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Nope, that's about it. There were also only two games that officially used the rollerball controller as well (Slither and Victory). Oddly Coleco really didn't support their special controllers very well. Perhaps they simply came out too late? Tempest I wonder why the quality of Coleco's controllers differs so much. The standard controllers aren't that good. The steering wheel is a rather simple, cheap device. By contrast there's the high-quality roller controller. I mean, the foot pedal of the driving controller is just a simple switch. Fire buttons in standard controllers tend to fail, so does their joystick. Now, look at the roller controller. Microswitches for the fire buttons. Optical sensors to measure movement of the ball. Five ball bearing. Massive steel parts inthe mechanism that connects the ball to the optical sensors. Capacitors with a maximum rating of 50V where the voltage will not go above 5V during operation. Philipp

Nur ein paar ColecoVision-Spiele. Philipp

well, I'm mostly trying to find out the exact shape of the carton boxes Coleco used. I know the basic size is about 190mm x 140mm x 25mm. Now I need to know about the top and bottom of the box, i.e. what type they are, their exact size, etc. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Reverse_Tuck_Carton.jpg shows the shape of the most basic carton boxes in use. There exist varations like rounded corners, etc. Some more exotic boxes can be found at http://www.dienst-packsystems.de/1/anwendu...rmen/index.html with the first image differing significantly from the basic shape at the top. Can the box be opened at both ends or is it glued at the bottom? Is the bottom end the same basic shape as the top end? I'm mostly interested in pictures that show details of this, like the top end opened, from front and back side, etc. Philipp P.S.: email adress has been send in PM.

Tinkering with (including improving) the power supply / power switch can modify the frequency at which the ColecoVision sends it's signal. You might have adjust to your TV to this. Just change the frequency of the channel you use for you ColecoVision a bit. Philipp

Hi, I do not own any boxed ColecoVision games made by Coleco (I live in Europe, CBS released the games here). Gamers have expressed their desire to have boxes of Homebrew games close to Coleco's boxes multiple times. Some even go so far as to make their own boxes to replace the boxes that homebrew games come in. I want to make the boxes for my upcoming games closely resemble those made by Coleco. I need photos of US boxes for this (not just the front, but top and bottom, both opened an unopened). Philipp

Well, I want at least make construction teams stay on the road while moving from / to construction sites. And team selection at startup (which teams are available will be affected by the difficulty setting). There should be more levels (maybe a third graphics set in addition to the existing residential and industrial ones). Maybe a bit more music, too (currently it just chooses randomly from four Bach pieces). Philipp

Some time ago I've been working on another ColecoVision game. In this game you're leading a construction company, send workers to constructionsites, etc. It has some good music, too. I just created a first draft of a manual for it. Please have a look at it (it would be difficult to play the game without having looked at the manual). In the screenshot you see the start of the first level. Philipp BB.zip BB_Web.pdf

I hope I'll be able to make a cart-releasable game out of this. However I don't know when that will happen. Since I probably won't work on it in the next few weeks I've attached the current version. Philipp CG5.rom.gz

The attached demo shows some of the gameply items I intend to use: - Player starts in empty field, other objects teleport in over time, Player wins level by surviving for some time (a bit similar to Wizard of Wor) - Space station at fixed position that fires fast, short-lived bullets which are not affected by gravity. Philipp CG4.rom.gz

They're 2.5€ per CPU at digikey, minimum order 240 pieces.

Yes. However we couldn't call it ColecoVision, since RWB still owns the trademark. Well, generic FPGA boards tend to have lots of features. They're aimed at developers, people that want to experiment with them. They have peripherals and often a rather large FPGA. These boards tend to range from about a hundred dollars to ten thousand. However for the new CV we would just use the smallest FPGA that will do for a ColecoVision. Philipp

Worldwide isn't that easy. Someone already mentioned UL certifiation. Most stores in the US will not sell electric equiment that isn't certified. However it could be sold through less conventional channels like small game shops. In other parts of the world it's just plain illegal to sell electrics devices that don't have certification. Not UL certification, but whatever local laws require. Getting that certification for many places in the world will result in insane costs. Philipp

This will be difficult; just remember the sales numbers of CV homebrew games. Philipp

Well, it depends If you just want to have data at a specific place many C compilers have a #pragma directive for that. With a little bit more work (for the compiler writers) the compiler does some more of the work for you (the application developer), so you just call functions across banks normally and the compiler do the bankswitching for you (sdcc's PIC port does that; the Z80 doesn't yet). Philipp

I just did a few first successfull test of my ColecoVision "Megacart". I'll use the pcb name, L5 in the rest of the post. While there are many different configurations posible I'll just talk about the one I tested in this post. As can be seen on the picture, there are 3 chips on L5. To the upper left we see a 4 MBit Flash ROM. In the current configuration the lower 24 K are mapped as usual with another 4K bank above. Any 4 K of the Flash ROM can be mapped into these 4 K of cartridge address space. Mapping is done by writing the number of the desired page to memory address 0xfffd. This written number will then be used for the Flash ROM's upper address lines when reading from the 4K bank. To the upper right we see a 64 KBit EEPROM. It provides 8 KB of memory for savegames. The CPLD in the middle manages access to Flash and EEPROM. I have tried to optimize the design for low cost. From the cost of the board and components, this should be at most 1.25€ more expensive than my standard board with a 32 K EPROM. However due to the small, fine surface mount components I can't assemble them all by hand. It took some effort to solder the prototypes. L5 has been developed mainly as a platform for a future Tunnels & Trolls game. I think for an RPG I need lots of ROM to store the large world with it's map, monsters, NPCs, etc and players would want to be able to save their games. Philipp

archive.org has them: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.coleconation.com Philipp

Well, it certainly is a good game idea. I suppose it will be picked up by me or someone else later. Isn't the maker of Simcity doing a similar (at least for it's first level) project named spore? Yeah, but from what little I've heard, it's turning more and more into another Duke Nukem Forever. The release date is tomorrow.

CBS is many things and divisions. They produced the ColecoVision's for the European market. The PAL and NTSC ColecoVisions differ in the graphics chip (and video encoder). This is visible to the programmer in the different vertical retrace interrupt frequency. Games that were designed with NTSC only in mind are likely to run at 5/6 of their intended speed on a PAL ColecoVision. Philipp

Well, it certainly is a good game idea. I suppose it will be picked up by me or someone else later. Isn't the maker of Simcity doing a similar (at least for it's first level) project named spore? Philipp

Yes, I'd like to make that one, but it'S gonna take time. So far there's just that map demo I released earlier this year (demonstrating that the ColecoVision can handle huge maps). Philipp

For now my favorite console is the ColecoVision. The best game will be Tunnels & Trolls. Philipp

I've never made spaceship game before, so fo me it would be a first, not a #4583. However I agree that there currently is not enough for a game. I'm considering making a spaceship game based on these physics with the current game becoming just one level of the game. Philipp

50Hz vs. 60 Hz on the power line is an AC thing. The ColecoVision's power supply outputs DC, so this difference is nto visible to the ColecoVision. Just use an European power supply made for 220V 50Hz. Philipp

Look at the homebrews. Most use 32K on the ColecoVision. Maybe have a look at the demos of homebrews at http://www.colecovision.eu. Philipp

Probably +5V voltage is too low (probably 4,7V or less). The graphics chip is affected first by this problem. It's a problem I've seen on many ColecoVisions. I recommend: - Clean the power switch (to reduce it's resistance) - Try another power supply. Philipp