Team Pixelboy News Bulletin - April 18th 2012

Pixelboy · April 18, 2012

Hello guys and gals of the ColecoVision universe, and welcome to another edition of the Team Pixelboy News Bulletin!

EASTER AT THE MELLO'S

I visited Eduardo Mello on Easter week-end, a week and a half ago. Played some games, watched some Star Trek stuff, had an overdose of Pocoyo (because his son Victor loves it to death), I had a great time. Eduardo and I also discussed our various ColecoVision projects currently in the works, and this led to a few changes in our game plans.

Eduardo has a lot of work left to do on the Super Game Module, Donkey Kong Arcade and other projects, and so he isn't sure he will be able to have all his ports ready for Team Pixelboy by the end of October. Therefore, where the games dependent on the Super Game Module are concerned, we agreed to segment the releases into two waves: King's Valley and Thexder will be released in 2012, and Spelunker and The Stone of Wisdom will be released in spring 2013. I will still get the boxes for all those games printed in the fall of 2012, so I will be able to release the last two games (in 2013) as soon as the software is completed.

With this change in the release schedule, I am hopeful that Eduardo will be able to complete the work on Champion Ice Hockey and The Black Onyx in time for a Christmas 2012 release. There's not that much to do on either games, but it's still several hours of tedious work. By the way, Daniel Vik added support in blueMSX for the bankswitching and EEPROM features of my Activision PCB, which means that Eduardo will be able to test the final alterations to The Black Onyx under emulation before the final tests on real hardware. Same goes for Jewel Panic, which is a game I'm working on myself, and which also requires the Activision PCB. That's really good news right there.

JAPANESE TRANSLATOR WANTED!

The Stone of Wisdom may be released next year, but there's a lot of preliminary work to do on this game right away. In particular, the game contains some texts in japanese which need to be properly translated. The manual of the game is also in japanese, and I would like to have certain pages of that manual translated, to make sure that there's nothing important missing from the manual of the ColecoVision version. So if you can help with this translation effort, please send me a PM.

NEED SOME CARTRIDGE CASINGS?

The main reason for my recent visit at Eduardo Mello's place was to pick up the mold for making new ColecoVision cartridge casings, and bring it back home with me. The mold is now in the custody of Moldex, which is the plastics company in Montreal that handled the casing production last time. So if you're a ColecoVision homebrewer in need of some cartridge casings, feel free to contact me. Most of those who have already expressed an interest in purchasing casings seem interested in "regular" black casings only, but I can also get some done in other colors, like green, red, and maybe blue. Transparent (colored or uncolored) casings are also a possibility. I'll post more info in this thread later, if the need arises.

TEAM PIXELBOY GAMES ON EBAY

I currently have a few copies of my games up on eBay right now. You can find them easely by searching for all items for sale by "darzilot", which is my eBay username. The eBay selling period ends on April 23rd.

MORE TO COME...

I have several other tantalizing tidbits of news to share with you, but now is not the appropriate time to reveal them. Expect another news bulletin in late July, right after I return from Adamcon 24!

This concludes this news bulletin. We now return you to your regular forum activities.