ColecoVision

[Turbo Kid]

Anyone remember this thing? I've played some fun games on it. It supposedly had some influence on the creation of the NES

 

[Eclipse14]

I know its architecture would later be seen in the Sega SG-1000 (essentially the Japanese ColecoVision) and first version of the MSX.

Beyond that, I've had some experience with it, but I look at it much like all the other 2nd-Gen systems; it's the kind of system that you played a game for like an hour at any given point in time, and that was it. That weird controller doesn't help things, but at least it could be unplugged and had the same socket as the Atari 2600 & Sega Mega Drive/Genesis controllers.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I only know it for the AVGN episode on it.

Cool little machine for sure, even damn innovative in some aspects.

 

[qw90700]

The story is more about one of the reason of why Atari failed back then that has relation to this topic:

Long story short: ColecoVision's existence kinda caused a shockwave to the industry like how PS1 was dropped because it set a high-quality bar for the future of video game consoles. It could play high-quality arcade games and it was a big deal. Because of it Atari wanted to make ColecoVision play a big role on their side but they became a big deal rival instead, and then Nintendo wanted to make money by home video game console because their toys and then Game & Watch was not stable potential tools to ensure future profits, especially the dark days of ideo Game Crash of 1983 made future so bleak yo. So Nintendo played smart and wanted to invest on home consoles so they learned about ColecoVision and they were like "if we can't even beat that we will lose hard yo" so it was just a technical reference point for them. Atari learned about this and they partnered with Nintendo. Atari wanted to use Nintendo as a weapon to shut down Coleco but Nintendo saw Atari and Coleco as stepping stones to make money by Americanos.

However afterwards gets more complex. Atari was dominating the American market and Nintendo also wanted to sell Famicom in America. So for the distribution of Famicom in America, they made a deal with Atari so Famicom was to be sold under Atari brand perhaps like "Atari Nintendo Entertainment System" or some shit, and most importantly Atari had legal right to publish Donkey Kong as a "home computer video game" after Nintendo made deal and granted right for Coleco to publish "home video game console version of Donkey Kong" but Atari saw that Nintendo allowed Coleco to advertise their new "Adam Computer" by playing Donkey Kong via ColecoVision console game cartidge. The purpose of that advetizement was to show people this new computer can play popular arcade game Donkey Kong's ColecoVision port to show it can play ColecoVision console cartridges. BTW Donkey Kong is important to understand most part of the core video game history to make sense what kind of changed happened and why. So Atari felt betrayed "You too, Brutus?" they asked!!! And then Nintendo was like "but our agreement was about computer games, and Coleco played our game's console version, not it's computer version!!!" and Atari felt so betrayed they broke the deals they had with Nintendo.

So Nintendo cried hard and in their own power they did whatever they can to sell Famicom in America as NES lol.

Now it's time for Nintendo rap song!!!:

Come one everybody let's do Nintendo dance and be sued by Nintendo!!! lolol

 

[ThunderBoy]

 

[bjork]

ColEm is a pretty good emulator for it, there's a lot of ports of stuff you've seen elsewhere and they're generally adequate jobs. I didn't have one but I knew a kid who did and it was fun to see something different than what I was used to.

 

[DanCalibur]

I was curious about the meaning of the name Coleco, but I would never guess it means Connecticut Leather Company