Parrothead

Give VR a whirl with the inexpensive new Viewmaster. It works with your phone and is quite amazing. And there are lots of free apps to use with it. Like Google Cardboard. http://www.view-master.com/en-us

I am only going to comment in here about Sean at this point as I know others who have been scammed by him are reading this thread. Here is some more info I got from Greg Albright who has now remembered more about the case. All this is also public record if you know where to look. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Here are several paragraphs from the opposition that I wrote: This was not simply an isolated, one-time incident in which the defendant screwed up. The defendant’s convictions resulted from sophisticated confidence scams that stretched out over a period of nine months. His methods did not involve a single act of taking the victims’ money and running. The defendant actually communicated with each of his victims repeatedly, and either assured them that their merchandise was on its way, or he attempted to shift the blame to a fictitious company that he created to further his crimes. When the police were finally involved, numerous victims handed over dozens of pages of e-mail messages from the defendant, in which he continued to try to earn their trust by assuring them that he was a legitimate seller and by offering excuses that the delays were not his fault. It was defendant’s continuous and deliberate deception that made his victims experience ongoing frustration and suffering throughout that time. The defendant’s criminal sophistication is clear. He chose many victims from out-of-state, which makes confrontation and prosecution difficult. He used his wife’s name on E-Bay to build up the positive feedback ratings on the site. He explained that the more positive rating a seller has, the better the chances are people will bid on their items. In other words, the more likely people will trust him and fall victim to his scam. He created false shipping companies, with false employees, and created false shipping invoices, all to convince the victims that he was a genuine seller, and to try to shift the blame for the victims’ losses on someone else. He even sent e-mails back and forth with a fictitious shipper, Brian Johnson from BJ Shipping. The police were unable to locate a business license or any other proof that BJ Shipping or Brian Johnson ever existed. The defendant had “Anonymizer” and a firewall installed on his computer to prevent others from finding out who he is and to keep victims from tracking him down. Anonymizer software allows the user to send emails and prevents the receiver from finding out where the messages were sent from. The only practical purpose is to disguise where the e-mails originated from, which no legitimate business would do. The defendant’s basis for his motion is that he is a changed man who has been rehabilitated. But this court cannot ignore the fact that the defendant is a compulsive liar. He lied all throughout this case. He lied to his wife, over a period of two years, telling her that he was employed by Sprint. He got up every morning and pretended to go to a job he didn’t have. He lied to each of the victims, telling them that he was a legitimate businessman and that their merchandise was on its way. He told them that the problems were not his fault, and blamed them on a fictitious shipping company that he made up. He even had the audacity to accuse the victims of being unreasonable and threatened to sue one of the victims for defamation of character. Once the defendant was arrested, he repeatedly lied to the police. During interrogation, he evaded responses with one lie after another. He initially told Detective Anderson that he worked for Sprint. When asked for some documentation of his employment, he said that he had no ID card. When asked for a pay stub, he said he did not keep them. He then said that he worked for Sprint part time, but had not worked in about a month. He finally acknowledged that he did not have a job with Sprint, and had not worked for two years. When the detectives asked him why he did not pay back one of the victims’ money, he said he tried to but the victim changed his e-mail address and would not return phone messages. The defendant’s criminal sophistication and compulsive lying show that he is a man who cannot be trusted. His failure to fulfill his obligation of full restitution after representing to the court that he had already done so shows that he is just trying to manipulate his way out of trouble. Given that the defendant has been convicted of seven felony counts of grand theft, this court should hold him to his plea and deny his motion. I am relieved to learn that you are filing a police report. The court granted his motion for expungement under the erroneous belief that the defendant had become “a changed man.” Clearly the judge was just one more person who fell victim to the defendant’s con game. Gregory R. Albright Deputy District Attorney Grand Theft Auto Unit Riverside Co. District Attorney's Office _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

And this is why I won't be answering any more questions. Just for the record.

And let Sean off the hook? I chose to expose this guy after I what I learned. And it's a service to the community for doing so.

