Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

[AtariBrian]

So, I take it that nobody has heard from Mike Kennedy since the KS launch date?

 

What do you guys *think*? Will he return with some sort of statement, or remain under

the radar for ever?

 

Reading recent posts and listening to the Piko/UKmike/Scott podcast, it seems that people

are opening up for idea that he is innocent and Hardware Guy did it all. Sounds crazy to me,

but it could give him the room for a return.

That would be Mike's next lie I bet . Sorry , but he knew exactly what was going on lol .

[enoofu]

I don't think he will make any public statements at this point for at least a few weeks

[toiletunes]

"Hardware Guy disappeared with every prototype and all of my Hard Work. Not to worry, the new console will be a handheld. Look for the Tiger Tiger, coming soon..."

 

[Phantom_of_Krankor]

I hope when this finally flops Mike goes back to selling the shells again. My Jaguar would look pretty sweet in a clear one.

[The Notorious MW]

"Hardware Guy disappeared with every prototype and all of my Hard Work. Not to worry, the new console will be a handheld. Look for the Tiger Tiger, coming soon..."

 

FB_20160306_07_57_41_Saved_Picture.jpg

I love that picture lol what are some of those accessories? I only recognize the screen light it was a POS mind you but I did own one. I actually found a miner style head light more effective with it when I played Pokemon Blue under the covers as a kid (I know that dates me as alot younger than you gaming graybeards lol) but Ive never seen any of those other accessories before but I find the toggle thing to be pretty cool

[Vanta]

Not going to make this long winded, but honestly, I think we all need to take a step back for a few days, let Coleco conduct their investigation and post the results, and (hopefully) see the reaction/announcement from Mike, because ultimately how he deals with everything when we do next hear from him should be the deciding factor for how the community interacts with him in future.

 

I'd rather things not turn in to a bloodbath, at least until we have the entire situation laid out.

 

And Mike, if you're reading this, my suggestion is come clean, scrap the idea and sell some shells, you'll have an immensely long way to go for forgiveness, and many people may not even be able to forgive you, but that doesn't mean you don't owe it to everyone to try.

[sh3-rg]

So, I take it that nobody has heard from Mike Kennedy since the KS launch date?

 

What do you guys *think*? Will he return with some sort of statement, or remain under

the radar for ever?

 

Reading recent posts and listening to the Piko/UKmike/Scott podcast, it seems that people

are opening up for idea that he is innocent and Hardware Guy did it all. Sounds crazy to me,

but it could give him the room for a return.

 

Pipercub says he's heard all kinds of ridiculous excuses and buck passing offered by those on the inside or close to this, Mike might need to hire a whole fleet of busses to aid in sanitising this current situation

[AE35]

 

Pipercub says he's heard all kinds of ridiculous excuses and buck passing offered by those on the inside or close to this, Mike might need to hire a whole fleet of busses to aid in sanitising this current situation

 

...which is why I found it strange that none of them were brought up in the podcast with Piko....especially towards the end when it is said that Mike said that he didn't put the capture card pictures on facebook. I was waiting for Scott to comment on stuff like that several times, but nothing.

 

Otherwise, an engaging and interesting podcast. Amazing how far people can be strung along, also. It makes me wonder if MK is a sort of power player, still, in peoples minds. Even after all this it still looks like a lot of people are trying to clear him.

[enoofu]

So far it sound's like Mike and Steve Woita pretty much had 100% control of this project from the start

Edited March 6, 2016 by enoofu

[toiletunes]

I'm not looking for a bloodbath either, nor would I encourage going there, but Kennedy asked for (and received) a "second chance" already- and this is how he chose to use that second chance. I'm not saying he needs to be shunned or outcast, but geez, maybe he should stop trying to sell us stuff that doesn't exist.

[dommie]

 

Not so much sue, just walk away reliveley unscarthed and dodge the bullet.

 

 

While that's possible, the opportunity for them to recoup financially from the fiasco is there and a likely outcome. There are some intangibles to consider - damage to the Coleco reputation for one, all based around a willful attempt to deceive. Pretty much a slam dunk from Coleco's side should they move forward with a lawsuit.

[rob_ocelot]

 

The thing is that since there is no new controversy out there. People have to direct their anger to somebody else.

 

If there's something to be angry about it's your microphone, Eli -- manufacturer totally threw you under the bus there.

