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Good Deal Games has confirmed that these four games will become available in their shop. Also, "Search for the Stolen Crown Jewels 2" will become available there again. Since they also have a good selection of other ColecoVision homebrew games (including my very first game, "Schlange CV"), I guess they're currently a very good option for someone looking to buy some ColecoVision homebrews. Philipp

So, the list still stands at Telegames UK, Retrogames UK, RetroGamesShop. So we've covered the UK, but how about other places? South America? Europe? Philipp

I wonder why so far, no homebrew games made the list. Philipp

The site seems to not correspond well to what they really have in stock. It seems they have other ways of announcing availability and selling games. They bought some SCJ2 games from me in october, and had a more substantial number of cartridges of another ColecoVision game made in december, but neither game is listed their website. Philipp

Wow, they even have a Telstar Arcade. But 300€ is a lot of money. Philipp

It seems most shops selling ColecoVision games and systems are in the US? Outside the US it seems there basically is Telegames UK, and ebay to get ColecoVision stuff. Sure there are some shops specializing in retrogames, but they rarely seem to have ColecoVision stuff. AFAIK the ColecoVision was somewhat popular inUK, DE, FR, CA, BR, so there should be some places there. Anyone know any (web)shops outisde the US selling ColecoVison stuff? Maybe there even is a list of shops carrying ColecoVison stuff somewhere? Philipp

The plan is to sell them to shopd like Good Deal Games. This should make it easier to obtain the games for gamers, as the games will be available from there for some time to buy any time. I'm travelling alot, so I can't respond to orders timely, and I live in Europe, while most gamers live in America. So if I would be selling them myself there might be a 1 month waiting period while I'm travelling somewhere, followed by weeks of expensive intercontinental shipping. Current numbers are: BB: 50 produced, SP: 66 produced. These games are somewhat different in concept from other ColecoVision games, so I'm unsure about how popular they might be. For BB a limited run of 50 copies seems good. I did the same with Cye before. When Cye turned out to be very popular (ebay prices went really high after some time, so not everyone playing the game could afford it), I replaced some of the levels by different ones and rereleased it as Cye 1.1 (and recently that one sold out as well, so I'm planning for a Cye 1.2 at the end of the year or so). Similarly, I have ideas for some levels for BB that did not fit into the ROM, so if BB sells quickly, I'll make a BB 1.1. release with some levels replaced by different ones. On the other hand, SCJ3 is the third part of a successfull series, and Ȼi̅x̅ features the basic gameplay of an arcade game (arcade ports tend to be popular on the CV), so I want to produce 96 of SCJ3 and 128 of Ȼi̅x̅ (just 8 of SCJ3 and 16 of Ȼi̅x̅ left to produce to reach that number). Philipp

Well, I haven't released a game since 2008, so it's about time. Some photos: More information including screenshots at http://www.colecovis...coVision/games/ and in the various AtariAge forum threads discussing the individual games (many of them quite old since I took long breaks from ColecoVision game development; I definitely spent much more time improving the compiler than writing games). Philipp P.S.: I'll get into talks with shops soon, and intend to ship the games in about two to three weeks, so they should become available at the usual places a few weeks after that.

The .rtf file takes really long to load in current Libreoffice. How about providing a .pdf as well? Philipp

Some screenshots and a small demo can be found here: http://colecovision....wn Jewels.shtml Well, this game is the first of the Search for the Stolen Crown Jewels trilogy¹. The gameplay was partially inspired by an arcade game called "Fantasy". The player mostly evades enemies or draws them into the line of fire of other enemies to kill them. Unlike in later games in the series the player does not have any weapons¹. The two-player mode is alternating like the one in Boulder Dash (or any of my games that has a non-simultaneous two-player mode). It was one of my first games, which means that box and manual are much simpler than in later games - hand-cut, hand-glued small box, one sheet black-and-white manual. Philipp ¹ This does not hold for the bonus level, that can be accessed by winning the game on the hardest difficulty setting; there are two versions of the game; gameplay-wise the only difference is the bonus level.