1. What made you think it was a good idea to ask for money, twice, before having anything to show? Did you figure that everything would take care of itself once you were funded? The plan WAS TO HAVE SOMETHING TO SHOW for the Kickstarter. A unit that we could take the top off of or run straight from a cartridge on a bare board showing it all up and playing in front of a neutral audience. And showing at least two game platforms running - SNES and Intelli for example. That was what we were trying to accomplish at the Jag Bar set. I was told by Sean all along we would have a prototype unit that could be shown in that fashion prior to the Kickstarter going live and being an integral part of the campaign sizzle video. 2. Did you ever actually have the rights to make any of the games you featured in the Chameleon sizzle reel, such as the Intellivision and Colecovision multi-packs? What was the nature of the contract, if any (percentage of sales, up-front licensing, etc)? Did you tell Gizmodo that you had rights to Atari properties? If not, who did? Of course. Keith Robinson is a personal friend of mine and was excited to have an Intelli multicart on the system from the start. Remember, I thought I had bought an Intelli FPGA from Sean and he told me he was getting Intelli games running on our software/hardware. For Coleco we were lined up to either attempt to buy the FPGA core from Kevin or license the emulator from Oscar - CoolCV. Coleco being a partner obviously wanted a multi cart available for launch as well. So yes, these were both real collections coming on the system from the start. The reporter from Gizmodo happened to be in our booth waiting to interview us while we were all having a lengthy conversation with Atari who had come to the show specifically to talk with us. They wanted to have a multi cart available at the launch of the Kickstarter as well and we all shook on it in the booth - Ben, Chris and myself. She heard the whole thing. It was then after the show we were in further discussions with them when they said to do this they would need a guarantee upfront of like $50K to do the deal -- something they didn't mention in our booth. We were in the process of working through this when the clear proto fake was shown which ultimate ended all communications with them. And they weren't happy with the news of the SNES in a shell, obviously. 3. What were the plans for the USB versions of Colecovision and Intellivision controllers that never came to light? We were going to contract with Interworks Unlimited to create these controllers. 4. Why was Coleco Holdings led to believe there was a viable product in that shiny Jaguar shell? Should they have gone to the expense of printing flyers and sharing their booth with you at Toy Fair? We were all led to believe this. If I had known before going to the show that my $4k that I paid Sean in January was getting me a SNES in a shell, I wouldn't have gone to the show and cancelled. It was a big expense and it was very public. It was the start of the end and what has led to the uncovering of Sean's ways. We had no reason to distrust him at that time, remember. 5. Who made the decision to delete critical comments on the RVGS Facebook page, and block people from commenting? Who took down the bogus 2nd "prototype" minutes after it was outed here on the AtariAge forums? At the time I was convinced that we had real software running the games. I felt these comments were false based on what I was being told by a master manipulator. I will apologize again for this. I had complete and total trust in this guy, as did Steve Woita who had lots of phone interaction with Sean. It was inconceivable to us at the time that he was lying all along about everything he was or wasn't working on. 6. Was any money paid to any other hardware engineer besides Sean "Lee" Robinson? If not, what was it about Robinson that made him more worthy of this amount of spending than the people who came before? Nope. It was all for equity until I started paying cash to Sean. John Carlsen started the first RetroVGS company with me shortly before he quit and we were almost equal partners. That company was started and dissolved a few weeks apart. When I needed to make sure Sean was able to work full time the month before the fair to make what I thought was going to be a real prototype we discussed what would be needed to make that happen and we agreed on the $4K. 7. What happened to the "team" that you proudly splashed on the Chameleon page? It seems that their contributions were much smaller than those of the hardware engineer(s). Why were they named while the hardware engineer(s) were not? There contributions weren't small. Ben was securing retailers, Phil Adam was working with Interplay and Blizzard to secure deals on HD remakes or 16-bit cart collections of their earlier hits (Phil used to be President of Interplay back in their hayday and is also very close with the execs at Blizzard). Paul Wylie has a logistics background and was working to setup all our domestic and/or overseas manufacturing. I was setting up relationships with Arrow Electronics and others to begin supplying us our parts, etc. There was a lot going on while I thought I had a competent hardware team working on the hardware. Lots of wasted effort and I can assure you none of us knew the crap Sean was pulling. And remember, Sean didn't want to be mentioned as working on this project, wanted to remain "behind the curtain". Steve Woita was mentioned. 8. Who paid for your trip to the NYC Toy Fair? That come out of a small investment by a family member. 9. You ask that we not consider this issue when thinking about the Retro magazine. Why not? The same guy is in charge, and you have already taken money for that venture. The magazine is running great right now. I removed those that were cause for our delays the first year and we have been trying to catch up. We are printing issue #11 this week and they mail out directly from the printer so most subscribers will be receiving their second to last issue. We have a 200 page RETRO Replay: Best of Years #1 and #2 coming out next followed by Issue #12. We will be continuing with year #3 but not using crowdfunding to do it. Here is a free discount code (used during checkout) so any of you can download any of our issues and check them out at http://www.ShopReadRetro.com. Code: atariage. I will remove the code in a week so get them while you can and see for yourself if you like it or not. They look much better in person. 10. What happened to your partners in GameGavel and Retro magazine? Have they been cut out of their share of any profits, as has been suggested elsewhere? Will they be compensated in any way? Partners in GameGavel aren't really partners, they are friends and family passive investors. And then they bought in Oct 2010 there was no magazine only the auction site. I have continued to try and add value to that company by adding similar revenue centers, the magazine, media and auction site fit together well. The console was a separate venture because manufacturing a console is completely different than running a web/media/magazine site. This is still a growing venture so none of them have lost their investments which were minimal dollar amounts at best. I have offered to buy Scott out, but he never returns my calls or email. My two "partners" in RETRO Magazine were let go for various reasons, one of them not being able to produce a magazine within a deadline which led to our constant delays. As for GameGavel/RETRO it's still growing. And one of my minority owners has been doing his best to crater the company.

And convincing to Steve Woita. They spent Oct-Jan talking on the phone every week. Steve even was so fooled by Sean that he told me to do whatever it takes to make sure Sean stays with the project. Steve was completely unaware of anything having to do with the SNES in a shell and the PC card. When I told him about Sean he said it couldn't be the same guy he has been talking with all this time and that helped us early on with Clay. Steve is a bit hard to get in touch with but like someone mentioned he has been pretty active in various Facebook classic gaming groups. Feel free to track him down and ask him to confirm what I've said here. Throughout it all, I have done my best to protect Steve from all this mess and take the brunt of the hit. But he was with me right up to the end.

It's back. Believe it or not Sean weasled his way as an admin on ReadRetro.com. He also claimed to do website optimization and web design. At one point I was stupid enough to pay him to help make some backend changes. I just deleted his account and forgot he had anything to do with it as it was a couple years ago. I believe he came in and deleted the news story. http://readretro.com/news/sean-robinson-checks/ As indicated above, the clear fake proto photes went up Friday and then were discovered the evening of the 29th. I had written him out the check earlier in the day on the 29th. Sorry, for the mistake on the timing. I can tell you, I didn't pay him the $3K AFTER it was discovered. That is Sean's thumbprint on the check. He met me at my bank to cash it because he didn't want to be charged the $7.50 check cashing fee if he took it in without me.

http://readretro.com/news/sean-cancelled-checks/

Hello Everyone, I hate to light this thread up any more but at this time I have made the decision that my reputation is worth protecting and wanted to come in here and break my silence and fill in some holes and answer some questions about the hardware “team” (term used loosely) behind the Coleco Chameleon. This long winded response will explain: There were only (4) engineers (or people) EVER working on this project with Steve Woita and myself ( and in the beginning there were two working together) despite what Scott Schreiber has been spewing. And none were EVER working simultaneously on the project. And Scott had nothing to do with much of anything and was never considered to be “working” on this project. Has he ever produced and shown anything he was working on? Nope! It will for the first time reveal who the hardware person was that took over after the “John Carlsen” era. And it will show that I paid him considerable amounts of money for what was essentially two fake prototypes. One that I saw (Toy Fair unit) and one that I never saw in person (clear PC card unit). I was not building that crap in my garage. It will also reveal the shady background of said hardware person so that he can be stopped and hopefully save anyone here from dealing with this guy in the future. And as a side note, Carl Williams IS NOT taking over RETRO Magazine nor has he ever talked with me about it. And I am not selling it or giving it to ANYONE! Carl? Explanation? To understand how this ended, I want to direct your attention back to the early times of this venture, early to middle 2014. At this time, my first choice to design the system, Curt Vendel (who Scott Schreiber helped introduce me to thus ending his minimal involvement in the venture) decided he wouldn’t have the time to devote to this venture and opted out soon and never got started. At this time I researched others that could step in and bring this product to fruition and that lead me to Clay Cowgill. Clay really took this project under his wing from Nov 2014 to January 2015 and helped us (me and Steve Woita) define the hardware and its capabilities – this is when we were considering, at Clay’s recommendation, architecting something in-line with the Beaglebone Black. It was also at this time, that another person entered into the mix, Sean “LEE” Robinson. Sean was a “acquaintance or colleague” of Clay’s and it just so happened that he had moved from Washington (state) back to Southern California. He had heard that I was working with Clay on this project and offered to help. Since he and Clay were colleagues, and the fact he was local and very close to me, it seemed like a good idea to have them partner up on the project, which they did to some extent. Supposedly, Sean had a working prototype ( that I NEVER saw) playing Neo Geo games in Jan 2015. This prototype was later used again when he rejoined the project explaining how we supposedly had a prototype so fast AFTER Carlsen left. Read further . . . . . In late January 2015, Clay alerted us that he was contracted by SONY and that he would be leaving the project. At this time, Sean also decided to leave as well. Enter in the John Carlsen/Steve Woita FPGA “era”. Now I am not going to go into this part of the timeline because we know how all this worked out. Fast forward to John Carlsen leaving the failed RETRO VGS project. At the time of John’s leaving in September 2015, Sean “LEE” Robinson re-entered the picture and reached out to Steve and I. He indicated he wanted to help us get this project back on track, but his condition was that he remained “behind the curtain” (his words) due to the mess he was inheriting from Carlsen. At this time I agreed to that condition and also agreed to let him and Steve work together on this without my interference. While I thought I had a competent hardware “team” working on this, and was being told early on by Sean we had games running on our hardware/software prototype and that our costs had dropped considerably, I felt confident to go ahead and continue building this venture, bringing a “go-to-market” team together and making the decision to launch this under the Coleco brand. Things seemed to be coming together. Chris from Coleco invited us to demonstrate a prototype at Toy Fair. This did pose a challenge to Sean as it expedited the process a bit to try and make the show deadline. This is where things started to take a big bad turn. In mid-January, I had a lunch meeting with Sean and point blank asked him what he needs from me to spend the next 30 days working on the prototype full-time to get it prepared for the Toy Fair. We agreed on $4,000, which I quickly got to him via a check that he cashed with me at my bank. It was then a day before I was traveling to the show that he came over to my house with the Toy Fair “Prototype”, with his instructions to NOT SHOW the back of the unit no matter what. But without any specific information as to why I shouldn’t show it, other than it used an aftermarket connector that was composite-out and that was used because he didn’t have the HD stable enough to get us through the show. I believed him and went to the show with that unit. My biggest concern at the time was getting this conglomeration through the TSA and on the plane. During the show we were accused of not having that system even plugged in so I made the decision to take a photo of the back of the unit showing it was clearly plugged in. If that was true about using the composite connector, I really felt people would understand why it was used and decided to show the pics. I didn’t feel we had anything to hide. Then all hell broke loose and it was identified that SNES mini parts or the whole PCB from an SNES mini was inside the console shell. I was left in a terrible spot at this point and I had a decision to make that evening at the hotel. Do I take this thing apart and see what was in it and quit the show or continue on with the show, demoing the games that were going to be on the system, and then address this issue with Sean when we got back from New York. Right or wrong, I continued on with Toy Fair and it continued to impress people and the games were very favorably liked (Thanks Eli! For stepping in with his SNES multicart in place of Sean’s glitching out SD card driven demo cartridge). When I returned back home, I met Sean again and gave him the “prototype” back and he was still swearing that despite the SNES “parts” he used, the games were still running on the SNES FPGA software that he had constructed in a few short months. Again, I believed him and we moved forward. And he told me that during the Toy Fair he was preparing the next “prototype” board so I gave him the clear shells with explicit instructions from me to show “our” PCB inside the shell. This was going to be used to show the “real” prototype. Then in a move to extract more money from me he indicated that for $3,000 paid now (2/29/16), and $3,000 paid in 60 days he could wrap this up and have a production ready prototype completed. So, again, I wrote him out a check he promptly cashed with me at my bank. Soon after this he emailed me the images of the clear unit with the PC DVR capture card in it. But, when he first emailed me the images, he indicated this was our prototype 100%. I made a comment that it looked great (in the photos) and he responded by saying something like “this is what we can do when given the proper time.” Keep in mind, these pictures were to combat the criticism of the “fake” Toy Fair prototype and were given to me by him to post on Facebook to show people the real “prototype”. Sean even joked about how people online were trying to identify the board in our shell, laughing and telling me they won’t find it because it’s our original