Psionic

Not that much different from the movie industry I suppose, especially these days. These studios keep cranking out remakes and sequels but amazingly enough a lot of people keep paying money to watch them. Fox Video Games started a satellite office in Chicago at one point and hired a couple of ex-Bally programmers to work on ColecoVision games. After speaking with one of these guys, my impression of the people running the show back in California is that they were artsy-fartsy, pie-in-the-sky types (probably from the film industry) with little business acumen and no clue about video games in general. I also spoke with the programmer of the original Porky's VCS game (which was developed outside Fox) several years ago, and he told me the Fox people were impressed that his company was able to come up with a decent game with any kind of actual storyline. And they did put a decent effort into the game, actually hiring a Disney animator to do the game graphics. They also developed a custom chip that accelerated sprite computations but Fox would not spend the additional money on this chip, so that bit the dust.

Huh? The system in the photo is an SG-1000 Mark II as I stated above. The Mark II has a single row of ventilation holes on top whereas the Mark III has two, as you can see from the photos you posted yourself. Not that it really matters either way since the cartridges in question are not VCS games nor any other Atari cartridges.

Oddly enough, Pengo never appeared on a Sega system until the Game Gear. I like Penguin Land although the game is on the difficult side. Steve Begin ported the original SG-1000 version to the ColecoVision in the early 2000s. CollectorVision did a reissue several years back although I'd imagine even that version is hard to come by at this point.

It's the SG-1000 version of Penguin Land, which was also released on the Mark III/Master System.

Could be but more likely they're bootleg SG-1000 cartridges. That's a Mark II system in the lower right corner of the first image.

Not much. Mine don't really wobble at all. 2-3 mm maybe.

It is crazy how much time and money they spent porting some of these games to every platform imaginable. Of course, I'd imagine they spent quite a bit on some of these licenses and wanted to take full advantage of it. Still, it would've been nice had they devoted some of that energy towards something original instead of just cranking out all these ports.

If you're dead set on playing original hardware, then yes I would strongly suggest buying a working and fully tested unit from someone here on the forums as opposed to buying one locally. Unless there's one available locally from someone you trust or that you have an awful lot of time to test. I'm not trying to chase you away from buying one at all. It's a cool system with a unique game library. I just want you to have realistic expectations. The power switch, power supply, and various ICs are all prone to failure over time. Finding working power supplies is a problem. They were temperamental systems from the get-go due to poor engineering and haven't gotten better with age. It will be well worth your time (and money) to find the right unit before forking over the dough. Don't buy the first unit you see.

Look elsewhere. You should never, ever buy an "untested" ColecoVision. For that matter, they're so temperamental that it's debatable whether it's really worth buying any ColecoVision over the long run at this point. I second AtariBrian's suggestion that you might want to look into the Phoenix if you're seriously looking to get into Coleco gaming.

Speaking of vaporware...at 20:30 the game Skiing is also brought up, which 4D eventually worked on a version of. But by then Coleco was apparently no longer interested in publishing it.

Yeah, it was probably just a mix-up on the part of marketing or the artist who was doing the mock-ups. Who knows. I think part of the problem is that they were working on so much stuff that even they got confused. Midway had purchased an interest in Sega and they co-produced a few laserdisc coin-ops including Astron Belt and Galaxy Ranger. One of the artists from Sega that I spoke with was doing the art for the Star Trek one but I don't know how far along the game was. Sega worked on a ton of stuff during this period that never made it out the door. It was a total mess there, especially after they closed up shop in San Diego and moved everything to Paramount Studios in L.A. They supposedly worked on not one but two Masters of the Universe coin-ops that were never released. They also had a Congo Bongo sequel in development that never went anywhere because the management couldn't agree on a game design. Several original games also got canned including Turbo Tag, which was designed at Sega in Los Angeles but programmed at Marvin Glass & Associates in Chicago.

Yes, that's probably a generic version of the first Sega shell I mentioned above. It's a tight squeeze, but a socketed EPROM board will fit inside that shell. Sega actually used (soldered) EPROMs in early copies of their games (Star Trek, Congo Bongo & Buck Rogers).

