Colecovision - It's Only Rock n' Roll game

[Red 5]

What a bizarre game !

 

I bought a broken Colecovision and 23 games at a tag sale this weekend for $5.

 

In there with the commons was a BC Quest for Tires and a game I have never heard of before.

 

'It's Only Rock n' Roll' by Xonox.

 

I have no working CV so could not test it or play it, but I checked it out online and wound up playing it through

and emulator.

 

Has anyone else played this insane text game?

It's actually sort of enjoyable.

 

Also, does anyone know the worth of this game? DP says it's around $30, but the last one that

went on Ebay (boxed... unlike my loose copy) went for $269.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/Colecovision-XONOX-Its...1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Any info would be apperciated.

Edited May 7, 2007 by therealred5

[Bill Brasky]

I think I've played it many years ago. IIRC I had it on a tape for my ADAM computer. I know I've played Campaign '84 and I think the gameplay was similar to that. Instead of going around the country and meeting voters and kissing babies you go around and meet fans and groupies. As far as value, I thought only the xonox double-enders went for $100+, the regular xonox carts varied in price but didn't go for that much. You would be nuts to pay $200+ for a xonox game.

[Vic George 2K3]

Only had the misfortune of owning Miner 2049er (which was much better on the Atari 8-bit computer and the 5200, though I only played those versions through emulation) and BC's Quest For Tires II: Grog's Revenge.

[Zwackery]

I believe it is considered the rarest Xonox game for Colecovision - the value for the loose cart is probably around the $75 range right now (based on the last few loose I've seen on eBay, and not the "easier" to find Telegames release).

[Red 5]

The game itself is bizarre.

 

When you 'write a song' it randomly generates lyrics from its

small database of words.

 

Pretty funny stuff.

 

I got to #5 on the charts before I became 'too old to tour'.

 

Funny bands were listed on the top 10 charts that really date the game.

 

Madness, U2, Wham just to name a few.

 

My tours went well when my drummer wasn't drunk.

And then we had a drug scandle that hurt us a bit.

 

MTV kept begging me to make a video.

 

Like I said... weird game.

[joeybastard]

I'm probably the only person in the world who really likes "IORnR" I think the songs are funny, and the animation of the band playing is a riot too. I find it pretty challenging most times too. It's a very limited early "sim" but I like it. It's one of those weird games that makes me like the CV so much.

 

BTW, what's wrong with the CV you got with it?

[Murph74]

I'm probably the only person in the world who really likes "IORnR" I think the songs are funny, and the animation of the band playing is a riot too. I find it pretty challenging most times too. It's a very limited early "sim" but I like it. It's one of those weird games that makes me like the CV so much.

 

BTW, what's wrong with the CV you got with it?

 

 

I think there's two of us, Joey. I remember playing IORnR for hours at a time-- then rediscovering my love of the game on another variation of it got hte c-64 called "A Rockstar Ate My Hamster". Classic stuff in the day.

 

Also on the last run of Ebay pricing, the same guy who ran this one up, also bought 3 other xonox games for over $250 from the same seller. While I realize pricing sometimes blows thru the roof for no real reason, I think this guy spedning over $1,000 on 4 coleco games at once from a seller with less that 100 feedback rating points and a 96% (most recent feedback was a neg for undelivered goods) total rating is kind of suspect.

 

Then on the other hand, maybe I just 'want' it to be suspect. After all, I'm yet to add any xonox-version game to my collection at this point.

 

Murph

[doubledown]

It's definately a good game if you can sit through a non-action paced game. I like to play it when I just kind of want to sit there and occasionally press buttons versus having to concentrate about a hundred flying shooting bastards. I got mine on Ebay with a manual for around 45 bucks about a year or so ago.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Some would say it's the worst Colecovision game ever made. It probably wouldn't be half as bad if someone hadn't had the dumbass idea to use the 10-second delay routine all the time. Oh yeah, and that random beep-boop "music". Seriously, this could easily have been some 2-page BASIC game in a David H. Ahl book.

 

I even found a minor bug in the text lists while disassembling it. I think one of the lengths was off, meaning that they probably hard-coded the lengths instead of letting the assembler do the counting.

 

I had the misfortune of finding two of them back in the day, one with no label that I sold off to someone, can't remember who. The other one had a label so heavily actiplagued that you can't read the name on the end.

[Jess Ragan]

A Rockstar Ate My Hamster on the Amiga gives me the impression that It's Only Rock 'n Roll COULD have been a good game with the right hardware and programmers behind it. However, since it was developed by Xonox, and runs on a game system without a proper controller for text-heavy resource management, it's a miserable failure.

 

JR

[Red 5]

BTW, what's wrong with the CV you got with it?

 

Powers on, but everything is all jumbled.

I can actually 'start' Tapper, but all I here is the music and see a jumbled mess on the screen.

 

Tried the old 'fold a playing card and rubbing alcohol' trick on the cart slot to no avail.

 

I sold my old Coleco when I went 'all atari' and it's the only system I truly miss.

 

I have to admit that I am a bit taken with the game myself.

The song lyrics are fantastic and the game was definitely written by someone with a sense of humor.

[misspent_youth]

Takes some disassembling, and the use of a soldering iron, but try to remove, clean and re-lube the power switch. Many times it is the cause of garbled graphics.

[Bill Brasky]

Try cleaning/polishing the electrical contacts where the power supply inserts.

[mumbai]

I believe it is considered the rarest Xonox game for Colecovision - the value for the loose cart is probably around the $75 range right now (based on the last few loose I've seen on eBay).

This is so not true, on both counts. $75 for this cartridge on eBay is an outlier at best.

[2600Lives]

Also check out www.oldschoolgamer.ca

 

Not only can you send your system to them to professionally repair the switch (with a MUCH sturdier model), but they can do some crazy stuff to it, like give it an S-Video mod and the like. That's likely what the problem is, as that damn switch breaks very easily. Try turning the system on, the resetting it a couple of times. Many times, that will fix the problem.