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Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?


phoenixdownita

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Y'know if Mike was really smart, then he wouldn't go to Kickstarter. He would go back to IndieGoGo. I'm saying this openly because- Mike, if you want to do this then by all means go ahead and lift this idea off me, I won't even ask for credit. Set yourself a goal for about $5,000. Make sure you have it set to flexible funding. Then once you meet your goal, IndieGoGo send you the check regardless of how far along into the campaign you are (Kickstarter doesn't do that, of course). And if you don't reach your goal, you still get some money in your pocket and you don't have any obligation to deliver or even continue working on it.

 

Of course what he's doing right now is an outright scam, you're wasting your breath if you try to argue further or against it at this point. By my idea is, if you're going to scam, do it the right way and go the full nine yards.

 

On Kickstarter, he risks not making it to the goal and failing again, and he'll get nothing. Or even getting his project pulled. But with this plan he's sure to at least get the money from his die hard Facebook followers.

 

I'm dead serious about this. In fact, Mike- if you go through with this plan, I will bury the hatchet and make a video promoting your console positively and asking people to donate money to it. I'm not kidding, I'm not pulling any kind of trick. I want to do this because I don't care about Mike after he's gone full-Madoff. The joke of Mike is starting to get played out at this point. Now I want to get some laughs out of the Facebook followers when they lose their money. I'm dead serious, Mike, if you want to contact me send me a PM and let's get this rolling.

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you would think with all the comment preening and scouring of the fb page, that mike would be a smart businessman and start offering other products to tide his followers over. make some chameleon t-shirts, mousepads, some sort of crap like that to help generate revenue while the masses wait for the kickstarter. no dice? nothing, really? just 'wait and see'. mike kennedy has all these people on the hook, and could certainly offer some other stuff to his chameleon fans if he's not going to offer the magazine, or any such info on the chameleon itself. so why not be smart about a business you're trying to generate revenue for and make successful, and put some extraneous products out there? its already been more than proven that these suckers that want to buy the console are supportive, so whats stopping him from putting some swag out there? this entire thing leads me to believe this is gonna wind up as another ken whitman scenario where he takes the money and runs after the kickstarter.

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Got to thinking today about how rotten Mike's luck is.

 

I mean, what are the chances that you end up with two hardware engineers in a row that both flake out and either overdesign a not-cost-effective product or hand you a piece of garbage that would be an embarassment at a grade school science fair on the eve of a big industry trade show reveal?

 

It's possible, I guess. Bad luck and all that jazz.

 

I don't know John Carlsen personally but my research turns up a guy who seems pretty capable and versatile. He's been in the Silicon Valley tech/computer/game scene for a few decades and his orbit seems to cross those of people like Nolan Bushnell quite frequently. A casual look at his Linkedin shows everything from designing automation for the railroad industry to key roles in a lot of the underlying technology that made ultraportable high quality audio an inexpensive reality.

 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncarlsen (and yes, I've verified this is the same person)

 

So this is the guy that Mike says went rogue from the RVGS project and designed an unprofitable dream console (a 'Ferrari' in Mike's words) when all that was being asked for was the console equivalent of a grocery getter with a radio tuned to play your favorite classic rock songs. OK, I can maybe buy that if you painted John as an overenthusiastic newcomer to the industry trying to make a name for himself but that really doesn't square with the professional who has a listing on the IMDB and holds several degress -- not just computer science but also in business management and another in accounting. I'm beginning to think John probably knows a thing or two about how tech finances work and what kind of compromises have to be made to get a product to market.

 

http://www.johncarlsen.name/ (again, same John Carlsen)

 

Curiously, he lists that he worked on RVGS *and* Coleco Chameleon (like they are two separate entities). Even curiousier, the date of his Facebook announcement that he was no longer involved in this project predates the announcement of the Chameleon by a couple of months.

 

I'm still finding it hard to reconcile the Silicon Valley professional detailed above with the guy waxing on about lab power supplies with a table full of junk in that infamous video. A video Mike says he knew nothing about and that John was doing his own thing without prompting and nearly doomed the whole project, until it was saved at the 11th hour by this amazing deal with Coleco.

 

Flash forward to the present and here we are being set up for more hardware people being thrown under the bus. Only this time we don't know who this mysterious person is.

 

For all we know it's still John. He does list the ColCham as one of his projects.

 

Hmmm.

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I think everyone here knows exactly what will happen. The KickStarter will go up and there will be a video showing some kind of prototype board. Mike will then turn around and say "See, there wasn't a SNES in the shell as all the haters were saying". Mike figures he's safe and he pretty much is. That SNES Jr will likely be returned to its original shell after the Toy Fair and no one will be the wiser. We can post all the comparison pics we want and he'll just point to the content of the KickStarter campaign as the primary source of truth.

