Video Game Genres missing for ColecoVision

[newcoleco]

Sunday July 21, 2013...

 

It's the 3rd day of Coleco convention and it's time for my presentation. After 30 minutes of talk and open discussions on the subject, I was thinking of doing a simple survey here about the potential videogame genres you might be interested to see entering the Coleco games library. Sadly, nobody recorded my presentation, but you can find my slides in this message.

 

List of video game genres identified so far

1. Action (reflex, timing)
    
   
2. Adventure (no action, find and use items, talk to people )
    
   
3. Action-Adventure
    
   
4. Role Playing (RPG)
    
   
5. Strategy (plan your next move for victory)
    
   
6. Puzzle
    
   
7. Sport
    
   
8. Educational
    
   
9. Board, card, dice, etc... (with or without gambling)
    
   
10. Simulation
     
    
11. Serious (job training)
     
    
12. Party (challenge of minigames with friends)
     
    
13. Microgames (challenge in time of tiny tasks)
     
    
14. Trivia
     
    
15. Music
     
    
16. Exercise
     
    
17. Programming (set a list of instructions to accomplish a goal)
     
    
18. Sandbox
     
    
19. Advergame (cheap game/hack for advertisement purpose)
     
    
20. Adult
     
    
21. Religious
     
    
22. Art (unconventional look, may not be considered game)
    

Action genre includes an incredible number of sub-genres (First Person Shooter, SHMUP, Plateformer, Ball and Paddle, Dot-Eaters, etc.)

 

Two genres I didn't considered from the Wikipedia page : "Casual" and "Electronic Sport". Nobody agrees on a definition for a casual game and for some people an arcade game like PacMan can be considered a casual game but it's not generaly accepted. And as for an electronic sport, it is simply a professional gamer who plays a game to win competitions, it's not a game genre but a way to play a game.

 

Based on my "long research", half of these video game genres aren't exploited or under exploited on ColecoVision.

 

I was thinking about it and I came out with my personal list of potential unconvential ColecoVision games that might be fun to make.

• 2D Portal/Portal 2 (adventure)
  
• 2D Minecraft (sandbox)
  
• Physics Sandbox (sandbox)
  
• Monopoly (board game)
  
• Risk (board game)
  
• Party Time (party, microgames)
  
• Touristic Sites Simulator (simulator)
  
• Shopping Mall (simulator)
  
• Dance Mania (music, exercise)
  
• Charlie the Unicorn (Joke)
  
• Magic Flower Kingdom (role playing)
  
• Pirates Adventure (action-adventure)
  

Presentation - Adamcon 25 - Missing CV Games.zip

Edited July 21, 2013 by newcoleco

[+5-11under]

In other news... Daniel is alive.

[adamcon]

Oh yes, he is alive and well!! Came to the ADAM convention this year along with Luc and Tommy. Had great session on game genres and games possibly which need creating. And finally ran through and finalized Flora. GOOD JOB DANIEL !!! We salute you !!!

[+cmart604]

2D Minecraft!?!? My son would steal my CV from me.

[Kiwi]

I overcame my anxiety and dodge versions that want to install bunch of junk ware of OpenOffice. I finally found the right version, which is Apache Open Office. I was able to open this presentation. I am happy to see my game on one of the slide . I really need to get that one done. I have 3 KB left to fill to get the ending finish. Then I need to reprogram the entire game and make an engine instead of a linear style programming. It could buy me back more space for other cool stuff. I'm very peculiar and want to be 100% fine with the game before releasing them. Honestly, I feel as the game is way too short to be release as a cartridge format. I want to up the replay value after the main game is complete. I do plan to release this game eventually.

[RelliK111]

I would like to see some more Adult games made for the Colecovision, games like Leisure Suit Larry , and maybe some ports of the Atari 2600 adult games with better graphics and controls. I would also like a better version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre with better graphics and controls.

[BillyHW]

An (J)RPG would be cool.

Edited July 22, 2013 by BillyHW

[harlock76]

Salut Daniel nice you show up

i think a genre totally missing is horror genre

(atari 2600 halloween, texas chainsaw massacre there is even a homebrew game named evil dead)

[+boxpressed]

Light gun with the XEGS gun!

[retroillucid]

I would like to see some more Adult games made for the Colecovision, games like Leisure Suit Larry , and maybe some ports of the Atari 2600 adult games with better graphics and controls. I would also like a better version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre with better graphics and controls.

 

PERVERT!!

[Pixelboy]

Hey retroillucid, please make some room in your PM inbox. I haven't been able to send you any PMs since last week!

 

(Sorry for the off-topic post.)

[RelliK111]

PERVERT!!

 

Yep

[retroillucid]

Hey retroillucid, please make some room in your PM inbox. I haven't been able to send you any PMs since last week!

 

(Sorry for the off-topic post.)

 

DOH!!

 

Thanks Luc.

[BillyHW]

Light gun with the XEGS gun!

 

Would the Sega light gun work too?

[+boxpressed]

Would the Sega light gun work too?

 

I'm the wrong person to ask, but both guns do have a 9-pin DSUB. Sega would be more available than the 7800 gun.

[PkK]

I don't think a light-gun game would be popular. Light-guns only work with CRT TVs; few people have one these days.

 

Philipp

 

P.S.: Edit: capitalized "crt" into "CRT".

Edited July 23, 2013 by PkK

[PkK]

I would like to see some more Adult games made for the Colecovision, games like Leisure Suit Larry , and maybe some ports of the Atari 2600 adult games with better graphics and controls. I would also like a better version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre with better graphics and controls.

 

I guess it would be hard to get this right: A big problem for homebrew programmers is the already small CV community. So we need to reach at least a substancial fraction of players. Sure, arcade ports are always popular, but with different game concepts we 're already down to often less than 50 copies.

