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Rustproofing. Rustproofing is the answer....

Much like the Swordquest series, Cloak & Dagger was another great idea and opportunity blown by Atari. They should have had Clock & Dagger games on store shelves the day that the movie opened in theaters....

Keep an eye out for the never-released Atari 5200 Tempest! Plus, it's got Dabney Coleman in it -- what's not to love....

Cloak & Dagger features tons of Atari stuff (you probably already knew that). Also, there have been threads on this topic in the past. For example:

Sounds like how most software is released even today....

Maybe I'm not understanding what's being said here, but I thought Atari 2600 games famously had to be re-coded for pal. Also, since a pal 5200 system never existed, it's not possible to say that 5200 games were or weren't region specific -- none of it exists....

I personally think just the opposite. Had Coleco stuck to their original plan and released the Super Game Module instead of the Adam, they would have not just survived the crash -- but thrived. I know my siblings and I were drooling over the Super Game Module ads and articles, and were giddy with excitement. When they announced that the SGM was cancelled and that they were releasing the Adam instead, we were really confused. Why, we asked? Why! Anyhow, it is indeed fun to speculate....

Yep, figured it was a long shot. There's really nothing to a joyboard -- it's just a joystick in a different package. If it were me, I'd (1) cut a circular piece of plywood, (2) attach a rubber bumper in the center on the back, and (3) attach a Datasoft Le Stick (which detects tilt) in the center on front -- and you've got yourself a stew. Bonus: it will support way, way more weight than the old Atari joyboard by Amiga can....

One more note. In the index it says it was made by Charles Johnson. Wonder if he's still around and has a copy of the plans? Might be hard to track him down with such a common name like that though....

Found the article I remember -- not sure if it's same one you were thinking of? Electronic Fun, September 1983, Vol 1 Num 11. Like I mentioned, I had the blueprints and everything but sadly threw them away back in the late 80's. From what I remember most or all of the parts came from Radio Shack, if it helps...

I know the article you're talking about, but I just did a bunch of searches and didn't come up with anything. I vaguely recall it might even have been talked about here on AtariAge a while ago. I remember you could send away for the blueprints / schematics, which I did as a kid. Sadly, I never ended up building it, and eventually threw them away. Wish I still had them...

I wonder if the blue Venture is a case of either (1) the printer running out of yellow, or (2) the wrong color being loaded into the printer. Depends on how many color printer it was. In other words, I wonder if it's a mistake rather than being intentional. Either way, still neat....

This is part of Coleco's revised Operating Tips brochure. The fact that they put this in it is just the height of insanity to me, and shows how bad the problems were with the printer....

At my house we had one of the early Adams and the print head was misaligned. So the characters only got half printed. Later on, Coleco included an instruction sheet on how to take a PLIERS(!) and bend the hammer mechanism around until the printing looked good. Crazy stuff! Of course, ours didn't come with this instruction sheet, so we had no idea about any of this. So ours never worked right. The later redesigned ones fixed this issue, but any early adopters like us were stuck. So yea, THEY REALLY WERE THAT BAD (at least the early ones)! Aside from that, my main issue with it was that it was a "required purchase" with the system. As a kid, I wanted a dot matrix printer instead so that I could print out cool stuff like drawings / pictures / banners using something like The Print Shop that the Apple II's at my school could do. Printing out "term papers" wasn't any "fun"....

Thanks everyone. I have a few 'real' Coleco mockups in my collection as well -- see the two on the left. I bought these a loooong time ago (and for a lot more money, I might add!). I know the Destructor one is more common, but I just think the alternate logo on the French version of the label is cool. Welp, I guess I'll return to using my Super Action Controllers to stamp the prices on cans of soup (per the article 🤣)....

I guess my only nagging doubt about it being a fake is the obscurity of the whole thing. Why create a fake for a game no one has ever heard of? Like I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable Coleco guy, having owned one since it came out, but even I had never heard of Contact Baseball before....

Hi. I purchased this a few years ago off eBay. I realize it's highly likely a fake, and I didn't pay a whole lot for it. I just thought it was a curious oddity so I bought it. The game itself is Donkey Kong. I know Contact Baseball was apparently a working title for Super Action Baseball -- it's mentioned in an old issue of Video Games Player magazine. But yet it's such an obscure title for someone to make a fake of. Anyhow, I was wondering if anyone here knows the backstory on it -- who made it when / why / etc? Was is made during the era of enlightenment (AtariAge) or the dark ages (usenet rgvc era)? I know way way back there were people that used to create fakes and place them in thrift stores for others to find, so maybe this was one of them? Thanks.

Ok. I wasn’t there so I don’t know what all went on. Reading it today though it kinda sounds like a failed (or late?) Kickstarter project. If it was, kinda unfortunate he did many years of hard time for it, apparently. Seems like it was a really ambitious project — maybe too ambitious. But again, I wasn’t there….

Oh, I see. A yellow desktop with a blue boarder? Inexcusable! Throw him in the slammer.... 😀

Yea. I'm not even sure if he took the money and ran. Sounds like he put quite a bit of time and effort into it and that it was pretty far along. Assuming he was doing it full time and living off the $5000, it seems like he simply ran out of money before it was finished. I agree, there must be more to the story than what it appears. Maybe someone else with more knowledge can fill in the pieces?

Found this. Apparently he went to jail for taking ~$5000 from Adam enthusiasts for a product he didn't deliver. Seems pretty overblown if you ask me. Did he really go to JAIL for this (apparently there was even a TRIAL!)? This kind of thing happens all the time now days -- we just accept it and move on for the most part....

I agree NIAD. It seems like the most logical conclusion. The SGM may have originated from the marketing department trying to come up with a cost-reduced version of the Adam, for people that didn't want a full blown computer. I've said it before, but over the years I've come to the conclusion that the EM3 version of the Adam IS the SGM. Unfortunately it came saddled with a large printer and keyboard. But if you ditch those two things, you're left with what I believe is essentially the SGM (I know it won't power up like this, but work with me 😀).

Is it plausible that the Super Game Module was an elaborate ruse to distract the competition while the Adam was in development? Maybe the Adam was the end goal the whole time. I mean what else can explain the almost total lack of information about the SGM that has surfaced over the last 40 years. And now we have a VP at Coleco (of product development, no less) not remembering it and going straight to the Adam. Or maybe it's just a crazy conspiracy theory I dreamed up....

I don't understand how the Vice President of Product Development at Coleco seemingly doesn't even remember the Super Game Module. Was it never a real product in the first place? Coleco sure advertised the heck out of it back in the day for it not to be. Something isn't adding up here....

Correct. As the TI MBX Joystick, prior to be becoming the Atari Space Age joystick: