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Why I got back into collecting ColecoVision...


TPR

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Index of Updates!

4/15/15 - Initial post (see below)

4/16/15 - Pixelboy Games Arrive

5/7/15 - New games & Overlays

5/9/15 - Repro Boxes

5/23/15 - Some rare carts

6/1/15 - Clear case SGM

6/4/15 - Some NIB games

6/7/15 - Rey's awesome ADAM Power Supply

7/8/15 - Amazing collection of Repro Boxes

7/31/15 - New Homebrews & a ColecoVision Press Kit

8/8/15 - Opcode's Juno First

8/20/15 - Super Sketch

8/28/15 - Shovel Knight for the ColecoVision!

9/17/15 - Review of an AWFUL European homebrew controller

9/24/15 - Frenzy!

10/1/15 - The awesome F18a ColecoVision review!

10/6/15 - Boxxle & more from Pixelboy

10/8/15 - F18a + HDMI Converter Results #1

10/16/15 - Super Famicom NTT Controller & Taiwan Cooper Games

10/22/15 - F18a + HDMI Converter Results #2

10/23/15 - My final "loose cart" needed to complete the collection!

1/28/16 - Pics of my stuff

2/5/16 - Donkey Kong & DKJR Arcade Flyers

2/11/16 - More arcade flyer scans

2/17/16 - My daughter loves the ADAM!

2/20/16 - Even more arcade flyers

2/23/16 - Coleco ADAM Zaxxon Box

2/29/16 - Yay! More Pixelboy!

3/7/16 - One year anniversary post - My entire homebrew collection!

3/11/16 - USB PC Interface for ADAM Keyboard Review

3/11/16 - Mr. Do! "Alternate" Coleco Box

3/15/16 - Awesome homebrew repro boxes by Pixelboy!

3/26/16 - DK, DKJr, Zaxxon AWESOME ADAM games boxes!

4/12/16 - 5 New Games from CollectorVision - Star Soldier, Drol, Hang On, MORE!

4/21/16 - Track & Field II photos & video!

5/5/16 - New additions to the collection!

5/6/16 - Venture video!

5/12/16 - Opcode Prototype Games

5/20/16 - Mouse Trap Video!

6/8/16 - Mail Call! Sammy Lightfoot!

7/21/16 - Ms. Pac-Man Custom Tabletop!

7/22/16 - My Coleco Tabletops!

8/13/16 - Added a boxed Donkey Kong to the collection!

12/6/16 - Jawbreaker II is here!

10/15/16 - Some recent additions to the collection.

11/3/16 - I really suck at Bump n Jump!

12/6/16 - Nice looking "used" CV Box!

12/10/16 - Video of Jeepers Creepers!

1/30/17 - Video of Frantic!

4/8/17 - Playing ColecoVision on a SpectraVideo SV 328!

4/26/17 - Video of Kaboom!

2/4/17 - Strange "Mini" ColecoVision

7/5/17 - Custom Made Berzerk Tabletop

8/7/17 - German Version of Super Cross Force!

8/9/17 - Unboxing and playing Sydney Hunter!

8/13/17 - Photos of my collection from the 90s!

9/22/17 - Thoughts on Sydney Hunter!

2/7/18 - 3 New Videos!

2/14/18 - Wizard of Wor Review!

2/15/18 - Team Pixelboy Budget Series!

2/21/18 - Donkey Kong Review!

4/6/18 - A Boot Hill Review!

8/31/18 - Some oddly shaped boxes!

11/28/21 - A long overdue update!

1/11/22 - Unboxing a sealed copy of Jumpman Junior!

2/12/22 - Arkadion for ColecoVision is BAD! Full Review

2/15/22 - Reproduction ColecoVision Console Box Review

3/5/22 - Bull & Mighty's Critical Moment Gameplay Video

 

Why I got back into collecting ColecoVision...

 

…It’s all the Flashback’s fault! Seriously!

Growing up, the ColecoVision was always “my system.” It really was the video game machine that I grew up on and followed religiously. Sure, I had a 2600 before it and a C-64 and then an NES after it, but it was the system that would change a part of my life as an adult.

My “video game childhood” started out with the original Sears Tele-Games Pong which I received for Christmas in 1975, and then two years later Santa put a 2600 under the tree. I was only 7 at the time when the 2600 came out, and while I played it to death, I was still a bit too young to really appreciate games and how important they were about to become.

But then 1982 rolls around, I’m reading Electronic Games Magazine and news about the ColecoVision at CES is talked about and I was blown away. At this point in my life I was addicted to any stand-up game to hit the arcades but disappointed in the current home-version offerings. Seeing what the ColecoVision was going to bring home blew me away, and I had to get one!

