else

By the way, to answer your question is indeed SUPER rare. In fact, think you can safely assume it is the only one like that in world.* *Of course, just because it's rare doesn't mean it's valuable. People often confuse rare with valuable....

It's obvious what you need to do next: You need to track down Steve and give it back to him!

Well, I've never seen one working (or even a picture of it working), but I'll take your word for it that they really got it working. Did they actually demo a working unit at World of Atari '98, or did they only show people the PC boards?

Not a very good example. Wizztronics abandoned this project a long time ago and never shipped a single one....

The tape drives were a big mistake with the Adam. Had they gone with a regular disk drive, the Adam (and Coleco) *might* have had a fighting chance. Prices for disk drives were falling rapidly, but Coleco completely and utterly failed to recognize this trend and instead sunk a lot of time, money, and effort in to developing their tape drive. Well, they did eventually recognize that prices for disk drives were tumbling and released a disk drive of their own, but by then it was too late for the Adam (and Coleco). Then again, it probably still would not have been enough....

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I'm with you Murph74! I too remember being extremely disappointed because Destructor wasn't Destruction Derby (and it was a sucky excuse a game to boot, imho). Coleco must have figured they could pull one over on us kids by making the names sound very, very similar. I remember being confused at the store as a youngster, trying to figure out if it was Destruction Derby or not, then deciding to buy it because I figured it must be. Boy was I upset when I plugged it in for the first time to play it

As a general rule of thumb, the Jaguar's rarer games were released after it's cancellation (by the likes of Telegames and Songbird) and were never shrinkwrapped to begin with. BTW, these are also many of the Jaguar's best games, so you don't want to miss them.... Most of the games released while the Jaguar was in production are pretty common.

Fantastic interview! Keep 'em coming! One can't but help wonder if Coleco had delayed the launch of the ADAM by another 6 months (or even 12 months) instead of shoving it out the door before it was ready if it would have been more successful.... Our family got ours right before Christmas and it didn't work out of the box either, though we were able to figure out that a bent leaf-switch in the printer was causing the problem and we were able to fix at. I realized right then and there that it wasn't going to unseat Apple in the marketplace....

Thing is, I discovered this right away when I was a kid -- after I spent my own hard-earned paper route money to buy it. Maybe that's why I'm so bitter about the game....I never really got to "enjoy" the game because I immediately discovered how flawed it was....

Any comments from you guys who say Destructor is so hard? I could train a monkey to score unlimited points in the game using my method!

Well put, Rom. GLCB seemed so close that we could taste it at one time.....

Here's the strategy I used as a kid.... How to rack up unlimited points in Destructor *SPOILER ALERT* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notice that there is no timer in the game (the manual says you have "limited time", but you really do not) and that enemies cannot get you when you are on the Starcruiser's ramp (two huge flaws in the game). So.... 1) Sit on the ramp until an opportune time comes along to ram a Krystaloid and turn it in to a Crystal -- preferably when no other enemies are on the screen. 2) Push the Crystal up the ramp and into the Starcrusier's hole. 3) Goto 1 You can camp out on the Starcruiser's ramp forever -- no need to ever leave the screen you start on. Let the enemies come to you. While in step 1, feel free to take bathroom breaks, lunch breaks, get up and walk around, take the family on a vacation, etc as needed, since you're completely safe there....

You may be correct, though from what I recall that is not the case. From what I remember, crystals disappear when off the screen -- and that chomping sound you hear is likely just triggered randomly by the game to make it *seem* like it's doing something intelligent. None of this matters anyway, since the game is so fatally flawed in other ways that there's no point to exploring anyhow (see next post)....

Well maybe there are some that do (though I can't think of any off hand), but for comparison -- look at Adventure for the 2600 that was released ~6 years earlier on supposedly "inferior hardware". It kept track of dragons, bats, etc on the whole map, not just the current screen. Same for Superman on the 2600. Wasn't the Colecovision supposed to be light-years ahead of the 2600? The Colecovision was clearly capable of a much better version of Destructor, but the programmers were lazy and/or Coleco was greedy.....

Simple. It's the fact that as soon as an enemy leaves the visible part of the screen it's *poof*-- gone in to thin air. The game doesn't keep track of enemies that are off screen. You can be in hot pursuit of an enemy, but if they beat you off screen they're gone -- putting an abrupt end to any chase. So the fact that you can drive around and stuff is really just an illusion that has nothing to do with the actual gameplay itself. The game play all takes place with whatever is *currently* on the screen. In fact, all you have to do in the game is just sit there and wait for the enemies to come to you! No need to go driving around -- since enemies just "appear" and "disappear" at random no matter where you are. So much for any strategy or skill.... Terrible excuse for a game (if you can even call it a game), IMHO. Coleco was clearly just desperate to get another game out for the Driving Controller....

You probably already know this Rick, but for those that don't -- there's an interview with an ex-Coleco employee floating around in the internet where he admits that Coleco knew Destructor was a buggy piece of garbage, but decided to package it up and sell it anyhow. Is it any wonder why the crash occurred, with stuff like this going on.....

Multi-word search and quoted-string search has been broken for eons. It's been discussed to death on the admin forums, in topics such as this: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=83332

There were about half a dozen sequels on the playstation as well. See Miracle Design's web site for more info: http://www.miracle-designs.com/products.htm

I think you'll discover Atari Karts is no Mario Kart the first time you get stuck on one of the invisible walls It's a decent game, but it's no Mario Kart.....

Yep. When you get down to it, the resolution isn't a whole lot better than the old Mattel handheld LED sports games. I don't know what the Mattel games were -- maybe 8x4? So it's an improvement, but not a huge one. The LCD display sure looks a lot nicer though. Something to keep in mind....

Had one a while back. The Blockout game (i.e. Breakout) for it is very good, I thought. I can't imagine the other games being as good though. I think a major limitation of the system was having a paddle controller instead of a joystick controller. A paddle is well suited for a game like Breakout, but I can't imagine it working very well for many other types of games....

That was a big slime on Coleco's part. Ask pretty much anyone if the ADAM was a computer or not and they'll tell you yes it was. Look, I'm a big Coleco fan, but I'll admit it was a pretty dirty and underhanded move for Coleco....

He says this: And: There you go guys, bid away! It really is the long lost 2600 Turbo!!!

Course, Coleco didn't have the legal right to put a computer version of DK out, and they did (on the ADAM). But that happened after the 5200 had been out for a while....