually a great game! My parents disposed of the ColecoVision at some point. Recently I’ve been enjoying playing the classics on the Analogue Pocket!
This is one of my favorite gaming stories from the vintage era. Back when a leather company could just spin up a random set of products and end up making video games lol.
I know I had a hard time not laughing as I dug into this one and kept seeing all the odd twists and turns as to how they got to this point. It may be one of the most fun ones ive done to date in that respect lol
My friend had one. The first game I played was Venture, not graphically impressive but the mini games were fun. But what impressed me the most I think was BC Quest for fire, that guy on the tire and jumping over stuff. What an amazing game. I also remember Smurfs and Grog's revenge. What set the console apart were those big and detailed sprites, it looked amazing back then. It was a great console. Their version of Donkey Kong was extremely faithful. It was closer to the arcade games than any console at that point. The Z80 was a great chip, it was found in the C128 and as an add on/compatibility chip in more advanced computers. Those were great times.
I dont think I know of BC Quest for fire, Smurfs I defiantly knew I had that one and yeah Donkey Kong was absolutely the most faithful out of all of them around that time till around the time of the NES. Thanks for coming by and sharing btw a pleasure to meet you!
@@geekstorian Actually it's ...for "Tires" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.C.%27s_Quest_for_Tires It doesn't look so amazing today but it had that cartoonish feel and obstacles were fun. Thanks for your feedback, cheers!
Wow I still have my Coleco that I got for Christmas back in 1983. Still works, have all the classic games plus the Atari expansion and a bunch of Atari games.
Lol i never knew that as a game i alaays heard it as a joke in cartoons for when someone drank the water in some exotic location and had stomach issues lol. Ill have to look it up at some point :). Thanks ks a ton for watching!
I almost owned a Colecovision. I was saving money from my paper route. At the time the price of the Colecovision was $149. This was probably around 1983 to 1984. I wanted the Colecovision because of the number of arcade games that were available. I finally saved enough and was checking the flyers in the paper and saw that my local store had dropped the Commodore 64 down to $199. I was able to get the $50 I was short from my parents and instead bought the C-64. So that's about as close as I ever got to getting the Colecovision.
C64 is a dolid machine for the day and more flexible than the colecovision well maybe aside from putting the ADAM on it but that would of been WAY more than you spent id say you made the right move. Love the console but that deals just to good!
I had one of these. This was my first console, too. It shorted and shot out smoke one day. Too young to remember why. In fact, I only have one memory of even playing it.
Coleco Gemini was a stand-alone Atari 2600 clone console. The expansion module for CVIS that played Atari cartridges was simply called Expansion Module 1.
yep I need to work on a correction for that trust me its been on my mind once people pointed out I got that wrong. I also want to cover the telestar arcade a little bit more as well
Yeah, had they gotten in earlier and the crash hadn't happened they really could have made it much MUCH tougher for Nintendo to get a foothold in the states for sure! Thanks for coming by and hanging out man!
@@geekstorianColecovision shares graphical limitations with the SG-1000 and the original MSX standard. Even without the American console crash, those palettes and monochrome sprites plus scrolling struggles? Every multiplat is going to look like the poverty version to the point of cruel irony. And Nintendo benefits from the Colecovision's promotion of their games as the gold standard of a killer app. In a way, it'd be like when the NES and SNES went head to head.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 I don't disagree with you to heavily but with the console getting cheaper and having more games it could have kept moving along making them money till they came out with another console to more easily compete with the next generation. This was still a second generation console albiet an advanced one. NES technically used a "weaker" chipset than was in the colecovision it just had a PPU to offload a lot of the processing and help its color capabilities. It was a cheap and clever solution to keep costs down and make the graphics and smoothness of gameplay better.
@@geekstorian The Z80's shortest operation takes twice as many cycles as the NES CPU. You really need to know your way around the limitations and Assembly code to fully tap into its strengths vs. the reduced but optimized instruction set of the competition. Another concern is the state of Western game design in that era. Looking at platformers, for example, even Super Mario Bros 1 has layers of level design nuance beyond "challenges ramp up to sadism", and uses the soundtrack in ways you wouldn't see before then. Even the controller reveals more thought and care for the player experience. Plus, there's still the Intellivision successor and 7800 CD to worry about in a world without the crash. Can Coleco really last as the market leader with their arcade port licenses and the double edged hype of being the tech leader? Anything is possible, and I'd like to hear your perspective, but I'm not seeing many paths to victory without them hijacking a time machine to see which opportunities they could have used to overcome their disadvantages.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 my knowledge of the older processors is a it fuzzy but I thought the NES used a variant of the MOS 6502 chip which was popular in a lot of personal computers but was far cheaper than the z80 when it came out and as used in some older machines as well. Their clever and focused design on top of having the seperate PPU gave them an edge in graphical processing in the 3rd era even though there were more technologcially advanced chipsets and systems out there IE the last revision of the Master system. Now do I think they would of showed up the NES when it came out graphically , no, thats the short answer. They would have had to keep playing the game of the cheaper console with more titles while they worked on a new revision of their hardware hopefully one with a more modenized controller like the 7800 and the NES had simplying the control scheme. At the time they were making enough money to hold out a while and possibly develop a new unit "if" there hadn't been a crash so they could try to pull that off "possibly" putting them on par hardware wise. As to western development your not wrong it was very focused on high scores and more point based gameplay not really focusing on telling a story or giving you more of a level system like the NES started pushing. Generation 3 was a huge turning point in the console industry becoming more of a entity on its own rather than a simple port over popular arcade games kind of scenerio and its one Nintendo played very well and is one of the reasons they did so well against sega who was still porting over a ton of arcade titles to their consoles (mind you there is a LOT more to that story to). They would have had to learn to adapt and make more story driven and level driven games to adapt to that market something none of the consoles from the second Generation did at all to my knowledge really. In short , work as a cheaper option while developing a 3rd generation system with more NES style controles like the 7800 and revamp their game development process to the growing market of longer more console focused experiences and rely less on the arcade ports and popularity. Could they have done it, who the hell knows really lol.
Coleco had a lot of great games, and a few that were STARTLINGLY close to their arcade brethren. Ladybug, Venture, and Carnival were initial launch titles that were VERY close to the arcade originals. Later titles Frenzy and Pepper II were also REALLY close to the actual arcade versions. You could make a solid case that Frenzy and Ladybug were actually a little BETTER than the arcade versions.
never played either of those in the arcade I did at least play ladybug on the colecovision and really enjoyed it not as much as my mother who adored that game its the only console I ever saw her really play and the only game she ever really played excessively lol. Thank you for the engagement on this one btw I always appreciate insight and corrections.
@geekstorian true fact! My brother went on to work as a Gameplay Counselor for 7 years. He was hired by a temp agency after showing them a list of games (our collection was over 200 at the time) with asterisks next to the games he had beaten. After Nintendo, he was the Microsoft PC Games Beta Coordinator for 8 years. It was an awesome time! I remember vividly the many times he would bring home games pre-launch to play and learn for work. In 1999, he gave me a copy of Asheron's Call to play. I did nothing else after work and on the weekends for 2 1/2 years! Lol!
I've never known anyone else who had a ColecoVision. Everyone else in my neighborhood had Atari. My favorite games were Mousetrap (which works great with the play action controller), Pepper 2, Venture, Congo Bongo, Time Pilot, Ladybug, and Carnival. We also had Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, and Smurf's
I honestly don't think I've ever seen a working ColecoVision in action. Somehow it's one of the few consoles I never got to play with even as a retro game obsessed hipster adult.
Really i know a few people with working ones not in person where i can play it but other youtubers i talk to. There was also a short run of the phoenix that played the original carts which is very pricey now
I owned and used a CV for a long time. I still have mine, although I haven't turned it in on in over 10 years. It was definitely the best console of its day and held that position until the NES shipped. They had a novel approach to graphics, very similar to what the C64 does. Although I haven't seen a technical reference for it, looking at how games behave (and the particular patterns that appear when you hit the reset button), the primary graphics is actually a kind of text mode, but with the character data provided by the ROM cartridge. So they can make really elaborate backgrounds by constructing a font with the shapes that are needed and then rendering each cell with different foreground and background colors. Overlay that with a few sprites and you've got a nice high resolution color graphic display without blowing your budget on video memory. And you're absolutely right that Adam killed the company. It was a great idea, but it had some bad quality control issues and they cheaped out in the wrong way. Instead of selling the system they did for $600-700, they should've gone with floppy drives for storage and raise the price a little. They should've also made the printer an optional component instead of an integral part of the system, so people could save money and get a no-printer system or opt for a dot matrix printer (instead of the daisy-wheel printer they bundled), which would be better for anyone not looking to produce formal correspondence, since dot-matrix is faster, less expensive and can print graphics. But it's not too surprising that corporate executives with a background in children's toys were unable to properly spec-out and design a personal computer system. BTW, although you probably already know, the Z80 was used on a few other mainstream computers at the time. In particular, the TRS-80 models 1, 3 and 4 were all Z-80 based. As was Heathkit's series of home-built computers. And it was definitely more powerful than the (much less expensive) 6502 chip used by Apple, Atari and Commodore for their 8-bit computers.
Yeah I knew the Z80 chip was popular with a ton of PCs at the time I don't think I dug deep enough to find out which ones specifically though I just remember finding that mentioned in a few sources I looked up to try to do the video justice. As to the Adam yeah it .....had a lot of issues, bad sheilding terrible printer by all reports among other things. It really needed some more work to be solid and its price point was just...bad. As to the commdore, I never owned one of those and havent' done a video on it to know how the graphics look to compare personally. Though covering older PCs has been an idea on my mind to do at "some" point down the road. Thanks for coming in btw and dropping so much knowledge its. ALWAYS appreciated!
My best friend had the ColecoVision when we were in Middle School. I remember thinking "finally, a console that plays games that look just like the arcade!" THEN he got the NES and I thought video games could never get better!
Yeah both were amazing system of their day I STILL play a lot of NES content im not gonna lie its got some of my favorite games to beat my head against due to the hard gameplay but easy accessibility
I had ColecoVision when I was a kid. By far the game we played the most was decathlon. Wore out three controllers if my memory serves. for most of the events you had to work the control knob back and forth as rapidly as possible. those controllers didn't last long. There was even an order form in the back of the instruction manual where you could send away for a decathlon glove that was like a wide receivers glove. Yeah I had that too.
lol that shouldn't be funny since you broke your controllers but it sort of reminds me of people wearing out power pads playing track and field and the like. Thank you for sharing the story and sorry about your controllers.
Thays not a bad idea and they could have used a lot of colecos ips then. I font know that they would have wanted to many japanese companies dont play well with American mentality or want that brand recognition . Look at all the ststic over the years between sega of america and sega of japan. Another example was the turbographics american division often getting ignored about games they knew would sell well srate side. I agree it would have been great name recognition though!
The first Sega home console, the Japan only SG-1000, actually uses the same motherboard as the ColecoVision! That’s why the fonts look identical on the on-screen words for both systems. I agree that since Sega was already repurposing Coleco’s boards for the SG-1000 why not just make it ColecoVision compatible as well?
Loved CV as an older teenager at the time. I had my eye on getting an Adam but a closer look dissuaded me. Virtually no 3rd party support, cheaply made components (printer eg.). When I saw that it came with a tape drive when everything was going disc was the ultimate deal breaker.
Yeah i can see not wanting the adam it had a number of issues the colecovision itself was solid for its day with a large number of good games might be worth finding a website or emulating just to check some of them out if your still curious either way thanks for coming by and sharing its always appreciated!
Besides Donkey Kong, Turbo was another killer app that made me super-jealous for not having the console. And the Colecovision became a must-have when you also considered the arcade-level ports of Time Pilot, Centipede, Galaxian, Frogger, Defender, Venture, Roc 'n' Rope, Cosmic Avenger, Pepper II, Frenzy, Moon Patrol, Popeye, Q-bert, Spy Hunter, Zaxxon and Tapper.
Yeah that one was for the ADAM so technically it was a PC game ore than a console version but for the time it looked great! Thanks for coming by hope you had a good time!
We got a Coleco the year it came out, and I was initially disappointed as everyone else I knew had 2600s. How was I going to borrow and trade games? But then I saw the difference in the versions of games on both consoles, and I was completely fine with what we had. I personally enjoyed Zaxxon and Venture the most, but we had quite a few others.
Yeah i could see trading as an issue but yeah the games looked way way better also i loved zaxxon and venture as well thanks for coming by and sharing as well as watching!
I think if Coleco had just focused on the ColecoVision and not developed the computer, they would have kept going. The computer lost them a ton of money, and the ColecoVision was way ahead of the other consoles at the time. By 1984 all the 3rd party developers would have been concentrating on Coleco games and they would have built up a huge market before the NES entered the US. The NES would have still done really well, but by then Coleco could develop the 2nd gen console and they may have had Sega's market share.
yeah I see your point on focusing on the console but so many other people had gone into computers as well atari benig one of the examples that I think they would lose more not trying to get into that market. Also that market was staying solid and growing rapidly itself. With those things being in play the temptation to get into that market would be just to great for almost anyone especially when your hardware specs are already close to a computer of that day already.
My mom was crazy good at Ladybug & Mousetrap, those games would get moving so quickly she basically was going from anticipation and muscle memory…really good memories.
my mom adored Ladybug as well , I dont' recall her being big on mousetrap even though we did have it. Thanks for coming by and sharing the memories man!
@@geekstorian no problem I am really enjoying your content! I held off telling you I was born with muscular dystrophy and can basically only move my head so dad built me an elaborate contraption allowing me to shoot/jump by pulling strings with my mouth. I could play Carnival somewhat by timing my shots, very happy memories. If you look at my “project gameface” you can see me working with Google to leverage AI so people like me can do even more now.
We started with a Sears TELE-GAMES Video Arcade (ie their VCS/2600 that Atari made for them) and in 1983 I took all my $ that a kid could have and bought … a 5200. My cousins didn’t have a 2600 and we thought we’d give it and some games (not all, I keep my favorites) to them. But the 5200’s adapter for 2600 games … only worked with the 2-joystick port version (revised hardware) and the 5200 sold SO WELL that I had the OG hardware. My dad’s solution? He acquired a CV with expansion module 1! I never asked how but I think he knew some people and had connections and it was a promotional thing that didn’t work out so lucky us blah blah blah. But hey what did I care? Fun times! While most memories were of the 5200 it was really a matter of the games I played. There was overlap but some titles were only one system or the other. Funny, I knew “Looping” on the CV before I ever saw it in an arcade. Easier (slower) on the CV. Mountain King was another one I played a lot. And Venture. Ladybug and Mousetrap were cool too and these last three were not on the 5200. I did not know about the Roller Controller back in the day. Seriously! That would have been nice. I got the 5200 Trak Ball for Christmas and it was great to have. Also was not aware of the Super Action controllers. But I DID have a Wico Command Control joystick 🕹️ for both the 5200 and CV. Both of the systems had less than ideal joysticks (but at least they were better than Intellivision! Oh and Wico made a joystick for them too - looked like their CV joystick and you had to wire it into the OG Intellivision according to the shared instructions).
See out of the ones you mentioned i know i had venture,mousetrap and ladybug. I loved all of those never got into the 5200 though. I was just old enough to get into the colecovision and understand what was going on and got a good two years or more out of it before the NES dropped and i officially got massively hooked on gaming! Thank you a ton fir coming by and sharing some of your childhood i alwayd love hearing peoples personal gaming experiences and history!
Do you happen to know where I can find schematics for one? Mine had one of the crystals broken out. If you know the exact frequency of the crystal that's very close to the cartridge slot, that would do too! Te one I have in it now is a bit off, causing annoying artifacts in audio and video. (talking about the console that was used in the thumbnail...) Yes, I still have it, and want to get it back up and running. Still have the steering wheel too. I had smurf, turbo, donkey kong and space fury... Played turbo the most. When I was 12, I could get runs or over an hour with that game. I think I managed to crash the game a few times because it got too fast XD
not something I looked up for this but a quick search found a few sites you may have already seen. wiki.console5.com/wiki/Colecovision www.colecovision.dk/technical.htm not sure if those will help you but its the best I could come up with off hand quickly
The steering wheel had it's own accessory. Coleco made a C battery plugin adapter. If you look at the battery lid there is a little slot, which was where the plugin adapter cable fits. They knew. They had already planned around it. The price was the same as 4 C cell batteries as I remember my parents telling me. The Coleco Adam was WAY ahead of it's time. The worst mistake they made with it was the printer. Which was causing the spikes that would wreck tapes and tape drives. Had they just swapped the on board ROM with their BASIC and later sell the printer plus the word processor as an add on after fixing all the bugs they wouldn't have wrecked themselves. This would have literally just been dumping the BASIC tape image to the ROM. Pretty much any EOS software can occupy the ROM. Some exec got a hair up his butt that the only way they could sell the computer is if it came with a printer. Coleco never had an engineering problem. They had some of the brightest minds that could probably cure a rainy day if tasked with it. But their leadership is what tanked the company. Had they done the same type of fix as they did with the steering wheel as they did with the Adam... who know what would have happened.
see I didn't know about the replacement for C batteries in the steering wheel.. I remember having one but I don't even remember changing the batteries but then I was super young and just remember enjoying it and turbo. It wasn't till I was refreshing my memory and trying to get more details that I saw it in articles and pictures and was like thats so odd, first off C cells seemed an odd pick I'm sure they had reasons but most controllers even then didn't need an external power source and honestly I looked to try to find out why and just couldn't find anything on it so its good to know they had an alternative at least now.. As to the Adam I knew they had muiltiple issues that would erase alot of your tape data what I found more pointed to inappropriate shielding kind of like keeping poorly sheilded speakers to close to a CRT TV the magnet from the drivers will distort the image only in this case its erasing tapes/disks anything susceptible to magnetic fields. So yeah I could see a printer potentially being part of the problem. Thank you a ton for coming by and sharing this much information!
Yeah it was very very close to the NES in quality for its time the NES was still ahead of it mind you but I think it was the closest out of that batch of consoles to a third generation console very very much ahead of its time thanks for coming by and checking this one out btw!
@orian the Colecovision was inspiration for the Famicon/NES, "Nintendo's R&D team had seen a prototype of the ColecoVision and had been impressed by its smoothly animated graphics. Development of the Gamecom was headed by Masayuki Uemura, whose wife suggested it should be renamed the Family Computer, or Famicom for short." I still have my Original Colecovision, but it has failed, shelf queen now lol I should add on mine currently, I believe some of the chips have failed on the motherboard, black screen only , power supply tests fine
yeah thats the trouble with tech as it ages a lot of takes some work to get it up and running again if they have a failure. But I mean that system was running for what 30 years of use even if occasionally or more thats pretty impressive! That and you still have it as a cool display piece even if you don't repair it! I hadn't done any digging into the Famicom to know thatt I knew a bit about the NES being the AVS to start but not its main inspiration. Thanks a ton for the tidbit and coming by to check this one out! @@tony--james
Yep the Z80 and the specs used in the Colecovision were VERY popular for PCs are the time just not many of them being worked into a console form factor your absolutely right!