The two childhood CV stories that I remember distinctly… First - I always knew where my parents hid my Christmas presents and one day after school I had discovered that they had bought the ColecoVision system, Expansion Module #1 and several games that were available. But it would be weeks before Christmas and I just couldn’t wait. Knowing the exact schedule of when my parents would be coming home and how much time I had between getting back from school, I would go and take the ColecoVision, and very carefully remove it all out of the box, hook it up to the TV, play it as long as I possibly could, and then with enough time to reverse the process, put it all back into the box EXACTLY as it was before and put it right back to where it was “hidden.” And of course I played off the “surprise” perfectly fine on Christmas day! To this day, my parents still have no idea I did this!

The second was when I had saved up all my allowance to buy Donkey Kong Jr. For whatever reason that game came out (at least where I lived) at a higher price than other ColecoVision games and while at the store wanting to buy it, my parents wouldn’t let me due to the higher price. Thankfully, my parents didn’t pay too close of attention, and one day I rode my bike down to Gemco (big box store in SoCal in the 80s) and happily used up my allowance to purchase the game. They never even noticed that I had bought it.

My collection of CV games as a kid included pretty much all the “common” games. I had all the arcade ports and many of the original games that came out up until the end, all the add-ons, controllers, etc. The only thing I never had growing up was Adam.

Fast forward through the next few years…

My gaming career went from ColecoVision to the Commodore 64 to NES/SNES, (One of my best friends had an ADAM so I had a lot of exposure to that as well) etc… But even through all those years, I had kept a ColecoVision plugged in, and it would always be a system I’d go back to.

I ended up working in the video games industry from 1989 - 2011, which is an entirely other story, but I got into the industry because I was a retro games fan. During those first 10 or so years, I would go to flea markets and collect games. ColecoVision was always the system I looked out for the most. At one point I pretty much had collected just about everything that was out there at the time. I want to say I had really close to a complete collection of loose carts that were available in the USA, and many games CIB, and at this point I even had an ADAM up and running. ColecoVision was still “my system.”

At this point, I was also collecting stand-up arcade machines, and when I was living on the east coast I had about 40 machines in my game room and probably another 50 or so PCB’s that I could plug into various machines. I spent a great deal of time restoring dedicated cabinet 80s arcade games. Here's a few pics of my "game room" (wish I had more and at better quality, but in those days, the smart phone didn't exist!)

games1.jpggames2.jpggames3.jpggames5.jpggames6.jpg

In 2002 I took a job with Activision and had to move back to SoCal. At this point in my life, I had become jaded with the video games business based on a number of different things that had happened and I was totally disenchanted with the industry. It was no longer a “hobby” for me, but a “job.”

Disgruntled and uncaring about video games at this point, I sold everything I had. Didn’t even look back on it. Didn’t really care and moved to SoCal totally empty-handed as far as any retro games went.  No consoles.  No arcade games.  Not even a handheld. 

For the first couple of years at Activision, I didn’t even look at retro games, even though I was working for one of the companies that is iconic in the eyes of retro game fans, my interest in video games has pretty much died at this point, and my less-than-stellar experience at Activision (it was not a great company to work for during the years I was there) most certainly didn't help.

That being said, one of my co-workers was selling off some of their old game machines, and one of the machines was a ColecoVision with a hand-full of games. I instantly flash backed to childhood and I just had to have it. I bought it, took it home, made sure it worked, loved it, but put it in a box, and there it would stay, for probably another half decade.

In 2011 I finally got out of the video games business, focused on my theme park travel site and roller coaster video production (yes that is what I do for a living) which I had been doing on the side for many years and we moved to Orlando pursue that more. (When you are doing work in the theme park business, Orlando really is the place to be!)

If I said I had totally gotten out of retro gaming over those years, that would be a lie. While I was no longer collecting physical hardware or game carts, I always had an emulator or two on my computer. And it almost always consisted of MAME, ColecoVision, and Atari. I would find myself going back to play my favorite ColecoVision games from time to time. When I worked for WayForward, I did have a Vectrex sitting on my desk with a Sean Kelly multi-game cart, but that was mostly for “show.” In fact, when I moved to Orlando, I gave it away.

Orlando was a total fresh start for me. No more video games career, time to shift gears, have a different focus, move forward and not look back. And things have been going very well since. Still have the emulators on my laptop and would play from time to time, but I had pretty much forgotten about games and anything retro. I had not given up on games entirely though. I always had whatever the latest Nintendo system was and a few games, but nothing really interested me to be fanatical. We’d play Mario Party with groups of friends, I was slightly addicted to Animal Crossing and always had a handful of NES Virtual Console games, but that was about it.