 

It's absolutely sickening that this is taking place.

Yup. I also expect them to play up the fact that their "prototype" was shown at Toy Fair, as a way of establishing credibility with those who haven't been following the story:

 

"Back the Coleco Chameleon, as seen at TOY FAIR! Yes, it's the revolutionary retro console, unveiled to rave reviews at TOY FAIR! Sure, our last campaign failed because we didn't have a prototype, but this time we do, and you don't even have to take our word for it because it was on display for the entire industry to see at TOY FAIR! Did we mention that it was shown at TOY FAIR???"

 

(The implication being, of course, that whatever sexy-looking 3D render of a "prototype" that they doctor up for their next sizzle reel is the same machine that was shown at Toy Fair, which of course it won't be. It makes me glad that we've been documenting everything before it gets flushed down the memory hole.)

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Way back when the Retro VGS was first announced, I thought it sounded somewhat intriguing. I read a few articles about it, listened to a couple of podcasts, and figured I'd check back in on it when the kickstarter/indiegogo happened. I kind of forgot about it and didn't really look up anything until well after the indiegogo had failed. I think this was the article that got my attention:

 

From an Ars Technica interview in December Mike stated $250,000 to $300,000 KS campaign. If many buy into this, it might work. I won't be, but many are getting fooled.

 

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/12/coleco-chameleon-continues-quixotic-quest-for-contemporary-cartridge-console/

 

There is a link in that article to the 199-page thread on here (I've never really visited this forum, and just finally made an account) - and I read through the whole thing. It was one of the most entertaining things I have read in a long time, for a variety of reasons. Now I almost feel compelled to continue following this.....it's just so surreal. It's like a car crash.....I want to look away, but I just can't.

Edited by ROFLcade
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I don't think this has been posted...

 

 

"Retro Video Game Systems, Inc. At the moment the console will not play original ColecoVision carts. There is however going to be ColecoVision compilation carts specifically for the console. At a later date there could be adapters to play original ColecoVision carts which has been discussed, just not happening right now."

 

---

 

So Mike is going to milk his Colecovision titles right down to the last dollar and seemingly not even release them all on one cart when you can just buy a Colecovision Flashback with all of them on it for $30. Imagine if the pack-in game is a fuckin' small compilation of Colecovision games...

Dang it! Bring out ye olde "Offiginal Coleco Kwalitee seel"-stamp or whatever it was from a few pages back and give me a big, fat stamp right across my face!

 

This was exactly what i predicted earlier in this thread! Granted, i wasnt the only one but i can honestly say now that i called that! ColecoVision compilations on their own carts to maximize sales. I seriously only thing those converters will see the light of day if thia thing gets so massively successful that Mike doesnt have to care about money ever again as every old cart you can play in this system = less carts sold from RVGS.

 

If their launch-title video is anything to go by we will probably see the very same games as the Flashback has, presumably as those are the ones Coleco owns the rights for,i'm including those homebrews like Mecha 8 etc. by assumtion.

 

60 games. That is either 2 carts at 30 games each or 3 carts with 20 each.

I cannot for the life of me seriously assume they will go for 4 carts with 15 games per cart but anything is possible.

 

Do the same with the 60 Intellivision games and we are looking at between 4 to 8 carts in total for the whole series.

 

Better hope they will be fairly priced. If the going rate of 20$ per cart is assumed and they are not pack-ins we are looking at between 80$ - 160$ in carts with games found on 2 Flashbacks for 30$ each.

 

I know im speculating. The carts could cost 10$ for all i know but that seems unlikely given the small scale of their operations and the already fairly saturated market limiting larger economy of scale.

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...Now I almost feel compelled to continue following this.....it's just so surreal. It's like a car crash.....I want to look away, but I just can't.

Someone earlier said that the way we worked here it was like RVGS was taking on the Borg from Star Trek.

 

So i guess you just got assimilated. Welcome.

 

Resistance is futile and all your thoughts and dreams now belong to the collective. We are one.

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Here is another Issue for his lack of credibility with fraud in his mags

 

not answering vile questions

 

and and and he cannot even use a HD camera after all the money he made of KS for RETRO MAG and his other projects

 

WTF should we trust or take him serious???

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Dang it! Bring out ye olde "Offiginal Coleco Kwalitee seel"-stamp or whatever it was from a few pages back and give me a big, fat stamp right across my face!