@orian I wrote games for the Timex Sinclair 2068, with a 3.58 MHz Z80 but no Texas Instruments display chip. I later wrote games for the SNES with a 3.58 MHZ 65816 clone. It occurred to me that this frequency must be magical because it kept popping up everywhere. It turns out that the frequency is 1/4th the clock speed for the color signal, so rather than use two crystals, they could just use a single 14.32 MHz clock and a divider to get the processor clock speed. They did it to save money.
@@john2001plus ok thats a super cool tidbit and pardon me and my limited understanding of they wee using the 3.58 mhz to get more performance out of the unit than they could using the bade clock speed? Sorry if im way misunderstanding low level coding was never my expertise i got a C out of digital logic in college >_
@orian The 2068 computer used 4 MHZ memory chips, so one might think that running the processor at 4 MHZ would have been logical. However, they didn't do that, and I don't think that it was just to have a 10% margin of error on the memory chips. The 3.58 Mhz was a way of getting double duty out of the crystal that drove the color signal. They could have had a separate 4 Mhz crystal, but they didn't. I have seen several systems that used this 3.58 Mhz speed, so it appears to have been a common practice.
@orian I am not a hardware person either. I just wrote games for a living. I just know that the 3.58 Mhz processor speed on the 2068 computer was driven by the 14.32 Mhz clock crystal used with the video signal. Since this same 3.58 Mhz speed was also used on many other computers and video game systems, I assume that they did it for the same reason.
loved my colecovision, the (sports) super action controller was great, and the roller controller for what games it worked with, even the regular controller i thought was pretty good.. i think the games i remember the most was bump n jump, and zaxxon.. i also seem to remember a dragon's lair game, that wasn't just the push the right button at the right second to move and not die.. but more of a regular adventure game, not sure if it was an adam game or maybe i'm thinking something else entirely.
I think I saw a version of that myself when I was looking so I'm pretty sure your right. I specifically went with the Adam version because I wanted something that ran on the ADAM to show in that section and honestly it looked REALLY good for the time! I loved Zaxxon as a kid not as much as time pilot but a great game and I don't' think I ever had a version of bump n jump
I remember my neighbor had a Coleco and I went over there to play. He had Donkey Kong and so did I on my Atari 2600. I was blown away on how good that it looked on the Coleco. The Smurfs and Zaxxon looked so amazing! But I had the Atari so what are ya going to do?
I mean still enjoy your Atari it had a colossal amount of games lol. Don't get me wrong I loved my Colecovision while I had it but there was nothing wrong with Atari! Thanks for coming by and hanging out for a few btw I appreciate it!
I can't be the only one asking this. What TV is that you're using for your video? I know it's just a graphic but it has 525 and 625 all over it. What is the brand and model?
Actually your the first one to ever ask and it was a stock image I found and used. I spent some time looking and I can only assume its some british model TV but I couldn't tell you which one sorry man I really did look.
I remember coming home from school one day and my mom told me I'm sorry but we won't be able to buy you the coleco vision for Christmas because we just don't have enough money. So I told my mom it's no problem. It's okay, I understand. I then went into my room to put away my shoes under my bunk bed when I realized I couldn't. So I checked under the bunk bed and lo and behold. There was a black bag in there and when I pulled it out it was none Other than the Coleco vision, I jumped for joy obviously as an 9-year-old kid and I immediately ran to my mother's room and gave her a hug. My mother's no longer with us. I lost her to cancer 10 years ago. May she rest in peace. The coleco vision remains my favorite system of all time because of her. Thank you so much for making this video. It really brought back some very beautiful memories.
Aww man thats a great story! I'm sorry for your loss but grateful you could share your story with me today and that I could help you remember some fond memories. Thank you again and I'm very happy you enjoyed the video!
One day, I came home from school. And my father bought us a CV. It was a happy childhood memory. I asked him why CV instead of 2600, he said "have you seen the graphics difference." He was a pro at Lady Bug. I loved Turbo and Zaxxon. Cheers! 👍
my mom ADORED ladybug it was a her favorite game I never got as good as she was at it. Turbo and Zaxxon were amazing to loved those and smurfs to!
Yes, Zaxxon!
Haha your dad knows what's up
@@geekstorian Sorry, this video has been done about 10 times already WHY would you just do a worse version, forget it.
My parents were also really into Lady Bug.
I grew up near Coleco headquarters, and there were a lot of games falling off trucks.
I worked hard at my paper route to buy my ColecoVision & all these years later I have a big collection on display in my home. So many memories, thanks for this.
thank you for coming by and sharing some memories always good to meet people and hear their stories!
I remember back Christmas of 82....it was about 3am me and my little sister heard video game music...we rushed down to the living room & there it was....my first console gaming system 😊 the "Collecovision" My mom & dad allow me to get in there game "Donkey Kong", "Pac Man", "Defender", "Star Raiders" & "Centipede"....I must of played that system all Christmas. So much right after the holiday & it was time to return to school I was the envy among my friends. I was the first out my friends to have that system. Thank you Collecovision for fine memories & a great childhood.....
😀😉😀😀😀😀😀😀
I love this story!! Seriously this made my morning thank you SOOO much for sharing!
@@geekstorian Anytime my friend....
I was born in 1968 and my first home “console” was some Pong knockoff bought at our local farmer’s market in 1976 or ‘77. And by 1980 I bought my own Atari VCS with lawn mowing and snow shoveling money. But in 1983 when ColecoVision was released: oh my! 🤯
I sold my VCS to the local stereo shop and used the cash towards a ColecoVision and Expansion Module 1 (what my friends and I simply called “The Atari Adaptor” back then). 40+ years later the CV still ranks as my *NUMBER ONE* favorite console of all-time.
Venture, Space Fury, Cosmic Avenger, Frenzy, Lady Bug, and Mouse Trap are all absolute classics that were just as good as their arcade counterparts.
Thanks for this video: well done! 👍
dude thats awesome! I think the first console I bought myself was the N64 I saved up for ages on that one working part time retail.. I need to try Cosmic avenger I don't think I had that one I did have lady bug, Venture and Mouse Trap though great games!
Coleco Vision always brings up childhood memories especially when I think about their portable arcades
It might have been a hand-me-down for me from my brothers 5 years after it came out but the ColecoVision was still my first console and will always have a special place in my heart.
Was my first one to i dont thi k i knew about video games at all till my parents brought one home and i was pretty much hooked!
The Colecovision was the Neo Geo of that generation. It had by far the most faithful arcade ports, and back then, arcade quality was the gold standard.
Yup
Yeah but unlike the Neo Geo it was relatively affordable to get your hands on! Your not wrong though it was the gold standard!
Nope. I had a cv and a 5200. Dk, ladybug… venture… some launch titles were excellent. Then the ports got shoddy…. Played awful.. choppy time pilot… subroc was a slide show. Meanwhile for the 5200 I had defender, centipede, joust, dig dug and others… played so smooth and were as close to the arcade as you could get.
I had the film adaptation game of the movie "2010". I was 8 when I played it, but I loved it. All the circuit repairs you make got me interested in electronics and shaped my career.
Dude thats awesome i love hearing stories like this. Kinda wish i had played that one now i dont think i ever saw the one you mentioned just now
@@geekstorian This isn't the best review of it, but this gives a good overview of the unique gameplay it had, especially for mid 1980s.
th-cam.com/video/uUKLBSNunko/w-d-xo.html
yes! I had a friend who had this game and we would take turns working on the circuits. he was an expert so we'd almost always always save the ship. I can still hear the sounds in my mind, even after all this time.
@@poofygoof I haven't seen a video of the game in forever, but I would know those sound effects anywhere. They're permanently burned into my brain.
it's also too bad Coleco got severely distracted by the Home Computer market, they really should have dumped all their efforts into a more advanced ColecoVision 2 console...
In Hindsight I agree however a LOT of the console manufactorers were in the PC market at the time Atari being one of them so i can see why they wanted in. It was simply to much potential money to leave on the table!
Talk about humble beginnings, sheesh. Lol its actually really impressive all the different markets they got into.
I never had a Coleco and have zero history with it so its cool to see its rise and fall story.
Yeah it was a much wilder ride than i expected doing this one and i did have a colecovision as a kid. I learned way way more about the company than i expected to find glad you enjoyed it man!
That level of diversification was quite common in the 20th century. An important part of board game history was when 3M diversified and got into board games. They didn't stay in the market very long but they hired some important game designers and many of the games they produced became very influential. In fact, it helped spawn what would later become known as the Euro-style game.
Thanks for the video. I loved Coleco as a game company. The Colecovision was such a good console, with all kinds of very good games and a lot of high quality peripherals. Never owned one as a child but I bought one about 12 years ago and a bunch of games. I also have the handheld Coleco Electronic Quarterback. It still works and every so often I put a 9V battery in and play a game I originally started playing when I was ten. Retro-nostalgia is a helluva drug.
Yep nostalgia is a hell of a drug! I was talkong about that with friends last night about how you gergenerations dont really have that yet because their not old enough yet to be lookking back for things they miss. Also yeah the colecovision had some really slick stuff out for the time it was active and a LOT of the games hold up if your fonnd of anything back as far as even the NES!
Nice to see your new(ish) channel is doing well, Nick. Onwards and upwards old boy!
dude so good to see you!!!! Been a minute glad you could stop by man!