And then the ColecoVision Flashback system came out…

I thought “What a cool idea… so many of my favorites as a kid all in one place, and easy to hook up to the TV!” (I totally understood the licensing aspects of games so I knew some games couldn’t be included.)

Two things went through my mind while playing the system:

1. This Flashback just isn’t good enough, it didn’t *feel* right, and that right there sparked my interest in pulling the ColecoVision I had sitting in a box for many years out of storage and playing the real thing, and

2. WHAT ARE ALL THESE HOME-BREW GAMES ON THE FLASHBACK!?!?!

When I had gotten out of collecting games around 2001, there really wasn’t any home-brew (that I was aware of) out there for the system. At least not to the level that I was seeing on the Flashback system. I did some research and I simply could not believe that people were STILL MAKING GAMES for my childhood system keeping it alive! And not just tinkering around, or home-brew games that looked like someone punched in some code from Compute! magazine, I had found legit boxed games of arcade ports and original content that was just as good if not better than the original games that came out for the system 30 years ago.  This blew my mind!

I had to do a double take… “People are STILL making games for a system that hasn’t seen a retail store shelf in 30 years???” This was something that I realized that I needed to be a part of! And all of a sudden, something I hadn’t felt in 20 years was back… I was once again a “fan” of games instead of it being a “job.”

As I played games like Circus Charlie, Buster Bros, and Girls Garden, I’ve just sat there thinking to myself “I honestly cannot believe I’m playing these games…on a COLECOVISION!!! WTF?!?!?”

I had known of sites like Digital Press and Atari Age, had browsed them for reference when working on other games, but hadn’t really paid close enough attention to them to really understand what was going on in any of the retro gaming communities. Doing some searching around, it seemed like Atari Age was *the* community for ColecoVision fans and I registered. Seeing just how much I needed to get caught up on, I spent hours and hours neglecting my own business to read up on hundreds of threads (and I’m still getting caught up!)

Through the help of many of the forum members I have now collected over 100 of the home-brews that have been produced over the years and have re-collected many of the loose released carts. I have been totally blown away by this community since I found it and I haven’t been this excited in anything game-related in years.

So that’s my story… my introduction, etc… And if you read this whole damn thing then I’m even MORE impressed with this community! Looking forward to getting more caught up on the past and what the future of the system has in store!

Thank you for reading!

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Didn't read entire wall of text...

 

Holy phuck you had a Tac/Scan and Reactor!?!?

Yeah, sorry about it being so much text. While I don't have a list of all the cabinets I owned over the years (bought, sold, and traded quite a lot) here are the ones I had when I sold them off at the very end:

 

 

Asteroids

Astro Blaster

BagMan

Battlezone

Berzerk

Blaster

Burgertime

Carnival

Centipede

Crazy Climber

Defender

Deluxe Space Invaders

Discs of Tron

Domino Man

Donkey Kong

Dragon's Lair

Galaxian

Gorf

Journey

Kickman

Mad Planets

Mappy

Moon Patrol

Mouse Trap

Ms. Pac-Man

Omega Race

Pac-Land

Pac-Man

Phoenix

Q*bert

Rally-X

Reactor

Robotron 2084

Satan's Hollow

Sinistar

Space Duel

Space Fury

Space Invaders Deluxe

Space War

Star Castle

Star Wars (Upright)

Star Wars (Cockpit)

Stunt Cycle

Super Street Fighter II Turbo

Tac Scan

Tapper

Tempest

Tron

Tutankham

Vanguard

Venture

Wacko

Wizard of Wor

Xenophobe

Zookeeper

Edited by TPR
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Yeah, sorry about it being so much text. While I don't have a list of all the cabinets I owned over the years (bought, sold, and traded quite a lot) here are the ones I had when I sold them off at the very end:

 

Asteroids

Astro Blaster

BagMan

Berzerk

Blaster

Burgertime

Carnival

Centipede

Crazy Climber

Deluxe Space Invaders

Discs of Tron

Domino Man

Donkey Kong

Dragon's Lair

Galaxian

Gorf

Journey

Kickman

Mad Planets

Mappy

Moon Patrol

Mousetrap

Ms. Pac-Man

Omega Race

Pac-Man

Pac-Land

Phoenix

Q*bert

Reactor

Robotron 2084

Satan's Hollow

Sinistar

Space Duel

Space Fury

Space Invaders

Star Castle

Star Wars (upright & cockpit)

Stunt Cycle

Super Street Fighter II Turbo

Tac Scan

Tempest

Tron

Tutankham

Vanguard

Venture

Wacko

Wizard of Wor

Xenophobe

Zookeeper

Wow! I guess I missed that retro party... That's a load of cabinets...