4) If things are not too far out of range, use a pitch other than A=440Hz. Only people with absolute pitch will notice. And many musicians/orchestras, contemporary and past are doing it anyway for one or another reason. Philipp

I has been some time, so I don't remeber exaclty, but a few years ago I bought two roller controllers, and one didn't work. I disassembled and cleaned it, and then it worked like the other one. Philipp

Cool, I didn't know that the ColecoVision is popular in Jemen! On the other hand it is sad that all the game authors died immediately after writing those games. Philipp P.S.: phattyboombatty, you forgot to update your location, it still reads as "San Diego, CA". P.P.S.: In Jemen, works fall into the public domain 30 years after the death of the author. For most countries, works fall into the public domain 70 years after the death of the author, but there are some where it is 50 years (mostly in Africa and central Asia).

Welcome back. Many Colecovision developers take longer breaks for various reasons once in a while. In case this is a bug - as opposed to a missing feaeture - please file a bug report with sample code at sourceforge, so this issue can be fixed. Philipp

Thanks, everyone. 140mm X 190mm X 23mm is what a friend measuring a box in Europe found, too. So it seems box size was at least consistent across continents. And I'll consider using this or a similar size for my next games. Philipp

What's the size of the standard ColecoVision game boxes? Philipp (not near my ColecoVision game boxes for the next one and a half weeks)

Actually, the timing issue is a bit more complicated, depending on graphics mode, etc. See table 2-2 in the graphics chip datasheet for details. Philipp

I've tracked down and fixed some bugs in multiplayer, and worked on the music. This is what I'm currently considering for the music. Philipp P.S.: Players are named 0 and 1; level numbering starts at 0; the game stopping (but finishing to play the current piece of music) at the lost/won screen is working as designed. However the game stopping at the level load screen would be a bug. Ȼi̅x̅music.pdf

Here's a first attempt at adding a bit of music. Philipp Ȼi̅x̅c.rom.gz

Was there still aninvisible connection to the rest of th eopen space, i.e. a place where Sparxes would go to that unfilled place and back (as would be expected when two border are exactly next to each other)? I can't see how that could happen. The code there is very simple: cv_set_screen_active(true); step = 0; while(step < 128); print_string_centered(20, "Press fire to continue"); and step is incremented in the vint handler. If due to some bug the vint handler would somehow get corrupted, the game would reset or freeze before you could get to the level end screen. If the compiler would ignore the volatile on the variable step, then the game would freeze at the end of the level each time. Please let me know, if you ever encounter this bug again. I'll try to make it sound as if ten hundred devils were at the soundchip. Philipp

Just a regular 32K setup. There is no soldering required though (all components are already soldered, and one just pushes the EPROM into the socket). Philipp

No real update (I'm working on the music). Today I played on a "real" (well, it has no case, it uses a lab power supply for 5V, and is connected through a TV tuner to a computer monitor) ColecoVision using the standard controller for the first time. Another first is that this was the first test of the production version of my new pcb design, which will also be used in the upcoming solderless homebrew kit. Philipp

And since there is a "quantity" column in the list: 52 were made of the Cye CGE 2007 edition. Philipp

Just a minor addition to v2.07 of the list: There is a GC edition of Search for the Stolen Crown Jewels 2; it has a cheat code that is not in the normal version and displays the text "GAMECONSOLES.COM edition" in the intro screen; it was only available through gameconsoles.com (which AFAIK went out of business a few years ago). Philipp

There's no new features, but the two issues you reported should be fixed. There's some code for respawning (and trying to choose a location not toodangerous), but it isn't enabled in this ROM, as I want to work on a basic respawn animation first, so the player's attention is drawn to the respawn loaction. Philipp P.S.: Currently, the maximum difficulty is reached in level 7, from there on it doesn't get harder, although the Qix keeps changing between following the player more and behaving more unpredictable. Ȼi̅x̅b.rom.gz