IrishNerdLife

I believe that is an image of Pipercub's Toy Fair prototype replica.

Very true. There is certainly no shame in learning from ones mistakes, but I don't think that's the case here. Look at Parcel Gamer; it looks like there was more interest in handing out fancy titles than setting up the distribution and sale of used games. After eight years chasing alternate avenues of the same market you would expect to see more knowledge. Instead we have the same poor communications, lack of respect for the community and failure to provide real leadership over a project. Real leadership means talking responsibility instead of blaming others. In the end this has lead to the Chameleon project, which, as you said, has shown Kennedy to be a liar willing to use and dispose of people at will. Given that these are the actions of a person with plenty of business experience I think he has earned the judgements and ire he is currently receiving.

Following that line of enquiry Retroactionentertainment.com: Creation Date: 15-jun-2014 Expiration Date: 15-jun-2016 http://www.whois.com/whois/retroactionentertainment.com

That sounds like a very poor way to conduct a business, especially for people that were involved at the magazines inception. I often find enthusiast amateurs are more compelling than the typical jaded "professional".

I would class both GameGavel and Retro as failing enterprises at the moment. At best it seems GameGavel managed to keep it's head above water in the past, but it seems pretty dead these days. It certainly hasn't managed to take 10% of the market from eBay! I actually don't think either of these ventures are bad ideas, but they're definitely niche. I highly doubt that Kennedy went into debt with the Chameleon; that just doesn't seem to be his style. Everything seems to have been done on promises of future payments or for stock in a new company. I'm certainly not a forensic accountant, but the transfer of assets between companies and the useage of Kickstater funds sounds very fishy. I certainly wouldn't be surprised to learn that some fo the Retro money was used in the Chameleon project with the expectation that the console company would pay that money back for coverage in the magazine. Has it been confirmed how much the tooling cost? I've seen figures between $6,000-$10,000 thrown around. That would be excessive if the tooling failed to sell at auction for $4500. Surely the investment can't be more than the eBay price (not to mention the money made from selling shells). The one thing I'm sure of is that we haven't seen the end of Kennedy. He's like a gambler chasing the big score... if only I could get 10% of that eBay,Amazon , Gamestop market, etc. Media outlets do virtually no actual journalism so he will just ride this out and try something else in the future.

Wonder how long before that gets pulled now

No the mobile publisher appears to be MIA now. Chicken Shift is on iOS and Android, but the Intellivision Gen2 Kickstarter failed badly.

Good point. It does seem like an official successor so there probably was some action involved in getting the licence. As SD&R pointed out it seems Retroaction Entertainment, or should that be Retro-Action Entertainment, has removed their website and facebook page so I think this can be chalked up as another unsuccessful endeavor. So far that brings the list of failed or failing endeavors to eight: Game-Gavel Gamer-Spots Postal-Gamer/Parcel-Gamer Retro-Action Entertainment Chicken Shift Retro-Action Entertainment Intellivision Gen2 Retro Retro-VGS Coleco-Chameleon For someone that describes himself as an entrepreneur through and through he doesn't have a very successful track record. I can certainly admire a persons desire to dream big, but surely it should be clear even to Mike that he does not have the skills required to lead these ventures. I'm sure some people would class Retro as a success due to it receiving Kickstarter funds, but given the failure to deliver the product of the expected quality on time and the incredible staff turn over I could only class it as a failure. The most recent shenanigans with the Chameleon really sums up his business ventures. Out of his depth, but willing to do whatever it takes to get funding instead of focusing on the technical skills required to produce a tangible and sustainable product.

Chicken Shift was actually developed by ex-Atari programmer Bob Polaro: http://www.polaro.com/resume/resume.pdf Retroaction Entertainment, whoever they really are, handled the publishing. Not sure how much "publishing" is involved in an Android app in the 100-500 download band.

That is a very good point!

I'm not at all convinced by the Coleco branding or it's reach, but I think bringing a working demo to a toy expo is a good move. Get the price under $150 and bundle the system with a load of Coleco games built-in and it might get some retailers interested. Perhaps they could work with Intllivision/Sega/AtGames/SNK playmore to produce licensed compilation rom carts to run on an android emulator. Of course I don't mean they should start talking about so called contacts producing new content. These companies have shown they will licence their content fairly readily, but will have no interest in developing anything new for this system. You have to laugh at the whole "this is the successor to the Colecovision" bit though. This couldn't be further from the original Coleco family if it tried. Edit: Actually the price will probably need to be well under $100 to garner much retailer interest. Anything higher will be a retail shelf risk and things like the Sega Genesis Classic Console already have the whole cartridge slot/on-board games collection done for a bigger brand at a much lower price.

The more I think about it I can't help but imagine Mike digging through the graves of past consoles in RetroLand for whatever he can use. All that's missing is a bad sampled "rise from your grave" though we all know it's just going to edn with "welcome to your doom". I wouldn't be surprised if they've liscenced the Coleco name; after all there have been a couple of cheap plug'n'play Coleco units one of which only played Sega Master System games. Clearly they'll stick that name on anything. Personally I believe if you're going to use the name then you better show it respect and do it right. They didn't with the Jag and I doubt they'll do it with the Given Mike Kennedy's friendship with Keith Robinson I'm surprised it's not an Intellivision unit. I wonder if they'll have a working prototype at the Toy Fair. If it's going to be a cheap arm unit then there's no reason why not...

At this stage I'm nearly expecting the final name to be the Coleco Chameleon Neo-Geo DreamCast 2 Ultra 64. Plus I can't wait to play 32-bit "styled" games since they've aged so well I haven't seen Star Wars; no ticket and all booked up. Will wait until it quietens down.

Oh God. So now they're dragging the Coleco name into this mess!! Coleco name on an Atari shell with a crap Wii controller. The RetroVGS is a like a black hole that just keeps sucking things in.

I wouldn't base the level difficulty on my inability to complete it. I'd say I'm average at best when it's comes to Mario skills; really struggle on the expert setting difficulty levels. That's actually very similar to what I had tried. I guess I must have had the order/stacking wrong. I'm sure I'll come back to it as some point. I really liked the Zelda IV level. It reminded me of the light world/dark world mechanic you often find in Zelda games. I've uploaded a new level, which I think is one of my better ones. It was definitely one of the most interesting to create. Bowser's Fiery Cruise Ship C890-0000-0089-971B http://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYQHAAABAACNUKFKPXR_Lg