Who bought a DINA system?

[BassGuitari]

Bear with me, I'm pretty much "thinking aloud" here. Feel free to correct any inaccuracies, of which I'm sure there will be many. I know about the DINA's background in terms of the system itself (designed/manufactured by BIT Corp., imported by Telegames around 1988 and sold through mail order, stock destroyed in tornado in '94), but I'd like to know more about its sales, who bought it and why, etc.

 

Given that DINA was only available through Telegames mail-order, it's not like anyone could just find one of these in a store, decide that they seemed cool or that so-and-so would like it, or even want one for a birthday or something, and grab one. There were no kiosks, no real consumer product research, and no real advertising that I know of, other than (presumably) a listing under the Colecovision section in the Telegames catalogs.

 

Also, they were sold when things like NES were firmly established and things like Genesis were just around the corner.

 

I'm just curious as to what kinds of gamers/consumers would have purchased DINA systems back in the day. Some theories:

A) They would have had to at least be familiar with Telegames, which I'm guessing relatively few (very few) were.

B) They were into Colecovision collecting even then, or

C) They were Colecovision fans generally and wanted an inexpensive replacement/backup system

D) Maybe they were existing owners of non-Colecovision systems (Intellivision, Atari, whatever) who were also existing customers of Telegames (or at least knew about Telegames) and saw the DINA as a cheap way to get into Colecovision?

 

Would it be fair to assume that lower-income gamers or households who wanted a game console but couldn't afford something like the NES or Atari 7800 or TurboGrafx probably missed out on the DINA (and its near-rock-bottom price point), and went with something more readily available like the Atari 2600jr.? Or just purchased used systems instead? Were Colecovision games even still sold in stores by '88-'89? These consumers might not have had any games to play on a DINA anyway -except Meteoric Shower- unless they ordered those from Telegames also.

 

This probably doesn't apply to the United States so much, but would people -in other countries, most likely- have purchased a DINA for its ability to play Sega SG-1000 cartridges? As an American, I think that's a great feature. It opens up a whole new console for me, one I'd normally be kind of shut off from, unless I imported it. But I'm guessing most Americans, certainly at the time, had never heard of the SG-1000. Maybe some non-Americans had similar curiosity about Colecovision?

 

A related point of interest: in the Feb. 1997 issue of EGM (cover story: Tekken 3 in development), there is a 4-page article about retrogaming titled "Retro-active." It briefly describes/discusses and pictures a number of systems, including Colecovision. But instead of picturing the Coleco, a DINA system is pictured; the first line of the Colecovision blurb was something to the effect of "Pictured here is actually the DINA system. This system was fully compatible with the Colecovision." The blurb then goes on to describe the Colecovision specifically. So somebody at EGM at the time has/had a DINA at least as far back as 1997 (probably earlier; if Telegames' stock of DINA systems was destroyed in 1994, were would they likely have have gotten one since?), or knew someone that did.

 

(The entire article is full of inaccuracies and blatant nonsense probably stemming from the writer not knowing what he was talking about, such as the Atari 5200 being available in "several versions, like the 2600; not all were huge" and the DINA being "fully compatible" with Colecovision. And such gems as the Odyssey 500 being "more of a family machine, so the 6 dials instead of 2 came in handy" leads me to believe he never even hooked up the system he knew nothing about, yet pretended to be knowledgeable about.)

 

Are there any AtariAge members who bought a DINA system new from Telegames? I've to hear your story.

[ozma wars]

hi

in Italy, with the crash of summer 1984 all consoles disappeared from the shops and the magazines. Practically at same time Commodore 64 in Italy and Germany surfaced as number 1 ( in UK the Spectrum ) and only some magazines reported a new console was just launched in Japan but to be not launched here. The Sega sc3000 computer was also distributed here but it was as expensive like the C64. So, we had the paradox to have in few months a library of thousand games for the Commodore but with friends we had to spend 5 to 10 minutes to load each game and nostalgia for a cartridge based system was great and we were still using our Colecovision or intellivisions to play when in group. So, when the DINA appeared we saw the advantage to have a new Colecovision available (a lot were dead because the ac adaptor dead) with the advantage of using also a Sega sg ( whose console was here not imported, the computer version very expensive but the carts very common and relatively cheap )(C64 carts arrived here in limited numbers because piracy represented 99,9 of our libraries..).

 

Then the dina was also very much appreciated because had the advantages of a colecovision WITHOUT those terrific joisticks.

with my bad english not easy to explain but in 1984 we were orphans of US consoles and Dina was a new products to use old games.

The same reason for which I am ready to buy now the CV2 when released...

[BassGuitari]

Thank you for your reply, Ozma! It was interesting and enlightening!

 

(Don't worry about your English; it is very good. Certainly much better than my Italian!)