galax Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 PostalGamer wasn't his only attempt at taking on GameStop, he tried again with EKGaming: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EKGaming-Wants-Help-Publishers-Profit-From-Used-Games-41703.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120511134810/http://ekgaming.com/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 the page now says that they are "currently updating our database and servers to provide an even better experience" Wow! Where have we heard that before? Even his excuses are retro! 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StopDrop&Retro Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 but the page now says that they are "currently updating our database and servers to provide an even better experience": I love these Mike-isms. I need to start keeping track of them. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlaysWithWolves Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 PostalGamer wasn't his only attempt at taking on GameStop, he tried again with EKGaming: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EKGaming-Wants-Help-Publishers-Profit-From-Used-Games-41703.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120511134810/http://ekgaming.com/ In case you missed my edit above: Apparently also ParcelGamer. Hattip triverse: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/235430-how-has-this-not-been-posted-yet-retro-vgs/page-73?do=findComment&comment=3326915 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Before Al or CPUWIZ tells us to stop dog piling and dredging up old posts, might I just point out that I think that this person's "serial entrepreneurism" deserves to be called out? Only from past mistakes can we learn and move forward. He's "an entrepreneur through and through"! Here's hoping that he's just through, for good this time! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PikoInteractive Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Well if we're going back 5 years, 2011 was a prolific year for Mike. There was also Gamerspots, which aimed to be the Yelp of game arcades & stores. Went live in April 2011, and stopped tweeting 2 weeks later. There was a website for a few years according to archive.org, but the page now says that they are "currently updating our database and servers to provide an even better experience": http://gamerspots.com/ https://twitter.com/gamerspots https://www.facebook.com/GamerSpots/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/181112-gamerspotscom-local-gaming-hotspots-stores-arcades-events/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130530045158/http://www.gamerspots.com/ Actually that would have been very useful for people like me. We could go into that site, and get the info of stores to do sales calls of our physical games. But it hasn't worked in like 2 years. About the Intellivision games, man 10K for all those 3 and you are already making profit in My opinion. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Christian Nutt has posted a better-than-average piece about this on Gamasutra. Thing are looking very grim for the the Coleco Chameleon, a proposed retro-style cartridge-based console. The holding company that owns the rights to the Coleco brand has yanked its support from the designers of the console, Retro VGS, after that company failed to provide a working prototype of the system for inspection. Let's rewind: Late last year, Retro VGS launched an IndieGoGo campaign for an eponymous cartridge-based console -- but after major concerns about its design emerged and support began to dry up, Retro VGS cancelled the campaign. The project re-emerged months later as the Coleco Chameleon; Retro VGS had licensed the name from the current holders of the defunct brand, which had its heyday in the 1980s; the original Coleco, which manufactured the ColecoVision console (and Cabbage Patch Kids dolls) in the early 1980s, was defunct by the end of the decade. The brand lives on primarily in licensing arrangements for retro game-themed products. Soon after the Chameleon emerged, members of the retro game community who were skeptical about the Retro VGS began to investigate the provenance of the new console. A "prototype" demoed in New York City was alleged to be a Super Nintendo in a Chameleon housing; the company posted a picture that was represented as that same prototype in a clear housing to try and clear up the SNES rumor. That led to a bigger problem for the Chameleon, however: AtariAge forum member PlaysWithWolves identified a later prototype as containing a circuit board for a video capture card -- in other words, it was all but surely a decoy with a random piece of electronic guts, and not a working unit. After that allegation emerged, Coleco demanded that Retro VGS deliver a working prototype for evaluation, so the licensing deal for the brand could go forward. But today, the company announced on its official Facebook page that Retro VGS did not deliver, and so the deal is dead. The Update that you were all anxiously awaiting: Retro VGS has decided that the work that they have created is not sufficient to demonstrate at this time. Consequently, we can no longer proceed with the project and the Chameleon project will be terminated. This separation is amicable. We wish them luck in the future. - We thank the gaming community for their continued support, input, vigilance and trust. For its part, RetroVGS' official Facebook page is down, and so is its website; its official Twitter is up, as of this writing, and it still features Coleco Chameleon branding. There's a person in the comments with an interesting, if overly charitable, point of view But was this a scam?, or was it simply stuck in development hell? ... I don't know, but as developers we can all understand how difficult development can be, especially when you fail to raise enough funding to achieve your goals. This is as true of hardware development as it is of software development. People these days seem too quick to jump to call things "scams" and then gloat over the failure.A retro platform could have been good news for all of us, so the failure of this platform, if that is where its heading, is a loss to all of us. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+5-11under Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Wow. It sounds like this isn't strike 2... it's more like the end of the inning. Lots of repeating behavior and themes, too. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 About the Intellivision games, man 10K for all those 3 and you are already making profit in My opinion. I think so too. The market is really soft for super-retro stuff like that outside of good old AtariAge. They did Astrosmash and Shark Shark! on Android and iOS. Android tells you a rough idea of how many downloads an app has received. It's "between 100 and 500" for each of these, which sold for a dollar each. Note that "downloads" is a higher number than "purchases." Many of those downloads are me, and I bought them on iOS too. Maybe I should delete and redownload them a bunch of times to get them to the next tier. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Natimus Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 new cu-podcast peoplefriends!! 16 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PikoInteractive Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 I think so too. The market is really soft for super-retro stuff like that outside of good old AtariAge. They did Astrosmash and Shark Shark! on Android and iOS. Android tells you a rough idea of how many downloads an app has received. It's "between 100 and 500" for each of these, which sold for a dollar each. Note that "downloads" is a higher number than "purchases." Many of those downloads are me, and I bought them on iOS too. Maybe I should delete and redownload them a bunch of times to get them to the next tier. Well Android is really a waste of time if you don't have some sort of mini transactions for coins, or ads. IOS could make good money if you are picked up on the top numbers of categories. But Android users want free stuff; so is not the best Idea to released games there; at least if you don't have bottomless advertising funds like King or Rovio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Quick mention of the Chameleon on Giant Bomb's 3/08/16 podcast. Starts at around the 3:01:00 mark. http://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/ A few inaccuracies, but a good discussion overall. A few quotes: "I can't believe that the legal remains of Coleco are actually the good guys in this ..." "It seems like there's a real lack of understanding about why a game might get patched, and why that might be an okay thing, or how modern game development has changed in such a way that not allowing patches has probably become a negative ... it makes the guy sound like some crazed ideologue, more concerned about his philosophy of how games used to be and how they should be again, instead of paying attention to how they're actually made now." 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKMike Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Wow... I don't recall that one at all. I assume nothing happened after the press releases.... It seems that the postalgamer concept suffered a name change and another attempted launch in April 2012 as EKGaming.com http://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/169057/ There is also the 'everything but games' retro auction site from February 2009 http://www.worldamazingrecords.com/2009_02_08_archive.html http://www.vendazzle.com Oddly enough someone updated the record for that site in September last year. It was initially called Postal Gamer but there were issues with the name, Postal meaning postal, and the game too. It was later named EKGaming. The idea was taken to first party developers so they could put preprinted envelopes in their new games to send them in when completed. To be fair, Mike did get meetings with people from Nintendo among others and they thought about it for a while as they would get a cut of the used game value too. They all thought it would hurt their new trade too much and backed out. There was talk of a deal with Play n Trade at the tiime as well but that fell through. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Ugh. This is why I avoid mainstream game journalism like the plague. Indeed. Most bloggers and "journalists" operate with an unbalanced flywheel in their skulls. Powered by energy drinks and the unspoken rule of doing everything faster and faster for no good reason other than to keep up. Keep up with what? Best advice I can give is decouple yourself from all that and evaluate the situation based on what is real and 100% tangible and what you can purchase today. Anything else is pretty much talk and noise. Gone are the good'old days of slow and lazy print publications. When we as kids could read them and look at screenshots and see a game magically appear at the local department store. Gone are the days when videogames were an art and not a profit vehicle. Developers seemingly wanted you to get the game and have fun with it. I rather liked the Activision manuals that came with the VCS cartridges. Read one to find out why. Also the official Atari manuals, too, but for different reasons. Read one to find out why. Quite different than the shit they make today, if they even bother. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 By the way for what it's worh, Coleco says they want to develop the tabletops more. And they want to do another ATGames flashback or something. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RodLightning Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 By the way for what it's worth, Coleco says they want to develop the tabletops more. And they want to do another ATGames flashback or something. I would be all for a second ATGames Coleco Flashback as I missed out on picking up one cheap here locally. I don't know why they sold so well around here. I don't think many were left on the shelves to be reduced to the near-giveaway prices I have heard about elsewhere. The question is, how much influence would Coleco (the holding company) have on ATGames decision to produce a sequel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StopDrop&Retro Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Great video from Pat & Ian, as always! But yeah, Mike's schemes involving GameGavel and all that other shit are sleezy as hell if not illegal and the worst part is that he gloats about how sleezy he is: When I made my last video. I knew there were a few posts here that seemed to indicate that the true story is that GameGavel money, likely sourced from the RETRO mag Kickstarter was used to buy the Jaguar molds. But I stayed with Mike's retelling of the events just to show how convoluted his business dealings can be, plus there was no concrete proof. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 A few inaccuracies, but a good discussion overall. A few quotes: "It seems like there's a real lack of understanding about why a game might get patched, and why that might be an okay thing..." That brings up an interesting thought... what if some classic 2600 games had been patched? (At least two actually were - Demon Attack was patched to fix the game ending bug, and Asteroids had a copyright added.) And what about patching from the standpoint of not just fixing some bugs, but making the games better? Fixing collision detection or bad controls. Improving gameplay? (Of course, we just call them "hacks" now. But this is a what-if for back then.) What games would have benefited from a patch? Had the programmers been able to respond to how their games were received/played by the public, what might they have changed? Certainly, there are a whole bunch of games that could have been improved. What would Laser Blast 2.0 have been like? Fun, maybe? Could Pac-Man have been improved enough to ward off its criticisms? What would have changed in the game industry, if companies had had the opportunity to go back and fix their games back-in-the-day? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Here's Part 2 from Pat and Ian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJcYuAhl-9g 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck D. Head Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Great video from Pat & Ian, as always! But yeah, Mike's schemes involving GameGavel and all that other shit are sleezy as hell if not illegal and the worst part is that he gloats about how sleezy he is: When I made my last video. I knew there were a few posts here that seemed to indicate that the true story is that GameGavel money, likely sourced from the RETRO mag Kickstarter was used to buy the Jaguar molds. But I stayed with Mike's retelling of the events just to show how convoluted his business dealings can be, plus there was no concrete proof. Interesting, but why in the hell does it show his status as "cool without a fan"? How did that get there, did he not recognize it as a dig at himself? Was this from GG forums? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raticon Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 I found this gem at the bottom of that GamerSpots page:"Part of the GameGavel network. Copyright © 2008-2016 GameGavel LLC. All rights reserved."I'm amazed that he didn't call it "Empire" 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevtris Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Probably RETRO subscription rewards. I forgot about that KS, I remember thinking $100K to remake 3 Intellivision games seemed like complete and utter madness. What I didn't understand was from the KS, the games seemed to be done! They show them playing all? of them. So I am not sure what the money was for. From the video, I was disappointed that they didn't do much other than literally port the intv games. Granted, these might've just been proofs of concept, but it seemed from the campaign that they were the final product. Maybe they were going to polish them a little with the money; Shart! Shart! didn't have any real redeeming additions, and the stock "Water" sound effects were very uninspired and frankly annoying. I could play the real Shark! Shark! and get a better experience. Also, the games needed some kind of musical sound track for sure. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Natimus Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 (edited) I asked that "blow your balls off" debuffed guy what his stance on this now was and told him if he values his credibility he should admit he was either wrong or misguided.. His response... "It is comments like that, that have me having to make more videos. Ive been sick with the flu since saturday so it will come, and your comment wont be the only one being referenced. I will be making 2 - 3 more splitting them up since no one knows how to watch a full video. " Edited because I may have read it wrong and I was starting to feal mean about what I said. Edited March 10, 2016 by Natimus 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toiletunes Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 The only innovation to the Inty games was They were going to stick fifteen of them on one cart. That is all. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bretthorror Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 What I didn't understand was from the KS, the games seemed to be done! They show them playing all? of them. So I am not sure what the money was for. From the video, I was disappointed that they didn't do much other than literally port the intv games. Granted, these might've just been proofs of concept, but it seemed from the campaign that they were the final product. Maybe they were going to polish them a little with the money; Shart! Shart! didn't have any real redeeming additions, and the stock "Water" sound effects were very uninspired and frankly annoying. I could play the real Shark! Shark! and get a better experience. Also, the games needed some kind of musical sound track for sure. I was actually going to bring this exact point up when Flojo mentioned the games were on Android and iOS. The date on one of the games on Android was 2014 and this KS is 2015, so it's obvious the games were done. Immediately, I thought... wait, so then if they needed $100 grand, how did this get made? Were they just taking KS money and pocketing it? Is this all a scam too? I full realize that it sure as hell doesn't cost $33 grand to remake an Intellivision game, shit on Steam looks better and are a buck a pop, if that. But since I don't know anything about developing, I thought I'd better not bring it up in case I was wrong. I would also bet the farm on it being a way to sell Retro subscriptions because if you look at the tier rewards, it's put on there as though it was a product. The Retro sub wasn't being thrown in out of support, there were tiers to legit buy it along with the games at a discount. The lack of stretch goals or telling just what they were going to do with the project is vintage Mike. In a nutshell, add another scam to the resume of Mike Kennedy. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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