Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

[Chorne27983]

He just couldn't resist throwing limited edition color cartridge shells into the mix right at Tier #1. All of this tacky crap that I so loathed about the Retro VGS campaign is back and I was really hoping he'd reign it in. He keeps pointing out the Chameleon you get in the current tiers is "black" so I can only assume we're going to have all the Charms Blowpop colors rolled out soon. The reason this grinds my gears so much is because he's trying to force collectibility onto something right from the get go. Remember how well that worked for Marvel trading cards in the nineties? "Maybe Collectible!" should appear on the freaking Chameleon feature list. This sort of nonsense is done simply to prey on collectors and make a buck. This why I genuinely think Mike has absolutely no genuine care for the retro gaming community (anymore, I've heard he was great in the past). Sisyphus keeps pushing that Jag shell up a hill because he sees $$$ at the top.

 

Ok, Hi! I'm Ian from the CUPodcast. I'm like the blushing nerd talking to the prom queen. I enjoy lurking in your threads and not just the drama ones! If you hate me I promise I'm pretty darn friendly and easy going in real life. I have no schtick on the podcast but I tend to get worked up at certain topics, sometimes depending on the day I've had. If you find me likeable... I promise I'm EVEN MORE likeable in person =P. Can't say I'l contribute much here. I don't play a lot of Atari although I do have an unhealthy love of the 5200. I don't currently own one because I don't have a separate room for the mammoth.

 

Back to lurking...

Hello Ian. I'm Chris. I lurked here reading forever before making an account. after the near 200 page thread and then 20 pages into this one I had to make an account. I can't believe that this is going just like the previous crowdfunding shitstorm. I asked simple yes no questions and they kept getting deleted. Finally I had enough and told Mike to quit being deceitful and fill his investors (us) in. Deleted again. So I told people about the thread here and was blocked. No biggie. Now I won't invest a cent in this and have no problem telling others to stay away.

[Pipercub]

Mike was a GREAT guy when he started out on Retro Gaming Roundup. A very passionate gamer, and all around nice guy. It's what makes this all so stupifying. What in the world happened to SoCal Mike?

U.K. Mike (who may drop by to comment on this as well) have been asking ourselves that question for over a year now. We have even asked can we have our old Socal Mike back? This is a man we loved like a brother, we shared hotel rooms at expos, were guests in each other's homes, and it always felt more like family than friends. Socal Mike really, really was a true believer and while he certainly expressed that he wanted to work in this (gaming) industry rather than what he was doing for a day job there was always a love of the games and community first. I could not in good faith say that he was ever about the money (at an opportunistic level) and his humor and spark for gaming was among the greatest I have seen. I feel like I am writing an obituary here, and as U.K. Mike and I have mutually expressed it may as well be because its like were talking about a guy that isn't around anymore. All of this using and discarding people, throwing them under the bus and diminishing their contributions which helped turn his ideas into reality, and trying to shut down videos and articles and deleting facebook messages that are in opposition to what he is doing as some sort of righteous crusade when in fact they are telling the truth, all of this is not the guy we knew.

 

The best I can tell you is that when the first kickstarter of the mag hit all of the "we" talk, and there is ALLOT of that on a Socal Mike project, ended and the ME talk began. It was like when people get bit by a zombie and their eyes glaze over and they are gone. Funny enough I was talking with someone the other day telling old Socal Mike stories, like the times that we surprised him with U.K. Mike coming to the US. The first time we staged them meeting in the bathroom with UK on the pot, the next time we dressed UK up as a waiter at a bar in Portland. Man it was classic, after we reveal it was UK Socal takes out his phone and calls his wife calmly, 'Yeah, yeah, they got me again, he was a waiter this time" I am chuckleing just now thinking about it, we miss that guy.

[mickcris]

Wow, big dog in the house! Honored to see you here, Ian!

 

I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say that we all appreciate the work that you and Pat have done in covering the RVGS/Chameleon story. I'm afraid I wasn't familiar with the CUPodcast before that, but I've since become a big fan!

We do the discovery and they present it to a wider audience. Glad it gets out there to more people that would miss out on the info.

[dj_convoy]

Ian, thanks to you and Pat for being voices Mike can't (try to) silence.

[pxlsicle]

We do the discovery and they present it to a wider audience. Glad it gets out there to more people that would miss out on the info.

Yeah, we try to shout out Atari Age at least once or twice during those segments so people know we source a bunch of info from you. Not all of it but this is a great place to catch up on fast moving stories and maybe learn even more that we didn't catch. Thanks all!

[+Random Terrain]

. . . I've since become a big fan!

Sounds cool. Being able to change shape like that must be a blast. If I tried that, I'd just blow it. I bet it's a breeze for people to push you around now, but don't let that put you in the doldrums.

 

[mickcris]

Yeah, we try to shout out Atari Age at least once or twice during those segments so people know we source a bunch of info from you. Not all of it but this is a great place to catch up on fast moving stories and maybe learn even more that we didn't catch. Thanks all!

Yeah, lots of the SNES mini scandal evidence was probably noticed by a ton of people simultaneously as it was so blatantly obvious. I still cannot believe there are people saying it wasn't an SNES mini.

Edited February 19, 2016 by mickcris

[Retro Nick]

Ok, Hi! I'm Ian from the CUPodcast.

Hi Ian! You and Pat have the largest audience, and the broadest reach of any of us here. Thanks for getting the word out!