 

This was exactly what i predicted earlier in this thread! Granted, i wasnt the only one but i can honestly say now that i called that! ColecoVision compilations on their own carts to maximize sales. I seriously only thing those converters will see the light of day if thia thing gets so massively successful that Mike doesnt have to care about money ever again as every old cart you can play in this system = less carts sold from RVGS.

 

If their launch-title video is anything to go by we will probably see the very same games as the Flashback has, presumably as those are the ones Coleco owns the rights for,i'm including those homebrews like Mecha 8 etc. by assumtion.

 

60 games. That is either 2 carts at 30 games each or 3 carts with 20 each.

I cannot for the life of me seriously assume they will go for 4 carts with 15 games per cart but anything is possible.

 

Do the same with the 60 Intellivision games and we are looking at between 4 to 8 carts in total for the whole series.

 

Better hope they will be fairly priced. If the going rate of 20$ per cart is assumed and they are not pack-ins we are looking at between 80$ - 160$ in carts with games found on 2 Flashbacks for 30$ each.

 

I know im speculating. The carts could cost 10$ for all i know but that seems unlikely given the small scale of their operations and the already fairly saturated market limiting larger economy of scale.

 

I remember people bringing up a series but I never thought they'd stoop that low because the fucking games are already out there, especially the Intellivision ones, for peanuts. In the back of my mind, I took this for whatever positive I could since I don't have a Colecovision Flashback, so if they released the Colecovision library that they have the rights to on a multi-cart as their pack-in and by some miracle the system did come out, if I did buy it, at least I didn't have those games. When I saw cart being pluralized I was like fuuuuuuck it. I already see where this is heading because they're even gonna extort people even on these old ass titles.

 

By now, you could buy a PS2 and Intellivision Lives for it and it'd cost the same as the first installment of the cart series! I know there are a lot of suckers out there, but how many suckers out there are interested in Colecovision games and don't have a real console or the Flashback? There can't be many. Not when the target audience is basically the absolute hardcore retro gamer. Their ideal audience is suckers in Target, but there's a long road for them to make it there. Then, yes, you can release stupid shit for people to blindly buy and probably get decent results. Even the blind Facebook supporters, say what you will about them, but there's no actual guarantee they're gonna back the project. I would imagine half the idiots on there don't even understand the concept of KS to begin with, they're hitting the like button on something they fathom picking up at Wal-mart.

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Here is another Issue for his lack of credibility with fraud in his mags

 

not answering vile questions

 

and and and he cannot even use a HD camera after all the money he made of KS for RETRO MAG and his other projects

 

WTF should we trust or take him serious???

Not sure if srs nor who this comment was directed at but Mike seems to only reply to the same 5 people on the RetroVGS page. Good luck getting a reply if you aren't one of his shills or an administrator there.
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Last thread abour RVGS garnered around 250K views before it got shut down at Xmas, this one is hovering at 60K, why do you think the difference is so marked?

 

Personally I stayed away as I'd taken Mike's last set of words and 'apologies' on the RVGS disaster at face value. Guy says he screwed up, is sorry for (some) of the things said and done and wants a shot at redemption with his next go. Okay, fair enough.

 

But now with this nearly inconceivable level of bullshit, again...

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By now, you could buy a PS2 and Intellivision Lives for it and it'd cost the same as the first installment of the cart series!

 

This should be obvious, but anyone who doesn't already have an SNES, a Mega Drive, a PS2, an NES, a Colecovision etc.. And I mean, someone who doesn't already have all These Systems with pretty big collections of games for them, shouldn't even be looking at this RVGS anyway. Even if it was legit. Who in their right mind would buy this over a PS2? You can easily get a PS2 with a huge library of games for 150 bucks. Why would you get a Retro VGS with one pack in sd Card. ops sorry, with a pack in cartridge, for the same price? Even a SNES or a NES that are expensive Systems to collect for are cheaper than this.

 

This is the Horror of it all: The System is ridiculus to begin with. But on top of that it's horrendously poorly developed. And on top of that the "CEO" shits on the community. And then on top of that the guy after asking for another Chance Comes around and pretends he has a System by playing SNES games on an SNES.

 

This Looks much more like an Episode of your favorite parody Comedy Show than it Looks like real life.

Edited by leods
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There is a link in that article to the 199-page thread on here (I've never really visited this forum, and just finally made an account) - and I read through the whole thing.

 

Welcome, and please don't think the rest of this forum is at all like these rvgs threads. Have a browse around. Outside of here, AtariAge is a great source for all things retro, and a good bit of modern too. It's a great community that has built up around playing, collecting and making games on 30+ years worth of game systems.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that we do a lot more here than just rag on RVGS.