Gemini was a stand alone system Coleco made that played Atari 2600 cartridges. Coleco's add-on to play Atari cartridges on the ColecoVision was not called Gemini, but Expansion Module #1.
cool thank you for the correction I knew Module 1 was one of them I thought they also had named it Gemini as the final name from what I read a lot of the old tech and even new ones go by project names before they get finalized consumer product names.
@@geekstorian I actually used to own a Gemini system back in 1985. Mine only played Atari 2600 games. I used to want a Module 1 to play my Atari 2600 games on my Colecovision but was never able to find one. I eventually got rid of my Gemini system (which I wish that I didn't) for an Atari 7800. I still have my original Colecovision which I got back in 1984. It still works too.
Expansion module 1 was the steering wheel gas pedal peripheral?
Correct. The Gemini was an Atari clone made by Coleco a bit later on. The one that plugs into the front of the ColecoVision was most commonly called “The Atari Adaptor” back in the day….but the official title was Expansion Module 1.
@@Koexistence13 the steering wheel was Expansion module 2
Great video. My dad would trade our Atari with a work pal for his Coleco Vision all the time as a kid. Loved Venture and The Smurfs. Love your channel!
Dude venture and smurfs were AWESOME as a kid! Really glad you enjoyed this one thanks for coming by and im glad you enjoying the channel!
The Colecovision still sold well as the 1983 crash unfolded. The poor quality, downright idiotic engineering, and exorbitant pricing of Adam were major factors, but there were three other important factors in Coleco's downfall:
1) They turned their assembly lines over to the Adam and stopped the manufacturing of the still popular Colecovision, leading to Colecovision supply shortages,
2) They failed to get Adam in the stores in adequate numbers for the Christmas buying season that year, and,
3) They had such issues with financing that they couldn't get short term loans to buy raw materials. So, their assembly lines would wind up being idled as they waited for retail sell-through to be completed, allowing them to eventually fund the purchase of more raw materials. This is, btw, the main reason for the notorious shortages of supply on their popular Cabbage Patch Kid dolls.
That's what a bad reputation with lending institutions will get you.
This was the fourth console we got after the Sears Telegames Super Pong, Atari Video Pinball and Atari 2600 A. Picked it up used at a local pawn shop along with several games in 1985. I was able to add to the collection by finding new, unopened copies of games at toy stores which hadn't been able to sell out of them, such as Toys R Us where we acquired the roller controller and steering controller units (man, I miss Toys R Us) or at various pawn shops within a 50 mile radius of our home. I've seen a couple of games at local GameXChange stores over the years, but they never had any that I didn't already have in the collection.
The main downside for me with the system was the design of the controllers: they weren't ergonomic and after an hour or so of playing, my left hand would hurt like hell.
Managed to get 27 games for the system:
B.C.'s Quest For Tires
BurgerTime
Campaign '84
Congo Bongo
Cosmic Avenger
Destructor
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Junior
Frenzy
Gorf
Jumpman Junior
Ken Uston BlackJack/Poker
Lady Bug
Looping
Miner 2049er
Mouse Trap
Slither
Space Fury
Spy Hunter (favorite game and one of the best ports of it on any system)
Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
Star Wars: The Arcade Game
Tarzan
The Heist
Turbo
Venture
WarGames
Zaxxon
thats a good list of games and yeah the controller could be tough to use, at the time most of us honestly were just happy to have it but its definatly a difficult controller to go back to for sure! Thanks for coming by btw!
Yeah you really wanted to have the Super Action Controllers, so much better than those car-phone wannabes. It was also possible to use a Sega Genesis controller, providing there wasn't a selection screen at the start that required keypad (skill, etc.)
Colecovision was our family's first system too. we got it from an uncle who worked for Toshiba in Japan. He got it with a whole bunch of (probably) illigal copies of games. We had to actually put the diodes (3:15) of the games on the fitting socketboard and he gave along a whole load of games just existing of loose diodes and socketboards wrapped in styrofoam. I remember my parents only being allowed to change the diodes as the teeth of them were very fragile. (10:00) We had the steering wheel too and the spot where you put the gas pedal is actually meant for the controller to sit in and u can use the control stick as a shifter. The gas pedal is meant for under your foot but we used to put in under a pillow as kids and sat on it for constant throttle. (true story lol)
HAAHAHAHA I love that you were sitting on the gas! I don't think I ever let y my foot off when I played either! Thats crazy how you got ahold of one of them and how much work you did to get some of the games working , awesome story! Thanks for coming by btw!
Having been born in 1978, I was 4 years old when my dad brought home the ColecoVision, so being my first console, I still have fond memories of playing Mouse Trap, Looping and Donkey Kong. While I ended up being more invested in the NES in the years to come, the Coleco box still has a place in my heart.
yep 1977 here so I was only slightly older and took almost the same path Colecovision into the NES from what I can tell it seems sort of a natural progression for most Colecovision fans heh.
I remember the day that I got a colecovision. It was interesting to witness the differences in contrast to other consoles from its own era
Yeah I can totally see that, if you had most of those around that time the difference would be huge!
You sound like Napoleon Dynamites brother. Cool video!
Lol ill take that as a complement tha ks for checking this one out!
I owned 2 Coleco Visions and had almost a full library of games and controller accessories. I currently emulate my CV games on my Valve Steam Deck.
Yeah that steam deck os great for emulation i love mine i havent done any colecovision on it yet thats not a bad idea! Thanks for coming by and hanging out!
I bought a colecovision 2 years ago with both donkeykong,donleykong jr,popeye,turbo space panic among others and as a nintendo fan,i am very happy with it😁👍
Nicceee did you get it modded to work with HDMI or you using the normal RF connection on an older CRT?
@@geekstorian i did it just the retro nostalgic way,playing it on an old crt tv😁
I just found your channel great channel love the content. keep up the good work. You gained a subscriber. Was born in 1976 had most of what you went over.
Awesome man thank you so much! Glad to have you as a viewer and that your enjoying the channel!
The importance of the Colecovision in the gaming world cannot be overstated.
For the first time ever you got arcade style games at home. It didnt destroy the arcaid coin-op industry but it smacked its eyes good!
Id argue you got arcade style games from atari and intellivision as well but graphically this is as close as we had gotten to the arcadss to date absolutely!
I agree. My family owned an Intellivision and while it was way ahead of the Atari 2600, it was the Colecovision that had games that more closely resembled the arcade originals. This was such a huge part of the early console market as the majority of people learned about new games through the arcades. My family never purchased a Colecovision, but I played them at friends' homes... it was such a great console.
I was born in 1974 and remember visiting my dad and grandparents during Christmas in 1982. I opened up a CV and some games. It was my first game console. Looking back how much the console was back then vs todays dollar amount, it's crazy to me to think how expensive that was for my dad and grandparents but it's a memory I'll always have. Ladybug, turbo (with the steering wheel and pedal), zaxxon, donkey Kong, and venture were my favorites. Then got the 2600 adapter and added even more versatility
yeah the income vs the cost of consoles is kind of insane. Income was somewhere around 20 to 30k and consoles costing 200 dollars at launch the same price a NES or SNES would cost. Thanks for coming by and sharing some of your own gaming history!
I had a ColecoVision and an Atari 2600.. Loved the Coleco. Wish I still had it
Favourite games... Venture.. Ladybug. Zaxxon, Moon Patrol, Bump n Jump, Dukes of Hazzard.. Carnival!!! Space Fury! River Raid!!!!
Those are some good titles, I had ladybug, Zaxxon and Venture out of those all great games. I honestly didn't learn about Dukes of Hazzard till recently and was shocked how good it looked!
AS a kid who grew up with Atari 2600, I was blown away by games like Donkey Kong Jr., Zaxxon, and Montezuma's Revenge on my uncle's ColecoVision.They were so obviously superior. I wonder how things might have been different had they not succumbed to the video game crash.They seemed really innovative and forward thinking.
I think it could of gone a few ways but in my mind they could have fought off sega and held second i dont see them taking nintendos first offering without a rethink on how they approach game development and a second console to push their specs up a bit. If you scan through the comments there are some pretty deep discussions on just that. Be warned you might want some solid time set aside some of the replies get pretty long winded!
I never owned a Colecovision, but I certainly heard about the graphics and games it offered. I'll never forget while living in an apartment complex, I was passing by a door that was open when I heard some familiar-ish sounds. It was someone playing Donkey Kong....at home!! I couldn't believe what I was seeing because it was the closest to the arcade game I ever saw. I just stood there watching, wishing so bad that I could get one. Sadly, I was only 13 years old and my family couldn't afford any video game system, but it certainly blew my mind to see a home console capable of producing rather impressive arcade translations for its time. GREAT video, by the way!
Thank you for sharing and for coming by! Really glad you enjoyed the video!
I was born in Connecticut and I'm just learning of this now!
Super neat and interesting! Good video.
lol , I'll be honest I learned almost all of this doing this video and I had a colecovision as a kid! It was wild seeing all the twists and turns the company made from leather good to electronics and toys! Thanks for coming by and checking this one out!
I had a ColecoVision as a kid. It was one of the demo models from my dad's old computer shop. I loved that thing, though it did not survive my childhood. I found one at a flea market a few years back and snapped it up. $85 for the unit, the 2600 module, and uh...parts of the steering wheel. The thing is spotless. I was shocked, given that that particular flea market is filthy, lol.
I had no clue they made that Alf plush. I had that too.
Selling off a profitable leather goods company to get into snowmobiles is quite an odd shift to say the least.
Thats awesome uou gound a colecovision in that good a shape! Pity anout the steering wheel though. Also yeah the weird twists and turns coleco took as a company is bizarre to say the least. Thanks for stoppoing by btw!
AWESOME! Thanks for the flashbacks. Great times, the ‘80s!!!
Thank you for watching hope you have a great day!
if I had a nickel for every leather company that eventually became a computer / electronics company... well I'd have 2 nickels, it's just weird that it happened twice (the other one is Tandy)
Lol i didnt know tandy was a leather company as well hahhaha well played sir and thank you for watching!
Colecovision had the same graphics chip as the TI-99/4A. That was a nice gaming machine, as well!
Ive heard of that one but not done a lot pf digging into it tons of people rave on that one!
It also shared a lot of common hardware with the SG-1000 and MSX systems. That's one of the reasons emulators like BlueMSX can run all three.
I had most of the popular games of the time. The VCR Rental place up the block rented ColecoVision, Atari and Intellivision games. My father would let me rent 2 things a week so I usually chose 1 game and 1 movie. Through this I was able to figure out what games I wanted and what I did not. I had Spy Hunter, James Bond 007, Frenzy, BurgerTime, Lady Bug, Looping, Popeye, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., BCs Quest for Tires, BCII: Grog's Revenge which had amazing art. Looked just like the comic strip, Buck Rogers, Bump and Jump, Space Panic, Congo Bongo, Choplifter, Carnival, Dukes of Hazzard, Frantic Freddy, Frogger, Frontline, Galaxian, Gorf, Jungle Hunt, Miner 2049er, Mouse Trap, Mr. Do, Mr Do's Castle, Omega Race, Slither, Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle, Space Fury, Root Beer Tapper, Time Pilot, Turbo, Venture, Zaxxon, and my all time favorite, Fortune Builder. It is the Sim City of the time. You had a large sprawl of land that ranged from an island in a harbor, all the way into snow topped mountains. You would build infrastructure and then strategically place stores, entertainment venues, toll booths and every type of house, condo, apartment, and so on. I would list it all but it was a large manual, the game used every single button on the controller and used the two fire buttons for different purposes. The goal was to reach a certain amount of revenue by a certain amount of time, dictated by the skill level from the skill select at the beginning. This was another cool thing about ColecoVision. Most games had 10 skill levels. I could beat Fortune Builder on 10. I played and loved it that much. It played one of Vivaldi's Spring from the four seasons and it would be interrupted by quarterly reports, a year end report and news flashes. The news flashes could make you money or they could cost you money. What a gems. You'd see periods (.) that represented people and they would travel around your new towns, cities and resorts and bring you in revenue. I remember it looking like it was gridlocked by the end of a level 10 run if I were successful.
Most of the games were arcade ports and were as faithful as they could be. The early stuff was always really good. Not perfect, but always the best port on any system. Until Nintendo rolled into town. The Commodore 64 also picked up major steam during this time and the games on the C64 started looking and playing better than the ColecoVision games. But they crashed occasionally. ColecoVision almost never crashed. I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to have no connectivity and needing a patch to fix a game. The internet has made most coders (not programmers) lazy in that regard. But then E.T. for the 2600 would have been fixed if we had had connectivity lol! I also had the steering wheel (Never used it), The super action controller and the Atari 2600 expansion which allowed me to sell my two Ataris for more games. All in all this was the system to have. This was the Playstation of it's time and nothing could compare. Atari looked like a pixelated, blocky mess and the Intellivision wasn't much better, although it had good sound. Fun fact: The intellivision had a 16-Bit processor. It was the first 16 bit console per se lol.
If you want descriptions in my own words about any of these games, just ask. I played the tail off of that system and knew all the games I owned till boredom.
And just like the video says, it was cheaper to own a C64 and a ColecoVision and that's what I did after seeing the Adam at a friend's house and playing both the expanded Donkey Kong and Buck Rogers and although a bunch of the features that were missing from the arcade were in both, the conveyor belt level was still missing from Donkey Kong. That and the lack of a disk drive sealed the deal for me. I already had a Vic 20 with a Datasette and the Datasette was painfully slower than disks, let alone cartridges. My Coleco served me well until the NES arrived. I find it funny that the NES wasn't much more powerful than the Colecovision and had Coleco created a proper expansion for it, and not the Adam, it might have lived into the NES days alongside the first NES games (Alot of which came from the C64 and ColecoVision).
wow man you had a huge history with this sytem! I think you had more games than I did and a ton more experience in the PC market then than I did. I don't think my parents got a computer till DOS was the main standard for non MAC machines and even then we didn't use it for that much overall! Love that you came by and hopefully the video did the console justice!
@@geekstorianSpot on, great video. Thank you!
10 skill levels? U sure? I counted 4 (for each player)....
6:15 Willie Rushton's voice on that ad. Although I never saw the Colecovision in the UK.
Coleco was based in West Hartford, CT. On launch day or soon there after of the Adam they did a demo at the small indoor mall on the corner of N. Main St and Route 44 in West Hartford. Forget the store they were in. All I remember was the printer "Arms" on the daisy wheel printer jamming up. After Coleco was floating in the bowl, the outfit I worked for in Avon hired a guy from there. Wasn't an engineer but did work on the project. "They were garbage. We knew it was going to be a failure". I remember the printer being one of the biggest problems as far as making customers mad.
Yeah the ADAM was do umentsd in several places i looked as having multiple issues the printer being one of them. Its a shame as the console itself was really good i enjoyed mine during my time with it.
40 years later, it's still printers making customers mad. How are they _still_ awful?
@@Firevine lol i know right!
I don't remember ever having the printer jam up, but I remember it used a very unusual ribbon, which was almost unobtainable with Coleco going out of business. I think at one point we even opened it and rewound it so we could use it again. It wasn't a printer like we think of them today, it was basically a typewriter really. When you turned on the Adam you could type just like a typewriter, with the letters coming out instantly one at a time. You could switch to word processing mode, type your document, and then have it all come out at once. I don't think it could even print graphics other than ascii art since it was basically a typewriter.
@@joestupar827 Yep, daisy wheel printers were basically big automated typewriters. The arms jamming up in the manner described wasn't uncommon. What's crazy to me is how long they were in use. Advance Auto Parts and O'Reilly Auto were still using them up until a few years ago to print out quotes.
Great video , so much information…
Thank you glad you enjoyed it!
Atari was in talks with Sega to distribute the upcoming Megadrive/Genesis in the US around 1986 because Sega wasn't pleased with Tonka's handling of the SMS in the US market and they managed to drop the ball on that one too. Sega finally decided "screw it we'll just do it ourselves" so again it was actually a blessing.
In some ways yes sega wss never grest st managing the hardware side of their business they had a mess on their hands by the Dreamcast heh. But yeah its likely better than having atari working on it!
Gemini was a standalone console, the atari 2600 adapter was called the expansion module #1
yep that was a mistake on my part I made while I was looking things up from what I read it seemed like it was the offiical name for the module instead of module 1. Thank you for catching it though.
@@geekstorian the controllers combine the paddle and joystick, they are really great!
Still have mine. Zaxxon, Donkey Kong, and Baseball with those hand hidden controls were our favourites.
never touched the baseball ones but I loved Zaxxon and Donkey kong! Thanks for coming in and hanging out for a few!
This was fantastic and I really enjoyed this one.
Thanks for coming by man always love hearing your input!
Small correction, friend: Gemini wasn't a Colecovision add-on, it was a complete stand-alone Atari 2600 clone. The Colecovision add-on was simply called "Expansion Module #1", as far as I ever heard.
I still have a Colecovision, with Driving Module, Expansion Module#1, Roller Controller, and Super Action Controllers.
yep I've had a few people mention this I plan on doing something on the gemini and the telestar arcade as part correction and part expansion thank you for mentioning it though.
I had a Coleco with both the steering wheel and roller controller. Some of my favorites were Donkey Kong, DK Jr, Turbo, Descructor, Victory, Wing War, Cosmic Avenger, Front Line, and War Games. Such a great system.
Awesome man thank you a ton for coming by and sharing!
Great video as always… never had one as a kid.. I didn’t even know it existed until later years
See i was the same say with intellivision i had no idea till i got into the retro community it existed lol. Good to see you man!
So fun to see those old commercials!
Thanks man really glad you liked this one, thanks for coming by!
I still remember walking into sears with my mom and brother. We went to the third floor electronics department and got our Colecovision. Then we went to the 4th floor where Sears had a great lunch counter and we had burgers. I can still smell that day, it smells like victory! ❤
The super action controller was awesome.
I never had that one I'm kinda jealous you had one, thats a great story and I too love the smell of video game victory!
I was absolutely in love with this system when I had it. I thought it was amazing. From Turbo to zaxon to Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. Loved it!
Yeah I have a lot of fond memories of it myself. Not as many as the NES thats the first one I remember heavily latching onto but I have a lot of fun memories of the Colecovision too!
I like the lady riding the inflatable narwhal.
Great video, seriously. brought back some memories.
lol I love that pic! Really glad you enjoyed the video thanks for coming by and hanging out!
The reason the ColecoVision was so great is it had the most arcade conversions and they looked very close to the arcade. I loved my ColecoVision
Yep and that was the goalpost for the most part the. Replicating the arcade experience as closely as possible! Thanks for coming by btw its always appreciated!
I did indeed have a ColecoVision as a kid. Turbo, Pepper II, Cosmic Avenger & BC's Quest For Tires were my favorite games. Oh, and that darn penguin game who's music is now stuck in my brain again...... darnit! (Antarctic Adventure)
the main one of those I remember was Turbo and I really enjoyed that one. Sorry for getting Antarctic Adventure stuck in your head heh. Thanks for coming by!
It was my first console too. I think donkey kong was my favourite, or at least the one that stands out 38 years later
awesome , thrilled to meet more people who had this as their first console most I run into had an atari or an intellivision first!
I never had a ColecoVision, only having discovered its games library through emulation. The games are quite fun, a charming color palette and the music and sound are great.
I don’t consider it in the same generation of consoles as the Atari 2600 because its graphics and sound capabilities are far better.
whats funny is its still considered second generation of consoles. The third doesn't start till the NES days. I agree though for second generation its a very very advanced system and a wide range of consoles with atar 2600,5200,7800, intellivision and colecovision and multiple revisions of even the intellivision in that range!
@@geekstorian Well, the Famicom (which is basically the NES in Japan) came out a year later after the ColecoVision in 1983. Defining timelines for generations are an arbitrary thing anyway. The Atari 5200 was clearly meant to be the next-gen successor to the 2600 (it is basically an Atari 400/800 in terms of graphics and sound capabilities in video game console format), but it also gets lumped in the same generation as the 2600/Odyssey2.
Call me autistic or nitpicky, but they really need to recategorize this "in-between" generation (2B?) that occurred just on the cusp of the video game crash.
As someone that was there, I feel obliged to paint a picture for people that didn’t grow up in the 80s. It was MILES better than the 2600 or Intellevision (both being the only other consoles that people tended to own at the time). I would compare it to knowing nothing but a PS1, and then seeing a PS5. Mind blowing.
Yep I can agree with this it really was that advanced compared to the others that controller though, that...that could of used some more work ;).
Got my 2600 ‘late’. Dec of 1982. One year later my best friend got a ColecoVision. I was super jealous! Oddly, my friend spent tons of time on my unit as there were so very many games. Honestly, I just waned to play WarGames. I loved it so much! Haha!
Also we were ALL (not just he and I, but ALL our friends at the time) absolutely zero aware of any crash.
We just played in arcades or at home happily until around about 1985 or so….and then were all very weirded out by the nigh alien thing that was the NES…..
Yeah i think all of us as kids had no idea i played my colecovision till i saw a nintendo in a local store and begged my mom for one. Eventually we came home with the kit that had the nes two controllers and the zapper! I think thats ahat got me really hooked i loved the colecovision but i have more clear memories of the NES in part because i was older and could remember it easier. Thanks a ton for coming by and sharing btw!
Great video!
Much appreciated thanks for giving the channel a shot!!!!
@@geekstorian definitely! Gonna see what else you have.
The Super Action Controllers were great, so much better than the car-phone-esque stock set. They worked quite well for most platformers and various arcade type games in general; the third and forth triggers were mainly used for SAC specific titles. And one of the most unique with the fencing-foil grip that made you feel like a Musketeer.
There were also some games, sych as Pitfall, that started without a skill selection screen, where you could use a Genesis controller.
see I never had that controller I don't think I even knew about it at all till I was working up this video, in part because I wanted it on my channel and in part I was doing a podcast on the channel with a friend talking about the colecovision. I'm not surprised the genesis controller worked with the colecovision. I think it worked with a lot of atari consoles to the 7800 I think? Primarily because they use the same pin out.
Frontline was actually a great game! My parents disposed of the ColecoVision at some point. Recently I’ve been enjoying playing the classics on the Analogue Pocket!
Ohhhh i bet the analogs fun for the coleco games another guy was using his steam deck another great idea! Thanks gor coming by and hanging out!
Good video! For sure a top 5 system for me
Thanks a ton man glad you enjoyed this one! Appreciate you giving it and my channel a chance :)
I grew up with the Coleco Vision and current still have one. Love it. Lady Bug and Donkey Kong Jr are the best on the system.
Yeah those are great donkey kong jr is super hard but it was such a cool departure from the original game!
This is one of my favorite gaming stories from the vintage era.
Back when a leather company could just spin up a random set of products and end up making video games lol.
I know I had a hard time not laughing as I dug into this one and kept seeing all the odd twists and turns as to how they got to this point. It may be one of the most fun ones ive done to date in that respect lol
My friend had one. The first game I played was Venture, not graphically impressive but the mini games were fun. But what impressed me the most I think was BC Quest for fire, that guy on the tire and jumping over stuff. What an amazing game. I also remember Smurfs and Grog's revenge. What set the console apart were those big and detailed sprites, it looked amazing back then. It was a great console. Their version of Donkey Kong was extremely faithful. It was closer to the arcade games than any console at that point. The Z80 was a great chip, it was found in the C128 and as an add on/compatibility chip in more advanced computers. Those were great times.
I dont think I know of BC Quest for fire, Smurfs I defiantly knew I had that one and yeah Donkey Kong was absolutely the most faithful out of all of them around that time till around the time of the NES. Thanks for coming by and sharing btw a pleasure to meet you!
@@geekstorian Actually it's ...for "Tires" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.C.%27s_Quest_for_Tires It doesn't look so amazing today but it had that cartoonish feel and obstacles were fun. Thanks for your feedback, cheers!
Wow
I still have my Coleco that I got for Christmas back in 1983.
Still works, have all the classic games plus the Atari expansion and a bunch of Atari games.
Thays awesome to hear yours is still running! I’ve had a few people who werent as lucky but its good to know a number of them are still going strong!
Montezuma's revenge was the best game ever i was so happy when they recently remade it for pc
Lol i never knew that as a game i alaays heard it as a joke in cartoons for when someone drank the water in some exotic location and had stomach issues lol. Ill have to look it up at some point :). Thanks ks a ton for watching!
I almost owned a Colecovision. I was saving money from my paper route. At the time the price of the Colecovision was $149. This was probably around 1983 to 1984. I wanted the Colecovision because of the number of arcade games that were available.
I finally saved enough and was checking the flyers in the paper and saw that my local store had dropped the Commodore 64 down to $199. I was able to get the $50 I was short from my parents and instead bought the C-64. So that's about as close as I ever got to getting the Colecovision.
C64 is a dolid machine for the day and more flexible than the colecovision well maybe aside from putting the ADAM on it but that would of been WAY more than you spent id say you made the right move. Love the console but that deals just to good!
I had one of these. This was my first console, too. It shorted and shot out smoke one day. Too young to remember why. In fact, I only have one memory of even playing it.
Damn man that sucks im sorry mine never fried that i know of we just eventually replaced it with a NES
Coleco Gemini was a stand-alone Atari 2600 clone console. The expansion module for CVIS that played Atari cartridges was simply called Expansion Module 1.
yep I need to work on a correction for that trust me its been on my mind once people pointed out I got that wrong. I also want to cover the telestar arcade a little bit more as well
The Coleco Vision was in the 80's what NeoGeo was in the 90's. I is always a pity to see the best of the best dissappear from the market.
Yeah, had they gotten in earlier and the crash hadn't happened they really could have made it much MUCH tougher for Nintendo to get a foothold in the states for sure! Thanks for coming by and hanging out man!
@@geekstorianColecovision shares graphical limitations with the SG-1000 and the original MSX standard.
Even without the American console crash, those palettes and monochrome sprites plus scrolling struggles? Every multiplat is going to look like the poverty version to the point of cruel irony.
And Nintendo benefits from the Colecovision's promotion of their games as the gold standard of a killer app. In a way, it'd be like when the NES and SNES went head to head.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 I don't disagree with you to heavily but with the console getting cheaper and having more games it could have kept moving along making them money till they came out with another console to more easily compete with the next generation. This was still a second generation console albiet an advanced one. NES technically used a "weaker" chipset than was in the colecovision it just had a PPU to offload a lot of the processing and help its color capabilities. It was a cheap and clever solution to keep costs down and make the graphics and smoothness of gameplay better.
@@geekstorian The Z80's shortest operation takes twice as many cycles as the NES CPU. You really need to know your way around the limitations and Assembly code to fully tap into its strengths vs. the reduced but optimized instruction set of the competition.
Another concern is the state of Western game design in that era. Looking at platformers, for example, even Super Mario Bros 1 has layers of level design nuance beyond "challenges ramp up to sadism", and uses the soundtrack in ways you wouldn't see before then.
Even the controller reveals more thought and care for the player experience.
Plus, there's still the Intellivision successor and 7800 CD to worry about in a world without the crash.
Can Coleco really last as the market leader with their arcade port licenses and the double edged hype of being the tech leader?
Anything is possible, and I'd like to hear your perspective, but I'm not seeing many paths to victory without them hijacking a time machine to see which opportunities they could have used to overcome their disadvantages.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 my knowledge of the older processors is a it fuzzy but I thought the NES used a variant of the MOS 6502 chip which was popular in a lot of personal computers but was far cheaper than the z80 when it came out and as used in some older machines as well. Their clever and focused design on top of having the seperate PPU gave them an edge in graphical processing in the 3rd era even though there were more technologcially advanced chipsets and systems out there IE the last revision of the Master system.
Now do I think they would of showed up the NES when it came out graphically , no, thats the short answer. They would have had to keep playing the game of the cheaper console with more titles while they worked on a new revision of their hardware hopefully one with a more modenized controller like the 7800 and the NES had simplying the control scheme. At the time they were making enough money to hold out a while and possibly develop a new unit "if" there hadn't been a crash so they could try to pull that off "possibly" putting them on par hardware wise.
As to western development your not wrong it was very focused on high scores and more point based gameplay not really focusing on telling a story or giving you more of a level system like the NES started pushing. Generation 3 was a huge turning point in the console industry becoming more of a entity on its own rather than a simple port over popular arcade games kind of scenerio and its one Nintendo played very well and is one of the reasons they did so well against sega who was still porting over a ton of arcade titles to their consoles (mind you there is a LOT more to that story to). They would have had to learn to adapt and make more story driven and level driven games to adapt to that market something none of the consoles from the second Generation did at all to my knowledge really.
