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

I guess you could say that he succeeded then; his RVGS carts are very rare right now

Played a bunch of your levels last night, my in-game name is Alan, and I really enjoyed them. There was some awesome touches throughout and I think you make really attractive looking levels. I also think the challenge is generally very well balanced. One question; how did you do the pipe trick in the dinosaur level. I've tried doing something like that before, but I couldn't get the pipes organized correctly. I thought you could "stack" pipes to make it appear like the pipe exit is changing, but that didn't work. Any tips on where I went wrong? I've also tried Snakeboy's Donkey Kong levels, but I'm afraid they were too tough for me!

The Master system is a great little system and good much better support in Europe compared to the US. The Wonder Boy & Sonic series are my go to titles, but I also enjoy Alex Kidd, Shinobi, Road Rash, Desert Strike,etc. I actually have a near complete US/EU collection; missing 3 games. They only things I dislike about the system are the control pads, only system I've had multiple fail, and the pause button being on the system. So glad Sega included RGB out on the original models for all their old hardware over here.

No I certainly won't back any future RVGS crowd funding campaign. If a system does end up being released and turns out to be worth it I may consider picking one up, but I doubt it. In my opinion there are far better ways to spend your money and far more deserving projects to back.

I believe you mean: It's on like Donkey Kongtm

The X-men games are good games on the Mega Drive/Genesis; definitely surprising that they don't get more coverage. I would add Rolo to the Rescue and Starflight to the list of underrated games. Rolo is a puzzle platform adventure, which is actually surprisingly challenging in spite of its appearance. I've made a video discussing Rolo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmhyHY1w3cI Starflight is a massive space exploration game. It was easily the biggest game I encountered on the system at the time and the included map and manual, or Captains log, really helped flesh out the experience. I was surprised the series didn't continue, but in many ways games like No Man's Sky are successors to the concepts of the game. Both games were made back before EA turned "evil".

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure how other people create their levels, but I generally think of a mechanic and see how that could be expanded. This is how I created Big Boo's House, which is really an evolution of the ideas from my earlier Boos Little Cottage level. Design iteration is probably the key there. Mind you I also like to imagine what the "story" of the level would be in an adventure, which is probably not something most people do. Mind you I notice not too many people seem to have created SMW Ghost House levels or at least I don't come across them in 100 Mario Challenge. Pity as I quite like them. Yeah I'm not convinced by the Alex Kidd level either. It was probably more interesting to create than it is to play. Since I'm a Sega Master System fan I was curious how Sega's Mario alike would work, but it seems like it doesn't. The fact that the game scrolls vertically made it difficult to translate and not being able to punch blocks meant parts of the level had to be altered to be playable. This is one really for a few die hard Alex Kidd fans, which is why it's a pity you can't share levels without uploading them to the main server. It would be nice to be able to share levels with other users directly. I think your other tips make a lot of sense. It can be surprising how others react to a level differently than I expect. For example, I didn't spend long working on Starfish? as I'm not a massive fan of water levels, but people seem to like it (about 1 in 6 starred and 70% completion). In comparison some of the longer levels have completion rates of <5% even though I personally prefer them. I guess people prefer shorter levels especially since you can't include check points. Good to know you don't lose stars for deleting levels. Will definitely use that. Unfortunately I don't have a play tester so I will have to base it on community feedback. I'll definitely check out you levels tonight

Okay so apparently the haven't learned anything from this if they think they were offering a great product, running a great campaign and made lots of friends! Also the system was going to cost more than a PS3 and have less features. Not too sure I would be comparing the Retro VGS to the more powerful and cheaper PS3 when the specs provided, ARM + RAM, is more like Ouya territory. "we also learned that outsiders would fraudulently claim to be part of our team and accept credit for our work, sometimes while defaming it and us in the process." I have no doubt he is referring to Kevtris and Pipercub here. Can't say I recall any defaming going on. I guess they were planning to use their big shot lawyer to target them What an ass. That is certainly an unwarranted ding at Piperclub too. Mike Kennedy basically admitted he had been involved in the RGR interview

This is an interesting subject and one that is highly subjective. Personally I think the composition of the first and third images in the OP are quite good, since they have reasonable focus on the main character, but I'm not so keen on the others. However there are some great examples of modern art, such as those that HoshiChiri posted above, that are very well composed. I think it's a case of taking the good with the bad. There are some terrible pieces of artwork today, but that was the same in the past too. For every Missile Command you had a Pro Wrestling on the Master System.

Lol well it's actually my third post now, which if popular culture has thought me anything, means everything's game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soD1NwPVv-s This was definitely one of the biggest mistakes they made during the campaign. Why on earth would you even bring up companies like Capcom and Konami supporting a startup console. Right now the big three console manufacturers aren't exactly getting bowled over with support from Konami! Mike shouldn't have said anything about them at all; nobody would have expected this support. Instead he comes across as either incompetent or willingly deceitful with these claims. Then to have David Siller come out and basically say he does not want his name associated with the system when he is supposedly going to be creating a mascot for it?!?! This has surely got to be mistakes you'd find in the beginnings guide to marketing. Put simply don't talk about something that isn't confirmed.