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Coleco / ColecoVision History Book

retroillucid

By retroillucid
in ColecoVision / Adam

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Coleco / ColecoVision History Book  

66 members have voted

  1. 1. What are your thoughts about it?

    • Can't wait!!! Instant buy!
      54
    • Sounds interesting, but might only get the eBook
      9
    • Couldn't care less!
      3
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H.E.R.O. Dragonstomper

H.E.R.O.

Posted
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Well, gave it a thorough read. Here's the bad & the good in my opinion.

 

The bad - Missing and I think important Eric Bromley stories that I've read elsewhere that weren't included (like Nintendo going back on the deal before CV came out and giving the rights to Atari until Bromley's impassioned plea to Hiroshi Yamauchi at the 1982 CES or Yamauchi's rage filled rant at Arnold Greenberg some years later at another CES over the computer rights for Donkey Kong). I'd agree with others that say the Chameleon may have been given too much space as well.

 

The good - Excellent coverage from the beginning of the company through the mini arcades. Having owned some Telstar & Colortron units as well as handhelds & mini arcades it was a welcome walk down memory lane. The homebrew coverage was also well done.

 

I'm not saying in any way the Colecovision part was done poorly. What was there was very good. It just feels incomplete with what I've read about the company elsewhere. Maybe with Atari - Business Is Fun I was ruined for what I expect in similar subject tomes.

 

Regardless, a solid read & I'd recommend to anyone interested in Coleco. I'll be adding a review on Amazon at some point.

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retroillucid Quadrunner

retroillucid

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Well, gave it a thorough read. Here's the bad & the good in my opinion.

 

The bad - Missing and I think important Eric Bromley stories that I've read elsewhere that weren't included (like Nintendo going back on the deal before CV came out and giving the rights to Atari until Bromley's impassioned plea to Hiroshi Yamauchi at the 1982 CES or Yamauchi's rage filled rant at Arnold Greenberg some years later at another CES over the computer rights for Donkey Kong).

That is because there's 3 different stories about this

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editionsbooqc Space Invader

editionsbooqc

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Posted

Hey everyone! First of all, I want to thank each and everyone of you for the good feedback AND the criticism because, as always on the forum, it's constructive and not destructive and I appreciate it! Then, I saw a few things that made me feel that some clarification was needed.

 

 

Vain question...

Do CV homebrews get mentioned? Do they get good coverage?

More directly... I'll buy the book if I'm mentioned, and/or if Squares! or JetPack! get some coverage. :-D

 

It's not a book about the console in itself and thus extended coverage on the homebrew community. This will come in the future. Coleco - The Official Book is a book on the history of the company as it was the main reason such a book was needed. So you might get disappointed about the homebrew community coverage as you guys are part of the last chapter of the book on the legacy of the company but there are no reviews or list of games in this one. This will be done in a ColecoVision book set for 2018-2019 if I do it or sooner if someone else wants to do it :)

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5-11under River Patroller

+5-11under

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Posted

It's not a book about the console in itself and thus extended coverage on the homebrew community. This will come in the future. Coleco - The Official Book is a book on the history of the company as it was the main reason such a book was needed. So you might get disappointed about the homebrew community coverage as you guys are part of the last chapter of the book on the legacy of the company but there are no reviews or list of games in this one. This will be done in a ColecoVision book set for 2018-2019 if I do it or sooner if someone else wants to do it :)

 

No worries. I knew this book was more about history and the whole company, and less about just the ColecoVision and therefore even less about homebrews... I just didn't know how much less. Thanks!

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Ikrananka River Patroller

Ikrananka

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Posted (edited)

I too have just finished the book and thought I should give my feedback too to hopefully help with the next book :) Although I list more cons than pros it doesn't mean that I think negatively of the book (many of the negatives are quite minor in nature). Overall I think the book is great and achieves it's purpose very well. I very much enjoyed reading it - I was just left with wanting more detail which likely would be almost impossible to come by without direct input from the Greenbergs.

 

Pros

  • Lots of info on the early history of Coleco that is just not available anywhere else in the public domain.
  • Very high physical quality (I received the hardback book). Nice thick glossy paper, thick card cover and well bound. Cannot fault the book here at all :)
  • Awesome to read some interviews and to learn a little of the employees. Would have been even better to get employees from the other divisions and business units interviewed but I guess identifying such people must be very difficult let alone convincing them to give an interview.

Cons

  • The grammar and spelling is lacking in some areas and could have been improved with better proof reading.
  • Hyphenation on a few pages becomes overkill and messy due to text being squeezed into a tiny columns due to mid page graphics.
  • Many of the interesting old photos do not have captions.
  • In the interviews section, some of the images, e.g. of the ARD ColecoVision custom squared paper, are way way too small. I would have liked to have seen full page images of these so that I could read all of the text on them - they just looked to be fascinating.
  • Despite the additional weight to the book, I really feel that more detail on the history, larger images and a greater page count were all easily justified. Look at the thickness of the Atari Business is Fun book and that was for a much much shorter lived company.
  • You should have kidnapped Eric Bromley and Arnold Greenberg and forced them to contribute :) To be honest, without their input the book sadly lacks much of the personal touch that these two could have brought.
  • The interviews should have been more in-depth but I guess that may well have been limited by how much time they were willing to give.
  • Way too much coverage of the Chameleon.
Edited by Ikrananka
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Ikrananka River Patroller

Ikrananka

Posted
Posted

Thanks Ikrananka for this very detailed and constructive feedback. You're right, it will definitely help me improve my work!

 

No problem. Oh, the other thing I forgot to mention was the CBS ColecoVision wasn't released until around a year after the US/Canada release and so had a very short lifespan in Europe and I was hoping that this would be captured in the book.

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Nebulon Stargunner

Nebulon

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Well, I've had a chance to take a good look at the hardcover book. It's a bit smaller than expected, but the paper and image quality are good.

 

The page layout is nice and there's quite a bit of coverage of the ColecoVision. It would have been nice to have included some images of the phenomenal TV ads that Coleco commissioned for the ColecoVision console. That and more coverage of the whys and hows of the hardware would have been cool (more information on the TI graphics chip for example as well as more discussion of the rationale behind selecting those particular graphics and sound chips and pairing them with the Z80). There was no mention of the SEGA SG-1000. I would have liked to have been able to read about the ARD team's reaction to the SG-1000 since SEGA were releasing titles for the ColecoVision before and during the release of the SG-1000.

 

As with a number of books on computer and video game history in the last decade, this book suffers from numerous grammatical issues (in particular a real problem with the use of plural and singular forms). The tone of the writing is also curious in that it often sounds like it's trying to down-play Coleco's achievements instead of promoting them. Qualifiers appear throughout and the sentence structure is often convoluted -- almost to the level of causing confusion for the reader. Of course, these are things that could be addressed in later editions of the PDF. For those looking to release books on computers and games, please invest in one or two (or more) really good editors.

 

At the end of the day I'm just happy to have a book that covers material regarding the ColecoVision. In fact, I could do with a book this size (or even bigger) that only discusses the ColecoVision and associated hardware and game library.

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