work. He even made these comments through my car Blue Tooth speaker with my wife in the car and she heard everything. Again, I believed him. Let’s discuss the Kickstarter for a moment. So, believing I was going to have a working prototype for Toy Fair, I told Sean and Steve I was going to move forward with the Kickstarter campaign and use Toy Fair as a launching point for the campaign. A date was set. Now to Sean’s credit, he played that this was not a good idea and didn’t agree with me scheduling the Kickstarter to begin during the campaign was a good idea. But, at this point, I thought I had a real prototype playing games and was assured by Sean many times that our costs were now hovering around $100, so figured, let’s not wait any longer. After it was learned that we essentially had a SNES duck taped in my console shell I decided to delay the Kickstarter because it was always my intention to show off the prototype completely in the campaign video, open it up and show it running and playing games from at least two different systems. Then once I saw the clear unit was also a “fake” I made the decision to withdraw from a Kickstarter campaign altogether and reevaluate this venture. Back to the clear shell prototype. Since this all fell apart I have been trying to get Sean to explain to me why he would point blank lie to my face about that being “our board” and passing that two-bit PC board off as our prototype and he can’t give me an explanation that makes any sense, in fact I get no explanation other than that there was more going on in there than people can see. He mentioned we had chips located underneath the board even and assured me that the cartridge was also plugged into our cartridge connector. Something was just not adding up to me and I continued to lose sleep at night wondering how this all could have happened. First, he never showed me anything in person, that he was working on. I never went to his house, nor was ever given an address where he lives or works. He subscribes to my magazine so I looked at the address the magazine is sent to – a UPS store PO Box. I have paid this guy $7,000 and have nothing to show for it. Oh, I also bought two FPGA cores from a “friend” of his (whom I never met in person) whose wife was having medical issues and needed to sell some things and just so happened his friend had made an Intellivision and Amiga FPGA core. Sean told me his friend would sell them to me for $2,500 which I, again agreed to, and wrote Sean out another check which he promptly cashed at my bank and was going to give the cash to his “friend”. Did I ever get any software cores? NOPE! So, in total, with a couple other smaller checks I wrote to him, paid him nearly $10K in January and February 2016. Nothing to show for it except two fake prototypes and NO FPGA CORES! And, he swindled out my Crystal Castles Commodore 64 prototype cartridge as part of a payment as well!!!!!!! So, trying to make more sense of all this, I started Googling Sean and this is where things get super crazy. I will just post the links that are online for all to see and you can all take it from there. There is even more stuff you can uncover if you want to all look: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.video.arcade/bs4zJtfa4oY https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.games.video.arcade/almightyarcade http://www.megalextoria.com/forum2/index.php?t=msg&goto=297838& http://compgroups.net/comp.sys.cbm/sean-robinson-founder-of-commodorecomputerclub.c/3039131 In addition, I have confirmed with the Riverside County (CA) Assistant DA, Sean was charged a few years ago for 7 counts of Felony Grand-Theft and served part of a one-year sentence in jail and then got out on probation which he evidently complied with and then he made a plea to have the prior conviction AND his admittance of guilt overturned. A loophole that the DA mentioned drives prosecutors crazy. At this point I can only hope to recover any of my money paid to him, and can no longer live by my word to keep him “behind the curtain” while his deceit led to my defamation of character and demise of the company and opportunity and also I feel I was intentionally setup to take a fall. Because why else would he give me the clear shell “prototype” photos to hang myself? Seems strange as we both knew these photos would be scrutinized like crazy based on the last “fake” SNES prototype he gave me. I also hope that you will also wonder why I would go to all this trouble surrounding this venture with guys like Ben Herman (he was a Rockstar at Toy Fair, and had tons of legit retailer interest in this thing) and Phil Adam, Paul Wylie and eventually Steven Rosenbaum. Why would I go out and bring Coleco on board as a licensing partner? All done and then just try and pass off fake prototypes? This is just something that I would not intentionally or knowingly do. I have way more integrity and respect for this hobby to pull that shit. I did remain silent the past few weeks though while I put the pieces of this train wreck together and worked with my attorney to define my moves. And I apologize for the delay. Timed with the release of this statement here on AtariAge I have also emailed Sean a demand letter asking him to make arrangements to pay me back the money he scammed from me as well as a heads up I am going public with his participation in this deceit. But at the same time, I wonder who he might have to take advantage of to get the money to pay me back. That is the shitty part. And I am still working with my attorney and local authorities to find out what my options are. I want to apologize to all of you for the past few months. The John Carlsen era was an honest to goodness list of I mistakes. But there was never any intention to deceive or pull the wool over any of your eyes. These past few months with these fake prototypes was inexcusable and I hope you can all understand a bit more about how this all happened and why I have remained silent the past few weeks. It is not in my nature to trick people into anything. My end game has always been to give back to this hobby that I love and respect and to make and do things that people will enjoy. I’ve never taken one penny from anyone that wasn’t genuinely earned! You will all be glad to hear that I am officially tabling the console venture for good. I have negotiated with Albert (AtariAge) to take over the Jaguar tooling so we can all be assured it’s in good hands and won’t get destroyed or lost to time. And I am sure Albert will do some very cool things with the console and cartridge shells. I want to ask you all for some level of forgiveness and I hope you all understand that I would have never gone to Kickstarter with a blatant rip-off of a prototype. That was never my intention. And please, don’t let this mess carry over to the magazine. I have a great team of people working on it. We are pouring a lot of heart and soul and sweat equity into keeping the magazine going and it’s only getting better. And, I want to thank those on AtariAge (and other public forums) for opening my eyes to the craziness of all this happening right under my eyes. The fact that Sean indicated he wrote this SNES FPGA software in such a short time was questioned here and that opened my eyes. Of course, the uncovering of the fake prototypes has opened my eyes. You guys really go above and beyond to protect the hobby and it wasn’t until I have had the time to reflect back on this fiasco that I saw how you all came together and your alerts spread like wildfire across the internet. Again it was never the intention of myself or those legitimate guys on my team to deceive or potentially defraud anyone. In the end, I am the only one that has lost anything, money, potential opportunity and my reputation in this hobby. Mike

