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opcode

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Posts posted by opcode

  1. Posted

    23 minutes ago, mr_me said:

    Could it have been november 1982?  In november 1983, the Adam expansion would have been available in retail stores, sgm already cancelled.

    I don’t think they had disclosed the SGM yet that early. If I remember the SGM was something that only lasted a few months from its announcement to cancellation for the ADAM. 
    But anyways, by that point Coleco was doing all the cool and innovative stuff that Atari couldn’t because they were just a shell marketing and design company.  

  2. Posted

    1 hour ago, 128Kgames said:

    You know that old question which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

     

    Well, which came first the SGM or the Adam?  I am curious if the Adam was in development all along or only came into being after the plug was pulled on the SGM?  Or were they developed together, in tandem or part of the same "expansion" project?  

     

    There is a reason to my madness...

     

    If I remember correctly, the original plan was (don't remember the source):

     

    1) release SGM, 32KB of RAM, tape drive

    2) release keyboard component, with another 32KB + BASIC

     

    Keyboard connects into SGM, thus the expansion port passthrough in the SGM. In the end the result would be about the same, a 64KB computer with a tape drive. 

  3. Posted

    From New York Times. I remember other sources, from magazines to Phoenix (the book), cartridge sales were up in 1983, at lower prices, thus lower revenue. Public was still there. 

     

    Quote

    There are two parts to the home- game business: the game-machine modules, or hardware, which consist of compact plastic boxes that are linked to televisions by long cords, and the cartridges, or software, that are inserted into the modules.

    Christopher Kirby, an analyst with Sanford Bernstein & Company, said he expects module sales will tumble to between 5.5 million and 6 million units in 1983, from 8 million sold last year. Since game machines are priced lower, he thinks dollar revenue could plunge by 50 percent or more.

    Industry people are still expecting 80 million to 90 million game cartridges to be sold, up from about 65 million last year. But Mr. Kirby expects orders from manufacturers to be off about 20 percent, since a lot of the sales will be from inventory sitting on shelves from last year. Because of deep discounting, Mr. Kirby said, the dollar value of cartridge sales should tumble to about $1.3 billion, from $1.6 billion last year.

     

    https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/17/business/video-games-industry-comes-down-to-earth.html

     

    Assuming the $2.9 revenue to be true, since cartridge was $1.6 B, hardware was $1.3 B. In 1983 cartridge is down to $1.3 B (but cartridges sales is up in # units sold), while hardware is down 50%, thus $650 M. And you get your $2 B. ;)

     

    Thus public interest was still there.

     

  4. Posted

    1 hour ago, Pixelboy said:

    Even if an interesting new console had been released, I don't think it would have worked. You have to keep in mind that that the "video game crash of 1984", as most people call it, wasn't just about Atari and other industry players going out of business, it was about retailers generally losing faith in the video game industry. At the time, North-American retailers were clearing off all their consoles and games in their bargain bins, believing that the video game fad was over, and that home computers were the next big thing. A new console released by Coleco at that time would have been unlikely to convince retailers to give video games another chance. It took the NES and SMS to make them realize there was still a large market for dedicated cartridge-based consoles. Kids still wanted to play video games, after all.

     

     

    Exactly, the crash was not about people stop buying games, which in fact sold more in 1983 than in 1982. Instead it was the retail channel getting clogged with dead stock because there were too many of them for the market size at that point. If games aren't selling, they don't make space for new games and so on. So retailers stop buying them. For companies that means that: 1) your new game doesn't sell as much, because fewer retailers are placing orders. 2) a lot of dead stock was being returned. Thus massive losses. The NES probably worked because by 1985/86 retail had already got rid of most of the dead stock.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    4 minutes ago, 128Kgames said:

    I wish, back then it meant having a camera, with film, with flash bulbs, and carrying the damn thing!  We have it so easy nowadays! 

     

    I think it was the first and only type of show I ever went to back then, so I probably had no idea what to expect let alone think to documents things. 

     

    Shoulda, could, woulda.  

     

    When you get finished with this years games, start working on a time machine for us.  I have a flux capacitor already you can borrow.

     

    Just remember, no stepping on butterflies...