 

In all seriousness, thank you for providing another perspective to this whole mess. Fills in a lot of blanks and gives clarity to other events we've heard about.

 

IMO, the good folks here at AA should be striving to present as complete and clear a picture of the inner workings of Mike's companies as they can without being biased or heavy handed. The next person who stumbles onto a summary of this mess should be able to form their own opinion of events. If they choose to deal with Mike or his affiliated ventures in the future then hopefully they will do some minimal research and inform themselves.

Edited March 6, 2016 by rob_ocelot

[enoofu]

Wondering if they went broke?

Since, Retro magazine apparently is super late in releasing new magazine's issues

Plus with all the fake prototypes and a unknown engineer named Lee, can make you question

Plus staff leaving from Retro

Edited March 6, 2016 by enoofu

[rob_ocelot]

Yeah, for me, you build that box, goto IREM,Taito, Data East , Konami, Capcom, SEGA, and get their commitment to supply ARCADE rom's officially for this and maybe even the schematics of their old arcade hardware for The Company to create HDL's to run the games on the FPGA system.

Then they sell me multi carts with several arcade classics from each vendor and split money with those companies which still hold those rights.

Also, I could buy new Indie games written for several platforms on this platform instead. If they don't make it for Genesis, i still play it on here.

But, this is dead.

 

I'd LOVE to see new games written for older arcade hardware, eg Williams 6809 and running on an FPGA system that was modular so you could hook it up to the display and UI of your choice -- be it a modern HTDV, an older composite/RF TV, or an arcade monitor in a coin-op cabinet with arcade controls. Official support from companies like IREM and Taito would be icing on the cake.

 

That's just me though. I wouldn't mistake my wanting this as everyone else wanting this.

[jaybird3rd]

Wondering if they went broke?

Since, Retro magazine apparently is super late in releasing new magazine's issues

Plus with all the fake prototypes and a unknown engineer named Lee, can make you question

Plus staff leaving from Retro

From earlier in this thread, there was talk about how Mike wanted the magazine and GameGavel to benefit "at arm's length" from the Chameleon project, but it's looking more like the fallout over the Chameleon is destroying these other ventures. On the RGR forums, UKMike mentioned that the magazine's website hasn't been updated since October, and I couldn't help but notice that the most recent article is by David Giltinan, their most recent high-profile departure. With all the trouble they're already having releasing issues on time, the last thing they need is to replace senior staff. GameGavel is also showing signs of neglect (lots of broken images, etc).

[PlaysWithWolves]

 

Quote

... $$$ ...

... $$$ ...

... $$$ ...

Dreamer or not he likely got a glimpse that he'll be rich doing what he believes he loves and what he believes he's good at.

There's no fault in that but the way you go about it does make a difference.

 

 

"Cornering the Market on RETRO Gaming"

 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-kennedy-75933212?

 

corner the market also have a corner on the market

to control the supply or sale of a particular product The company tried to corner themarket on several types of computer software.

 

corner the market

to become so successful at selling or making a particular product that almost no oneelse sells or makes it They've more or less cornered the fast-food market - they're inevery big city in the country.

 

corner the market

Buy all or most of a commodity or stock so that its price goes up. For example, In afamous maneuver the Hunt brothers cornered the market in silver. This idiom usescorner in the sense of "drive would-be buyers into a corner." [Early 1800s]

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/corner+the+market

[TheClassyGamer]

I've been thinking about Coleco while waiting for the inspection. I've a few thoughts that I was curious what others would have to say about. Not having anything to do with the inspection other than to make the assumption that they will sever their ties with RVGS Inc, here is what I was thinking.

 

If nothing else Coleco has gotten it's name out there and people in the gaming community are saying Coleco again. If they can keep the negativity off of themselves by shucking it onto the RVGS team, I think the general public would accept that and not hold any ill will to the brand name. Also, this with their name having gotten so much attention, they should be getting a fair idea of what their potential customer base is for video game projects. The community has been very vocal on what they want or in this case don't want and I think that could be some valuable information if used correctly.

