rob_ocelot

One other thing... why are we expending any amount of energy and mental gymnastics to rationalize how Mike might have been duped by his hardware guy (again!) than the more likely (and depressing) truth that he's being intellectually dishonest about the garbage he brought to the ToyFair? He had his chance and squandered it. Twice. Are we really gluttons for punishment enough to tolerate this rodeo a third time?

Are you kidding me? RetroVGS/Chameleon has had five (FIVE!) hardware guys over a span of two years -- all of which have either dropped out, or attempted to screw Mike over and make him look bad. That is some severely rotten luck in an industry where rotten luck isn't in short supply. There's more evidence for the existence of Bigfoot than for a working prototype from this outfit. You might be able to handwave the lack of a prototype once, maybe twice, due to having to start from square one when your hardware guy bailed but using that excuse at the present time is bordering on ridiculous. Even the Government isn't this inept! So are Carlsen and this mysterious 'Li' part of a secret hardware engineer's cabal twirling their moustaches and cackling at how well their smear campaign to make Mike (and the entire Retrogaming community) look bad is progressing? Occam's Razor time: When there's one guy constantly pointing fingers and blaming the failures on everyone else it's far more likely it's that person who is the problem.

Comic dates from before the Toyfair but it's much more a-pro-pro to the current situation. IMO, there's really no functional difference between the "We're sorry, we'll try harder" pre-ToyFair Chameleon, the interim fauxtotype Chameleon digesting a SNES, and the "Getting better all the time" no-go post Kickstarter coitus Chameleon now with see-thru underwear. Mike will still continue to post vague updates like "Talked again with Toys-R-Us today and I can already smell the ink drying". Mike will still spend more time pruning Facebook and Twitter in his favour rather than get a real working prototype made, because that's hard work. Mike and his Chameleon are back to hiding in plain sight again.

It is an amazing coincidence that Eli happened to be at the show with one of his SNES carts (for other reasons) and Mike just happened to be there with the Chameleon prototype whose mysterious black box FPGA was not only configured to play SNES carts, it also sported a SNES cart connector. Eli recounts it like it was a surprise -- and it may very well have been -- but given the fart cloud that had been wafting around since the RVGS IGG failure I don't blame him one bit for keeping a cautious arms length distance from Mike and stating Piko has little to no involvement with that crew. Of course it's entirely possible that Mike tipped Eli off beforehand that he was going to be there with something that was configured to be SNES compatible, so on a whim maybe he brought along a SNES cart to call Mike's bluff. So there's another way it could have been a genuine surprise that it took a SNES cart and played it without glitches.

Hey, he who farts in church must sit in his own pew!

Have you appointed yourself to be officially offended on their behalf so they don't have to be?

Going back now to look at Carlsen's RVGS prototype in the infamous 'power supply' video. At a distance the placement of the 'all important' power on LED looks similar but the board looks to be a different configuration. Could this be one of John's WIP boards in there? Carlsen was involved with them for the better part of a year. I'm sure there's something tangible he worked on in that time. Also, what is that gear edge like plastic material you can see inside the clear top of the Chameleon prototype? Is it a shelf of standoff for the board inside, or a reflection of something above the console? Here we are again, scrutinizing these pictures like they were the Zapruder or Patterson-Gimlin films. I feel like I've fallen into a trap again.

Maybe he's retooling the kickstarter to fund an unwanted Facebook message pruning service?

Even North Korea's Dear Leader is pretty chatty right through till the day of an illegal missle test. Mike Kennedy's North Colea? They go inexplicably radio silent on the eve of what should be a media blitz and a Facebook/Twitter love fest. Crickets, drowning out the sounds of the tumbleweeds rolling. They should definitely ask for $3Million again. (Thank you for your candor, Pipercub.)

Occam's Razor Time... He wants a way to quit his low paying 9-5 job (hint: nerd patrol) expending the least amount of effort. Preferably with someone else picking up the tab. It's no more complicated than that.