I can understand that but you should at least test and dump the cartridge ASAP. Assuming it does work in the first place it's not going to suddenly fail altogether, but the chances of a few bytes here and there going bad are somewhat high. NES black boxes are cool but not all that important compared to a one-of-one prototype. Just sayin'... Doesn't work, there's nothing there. Just save the image and repost it. I really have no idea why anyone would hotlink an image in 2019.

Per his post above, Rareusgold appears to have been the buyer not the seller. The listing has been removed from eBay (in the U.S. anyway) and your hotlinked image isn't appearing, at least not on my computer.

The same thing happened with M*A*S*H, although the irony with that one is the 8-bit version was never published by Fox even thought it was the original version of the game that the other ports (2600, TI-99, etc) were based on. The author of the original 8-bit version actually wasn't even aware Fox had commissioned other versions of the game until relatively recently. Sega and Sirius did appear to use the same supplier for their PCBs and cartridge shells (Boone Software used them as well) so they're all quite similar, but there's really no connection beyond that. Fox and Sirius had a working relationship as you may know, but Sega had nothing to do with Porky's or any of the other Fox titles. I'm not sure who would've developed a VIC-20 conversion. Fox had in-house development but also used several subcontractors. I actually tracked down the guys who did Fox's ColecoVision titles just recently, so I'll see if they know anything. I didn't see this auction so I don't know what the prototype looked like. There are actually two variations of Sega cartridges for the VIC. One variation has screws on the back of the cartridge and the other has them under the label. The Boone games basically used a generic version of the first variation (minus the Sega logo on the back). The Sirius cartridges were probably a retooled version of the second variation. Did anything else come of this? Does the game work?

Just thought I'd add that Jennell Jaquays actually commented on Vanguard at 12:07 in this video of a presentation given at the 2017 PRGE. Apparently they had already gone as far as acquiring an original cab to study when the deal fell through. They soon picked up Cosmic Avenger as a substitute.

Thanks, I didn't catch that. At least now we know that Picnic Paranoia and Protector II are on K-Byte PCBs so they may have done them, although the Sofmachine games are on K-Byte boards also. Mike Yantis programmed Protector II, and from this post it can be deduced that he may have worked for Sofmachine. This post also confirms that the C64 version of Dig Dug was developed by K-Byte.

You win some, you lose some. If it's any consolation to you guys, I did recently talk to David Schroeder and he is willing to share the source codes to his original games (Crisis Mountain and Dino Eggs) so that they can be ported to other classic platforms.

Tim just got back to me... Sorry fellas, but at least you have your answer.

Can anyone who has opened one of these cartridges (purposefully or accidentally) show or at least tell me what the PCB inside looks like? Some of these titles should be on K-Byte boards but I'm curious about the other ones.

Haven't seen it but the reviews say it's pretty good. I didn't know you were a baseball fan.

Albert is pretty busy getting the new releases ready for the PRGE. These games should be back in stock after the show. Someone brought this up in the Baby Pac-Man thread a couple weeks back... https://atariage.com/forums/topic/278165-baby-pac-man/page/69/?tab=comments#comment-4315070

Sorry, I don't think I ever contacted him a second time. I forgot all about it. Did you guys ever get what you were looking for? If not, I can try him again. I still have his contact info somewhere.

A few years late but I just watched your T&C Surf Designs review. I know that this is one of the few NES titles you acquired brand new and you've made reference to this game on the forums several times over the years. I also noticed that you even commissioned Steve Nazar to do some t-shirt artwork for you. Very cool. I never had this one as a kid but I did rent it a few times and it's a game I did like (or at least wanted to like) back then, although like pretty much everyone I had a tough time with the surfing. When FuncoLand appeared years later, I eventually acquired a used copy and played it quite a bit until I kinda sorta got the surfing down to a level where I could at least make it to the shore on a regular basis. I was inspired to start playing it again a few years ago after Steve Nazar relaunched "Da Boys" via Thrilla Krew, and after I saw this video... Using the tips given in this video, I was able to completely master the surfing after a lot of practice over the course of a couple weeks. I can now do all kinds of tricks, jump over the seagull, pick up most of the bananas, and pretty much surf almost indefinitely. If you haven't watched this video, I'd highly suggest giving it a look to get maximum enjoyment out of this game.

Yeah, we know. He's the one who acquired it from Arnie. He asked if a second copy had been found and I answered him.