With an erotic game this problem becomes even worse: Not only do we loose part of the community by choice of genre, but we will again loose part of the community by choice of sexual prefences. And of course there are those that don't want to see anything sexual in their video-games at all (this might even include game distributors creating another problem). Essentially, creating an erotic ColecoVision game will result in all the effort for making a ColecoVision game, but only have a potential of maybe 10 copies or so sold.

 

Philipp

 

P.S.: Also IMO, making a good erotic game for the CV is as hard as making a good lovecraftian one: For Lovecraft, the story is everything, since it is all about the unknown horror, so you can't show it graphically. For an erotic game, the CVs graphic capabilities are essentially not good enough to create atmosphere visually, so you need a good story to do that.

 

P.P.S.: Of course the problems mentione mostly apply to ColecoVision games where the erotic aspect is the main focus. The situation looks better for games where this is only a side aspect. Once I get around to making some Tunnels & Trolls games, there most likely will be romance options.

[PkK]

Serious (job training)

 

IMO, the CV is the wrong platform for this. For hobby and leisure, restricted hardware capabilities are fine. Also again the target demographic (particular job and CV owner) is just too small.

 

Philipp

Edited July 23, 2013 by PkK

[Manoau2002]

 

I guess it would be hard to get this right: A big problem for homebrew programmers is the already small CV community. So we need to reach at least a substancial fraction of players. Sure, arcade ports are always popular, but with different game concepts we 're already down to often less than 50 copies.

With an erotic game this problem becomes even worse: Not only do we loose part of the community by choice of genre, but we will again loose part of the community by choice of sexual prefences. And of course there are those that don't want to see anything sexual in their video-games at all (this might even include game distributors creating another problem). Essentially, creating an erotic ColecoVision game will result in all the effort for making a ColecoVision game, but only have a potential of maybe 10 copies or so sold.

 

Philipp

 

P.S.: Also IMO, making a good erotic game for the CV is as hard as making a good lovecraftian one: For Lovecraft, the story is everything, since it is all about the unknown horror, so you can't show it graphically. For an erotic game, the CVs graphic capabilities are essentially not good enough to create atmosphere visually, so you need a good story to do that.

 

P.P.S.: Of course the problems mentione mostly apply to ColecoVision games where the erotic aspect is the main focus. The situation looks better for games where this is only a side aspect. Once I get around to making some Tunnels & Trolls games, there most likely be romance options.

 

The problem with bunching these games together is a think you have three different genres of games. A game like leasure suit larry is more of a comedy game with sexual references. Second you have horror games where the goal is to frighten people. (which in turn gives them a rush) Or contains suggest matter from old horror movies. ( ghosts, goblins, devils, ect.) Third you have porn/erotic games. Games like custers revenge for the atari 2600 that have direct sexual content.

 

I think the first two options would be good genres for potential coleco games. The third option could/would be offensive to many people which would criple sales.

[retroillucid]

Making Leisure Suit Larry for CV is more than doable!

The CV is capable of rendering graphics like this, no doubt

I already did a BUNCH of graphics and trust me, they all look awesome!

The challenge here is more like adapting the game to CV (keyboard interface)

 

This is more a funny game than anything sex/porn/erotic related

[Kiwi]

Not really a challenge. The bottom third of the screen would use it own tileset while the other 2 tilesets can build the scene. I would use the Colecovision keypad to select a 9 verbs as shortcut if you don't have a roller controller to use the pointer as a track ball. Therefore we can make more new overlays for the Colecovision! The person's dialogue color can change with the fill_vram(0x0200,0x20,784) function. This is one of many idea came to me earlier, was to make a SCUMM like game for the Colecovision based off of Monkey Island. Only challenge is time, and me sitting there and code it.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Kiwi

[retroillucid]

Not really a challenge. The bottom third of the screen would use it own tileset while the other 2 tilesets can build the scene. I would use the Colecovision keypad to select a 9 verbs as shortcut if you don't have a roller controller to use the pointer as a track ball. Therefore we can make more new overlays for the Colecovision! The person's dialogue color can change with the fill_vram(0x0200,0x20,784) function. This is one of many idea came to me earlier, was to make a SCUMM like game for the Colecovision based off of Monkey Island. Only challenge is time, and me sitting there and code it.

 

Did you say Monkey Island?

OH MAN! This one would be awesome on CV!!

[Jess Ragan]

I'd say versus fighting games, although it's hard to imagine how that would work on the ColecoVision. It's a really hardware-intensive genre of games that seems incompatible with 8-bit consoles.

[BillyHW]

I'd say versus fighting games, although it's hard to imagine how that would work on the ColecoVision. It's a really hardware-intensive genre of games that seems incompatible with 8-bit consoles.

 

There's Karate Champ and the Commodore 64 has IK+ which always makes the top 10 lists for that system.

[carlsson]

While I don't know the ColecoVision community, is there anything preventing development of new controller hardware so you actually could plug in a real keyboard or for that matter a dance mat or Guitar Hero controller to the console? Any adapter required would either be included with the game or sold separately. The GH type of games has been done on other systems - not sure about the CV - but is only fun if the game properly registers input according to the music played. Any glitch and it becomes a game of chance instead of skill.

 

Perhaps a game that combines the console with a board game? On the computer side (C64, BBC etc) there was a football board game that partially uses the computer. I can think of something like electronic Pictionary where you'd draw small cards from a deck and then use the controller to doodle on screen what you're supposed to draw. Or perhaps something like that also has been done. For the perverts in the audience, you could have a deck of adult themed motives and play that game with the people who can handle it...