Off-the-Record Confirmation About Coleco VCS Games

[+Random Terrain]

The indented text below is from Videogaming and Computer Gaming Illustrated (September 1983).

It sounds outrageous, but I've had some off-the-record confirmation: Coleco is deliberately screwing up the VCS versions of the games that you can also buy for their ColecoVision system. Case in point: Donkey Kong Jr. As you probably know by now, the ColecoVision is dynamite. The VCS version, which I had the misfortune of seeing at the spring Consumer Electronics Show, is absolutely swill. To be fair, it might not have been finished, but if it was . . .

It appears that Coleco may be doing this to make their system look good, and to make the VCS look bad. That's a pretty bogus marketing strategy, and if true, I hope it backfires on 'em.

[Rodrigo]

I knew it!

[Inky]

I don't know if I buy that. There are several brilliant Coleco titles for the 2600. That having been said, some top notch 2600 programmers did create the more popular coleco titles for the 2600, and some of those titles were less than what they could have been.

[Bill Loguidice]

Probably where the original idea started from. It was ridiculous then and it's ridiculous now, even disregarding the fact that it's been debunked by the programmer's themselves. In any case, nice find.

[Master Phruby]

Forget the Coleco is deliberately screwing up the VCS versions of the games. The real news is Universal is going to make a Zaxxon movie!!! Wouldn't that be cool addition to their Studio Tour?

[forrestsmith]

I never bought this stuff, Heck Atari screwed themselves on alot of their own games. Take Pac Man For example, Coleco DK is alot better than Atari Pac Man.

 

Forrest

[Rodrigo]

Probably where the original idea started from. It was ridiculous then and it's ridiculous now, even disregarding the fact that it's been debunked by the programmer's themselves. In any case, nice find.

C'mon, there is no evidence of it; then, it's true!

[NE146]

Probably where the original idea started from. It was ridiculous then and it's ridiculous now, even disregarding the fact that it's been debunked by the programmer's themselves. In any case, nice find.

 

I don't know about any "original" idea, but there I was a 12 year old kid, living thousand of miles away on a tropical island (Guam) circa the early 80's, and this exact suspicion came to mind when I got my 2600 DK. i.e. the game was disappointing, but it was intentionally made that way to showcase the much superior Colecovision version, very similar to the "Atari vs. Intellivision" commercials w/ George Plimpton but done in a more insidious way.

 

Thanks to the net and the various recent discussions over the past couple decades, I don't believe it anymore. It just was what it was.

 

But if I came up with that notion on my own as a kid back then pre-internet, my guess is a lot of others did too.

[Greg2600]

The Intellivision Coleco games were completely putrid. I liked pretty much all the VCS versions. They had good sound, colors, and control. Just that they were too short/incomplete. I think Coleco simply didn't give the programmers enough time to do a better version. Obviously, when it came to budgets, wouldn't it have made sense to spend the most money on the CV ports?

[BrianC]

I disagree that the Intellivision games were completely bad. Mouse Trap is good and Ladybug and Venture seem to be good, as well. DK Jr. is a flawed port, but a decent effort. I found most of their 2600 games to be decent, with some of their later games like Frontline being more impressive. I also like some of the hated games like Zaxxon. It's definitely better than the SG-1000 one that has impressive graphics and music, but has a boring layout that only gets marginally harder after looping. Too bad the 2600 Looping and Cabbage Kids weren't released since they seem to be among their better 2600 games.

Edited December 19, 2014 by BrianC

[themushroom]

I've always heard this statement. And the proof comes in Donkey Kong: the Coleco version looks like the arcade game, the Atari version is 2 levels, and the Intellivision version has the floor on the first level backwards. You can't tell me that with a little more RAM in the cartridge, the 2600 version couldn't have gone to the third level.

Edited December 19, 2014 by themushroom

[high voltage]

Garry Kitchen said he did the best job with the space available.

 

Again, just as I love Pac-Man I love the VCS version of Donkey Kong. I never visited arcades, so to me, they were 'new' games, not arcade conversions.

