Vanta

this whole thing smells a lot like coleco chameleon...

I see someone sniped the old facebook group name to post satire, lol

I am not surprised in the slightest that Mike is back and his only focus is clearing his name and not, you know, apologising. I read the entire sob story and honestly, I don't buy it at all, Mike has thrown others under the bus to save his own skin before I see no reason why he wouldn't do the same again. A couple things really, really bug me about this, too. 1) Lee gave Mike the photos to post, according to Mike, thus it was Mike that pulled the photo once it was shown to be a pci card, it's also Mike who shut down commenters from responding to the news, all the while keeping silent while people were out for blood. 2) Claim of being in a hotel room wondering if he should open it and look inside - again this is bullshit, he would have to disconnect the controllers to set it up in the clear box, and since they were just snes pads he would have needed to open the shell and physically remove the connectors from the snes mini board, there really was no 'SHOULD I OPEN IT' he knew damn well all along, a custom pcb wouldn't have Nintendo printed on it. 3) He mentions that his wife heard part of a convo in their car, how fortunate for him to have such an independent and unbiased party to coroborate his story.. 4) where are the scans of bank statements showing these withdrawals? 5) If I had been made aware that I just got scammed out of close to 10k, I would be in the nearest police station filing a report, here's a list of things I woldnt be doing: * blocking the people that uncovered the fraud from commenting * covering up the reveal of it by deleting posts and images * taking several days to get back to coleco on their request to see the hardware * doubling down and deleting everything when coleco make an announcement about pulling out * jumping in to my trailer home and taking a month long vacation. I would however do the above if I was guilty as sin and wanted to try my best to hide the truth and keep coleco onboard, then hide everything to do damage control once shit had hit the fan, and run off from responsibility with a month long vacation to think of an excuse that paints myself out to be the victim while 'that other guy is to blame' while making it clear I deserve your pitty and forgiveness but I won't actually apologise Color me not in the least bit convinced, and frankly, even if it's true, Mike you are guilty as sin for not only your inaction but your actions during and after each time things we revealed to be faked. You get zero sympathy from me and frankly I hope you pack your bags and leave the retro community for good.

Keep the 300 page dream alive!

I believe Mike really really wanted to make this system, but he also: Didn't want to be the one funding its development Used car-salesmen tactics on those in charge of engineering and development Was FULLY aware that the system was not in a presentable form and outright lied as he didn't want public knowledge of that fact impacting the project Outright lied about support from other companies (Atari being one of them) to upsell the console to potential backers Is likely to try again, especially now that the Kennedy empire is crumbling around him Had many opportunities to come clean and be on a level with the community about things, but chose not to Likely had shill accounts on this and other forums defending the project up until Coleco's announcement this week. I know people say he had good intentions but having good intentions does not, in my opinion, change what actually happens. If you shoplift from a store and get caught, "I fully intended to pay!" won't get you off the hook when you're found to have not even brought your wallet. "I just wanted to talk to him!" won't get you off the hook after you're charged with assault, so people saying he had good intentions doesn't change the fact that he willingly lied to push his project forward in unethical ways. To those doubting if Mike know the prototype was fake or not - There are two shots of the console at NY Toy Fair, one inside the clear plastic case and one outside, in order to get those "hardwired" controllers out, he would have had to have lifted off the top half of the shell and unplugged the SNES controllers first, and I don't care how oblivious someone claims they are, when you see a PCB stamped with "© 1995 Nintendo" all possibility of pretending you thought it was a new FPGA board go out the window with it. He is complicit and likely the mastermind behind the deception.

And imaginary! the chip placement seems done by someone trying to give the impression that the board is complicated, more than the impression that the board is real. Also the mosfet heat sincs aren't actually attached to mosfets.

I'll take that offered sandwhich!

Seems they finally pulled down their twitter page too

Thanks to Phoenixdownita for the idea.

Or even, "Where in the world is Con-man; San Diego?"

Yeah, as i said earlier, i'll give that an hour tops before it's protected/gone

Timings too spot on to be anything other than mike shutting it down in response to the announcement. It was up about 20 minutes before, as i checked it out.

Ah the old "scrub everything and act like it didn't happen, maybe it'll go away" routine. Any bets on how long till they pull down the twitter? : https://twitter.com/RETROVGS Within the hour is my guess. Sites also been pulled - http://retrovgs.com/ Mike, it isn't going to work, to quote the Simpsons for a moment...

From the Coleco FB page just now Reads to me like they tried to stall Coleco with "uh uh.. we um.. we need more time to get things as good as possible!" and Coleco were just like "yeah, no, screw this" https://www.facebook.com/Colecovision-1616402778636687/ I guess the takeaway here is that we now, without a single doubt, that we have been absolutely spot on with our findings and theories, and while some may feel Mike was somewhat innocent and oblivious to the goings on, the way he likes to be front man and the only real centerpiece to PR, makes it virtually impossible for me to believe that he wasn't fully aware of the situation all along. But alas, he has paid the price, even the projects of his that weren't faked are now mere crumbled shadows of their former self because everyone wants to abandon ship.

You know, I really hope Coleco come in and publicly post their findings, clearly they didn't need the full week to come to a descision.