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I received a box of awesome in from Pixelboy today! Here are 13 more reasons why I got back into collecting ColecoVision games!

 

Star Force, Bank Panic and Track & Field are all excellent titles. Gulkave isn't too bad it's just a little too difficult. I don't own the other games to comment.

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I did read the entire wall of text. Glad you are back into it again. I think some of us have drifted out of gaming only to realize that it was a mistake and come back with a newfound appreciation for things. I too got interested in CV again from the flashback but refused to buy it as I needed the real thing again.

 

Impressive collection of coin-ops man! That would rival some of the best arcades I can remember from back in the day.

Edited by Shmup Lover
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I did read the entire wall of text. Glad you are back into it again. I think some of us have drifted out of gaming only to realize that it was a mistake and come back with a newfound appreciation for things. I too got interested in CV again from the flashback but refused to buy it as I needed the real thing again.

Ha! I went the opposite way and actually bought all three version of the Flashback system! =) Although after doing that, I also realized I needed the real thing again. At least it was cool to get some of the bonus overlays in one of the bundles! ;)

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Ha! I went the opposite way and actually bought all three version of the Flashback system! =) Although after doing that, I also realized I needed the real thing again. At least it was cool to get some of the bonus overlays in one of the bundles! ;)

Bonus overlays that you could buy from pboland at any time... ;P

 

 

EDIT: This forum needs a winking-with-tongue-out smiley icon...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been working on my "loose cart" collection of official released titles, and I only have the following left to go. While I know there is a "Want to Buy" board as well, I figured it wouldn't hurt to post this in here to see if any of you guys had some extras you wanted to sell to me. Thanks in advance!

 

Alcazar

Amazing Bumpman

Dragonfire

Gust Buster

Oil's Well

Q*Berts Qubes

Rock N Bolt

Rolloverture

Sector Alpha

Skiing

Tank War

Wiz Math

 

I also do not have any of the Xonox Double Enders.

 

I know that a few of these may be pretty hard to come by, but I figured it was worth a shot listing them out!

Edited by TPR
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I've been working on my "loose cart" collection of official released titles, and I only have the following left to go. While I know there is a "Want to Buy" board as well, I figured it wouldn't hurt to post this in there to see if any of you guys had some extras you wanted to sell to me. Thanks in advance!

 

Alcazar

Amazing Bumpman

Dragonfire

Gust Buster

Oil's Well

Q*Berts Qubes

Rock N Bolt

Rolloverture

Sector Alpha

Skiing

Tank War

Wiz Math

 

I also do not have any of the Xonox Double Enders.

 

I know that a few of these may be pretty hard to come by, but I figured it was worth a shot listing them out!

Oil's Well in my opinion is one of the most addicting games on any console . Go for that first ! Al has also made it available on the 5200 and I highly recommend picking one up from him .

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I can update this list a bit:

 

I still need:

Alcazar

Amazing Bumpman

Dragonfire

Gust Buster

Rock N Bolt

Skiing

Tank War

Wiz Math

 

And I now have one of the Xonox double enders: Tomarc the Barbarian/Motocross Racer

 

Getting closer to having a complete loose collection of all the released carts! Thanks to everyone here who messaged me with some available games.

Edited by TPR
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Looks like I can knock Dragonfire off that list now. According to NIAD's list, I think the only loose carts I need for a complete collection of released carts (note that I'm not going for label variants) are:

 

Alcazar

Amazing Bumpman

Boulder Dash

Gust Buster

Skiing

Super Sketch

Tank War

Wiz Math

 

I also do not have any of these reproduction prototype carts:

BurgerTime (Intellivision on label)

Escape from the Mindmaster

Fall Guy

M.A.S.H.

Porky's

Yolks on You

 

If you have any of these you're willing to sell, please let me know!

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wow you really got down to the ones that are going to be very hard to find and cost you money. :)

 

Probably the easiest one on your list is Artillery Duel/Chuck Norris Double Ender, gust buster might be easier to get just because of the boxes that were found you can probably get a CIB of it for 40 - 50 bucks or so.

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wow you really got down to the ones that are going to be very hard to find and cost you money. :)

 

Probably the easiest one on your list is Artillery Duel/Chuck Norris Double Ender, gust buster might be easier to get just because of the boxes that were found you can probably get a CIB of it for 40 - 50 bucks or so.

Yup. I figured that would be the case! =) I was able to cross Rock N Bolt off the list tonight. Just gotta keep an eye on eBay or if anyone on AA wants to sell, although I kind of thought that probably won't happen, but it doesn't hurt to ask, right?

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