 

I don't think it is likely as they are trying to become a large national name again, but I feel like the potential is there if they wanted to try and court the smaller gaming market. Rather than try for retro gaming products in big name stores, they could build up by trying to associate with smaller projects. It would be interesting to see them make offers to some of the homebrew chaps making games for the Collecovision to be able to have their games be official releases if in name only. For example, a small fee gets you the right to put the seal of quality on your game or such and say you did an official Coleco product, and in exchange for that the game maker would be getting a bit of advertisement through Coleco.

 

Also, if they were to turn out something like a Colecovision flashback type console with a cartridge port on it, some updated better controllers or such, or some items that would support the classic gaming community. I think they could for on the cheap build up a lot of good will in the community for when they do release their national big release products.

 

I don't know, but I think there is a lot of potential for the Coleco name to make a comeback in a positive way and be loved again. It all depends on the people holding the rights I guess.

[galax]

All very interesting points and I didn't know a couple of those. I agree a lot of his credentials don't seem to fully jibe and that part always bothered me. I never actually did see a single concrete example of his work in all the time I talked to them. I would expect at least a single link to *something* tangible instead of what amounts to unverifiable gum-flapping. When I was talking to them I kept sending links rapid fire to my projects and videos and stuff to show off what I have done and can do and kinda expected to see similar from John.

Well they did, ahem, manage to show the "actual output of our printed circuit board design" as part of the Indiegogo campaign:

 

 

I'm not sure about the exact timing of when you were talking to John, but you (and perhaps future RVGS/CC archaeologists) may be interested by this short talk he gave about the RVGS at Commodore Vegas Expo v11 2015 - July 18-19 (RVGS info starts at 5:50) :

Some key points:

5:53 "I feel like I've really lucked out on this one earlier this year"

6:30 "[Mike] managed to buy the tooling and mechanical design for this old system"

7:50 "Kickstarter within the next few weeks"

8:15 Acts confused and flustered: "[how much RAM] on the FPGA? Goodness, let me try and remember that, it's about 3/4 of a GB attached to the FPGA. I say about, it's actually a little bit more, because there are actually 3 banks of RAM attached to the FPGA allowing us to do various different functions, there's 1MB of SRAM that we use, mostly it's just a DMA buffer, so we can use the FPGA to automatically get a lot of the information off the cartridge, and we're looking at some fairly substantial cartridge sizes on there as well"

9:00 "One of the mandates on our design is that we have to make this for this really hard use case where we basically play with the system and shove it in a closet for 50 years and it still has to work when you pull it out of the closet. And so we can't use a lot of the cheap commodity flash memories because those are good for maybe 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. We're using premium flash memory that's got a thick oxide tunnel window and that's rated for 100 year data retention."

9:40 [question: internal expansion bus?] "Yes and no, there's of course the exposed cartridge bus, I'm trying to make that as open and freely accessible as possible. Right now I'm pushing to have the FPGA on a separate board that will attach with a couple of connectors so if you wanted to stick something on the bus you just pop it between the FPGA and the main board"

 

 

As for a 6 layer board, that reasoning is hilarious. There's many reasons why this is not why you'd use a 6 layer board.

 

As Mike said before about the decision to use the Cyclone V (5 minutes into the SegaNerds Toy Fair interview), they probably decided on a 6-layer board because Kevtris had mentioned it.

[Great Hierophant]

John Carlsen's only tangible claim to fame in the retro community, as far as I know, was assisting in the design for the C128/IBM CGA digital to analog converter : http://www.bit-c128.com/ That device actually works, gives the correct colors (brown instead of dark yellow) and is a valuable contribution to the retro computing community.

[Flojomojo]

 

"Cornering the Market on RETRO gaming"

cornerthemarket.PNG

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-kennedy-75933212?

 

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/corner+the+market

Or it could be like when you corner a wild animal, like a mountain lion or a bear. It lashes out at you with unexpected ferocity and you're lucky if you get away unharmed.

 

I'd say Mike Kennedy was pretty successful at cornering the retro game market, if you use my definition of the term.

[PlaysWithWolves]

Or it could be like when you corner a wild animal, like a mountain lion or a bear. It lashes out at you with unexpected ferocity and you're lucky if you get away unharmed.

 

I'd say Mike Kennedy was pretty successful at cornering the retro game market, if you use my definition of the term.

 

Well, he did have that "Big Game Hunter" YouTube series.

[Flojomojo]

So, I take it that nobody has heard from Mike Kennedy since the KS launch date?

 

What do you guys *think*? Will he return with some sort of statement, or remain under

the radar for ever?