And even later, when I learned about arcades, I always thought, why the comparisons with arcades, when the arcade game had such powerful hardware when compared to the home video game. It's like saying, oh my toy rocket doesn't fly to the moon, why not....absurd.

[Rodrigo]

I disagree that the Intellivision games were completely bad. Mouse Trap is good and Ladybug and Venture seem to be good, as well. DK Jr. is a flawed port, but a decent effort. I found most of their 2600 games to be decent, with some of their later games like Frontline being more impressive. I also like some of the hated games like Zaxxon. It's definitely better than the SG-1000 one that has impressive graphics and music, but has a boring layout that only gets marginally harder after looping. Too bad the 2600 Looping and Cabbage Kids weren't released since they seem to be among their better 2600 games.

I love Frontline. I played the Commando arcade version a lot back then, love it, and then I saw Frontline for 2600. I got instantly addicted to it.

[awhite2600]

I think Coleco simply didn't give the programmers enough time to do a better version. Obviously, when it came to budgets, wouldn't it have made sense to spend the most money on the CV ports?

 

I had the same thought. The programmers of the VCS and Intellivision versions were given small ROM sizes to work with. I suspect that there were also tight time constraints that made the programmers rush to get a passable game working by a deadline. You can say the same thing about some of the Atari games - Pac Man, E.T., etc. Had the programmers been give more time and/or bigger cartridges then I'm sure the games would have been better.

[Tempest]

The 2600 version of DK jr. was done by an outside contractor (Harley H. Puthuff, Jr.). Spoke to his son at one point and he never mentioned anything about being told to make the game bad (he was actually quite proud that he got 3 of the 4 screens in there). While I think the game could have been much better, I don't think he deliberately botched it. The 2600 is a very limited machine and hard to get the most out of, especially if you don't have much experience with it and no time to really learn.

 

I think it's more that Coleco wasn't putting as much effort (less time and money) into the 2600 as they wanted to show more support for their own console. That's a very different thing than purposely trying to make them look bad.

[high voltage]

Bottom line is If Coleco would have made Atari VCS Coleco games look bad on purpose, it would only made them look bad.

[Tempest]

Bottom line is If Coleco would have made Atari VCS Coleco games look bad on purpose, it would only made them look bad.

Not to mention hurt sales. Why bother making intentionally bad games for a competitors system? They won't sell and they'll hurt your reputation. If they really wanted people to buy Colecovisions then they would have made the games exclusives. Coleco was in the business of making money so they put their games on as many popular systems as they could, but they didn't make those systems their primary concern so the conversions suffered a bit.

[Rodrigo]

Maybe frustrated people with the 2600 Coleco games started this rumour.

[+save2600]

Sucks to think a company would go through all the trouble to license something, only to half-ass their own product - which is effectively what they did by not giving these conversions higher priority.

 

<alternate reality>

 

Only chance we could have had with a re-do BITD was if somebody would have secured the magnetic media rights (ie: Official Frogger) for play on the Supercharger. Would have been awesome to see Supercharged versions of Pac-Man, Ms. Pac, Joust, Moon Patrol, Tutankham, DK, Zaxxon, etc.

[awhite2600]

Coleco was in the business of making money so they put their games on as many popular systems as they could, but they didn't make those systems their primary concern so the conversions suffered a bit.

 

Atari did the same thing with the Atarisoft titles. Unlike Coleco, Atari managed to release some very good ports for the competition's systems. Some were still pretty bad, but in most cases it was due to limitations of the hardware.

[Tempest]

 

Atari did the same thing with the Atarisoft titles. Unlike Coleco, Atari managed to release some very good ports for the competition's systems. Some were still pretty bad, but in most cases it was due to limitations of the hardware.

It all depends on the skill level of the contractor. Some of the Atarisoft ports are pretty bad (C-64 Galaxian for example). Also keep in mind that the 2600 was probably the most difficult system to program and Atari obviously had much of the best 2600 related talent locked down pretty hard. Most of the best third party companies (like Activision and Imagic) didn't loan out their people (at least not as far as I know). That left Coleco dealing with whomever they could get their hands on.