Edited by Reaperman
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Apparently not many people stopped by the booth. If the booth was busy you would think that they would have flooded their page with first impression videos of all the attendees that played it. I know if I was trying to get the word out I would have a video of everyone that played it posted.

If I understand correctly these are private/closed events, so I don't expect huge attendances, still it will be nice to know how it fares for their booth.

[Mike will plow ahead no matter what, painting a big success no matter what happened, that's why I'd like impressions on attendance if anyone happened to be around, SD&R what's your source saying?]

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If I understand correctly these are private/closed events, so I don't expect huge attendances, still it will be nice to know how it fares for their booth.

 

 

I dunno, between the "press" which now includes youtubers (yay), and the retail reps, there are plenty of folks milling around. (vid link cued up to some general walking around shots)

 

As I'm sure I've mentioned, I'm a huge toy fan and I've been totally geeking out on the toyfair coverage hitting my youtube subscribscriptions feed. Nerf, transformers, lego--it's been a good week.

Edited by Reaperman
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If I understand correctly these are private/closed events, so I don't expect huge attendances, still it will be nice to know how it fares for their booth.

[Mike will plow ahead no matter what, painting a big success no matter what happened, that's why I'd like impressions on attendance if anyone happened to be around, SD&R what's your source saying?]

 

Futher to that, the Coleco booth is not on the main floor but off in the boonies where the smaller fish are. Low traffic zones coupled with not everyone interested in your product (it's a toy show, not a video game show like E3) means you probably wasted your money setting up a booth when you could have networked some deals via skype.

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This should be obvious, but anyone who doesn't already have an SNES, a Mega Drive, a PS2, an NES, a Colecovision etc.. And I mean, someone who doesn't already have all These Systems with pretty big collections of games for them, shouldn't even be looking at this RVGS anyway. Even if it was legit. Who in their right mind would buy this over a PS2? You can easily get a PS2 with a huge library of games for 150 bucks. Why would you get a Retro VGS with one pack in sd Card. ops sorry, with a pack in cartridge, for the same price? Even a SNES or a NES that are expensive Systems to collect for are cheaper than this.

 

This is the Horror of it all: The System is ridiculus to begin with. But on top of that it's horrendously poorly developed. And on top of that the "CEO" shits on the community. And then on top of that the guy after asking for another Chance Comes around and pretends he has a System by playing SNES games on an SNES.

 

This Looks much more like an Episode of your favorite parody Comedy Show than it Looks like real life.

 

This is why I think the Chameleon should actually be targeted towards Steam users who already are familiar with these games and would like physical copies of their favorites, while also being relevant to retro gamers who want a retro style experience on carts and are new to these games, and the average joe who doesn't know any better. Mike took the position of ignoring being able to just take any, say, Linux game and putting it on a cart, is irrelecant to average joes because they don't back crowd funding projects, and can't be relevant to retro gamers because he has no games. He literally appeals to no one.

 

I agree that this is something out of a TV show. The SNES mini proto puts everything into perspective. Fuck, you couldn't make that up! He may as well have just showed the shell and had games running on a fucking PC because even IF the pictures weren't out there, the fact it only played SNES games and Piko put their SNES board in the console would have still been near damning evidence. It's sad, but hilarious at the same time because ALL HE HAS TO DO IS TELL THE FUCKING TRUTH. THAT IS ALL. HE. FUCKING. HAS. TO. DO. It's mindblowing! Some people have given Mike credit as a good marketing/sales guy, but I don't even see him as that because he hasn't been able to market himself out of this charade in the least. He's horrible at it because he doesn't have any comprehension of the product or accountability. Honestly, would a good marketing/sales guy ever spout out proudly "NO UPDATES!" when he's pitching a crowdfunding campaign to the most experience group of gamers out there who know that patches of all things ARE AWESOME? Never. He targeted old, cranky, luddite curmudgeons who never would have bought his shit anyways, imbeciles who can't even get the chance to buy it because it will never hit stores (under current assumption of crowd funding dollars required) and people who just really hope this happens just because they did carts. I don't consider that a good "idea guy" at all.

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New interview with Mike about the console from the toy fair:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz7SgnQexJI

 

So they are gonna sell USB Intellivision/Colecovision controllers and bundle them in with the carts... interesting... very interesting. That's about the only interesting thing I've heard coming out of the Toy Fair.

 

What I'm saying is if they make that shit work with Intellivision/Colecovision emulators, I'd be so fucking in, even if they weren't the absolute best just to make keypad games more playable.

Edited by bretthorror
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