 

Reading recent posts and listening to the Piko/UKmike/Scott podcast, it seems that people

are opening up for idea that he is innocent and Hardware Guy did it all. Sounds crazy to me,

but it could give him the room for a return.

Nobody could have predicted anything that has come before in this saga, from the wildly inconsistent promises, the running of the mouth before things were ready, the empty "just you wait" promises, the crazy lashing out in public that contributed to locking prior AA threads, the lies of the mysterious Mr. Lee, "COLECO" stating there will be an "inspection," blatantly falsified "prototypes" presented without written explanation but lots of rumor and hearsay.

 

There's probably a lot more we don't know about. Eli@Piko's story was very eye-opening, and those of you who seem to want more out of him should respect how much time, effort and goodwill he has already given us. Give the dude a break, he shouldn't be subjected to an inquisition.

 

I never thought RVGS would make it this far. Any predictions I would make would be biased by my preference for truth and intelligent business judgment. I want to say this will end quietly but there have been enough surprises so far, I just want to see what happens next.

[Flojomojo]

 

Well, he did have that "Big Game Hunter" YouTube series.

Gross. Serves him right that the hunter becomes the hunted then.

[InnovaX5]

Alright, I've thought about this for a while now. The entire Retro VGS / CC idea just doesn't add up to me. I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that Mike Kennedy is passionate about "retro gaming" at all. I do believe Mike is a collector and he does really like collecting stuff. I don't think that Mike ever wanted to bring back the glory days of the cartridge because he loves them so much. As Triverse said, "Retro Gaming" by definition varies from person to person. What is Retro to me as a thirty year old will be much different than someone older than myself or younger than myself.

 

Mike Kennedy and Steve Woita are how old? Retro gaming to them, should be the Atari VCS, Intellavision, Odyssey 2, Colecovision, etc - that kind of 8 bit gaming. Also, that era of Arcade. If they truly wanted to revive retro, the RVGS / Chameleon would be something based around those consoles. The '64 bit' Jaguar shell and cartridge mold was purchased by Mr. Kennedy because he is a collector. However, why is it that the "16 bit era" is so heavily focused on by the RVGS / CC team? In the Coleco Chameleon sizzle reel, why are Atari 2600 and Colecovision games shown and then a jump to Super Nintendo games? Why was the NES / SMS 8 bit era completely skipped over with zero reference? Also, Mike's era of retro Arcade is totally skipped over during all talks of the RETRO VGS and its campaign. Instead, the only arcade era featured was the NeoGeo. Why?

 

Well, my thoughts are simple. Money. The reasoning behind the RETRO VGS / Coleco Chameleon has been what will generate the most sales and money from the start. There was no passion behind it. Mike picked the biggest money demographic from retro gaming for the Chameleon from the start. He wanted cartridges because you can make a far larger profit return from complete boxed cartridges than you can complete boxed discs. He chose to focus his system on 16 bit super nintendo / genesis style games because they're the most popular and biggest money making area in retro gaming right now. He was obsessed with Neo Geo compatibility because he saw NGDev team's game prices and the potential market share he could have on reeling people in on a cartridge that doesn't cost $400+. Notice that when NG Dev Team pulled out, all talk about Neo Geo stopped with the project. His cash cow left so he seemed to have scrapped the whole idea. As if there were no other Neo Geo games that could be licensed and 'ported' over. My speculation is that NeoBlitz just sat in the dark after the IGG, wondering why they didn't want their game anymore. In my opinion, everything about this console was designed on how to cash in the most on retro gaming.

 

Mike Kennedy even said it in a couple interviews and podcasts. He claimed that he wasn't trying to cash in on "retro" any more than Yacht Club does with Shovel Knight. Mike just wanted to sell nostalgia back to people in cartridge form on his platform.

[galax]

John Carlsen's only tangible claim to fame in the retro community, as far as I know, was assisting in the design for the C128/IBM CGA digital to analog converter : http://www.bit-c128.com/ That device actually works, gives the correct colors (brown instead of dark yellow) and is a valuable contribution to the retro computing community.

 

I think "assisting in the design" overstates things a bit, he took an existing design and replicated it a few years later- as other people have done. He claims to have refined it a bit, but that could be as simple as tweaking the resistor values to give more accurate colours.