     

    Well, I don't fault you. I wish that I had documented a lot of stuff I did or went to in the past. Just asked out of curiosity. In Brazil we had two ColecoVision clones announced. In the only one got released. But I went to a small expo where they had both in display. I even played both... Or the Atari booth in another expo in 1983/1984. I was there, Atari Club shirt and all...

     

    As for the time machine, already working on that. I must go back and tell IBM to not agree in letting MS sell their PC-DOS to third parties.... That should change history for better. Will be careful with the butterflies...

    • Haha 1

  7. Posted

    2 hours ago, Loafer said:

    Considering the amount of games they put out, the design team may have been a decent group of guys/gals, but the problem as always was the budget on the game, which often restricted their time spent on developing it.  That was a major problem for all the game developers of the era.

     

    Incidentally, when compared to other games of the era, I think Coleco devs did a fantastic job on Time Pilot.  This was a complex game ... for the time

     

    May I offer a not so US centric perspective? Famicom with Dk, DK Jr, and Popeye released in Japan in June 1983. June 1983 was still halfway in the CV lifespan. Now those ports were closer to the arcade originals than anything at that point in a US console. Part of that may be the superior hardware. And part was good coding. I believe Nintendo was assigning a lot of those ports to HAL, which also ported Joust, Millipede, and Stargate in 1983 for the Atari deal that never materialized. 

    So no, I don't think it was a matter of budget or tight schedules. And Atarisoft was also doing great stuff for the CV in 1983, all very smooth and polished. Now, if you check who was doing the CV work for Atarisoft, you will find people who was also working in arcade games. It was just a different level of pedigree. 

    Again, I was blown away by the CV back in the day like everybody else, which doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better, even back then.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    18 minutes ago, 128Kgames said:

    Would have been cool though to see what could have been if the original SGM was released, wouldn't it? 

     

    I saw the "dummy" SGM "running" at the Coleco booth at a CES like show at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island back in the day (year unknown). 

     

    Coleco had the Super Action controllers with Rocky on display, and I don't think they were out yet.  For someone like me who was all about the games, the SGM would have been fantastic. 

     

    I can only imagine where the system would have gone from there.

     

    Wow, I can only imagine what that may have been or felt like, seeing the SGM first hand... Envy... Did you take pictures? 

     

    So let's get some of those improved ports out. This time with much improved frame rate. :)

    • Like 2

  10. Posted

    6 hours ago, imstarryeyed said:

    Opcode I love the sounds on the new video..  I was trying to remember where I have heard the Moon Cresta music before,  and it was Jupiter Lander for the Commodore Vic 20 / 64!  I grew up hearing those jingles..  I never realized they came from Moon Cresta, makes sense as commodore always "borrowed" assets, concepts and art from games at the time.

     

    To those that might be curious you can listen to it now... now I have to wonder if its a famous piece of classical music I did not know.

     

    You can hear both jingles (when the game starts and when it lander lands) within the first 30 seconds of this video.  I totally played so much of this game as a kid.. haha..  Opcodes game really brought back a fond memory..

     

     

     

    Since people were mentioning games that are needed...

     

    I would love to see Elevator Action Arcade or even Elevator Action  2.

     

    Or better yet Two Tigers!  That game never got a real home version ever... Dr Destructo for the 8 bit computers is similar to it, but Eduardo can your tools do Atari arcade like graphics?  I am talking about things like Paperboy, Two Tigers, Tapper etc?  Those graphics used a strange higher graphics mode but I wonder if they can be done with some justice on the SGM?

     

     

     

     

     

    Very cool, they indeed used Moon Cresta tune. And a very good rendition of it btw.

     

    As for hi-res games like TRON and Popeye, and the others you mentioned, they are possible, you just have to redo the graphics. I don't think they would look bad at all. 

     

    Elevator Action: when I was doing the SGM2 stuff I used the tools to produce ports of Jungle King and Elevator Actions. I believe I posted several videos of Jungle King. But that was SGM2. Because of the hardware scroll, those two can't be fully ported by the existing tool without a lot of manual intervention. I will be working soon to add scroll support, but I need a less advanced specimen to be a starting point. The Taito hardware is super advanced for its time, with multiple planes, programable color palettes and a billion PSGs. Just insane. :P 

  11. Posted

    I would argue that since the 70s, if you were doing electronics, you should be aware about Moore’s law. Which means it wasn’t a question of “if” but “when” bigger ROMs would show up. And so 1Mbit ROMs were already available in late 85, and by 1986 quite a few companies were already using them for games in Japan. In fact the Disk System, released in early 1986 was made almost instantaneously obsolete that same year. By mid 1986, Konami had the Goemon game out using a 2Mbit cartridge, twice the capacity of a Disk System disk. And btw, true that Zaxxon sold at premium price in 1982, but you are forgetting about all the 24kb games we got in 1983. So prices were going down. 