In short , work as a cheaper option while developing a 3rd generation system with more NES style controles like the 7800 and revamp their game development process to the growing market of longer more console focused experiences and rely less on the arcade ports and popularity. Could they have done it, who the hell knows really lol.
It is amazing how a company can change so much like Coleco did.
Yeah its pretty crazy! Thanks for coming by and hanging out!
Coleco had a lot of great games, and a few that were STARTLINGLY close to their arcade brethren.
Ladybug, Venture, and Carnival were initial launch titles that were VERY close to the arcade originals. Later titles Frenzy and Pepper II were also REALLY close to the actual arcade versions.
You could make a solid case that Frenzy and Ladybug were actually a little BETTER than the arcade versions.
never played either of those in the arcade I did at least play ladybug on the colecovision and really enjoyed it not as much as my mother who adored that game its the only console I ever saw her really play and the only game she ever really played excessively lol. Thank you for the engagement on this one btw I always appreciate insight and corrections.
The neighbor's son behind me back in the mid-80's had a Coleco Vision. I was so jealous. That is until our folks bought us a NES for Christmas 1985.
Lol i can totally see not being jealous anymore NES is my favorite of the early consoles to!
@geekstorian true fact! My brother went on to work as a Gameplay Counselor for 7 years. He was hired by a temp agency after showing them a list of games (our collection was over 200 at the time) with asterisks next to the games he had beaten. After Nintendo, he was the Microsoft PC Games Beta Coordinator for 8 years. It was an awesome time! I remember vividly the many times he would bring home games pre-launch to play and learn for work. In 1999, he gave me a copy of Asheron's Call to play. I did nothing else after work and on the weekends for 2 1/2 years! Lol!
I've never known anyone else who had a ColecoVision. Everyone else in my neighborhood had Atari. My favorite games were Mousetrap (which works great with the play action controller), Pepper 2, Venture, Congo Bongo, Time Pilot, Ladybug, and Carnival. We also had Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, and Smurf's
Yeah I don't think I knew anyone else who had one myself love a lot of your game picks thanks for coming by!
Trip down memory lane for me! Great days.
thanks for coming by and checking it out man. Really glad you liked this one, have a great day!
I honestly don't think I've ever seen a working ColecoVision in action. Somehow it's one of the few consoles I never got to play with even as a retro game obsessed hipster adult.
Really i know a few people with working ones not in person where i can play it but other youtubers i talk to. There was also a short run of the phoenix that played the original carts which is very pricey now
I owned and used a CV for a long time. I still have mine, although I haven't turned it in on in over 10 years. It was definitely the best console of its day and held that position until the NES shipped.
They had a novel approach to graphics, very similar to what the C64 does. Although I haven't seen a technical reference for it, looking at how games behave (and the particular patterns that appear when you hit the reset button), the primary graphics is actually a kind of text mode, but with the character data provided by the ROM cartridge. So they can make really elaborate backgrounds by constructing a font with the shapes that are needed and then rendering each cell with different foreground and background colors.
Overlay that with a few sprites and you've got a nice high resolution color graphic display without blowing your budget on video memory.
And you're absolutely right that Adam killed the company. It was a great idea, but it had some bad quality control issues and they cheaped out in the wrong way. Instead of selling the system they did for $600-700, they should've gone with floppy drives for storage and raise the price a little. They should've also made the printer an optional component instead of an integral part of the system, so people could save money and get a no-printer system or opt for a dot matrix printer (instead of the daisy-wheel printer they bundled), which would be better for anyone not looking to produce formal correspondence, since dot-matrix is faster, less expensive and can print graphics.
But it's not too surprising that corporate executives with a background in children's toys were unable to properly spec-out and design a personal computer system.
BTW, although you probably already know, the Z80 was used on a few other mainstream computers at the time. In particular, the TRS-80 models 1, 3 and 4 were all Z-80 based. As was Heathkit's series of home-built computers. And it was definitely more powerful than the (much less expensive) 6502 chip used by Apple, Atari and Commodore for their 8-bit computers.
Yeah I knew the Z80 chip was popular with a ton of PCs at the time I don't think I dug deep enough to find out which ones specifically though I just remember finding that mentioned in a few sources I looked up to try to do the video justice. As to the Adam yeah it .....had a lot of issues, bad sheilding terrible printer by all reports among other things. It really needed some more work to be solid and its price point was just...bad.
As to the commdore, I never owned one of those and havent' done a video on it to know how the graphics look to compare personally. Though covering older PCs has been an idea on my mind to do at "some" point down the road. Thanks for coming in btw and dropping so much knowledge its. ALWAYS appreciated!
I had one and it’s by far my favorite 8-bit console.
glad you still like it man thanks for coming by and watching btw!
My best friend had the ColecoVision when we were in Middle School. I remember thinking "finally, a console that plays games that look just like the arcade!" THEN he got the NES and I thought video games could never get better!
Yeah both were amazing system of their day I STILL play a lot of NES content im not gonna lie its got some of my favorite games to beat my head against due to the hard gameplay but easy accessibility
@@geekstorian Yes! Lots of timeless classics! My favorite on ColecoVision was Time Pilot. On the NES, there are too many to mention!!
I had ColecoVision when I was a kid. By far the game we played the most was decathlon. Wore out three controllers if my memory serves. for most of the events you had to work the control knob back and forth as rapidly as possible. those controllers didn't last long. There was even an order form in the back of the instruction manual where you could send away for a decathlon glove that was like a wide receivers glove. Yeah I had that too.
lol that shouldn't be funny since you broke your controllers but it sort of reminds me of people wearing out power pads playing track and field and the like. Thank you for sharing the story and sorry about your controllers.
In the 1980s Sega should have bought the Colecovision name and just named the Master System the Sega-Coleco, for brand recognition in the USA.
Thays not a bad idea and they could have used a lot of colecos ips then. I font know that they would have wanted to many japanese companies dont play well with American mentality or want that brand recognition . Look at all the ststic over the years between sega of america and sega of japan. Another example was the turbographics american division often getting ignored about games they knew would sell well srate side. I agree it would have been great name recognition though!
The first Sega home console, the Japan only SG-1000, actually uses the same motherboard as the ColecoVision! That’s why the fonts look identical on the on-screen words for both systems. I agree that since Sega was already repurposing Coleco’s boards for the SG-1000 why not just make it ColecoVision compatible as well?
Loved CV as an older teenager at the time. I had my eye on getting an Adam but a closer look dissuaded me. Virtually no 3rd party support, cheaply made components (printer eg.). When I saw that it came with a tape drive when everything was going disc was the ultimate deal breaker.
Yeah i can see not wanting the adam it had a number of issues the colecovision itself was solid for its day with a large number of good games might be worth finding a website or emulating just to check some of them out if your still curious either way thanks for coming by and sharing its always appreciated!
Great job nailed it 👍
Thanks Ken good to see you man didn't know you hung out on youtube that much!
@@geekstorian I'm nearly on every platform that there is
Besides Donkey Kong, Turbo was another killer app that made me super-jealous for not having the console. And the Colecovision became a must-have when you also considered the arcade-level ports of Time Pilot, Centipede, Galaxian, Frogger, Defender, Venture, Roc 'n' Rope, Cosmic Avenger, Pepper II, Frenzy, Moon Patrol, Popeye, Q-bert, Spy Hunter, Zaxxon and Tapper.
Yeah I had Turbo, Donkey kong, Time Pilot , Venture and Zaxxon to name a few and they were all great games Donkey Kong Jr was amazing to!
I Didn't ever play it. But it looks like a solid system. That version of Dragons Lair looks better than the NES version.
Yeah that one was for the ADAM so technically it was a PC game ore than a console version but for the time it looked great! Thanks for coming by hope you had a good time!
We got a Coleco the year it came out, and I was initially disappointed as everyone else I knew had 2600s. How was I going to borrow and trade games? But then I saw the difference in the versions of games on both consoles, and I was completely fine with what we had. I personally enjoyed Zaxxon and Venture the most, but we had quite a few others.
Yeah i could see trading as an issue but yeah the games looked way way better also i loved zaxxon and venture as well thanks for coming by and sharing as well as watching!
I think if Coleco had just focused on the ColecoVision and not developed the computer, they would have kept going. The computer lost them a ton of money, and the ColecoVision was way ahead of the other consoles at the time. By 1984 all the 3rd party developers would have been concentrating on Coleco games and they would have built up a huge market before the NES entered the US. The NES would have still done really well, but by then Coleco could develop the 2nd gen console and they may have had Sega's market share.
yeah I see your point on focusing on the console but so many other people had gone into computers as well atari benig one of the examples that I think they would lose more not trying to get into that market. Also that market was staying solid and growing rapidly itself. With those things being in play the temptation to get into that market would be just to great for almost anyone especially when your hardware specs are already close to a computer of that day already.
This was a great video
thank you really glad you enjoyed it!
My mom was crazy good at Ladybug & Mousetrap, those games would get moving so quickly she basically was going from anticipation and muscle memory…really good memories.
my mom adored Ladybug as well , I dont' recall her being big on mousetrap even though we did have it. Thanks for coming by and sharing the memories man!
@@geekstorian no problem I am really enjoying your content! I held off telling you I was born with muscular dystrophy and can basically only move my head so dad built me an elaborate contraption allowing me to shoot/jump by pulling strings with my mouth. I could play Carnival somewhat by timing my shots, very happy memories. If you look at my “project gameface” you can see me working with Google to leverage AI so people like me can do even more now.
