misspent_youth

Sold, thanks for your attention everyone!

Funny how, even in the age of instant knowledge at our fingertips, there are still little bits of trivia that make you say 'Oh yeah! I always wondered about that!" Thanks for pointing us to the little bio of Ken Uston.

I am pretty sure that the parts DoubleDown used were DigiKey parts. I actually took the trouble to look them up, but since then have had the computer that I used back then give up the ghost. There is a backup of that PC somewhere, so I'll try to find it and post the part numbers.

Got my copies of Burn Rubber and Side Trak today too! Thanks to J-F, Russ and the rest of the CollectorVision team. Now I just gotta do this mod

They love music and 8-bit gaming. So many of the cut-scenes are video game mock-ups.

Yikes! I have a trickle charger for the riding mower battery that's about that size. I wonder if it put out more heat than the NA brick/wall warts (hence the vents).

I noticed the Gemini has ColecoVision Donkey Kong in the cartridge slot.

I also like the black with the grey leaves. Check Vistaprint.ca - they do everything print-related, but I'm not sure how cost effective the shirts would be compared to other places. Unless I don't know how to read their site properly, it looks like black shirts with printing on front and back would be around $13 a shirt, plus some up front costs. Edit: On second look, it appears to be around $30 for the above. Edit #2: you can get matching mugs too!

I think SlowCoder is thinking of Puzzle Bobble, which is a similar game to Bust a Move.

I remember being pretty disappointed in the NES port of Rygar. I guess I just pumped so many quarters into that old side scroller that I wasn't expecting what they turned it into. I didn't put much effort into it, so maybe it got better later into the game, but I just didn't care to find out.

I voted single box with the pack-in space because it feels like the way Coleco released its original hardware (that came with games, anyway).

I vote Pengo just because I can play some version of the other 3 on CV already to tide me over until opcode gets to them.

I had to vote for Elevator Action. I just pumped so many quarters into it at Chuck E Cheese's as a kid that it's a sentimental favourite.

So great!

I dumped a fair bit of quarters into that game in the arcade. This looks so great, I will be wathcing this one with great anticipation. Great work!

But the 'Super Action' titles (Football, Baseball, Soccer) were named that way because they are for use with the Super Action Controllers. I know that your controller has the same functionality, but shouldn't Rollerball be re-named Arcade Quality Pinball since it's for use with the Arcade Quality Controller?

It's a little like a late Christmas with all the updates on progress on the SGM. Great work opcode, can't wait for when this is ready!

I read it on my e-book borrowed from the library as well. A great book, with a genuinely suspenseful story that just happened to revolve around lots of pop culture from the 1980's. The author is pretty hardcore, even owning a DeLorean like he one mentioned in the book. Based on the notes at the end of the book, this will be made into a movie before too long.

Nintendo will definitely take a much closer look at an actual corporation infringing its intellectual property. After all, it's likely they don't bother with micro-scale publishers like Opcode, Team Pixelboy and CollectorVision (no offence intended) because they know that they pose no threat in terms of cannibalized sales, and also that there is no chance of recovering any money in the event they decide they want to sue. While the same thing may actually be true of the current owners of the Coleco brand, it probably looks much less so to Nintendo. As for the original license agreement, it would have died with Coleco Industries unless it was assigned to Hasbro when they bought the Coleco assets in 1989. Even if that did happen, it was almost certainly a time-limited agreement, because it wouldn't have been good business sense on Nintendo's part to license the rights to Donkey Kong for home consoles to Coleco forever.

I haven't played probably even half of the homebrews that have been released over the years, and I bet there are those out there that I may like better than what I have played/own, but as of now my favourites are: 1. Mario Brothers - perhaps the arcade game I played most as a kid, and a beautiful job of bringing this to the CV. 2. Pac-Man Collection - another often-played arcade game, and this game is what got me back into collecting CV - I came across posts here about it dating back many years, and the anticipation for this got me spending money collecting other games. 3. Ninja Princess - I love linear kinds of games like this, and I just got it, so that's why it gets a high place on my list. 4. Magical Tree - Same as Ninja Princess, it was #3 until I got Ninja Princess. 5. Circus Charlie - Another fun game that I just can't seem to stop playing. 6. Pitfall II - I didn't really play this as a kid, but I'm really enjoying it now. 7. Sky Jaguar - Love me some old school shmup action. 8. Gulkave - What can I say - I'm a glutton for punishment. This game makes me realize how crummy the stock CV controller is for games that require rapid and repeated button pushes. 9. Yie Ar Kung Fu - I played this a ton on a buddy's C64 as a kid, so it's no surprise I love playing this one. 10. Space Invaders Collection - granted Space Invaders was just slightly ahead of my arcade addiction as a kid, but SIC showed me just how faithfully the CV could reproduce some arcade classics. I'm most looking forward to Donkey Kong Arcade and SIde Trak. Can't wait, and I wish I had more cash for homebrews! Thanks to all those whose efforts have allowed us to see what the CV was really meant to be.

I also want to add my thanks to you for doing this phattboombatty. At least now one of my DK carts now has a comfy and really sharp looking home.

I'll take one when you've got them ready. Maybe I can pick it up if you have them ready at the next CGCC meet.

I'd like one. Any idea how much more it would cost to ship to Canada?

Christmas of 1982, I was 9 years old. I was just getting into gaming mania playing the heck out of Galaxian and Asteroids at my local corner store. My older sister and I knew about the VCS (although I guess by then it was the 2600) and I guess we were pushing our parents to get us one. My dad must have done some research at the stores because they bought us a ColecoVision with the VCS adapter, along with Pac-Man and Asteroids. They had to tell us what it was because we didn't know about CV at that time. What a great present. I still have the receipts from the VCS adapter and the two games, though the games and machines were a yard sale victim in the 1990's (but have since been replaced).

Also, see if you can get your hands on any of that silica gel desiccant (you know, the stuff that comes in those little packets that come in things like shoes or electronics). It'll absorb any humidity that gets in.