    Finally, we also had advancements in programming. Sky Jaguar, a MSX game that I ported for the CV years ago, a sort of Xevious clone, has only 16Kb. And it put most CV 32Kb games to shame in terms of content/graphics. Antarctic Adventure is another example, only 16Kb.

     
    And I know this is an unpopular opinion because it goes against our rose tinted memories of childhood, but most Coleco games were just plain poorly programmed. Coleco has a wonderful internal game design team that was unfortunately underutilized, but surely not the best programmers. Just one example: CV Time Pilot starts to slow down as soon as the first enemy enters the screen, and gets worse with each enemy. I wonder if even a single Coleco game ran at 60Fps, but I can’t think of any except for the Coleco published Konami games. Compare to stuff that Atarisoft did, which is still simple but really well done and smooth. But I digress. 

    • Like 2

  12. Posted

    16 minutes ago, christo930 said:

     

     

    All 4 screens and the proper height. fireballs and barrels are mutlicolor. Though the 64 has the sid, the Adam version certainly sounds more like arcade donkey kong than the C64.  Still, I think the 64 plays better.

    Not bad for the time. Slow though. 
    And you must deal with the 160 pixels resolution, which isn’t very arcade-ish. 
     

    how about this instead: :P

     

     

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

    15 minutes ago, christo930 said:

    Thanks for posting that link.  It was interesting, but really didn't say anything about what is inside of it. But what is clear is that the tapes were to be up to 128kB (1 megabit).  I would guess it would be a fairly small amount of RAM, maybe 16 or 32k as you say. There were already 256kb cartridges in 1983. Since this expanded space is the only thing mentioned, one assumes that was the big push of it, which means no extra system ram (just cartridge "emulation" ram). This would have lowered their cost, but it really did nothing in terms of giving the system more capabilities (though it does make sense to add frills like animations where you're not paying for that extra space).  One assumes if it was more, they would be pushing that aspect. But it also would add loading times.

    I really don't know why they were so wedded to the particular format they chose that they cancelled the project when they were shown to be unreliable. They could have just as easily put a cassette deck in it and used endless loop cassettes (they aren't very long, but they do exist) or even regular cassettes. They could have ran them at double speed or something if they couldn't get the kind of speed they wanted from a cassette.  If it was a big success, it would have paid them back in spades. Charge people more money for the larger games with dirt cheap production costs.

     I read somewhere it was going to be 32kb of ram. With 32kb more in the computer module. And that makes sense, as 16kb may not be enough for current stage plus next stage. 
    the added bonus is that those 32kb could have been used as work area, for the same effect as the Opcode SGM. 
    But it was still a expensive device, and they were offering basically enhanced arcade ports. I see that working with the hardcore crowd, but not with the average Joe. They are saying, you pay this more for the SGM to play basically the same games, but better. 
    And something that the Famicom disk system taught us is that magnetic media can be a success with piracy and in fact that can ruin your system. 
     

    IMHO they should have stick with the system as it was and then eventually release a more ambitious expansion module later, with improved graphics and sound or something like that. As we know cartridge space would increase quickly in the following years and any benefit of the SGM would also be lost quickly. 

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    Good to hear! 

     

    another redo/port I'd like to see are a more vectorish friendly port of Space Fury and especially it's quasi sequel, Zektor, a favorite of mine.  

    Vector stuff is always a challenge with the ColecoVision hardware. A tile based system isn’t the best hardware for that unfortunately.

     

    A particular game that I am sure would translate great for the CV is Crazy Climber, another Nichibutsu classic. Release only for the 2600, and even so in a limited edition. And the port wasn’t great either. Would be a great match for the extra buttons in the Super Action Controller.

     

    And then there is that one game... Phoenix. Have been looking on that.

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  16. Posted

    I love the ideas for ports, but IMO one that badly needs a redo, as I dislike ALL of it's 8-bit ports is Mr. Do.  The CV version is passable but lackluster.  The SNES one is the only port of it that was any good, but I would prefer a port on an 8 bit system. 

    And I agree. The CV could have been so much better.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  19. Posted

    Between the years 1982 to January 1985+ the ColecoVision/ADAM version of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior was the best of the best with only the original commercial arcade game being better (one cannot take the arcade version home). Now in October of 1985 Nintendo for the United States market came out with a videogame system that had better graphics quality when compared to the ColecoVision/ADAM. However it is my understanding that the Donkey Kong games do not have all the screens. The ADAM version of Donkey Kong the supergame has all 4 screens but the NES only has 3 game screens. The ADAM version of Donkey Kong Junior has 5 game screens which is one more then the official arcade version (that is the leaked unreleased version from a former Coleco employee, the released version has 4 screens).   

    Well, technically Famicom DK is from 1983, and it is a far better port. Problem with ColecoVision wasn’t so much the capabilities, but the programming. Most Coleco games were choppy and had low frame rates, and ROM space utilization wasn’t their strongest suit either. I think the BIOS more than the programmers was the culprit.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  20. Posted

    Well said and exactly what I always thought.
     
    If Coleco had survived the videogame crash (their electronics division) and not gone down the road of the ADAM Computer, it would have been interesting to see these two companies go up against one another for videogame supremacy in the mid-80s. Nintendo probably would have lulled Coleco into a false sense of security about not releasing the Famicom in the North American market by using their past working relationship to garner trust and further information about Coleco’s plans for expansion of the CV or details of a possible CV2.
     
    I am not forgetting about Atari in the least in the proposed scenario... just don’t care to include them in this “what if” scenario.

    By 1983 Atari was a shell marketing and design company. They had little actual development of anything related to video games. Their latest major hardware has been the Atari 800 in 1979. 5200 was just a rebranded Atari 400. Most of their games were being made in Boston by GCC at that point. They didn’t have enough R&D to even put together a new console in 1983/1984, so their two options were supplied by 3rd parties: the 7800 was GCC, and they even considered the Famicom. So yeah, all of that to say they were failing as a video game company crash or not.
    So future was bright for Coleco. Or so it seemed...


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  21. Posted

    We are glad to announce that the pre-order for the Super Game Module is NOW OPEN! 

     

    We sent an email regarding the pre-order to everyone in the waiting list, so if you didn't see the email please check your spam box.

     

    🔹Click here to read our latest newsletter

    🔹 Click here to go directly to the PRE-ORDER page with all info and Paypal button

     

    Thanks!

     

    image.thumb.png.fa6092f9612f56894c6a8ac5d6689854.png

    • Like 2

  22. Posted

    Pre-order for the SGM 5th run has officially started. If you subscribed to the waiting list, you should have received an email from us with instructions. If you don't see it, please check your spam box. We will post a direct link for pre-ordering here soon.

  23. Posted

    Pre-order for the SGM 5th run has officially started. If you subscribed to the waiting list, you should have received an email from us with instructions. If you don't see it, please check your spam box. We will post a direct link for pre-ordering here soon.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    Isn't that interesting that Nintendo followed Coleco steps in almost every single concept? They used the ColecoVision TMS9918 was their inspiration for the Famicom video chip. They released the Famicom with Donkey Kong. They released a keyboard/BASIC module, they released their Disk System that uses the exact same concept with the exact same goals as the SGM. I may be missing someone, but I am pretty sure they were a fan of Coleco.

     

  25. Posted

    On 6/9/2020 at 10:08 AM, NIAD said:

    Opcode Games entered into agreement with the current rights holder of the Coleco name so that he could produce a complete in box product with the name “Coleco” on it.  The use of the “Super Game Module” name for his product wasn’t necessary, but it is a very nice and nostalgic touch.

     

    Between the Opcode SGM and bank-switching cartridge PCBs that are widely used now to break the 32K cart size barrier, you basically get what Coleco had proposed back in 1983. Albeit, a lot more reliable than using stringy tape cassettes.

     

     

    True, but let's not forget about the saving capabilities of the original SGM, that was one of the selling points. We get that with our Super Game Cartridges, we can save whatever amount of stuff we want, so perfect for high score tables and settings. Games like Maze of Galious can get rid of long passwords, etc.

    • Like 1
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