We started with a Sears TELE-GAMES Video Arcade (ie their VCS/2600 that Atari made for them) and in 1983 I took all my $ that a kid could have and bought … a 5200.
My cousins didn’t have a 2600 and we thought we’d give it and some games (not all, I keep my favorites) to them. But the 5200’s adapter for 2600 games … only worked with the 2-joystick port version (revised hardware) and the 5200 sold SO WELL that I had the OG hardware. My dad’s solution? He acquired a CV with expansion module 1! I never asked how but I think he knew some people and had connections and it was a promotional thing that didn’t work out so lucky us blah blah blah. But hey what did I care? Fun times!
While most memories were of the 5200 it was really a matter of the games I played. There was overlap but some titles were only one system or the other. Funny, I knew “Looping” on the CV before I ever saw it in an arcade. Easier (slower) on the CV. Mountain King was another one I played a lot. And Venture. Ladybug and Mousetrap were cool too and these last three were not on the 5200.
I did not know about the Roller Controller back in the day. Seriously! That would have been nice. I got the 5200 Trak Ball for Christmas and it was great to have. Also was not aware of the Super Action controllers. But I DID have a Wico Command Control joystick 🕹️ for both the 5200 and CV. Both of the systems had less than ideal joysticks (but at least they were better than Intellivision! Oh and Wico made a joystick for them too - looked like their CV joystick and you had to wire it into the OG Intellivision according to the shared instructions).
See out of the ones you mentioned i know i had venture,mousetrap and ladybug. I loved all of those never got into the 5200 though. I was just old enough to get into the colecovision and understand what was going on and got a good two years or more out of it before the NES dropped and i officially got massively hooked on gaming! Thank you a ton fir coming by and sharing some of your childhood i alwayd love hearing peoples personal gaming experiences and history!
Do you happen to know where I can find schematics for one? Mine had one of the crystals broken out. If you know the exact frequency of the crystal that's very close to the cartridge slot, that would do too! Te one I have in it now is a bit off, causing annoying artifacts in audio and video. (talking about the console that was used in the thumbnail...)
Yes, I still have it, and want to get it back up and running. Still have the steering wheel too. I had smurf, turbo, donkey kong and space fury... Played turbo the most. When I was 12, I could get runs or over an hour with that game. I think I managed to crash the game a few times because it got too fast XD
not something I looked up for this but a quick search found a few sites you may have already seen.
wiki.console5.com/wiki/Colecovision
www.colecovision.dk/technical.htm
not sure if those will help you but its the best I could come up with off hand quickly
The steering wheel had it's own accessory. Coleco made a C battery plugin adapter. If you look at the battery lid there is a little slot, which was where the plugin adapter cable fits. They knew. They had already planned around it. The price was the same as 4 C cell batteries as I remember my parents telling me.
The Coleco Adam was WAY ahead of it's time. The worst mistake they made with it was the printer. Which was causing the spikes that would wreck tapes and tape drives. Had they just swapped the on board ROM with their BASIC and later sell the printer plus the word processor as an add on after fixing all the bugs they wouldn't have wrecked themselves. This would have literally just been dumping the BASIC tape image to the ROM. Pretty much any EOS software can occupy the ROM. Some exec got a hair up his butt that the only way they could sell the computer is if it came with a printer. Coleco never had an engineering problem. They had some of the brightest minds that could probably cure a rainy day if tasked with it. But their leadership is what tanked the company. Had they done the same type of fix as they did with the steering wheel as they did with the Adam... who know what would have happened.
see I didn't know about the replacement for C batteries in the steering wheel.. I remember having one but I don't even remember changing the batteries but then I was super young and just remember enjoying it and turbo. It wasn't till I was refreshing my memory and trying to get more details that I saw it in articles and pictures and was like thats so odd, first off C cells seemed an odd pick I'm sure they had reasons but most controllers even then didn't need an external power source and honestly I looked to try to find out why and just couldn't find anything on it so its good to know they had an alternative at least now..
As to the Adam I knew they had muiltiple issues that would erase alot of your tape data what I found more pointed to inappropriate shielding kind of like keeping poorly sheilded speakers to close to a CRT TV the magnet from the drivers will distort the image only in this case its erasing tapes/disks anything susceptible to magnetic fields. So yeah I could see a printer potentially being part of the problem. Thank you a ton for coming by and sharing this much information!
I never owned a colecovision as a kid , had the Atari 2600. But I was always amazed at the graphics and thought it was way ahead of its time
Yeah it was very very close to the NES in quality for its time the NES was still ahead of it mind you but I think it was the closest out of that batch of consoles to a third generation console very very much ahead of its time thanks for coming by and checking this one out btw!
@orian the Colecovision was inspiration for the Famicon/NES, "Nintendo's R&D team had seen a prototype of the ColecoVision and had been impressed by its smoothly animated graphics. Development of the Gamecom was headed by Masayuki Uemura, whose wife suggested it should be renamed the Family Computer, or Famicom for short." I still have my Original Colecovision, but it has failed, shelf queen now lol I should add on mine currently, I believe some of the chips have failed on the motherboard, black screen only , power supply tests fine
yeah thats the trouble with tech as it ages a lot of takes some work to get it up and running again if they have a failure. But I mean that system was running for what 30 years of use even if occasionally or more thats pretty impressive! That and you still have it as a cool display piece even if you don't repair it! I hadn't done any digging into the Famicom to know thatt I knew a bit about the NES being the AVS to start but not its main inspiration. Thanks a ton for the tidbit and coming by to check this one out! @@tony--james
There were many game systems and computers with similar hardware at the time. There was a 3.58 Mhz Z80 with a Texas Instruments display chip.
Yep the Z80 and the specs used in the Colecovision were VERY popular for PCs are the time just not many of them being worked into a console form factor your absolutely right!
@orian I wrote games for the Timex Sinclair 2068, with a 3.58 MHz Z80 but no Texas Instruments display chip. I later wrote games for the SNES with a 3.58 MHZ 65816 clone. It occurred to me that this frequency must be magical because it kept popping up everywhere. It turns out that the frequency is 1/4th the clock speed for the color signal, so rather than use two crystals, they could just use a single 14.32 MHz clock and a divider to get the processor clock speed. They did it to save money.
@@john2001plus ok thats a super cool tidbit and pardon me and my limited understanding of they wee using the 3.58 mhz to get more performance out of the unit than they could using the bade clock speed? Sorry if im way misunderstanding low level coding was never my expertise i got a C out of digital logic in college >_
@orian The 2068 computer used 4 MHZ memory chips, so one might think that running the processor at 4 MHZ would have been logical. However, they didn't do that, and I don't think that it was just to have a 10% margin of error on the memory chips. The 3.58 Mhz was a way of getting double duty out of the crystal that drove the color signal. They could have had a separate 4 Mhz crystal, but they didn't. I have seen several systems that used this 3.58 Mhz speed, so it appears to have been a common practice.
@orian I am not a hardware person either. I just wrote games for a living. I just know that the 3.58 Mhz processor speed on the 2068 computer was driven by the 14.32 Mhz clock crystal used with the video signal. Since this same 3.58 Mhz speed was also used on many other computers and video game systems, I assume that they did it for the same reason.
Coleco Vision was my first system too. I had Donkey Kong and Buck Rogers
Nice loved donkey kong and donkey kong jr, never tried buck rogers though. Thanks for coming by btw!
Good video dude
Thanks man glad you enjoyed it :)
loved my colecovision, the (sports) super action controller was great, and the roller controller for what games it worked with, even the regular controller i thought was pretty good..
i think the games i remember the most was bump n jump, and zaxxon.. i also seem to remember a dragon's lair game, that wasn't just the push the right button at the right second to move and not die.. but more of a regular adventure game, not sure if it was an adam game or maybe i'm thinking something else entirely.
I think I saw a version of that myself when I was looking so I'm pretty sure your right. I specifically went with the Adam version because I wanted something that ran on the ADAM to show in that section and honestly it looked REALLY good for the time! I loved Zaxxon as a kid not as much as time pilot but a great game and I don't' think I ever had a version of bump n jump
Just been recommended this video...
Thanks for checking it out then :)
They released a Cabbage Patch Kids game after a successful launch of the dolls. It helped keep the ColecoVision going a bit longer.
ok thats a cool tidbit I didn't know thank you for sharing! Also thanks for hanging out on the channel for a bit I really appreciate it!
I remember my neighbor had a Coleco and I went over there to play. He had Donkey Kong and so did I on my Atari 2600. I was blown away on how good that it looked on the Coleco. The Smurfs and Zaxxon looked so amazing! But I had the Atari so what are ya going to do?
I mean still enjoy your Atari it had a colossal amount of games lol. Don't get me wrong I loved my Colecovision while I had it but there was nothing wrong with Atari! Thanks for coming by and hanging out for a few btw I appreciate it!
The Cabbage Patch Kids video game for COLECO was great, and I bet would hold up today for speed runners.
I don't think I played this one either thank you for sharing and thank you for watching!
I can't be the only one asking this. What TV is that you're using for your video? I know it's just a graphic but it has 525 and 625 all over it. What is the brand and model?
Actually your the first one to ever ask and it was a stock image I found and used. I spent some time looking and I can only assume its some british model TV but I couldn't tell you which one sorry man I really did look.
Donkey Kong and Zaxxon! My Best Friend had one and was AWESOME!
Yeah it had some great titles on it and a big deal in its time!