Carl. I am the majority shareholder and the only one that matters. Seems strange I never heard anything about this from you. And, we've had lots of complements on issue #10. Issue #11 is going out this week and will be great as well. So we are continuing to make good on our committments to all our subscribers. And the magazine team is still in tact, less two.

The @ ColecoChameleon Twitter and ColecoChameleon.org are unofficial and were set up a week ago. We have been working very hard to rope this all back in and have worked miracles the past few months to get to where we are today. We will be revealing a lot more over the next couple weeks and stuff like this stoops to a new low for "someone". Pressing forward!

Hey Everyone. First off, this post isn't pointing fingers at anyone in this community whatsoever, but will single out one Carl Williams. This is directed at him and asking him why he seems to have it out for me? I think you can agree that his 30,000 words accusing me of everything has tons of holes in it after you read further. I too, have mastered the art of copy and paste. I think it is safe to say that Carl is a bit obsessive in trying to ruin my reputation and character. Take a look at what he is saying in all his rants and he goes way out of this way to create mountains out of molehills in everything he writes about me. And, yes, I've banned him from our Facebook page so he can't spread his deceitful tabloid written crap over there. I will address the rewrite of the press release shown on RetroVGS.com. I made some additional clarification on that release after it was appearing that some people, not all, were not understanding what our relationship with "Coleco" was, a licensing deal with the new rightful owners of the brand name that ultimately would legally adorn the COLECO brand on our product. I was in effect, doing what many wanted, clarifying the situation that this was not a deal I made with the original company, which yes, everyone could take two seconds to see have been out of business since 1988. Most people would have known this without taking the time to look at. But Carl, took it upon himself to yet again undermine my character and reputation by blowing things way out of proportion. This is happening over and over and everyone here is trusting this guy. You might want to question him instead of me. He says that I never had any "real" discussions with Konami? Well, here you go Carl! http://readretro.com/news/kennedy-rajna-konami-proof-of-discussions-seeking-opportunities/ Password: CWILLIAMS Note the email from Mike Rajna to me kindly asking me not to discuss our internal discussions until some sort of official deal is made. I then kindly asked Carl Williams to remove any mention of the Konami mentions in his stories, at the request of Mr. Rajna. Here you will also see some original discussions beginning with Howard Phillips and Owen Rubin. Two of the other people I am accused of name dropping. Guys, in the pursuit of opportunities to successfully bring this product to market I have tapped deep into my contacts and friends of contacts which are all legitimate contacts in the industry. Those look like real opportunity seeking discussions to me. This is what you do running a business. You seek out opportunities. This is what I was doing (and have continued to do throughout this process) reaching out to companies like Konami. I never once said anywhere that I had a deal with any of these companies. Only that I was in discussions. This is where opportunities begin. I was being very open and honest about this to the gaming world as it was important to me to build a fan base for this product prior to lighting up a Kickstarter campaign. I wanted to do as much groundwork as I could in the beginning to show people we were serious about trying to go after some of these cool games we would like to all see brought back in some form. Carl has had it in for me and the only reason I can see is that I successfully crowdfunded RETRO magazine (Twice) to his failure of even reaching $1K in funding on Kickstarter. I have real legit contacts in this industry and it can be seen from the writing team I put together on my magazine. This is the same model I was going to apply to the console, tapping into friends and colleagues to help make this a cool gaming platform for all to enjoy. I have admitted that we F'ed up on the hardware but I am not going to sit back and admit to or be accused of lying to any of you about anything. Many here have known me on my podcasts and other dealings and I can't believe I have to come in here and defend myself against someone who is questioning everything I do and using my situation as a springboard for his own gain. Do you guys think I am out of line here?

Hi Leods, notice that the AT story says 'closer to 100MB'. Kyle wrote the balance of that paragraph himself. We are still finalzing much of this info and we will let you all know where it falls when we are ready. In the end we want to support the largest games we can while keeping the cart prices in check.