At this point I'm baffled that Mike even wants to deal with tangible goods. He's all talk and promises but when it comes down to actually making -- hell, just showing -- hardware that does something it's a huge stumbling block he never seems to get past. This cycle keeps repeating in different iterations but the common denominator is the hardware that never makes it or is just not ready for prime time. Why not cut that middle bit out and do what GameSlam does and sell an intangible service? With all the rah-rahing and message deleting happening on their Facebook page -- it's like a giant hermetically sealed room and everyone is just sniffing their own farts. All Mike needs to do is ask his most ardent supporters to reinforce their zealotry by paying him for 'exclusive info and perks', walk away a millionare and never have to get his hands grubby with electrical tape again. I mean, these guys were already willing to white knight his cause for free...

Obviously this is their most important outstanding issue with the prototype. In the Gospel According To Mike, just the mere presence of the console shell is 50% of the battle. The 'on' switch and indicator LED? Well, that's another 45%. Unicorn farts will take care of the rest.

So much energy, effort, and internet bandwidth devoted to maintaining the illusion that buckling down and making an actual prototype would have been the easier option. Reminds me of the people in school who made elaborate cheat sheets for tests instead of studying. Why the rush to have something for Toy Fair? If Mike took another six months to a year and presented something substantive at another trade show or the 2017 Toy Fair would we likely would have understood and accepted the time delay. It reeks of financial desperation that they showed their hand early -- desperate to hobnob and ink some deals so people can get paid or get creditors off their backs. I weep for anyone on that team who left a paying job on Mike's word they'd be swimming in cash and cars. When this fiasco is over and the entire gaming community is picking the pieces of shrapnel out of their shins would YOU cite working on the Hot Potato (err... Coleco Chameleon) on your resume?

If funds are limited I think the best bang for the buck is a Raspberry Pi or RPi2 with RetroPie. Beats risking your money on a (likely) vapourware console.

Isn't it easier (and cleaner) to go from the digital signals to something suitable for HDMI? Hate to say it, if I was at a trade show and saw them playing games on one of those luggable VHS-TV combos from the 90s I'd laugh my ass off. It's worth noting that the early pictures of the Chameleon playing a game but not in the clear plastic cube it's displaying on precisely this type of monitor. For the later pictures and video of the CC in the cube it's displaying on a modern LCD via composite. Maybe someone did walk up to them and laugh -- and just maybe they ran out to Best Buy and splurged on a TV that looks like it's from this century. Why bother to lug that tube TV on a plane or in a car across the freaking continent?

Anyone remember the hardware you could buy (and probably sill can buy) that let you you plug in JAMMA boards and play them on a regular TV. Came with it's own joysticks too. edit: It's a SuperGun. I was blanking on the name. I'm getting old... Maybe Mike is making the modern equivalent -- a system you could plug real cartridges and console motherboards (sans shell) like JAMMA boards.

I also think the "why composite video?" issue should be addressed. Why take the digitial signals generated on the FPGA board and convert them to interlaced analog composite when you natively have RGB ? Just so you can reuse a cheapo SNES cable and connector? On top of that, they lug a composite tube monitor from Cali to New York as a display when a DVI to HDMI adaptor and a much lighter LCD TV would have sufficed. Makes absolutely no sense.

<Matrix Reference> There is no spoon </Matrix Reference>

Hold on... I'm sensing something... it's not clear... but... almost got it... almost... THERE! "The haters at AtariAge killed my dream before the amazing earth-shattering Kickstarter could happen" (unfortunately, all I'm picking up apparently is deja vu )

Yeah, Nathan needs to spread that stuff out over multiple posts -- each one of those deserves it's own post with it's own likes. It's not like you are saving precious electrons and black electrical tape by economy sizing your posts, you know!

"Wait for the Kickstarter" literally means: "We have a two week deadline for our FPGA dev board to arrive by USPS and to find someone qualified to desolder a QFP chip and graft the dev board in there. Doesn't have to look pretty or work, just look like we did SOMETHING." (The irony of course being that pissing around making the fauxtotype look convincing for the rubes is taking time away from, you know, developing an ACTUAL PROTOTYPE)

Are you kidding? Lawyers are expensive! That's what Kicstarter funds are for.

Screw the Coleco Chameleon. I want someone to plug this word salad into an FPGA and make a real working Mike Kennedy simulator. I'm willing to drop $500,000 cash on the barrelhead. (Prototype must be authentic and delivered by noon EST Feb 26/2016)

Bahahaha... I'm holding you personally responsible for my next dry cleaning bill, Nathan.

Sega Nomads?