Were Some ColecoVision Titles Just Poorly Programmed?

[Keatah]

Perhaps some/many Colecovision titles were not of quality we'd expect. Let's use arcade ports as examples. Arcade ports were sometimes good and sometimes bad, and all different on all systems. But I believe it is these difference and multitude of interpretations that gave each system it's own personality. Each system had/has unique capabilities. This is what makes the hobby so enjoyable and fun. If we had arcade exact ports for each system.. Then why bother? Just get one system and you're good to go..

 

As a kid.. I always thought:

 

Being a former SYSOP from years gone past, I liked BASIC programming on the II+ and //e. The hardware worked well here with all the storage options and drives, and memory, and BASIC in ROM that wasn't cluttered with sound and graphics commands.

 

For fast action games, the VCS was a good choice. The style and hardware limitations required the programmer to update the playfield as fast as the electron beam flew across the screen. And the color palette was suitable for many bright vivid primary colors. So games like Kaboom!, Dragster, Turmoil, and many many others, worked well here. The fast nature of how things worked in here lent itself well to games that were based on reflexes and action.

 

I enjoyed Galaxian on the Astrocade because of the sound. First time I had an arcade sound-chip in the home was with this system. That, and Wizard of Wor rocked too.

 

Intellivision, with more memory, slow bit-mapped graphics, this was suitable for strategy games like Sea Battle, and Utopia, and some of the Tron series games. I liked intellivision for the slower in-depth games. This is the thinking-man's game console.

 

The Atari 400/800 was a good choice for a number of reasons. Star Raiders is one of the reasons why I got it in the first place. All the programmable graphic effects and sounds came together nicely here. I sometimes felt it was a lot like the VCS, save for the bit-mapped graphics and tons more memory. Great color effects.

 

The Commodore 64, I felt was cool too, in a mystical sophisticated way of a sort. All sorts of cool capabilities but you needed to know how the machine worked on the inside, and that meant learning a lot lot more than, say, learning the VCS.

 

ColecoVision, I always associated this as a console that was based all around memory and the tricks that needed to be done to get stuff going. A lot of bit-map stamping. I knew little of the tile-based (character based) rendering in the TI graphics chip in the CV.

 

I always thought the O^2 was underpowered and had no graphics memory at all. Or something equally stupid.

[65Gamerguy]

I think both the ColecoVision and Atari 5200 are great systems, and they both have their merits and flaws. I also think that some early coleco games were rushed in order to capitalize on the 2600 and Intellivision's popularity back then and some games suffered. The 5200 was capable of a larger color pallete but it seemed like they didn't use it well at first. In the final analysis neither system really got to show their full capabilities until late in each systems life and by then they were made "obsolete" by the NES.

 

But here we are 30 years later and people are making these new great games for not only the 5200 and ColecoVision, but other systems as well. I think that is awesome! I would have never thought that people would be doing this back then in 1982 when I was 17 years old.

 

My thoughts are no matter what system you own, or prefer, if people are making new games for it support them in anyway you can. They won't make new games unless you give them your help.

 

Just my thoughts, not trying to start a war.