Hey Carl, No and at this point not sure what it would get us. But it might be worth exploring. Most of the comment sections under the stories brought this all into light anyway. And I know you've gone in to dispell it in various places as well. We certainly could have been more careful with our words. As far as PR adding the title, it was run by me right before it was blasted out and it seemed OK at the time with the further indication that this was a step to revitalize a brand that I really figured most knew had long been out of business. The brand name is back would have been more accurate. But I think most understand at this point.

It was time for us to establish a new identity for this product moving forward and that was one of the main goals of the press release. We are having a variety of ongoing conversations with companies and people who are working with us in various capacities on this project and we've stopped referring to it as the RVGS. It was something that needed to be done.

theloon, Ya, there was NOTHING accurate about that. But we can't control that or the tons of other media outlets that picked it up. Moving forward we will be more careful about how we address the COLECO licensing. As a side note, look at all the homebrew video games being sold all over the place that are recreating original box art and displaying brand names and IP from the past? Do you not all think this could be confusing to some people as well? Especially when these games penetrate the outside market? I am paying for this license and will pay for everything associated with this console's hardware, integrated software, branding, whatever. It's all above the board

Atlantis/Flogomojo The prototype isn't costing me a lot of money and I have funded that myself at this point and would have done this much earlier if my previous engineer would have not over exaggerated the costs and effort involved and ultimately refuse to even progress on anything that resembled a real prototype.

Hey Carl, That "COLECO is Back" title was added at the last minute by our PR firm. And I guess we can all debate what "Back" means. In a sense it is back. Even if in name only. The future of what that means remains to be seen. If this product, with the COLECO name on it, becomes a success at some level, then what will that mean? Is it "back" then? Is there a future in that brand to bring out or lend their name to other "new" products? I really don't think most are reading much more into it other than, "Hey, it would be cool to see that brand name back on a new product." The Chameleon will be the first "new" forward thinking product to adorn that brand name and none of us know where it could take the brand. It was never our intention to indicate this was anything but a licensing deal.

The media is the media. Our press release did mention "revolutionize and revitalize the COLECO brand". And Yes, Kyle at ArsT was the first one to reach out to me and ask for a short interview and it was my quote he eventually referenced saying this was a licensing deal. I do want to be very upfront about that. I believe most realize that Coleco, the original company, isn't behind this but are still enjoying the fact that the COLECO brand could be brought back on a new system. Now we have to live up to having that name on our product.

Hello Everyone. It is the end of a very tumultuous year for me and in the spirit of Christmas and the holidays I wanted to come in here and ask those of you who will listen to let the past be the past as it relates to this (ad)venture. RETRO VGS is the past and COLECO Chameleon is the future. The Chameleon is not just a rebranded Retro VGS. Despite sharing some of the same internal components the hardware has been completely redesigned to lower the cost while maintaining much of its ability to play a wide variety of games in a variety of ways. To boil this all down to its essence we just want to produce a product that is different, affordable and will bring joy to people’s lives. The market will ultimately decide if we are crazy enough to believe a cartridge console can stand its ground in this age of digital delivery. There are clearly lots of people on both sides of this fence and ultimately it will all come down to the games that can be played and if they are compelling enough to vie for peoples hard earned money. The COLECO branding was a business decision I made to bring instant brand recognition to the Chameleon. But I did not enter into this licensing agreement lightly, knowing that if done so, we have a lot to live up to. COLECO made some very influential, high quality and fun video gaming and electronic products during their time and we will try endlessly to carry on that tradition with the Chameleon. The recognition of having the COLECO logo on the system and the (game and console) boxes will make the Chameleon immediately identifiable by millions of people right from the beginning. In the end this is a good thing for all involved including us, our customers, our suppliers and distributors, our contract manufactures, potential retailers and probably most importantly to game developers. Mark and Chris at River West/Coleco Holdings are also very behind this product and will be helping out in a variety of ways, beginning by inviting us into their booth at Toy Fair which is where they want to officially begin rebuilding this brand in more concrete ways. We know we have a mountain to climb and are prepared to do what it takes to plant a flag at the top. I will once again apologize to all of you for at times dissing some individuals and this community but it was hard being criticized by a group of my Atari and classic game lovin’ peers. I let it get to me on occasion and I do regret all of it. I am aware that we gave you all plenty to poke fun at and criticize but in the end, I believe the product will be much better for going through all of this. In my mind, the best way for me to apologize once and for all is to ultimately create a game system that will make most of you turn a 180 and win over your support and positive influence. And given the chance that is what I will do. All I ask is moving forward into the New Year is you try and give the Chameleon a fair chance to stand on its own, and again forget about the past. Let it speak for itself when we reveal it to you all early this New Year. And finally, let’s respect one another and our opinions (some advice I am directing towards myself) and that goes for both believers and non-believers of what we are trying to do. In the end, we all love and are passionate about video games and sometimes this passion causes us to do uncharacteristic things. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and I hope you all have a very Happy New Year! - Mike

Hello Everyone. It is the end of a very tumultuous year for me and in the spirit of Christmas and the holidays I wanted to come in here and ask those of you who will listen to let the past be the past as it relates to this (ad)venture. RETRO VGS is the past and COLECO Chameleon is the future. The Chameleon is not just a rebranded Retro VGS. Despite sharing some of the same internal components the hardware has been completely redesigned to lower the cost while maintaining much of its ability to play a wide variety of games in a variety of ways. To boil this all down to its essence we just want to produce a product that is different, affordable and will bring joy to people’s lives. The market will ultimately decide if we are crazy enough to believe a cartridge console can stand its ground in this age of digital delivery. There are clearly lots of people on both sides of this fence and ultimately it will all come down to the games that can be played and if they are compelling enough to vie for peoples hard earned money. The COLECO branding was a business decision I made to bring instant brand recognition to the Chameleon. But I did not enter into this licensing agreement lightly, knowing that if done so, we have a lot to live up to. COLECO made some very influential, high quality and fun video gaming and electronic products during their time and we will try endlessly to carry on that tradition with the Chameleon. The recognition of having the COLECO logo on the system and the (game and console) boxes will make the Chameleon immediately identifiable by millions of people right from the beginning. In the end this is a good thing for all involved including us, our customers, our suppliers and distributors, our contract manufactures, potential retailers and probably most importantly to game developers. Mark and Chris at River West/Coleco Holdings are also very behind this product and will be helping out in a variety of ways, beginning by inviting us into their booth at Toy Fair which is where they want to officially begin rebuilding this brand in more concrete ways. We know we have a mountain to climb and are prepared to do what it takes to plant a flag at the top. I will once again apologize to all of you for at times dissing some individuals and this community but it was hard being criticized by a group of my Atari and classic game lovin’ peers. I let it get to me on occasion and I do regret all of it. I am aware that we gave you all plenty to poke fun at and criticize but in the end, I believe the product will be much better for going through all of this. In my mind, the best way for me to apologize once and for all is to ultimately create a game system that will make most of you turn a 180 and win over your support and positive influence. And given the chance that is what I will do. All I ask is moving forward into the New Year is you try and give the Chameleon a fair chance to stand on its own, and again forget about the past. Let it speak for itself when we reveal it to you all early this New Year. And finally, let’s respect one another and our opinions (some advice I am directing towards myself) and that goes for both believers and non-believers of what we are trying to do. In the end, we all love and are passionate about video games and sometimes this passion causes us to do uncharacteristic things. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and I hope you all have a very Happy New Year! - Mike

Pm sent and replied

Yes these were all shipped but for a 4-5 which fell through the cracks and were shipped after some communication from the buyers. I can assure all that paid got what they paid for

Hey Everyone! We are preparing to tool up again for some of our new console prototypes so I thought now would also be a good time, since the tooling will be installed and set, to see if any of you are interested in another color run of Jag console shells. I think Translucent Red would look great. Note: We will not ever produce our new console in this color so it will be unique only to the Jaguar. Another idea is to just use the T-Red top shell installed on the existing black bottom shell. I think the contrast black and red would look cool and would be an easy retrofit. Pricing is the same as the clear translucent run: $45 USA. $56 CANADA. $64 INTERNATIONAL. If you want multiples, please email me for a quote with combined shipping -- socalmike@gamegavel.com Paypal to: admin@gamegavel.com We will make sure to ship in the order purchased. The injection molder is quoting me 5 week delivery with the holidays so these would be mailing out around mid-January. These will include the clear translucent button, light pipe and spring. - Mike

Hey Guys, I have a pallet full of the white Atari Jaguar console shells that were part of my buy-out from Imagin Systems. I would like to sell these in bulk to anyone that wants them. I have boxes of 30 tops/30 bottoms + buttons, springs and light pipes = $10 each = $300 + Shipping to wherever you are. OR If you are interested in buying the entire pallet of white Jags - 400 tops and bottoms and all the buttons, springs and light pipes = $5 each = $2,000 + Shipping to wherever you are. Big shrink wrapped pallet. Any interest? I need to get these out of our warehouse in the next couple weeks. If you are interested, email me at socalmike@gamegavel.com . Thanks again, Mike