[Gentlegamer]

He just couldn't resist throwing limited edition color cartridge shells into the mix right at Tier #1. All of this tacky crap that I so loathed about the Retro VGS campaign is back and I was really hoping he'd reign it in. He keeps pointing out the Chameleon you get in the current tiers is "black" so I can only assume we're going to have all the Charms Blowpop colors rolled out soon. The reason this grinds my gears so much is because he's trying to force collectibility onto something right from the get go. Remember how well that worked for Marvel trading cards in the nineties? "Maybe Collectible!" should appear on the freaking Chameleon feature list. This sort of nonsense is done simply to prey on collectors and make a buck. This why I genuinely think Mike has absolutely no genuine care for the retro gaming community (anymore, I've heard he was great in the past). Sisyphus keeps pushing that Jag shell up a hill because he sees $$$ at the top.

 

Ok, Hi! I'm Ian from the CUPodcast. I'm like the blushing nerd talking to the prom queen. I enjoy lurking in your threads and not just the drama ones! If you hate me I promise I'm pretty darn friendly and easy going in real life. I have no schtick on the podcast but I tend to get worked up at certain topics, sometimes depending on the day I've had. If you find me likeable... I promise I'm EVEN MORE likeable in person =P. Can't say I'l contribute much here. I don't play a lot of Atari although I do have an unhealthy love of the 5200. I don't currently own one because I don't have a separate room for the mammoth.

 

Back to lurking...

 

Nailed it, Ian. Kennedy really only cares about tapping that collectard market and not actually making a real playable product.

[Retro Nick]

U.K. Mike (who may drop by to comment on this as well) have been asking ourselves that question for over a year now. We have even asked can we have our old Socal Mike back? This is a man we loved like a brother, we shared hotel rooms at expos, were guests in each other's homes, and it always felt more like family than friends. Socal Mike really, really was a true believer and while he certainly expressed that he wanted to work in this (gaming) industry rather than what he was doing for a day job there was always a love of the games and community first. I could not in good faith say that he was ever about the money (at an opportunistic level) and his humor and spark for gaming was among the greatest I have seen. I feel like I am writing an obituary here, and as U.K. Mike and I have mutually expressed it may as well be because its like were talking about a guy that isn't around anymore. All of this using and discarding people, throwing them under the bus and diminishing their contributions which helped turn his ideas into reality, and trying to shut down videos and articles and deleting facebook messages that are in opposition to what he is doing as some sort of righteous crusade when in fact they are telling the truth, all of this is not the guy we knew.

 

The best I can tell you is that when the first kickstarter of the mag hit all of the "we" talk, and there is ALLOT of that on a Socal Mike project, ended and the ME talk began. It was like when people get bit by a zombie and their eyes glaze over and they are gone. Funny enough I was talking with someone the other day telling old Socal Mike stories, like the times that we surprised him with U.K. Mike coming to the US. The first time we staged them meeting in the bathroom with UK on the pot, the next time we dressed UK up as a waiter at a bar in Portland. Man it was classic, after we reveal it was UK Socal takes out his phone and calls his wife calmly, 'Yeah, yeah, they got me again, he was a waiter this time" I am chuckleing just now thinking about it, we miss that guy.

I remember all of those as they were retold on your show. Great moments. Even funnier is that his wife was in on some of it!

 

My favorite piece from Mike was his retrospective on pre-gameboy portable gaming. This included Tomy pocket games. I had a similar experience, with my mom providing me with a grab bag of pocket games, comic books, and kids magazines at the start of road trips. It was total nostalgia overload to listen to Mike share his story. Plus his endlessly quotable comments that UK Mike would replay out of context over, and over.

 

The point my original post was to tell everyone that Mike was not always like this. This is a different person we are dealing with today. I had the same thing happen to me when I was a kid. I had an older friend who was like a brother to me. We went camping, played video games, and shot bb guns together. One day, he flaked out on me, and became a duchebag. I found out later it was due to drugs. Bottom line? I completely washed my hands of him. It wasn't worth getting hurt over, and over.

 

Mike's drug is money, I'm affaid.

[Reaperman]

[Retro Nick]

 

Nailed it, Ian. Kennedy really only cares about tapping that collectard market and not actually making a real playable product.

I think that part of the problem is that Mike is an obsessive collector himself. He probably wants this stuff himself as much as he wants to sell it to everyone.

[RupanIII]

I'm mainly wondering/worried if he's tapping into FPGA Arcade now.

anyone know?

 

http://www.fpgaarcade.com/platforms/

 

Click Forums, look around.

[Osgeld]

[Akito01]

Although I have mixed feelings about the Retro Gaming Roundup podcast and its hosts, one of the genuine highlights of that show was their extensive interview of Ted Dabney. It was very clear that the hosts were anxious to tell the other side of the Atari story, and give credit where it was due to the engineers (Dabney and Alcorn) that made all of Atari's success possible.

 

Because Mike was a part of that interview, it is disappointing that he apparently has forgotten that primal lesson. More to the point, Bushnell never took a Magnavox Odyssey and put an Atari shell over it and pretended it was his own work.

[Andromeda Stardust]

We have a week to prepare polite, respectful questions for their Kickstarter campaign. Some suggestions, assuming they aren't addressed up front:

 

- Why haven't you shown us the inside of the Toy Fair "prototype?" There are a lot of people who believe that you simply put a mini Super Nintendo board in your custom Jaguar shell. If this is not true, what was in there?

 

- What is your plan for quality testing the FPGA cores you have written/acquired?

 

- Can you explain how your device is significantly better than software emulation? It seems less flexible, especially if it cannot be updated.

 

- Will the Chameleon receive any post-release hardware support if we receive a unit with defects? The COLECO ADAM was infamous for its return rate.

 

- Several press outlets are talking about Atari 2600 compatibility, but we haven't heard this from you. Will this happen, and when?

 

I think this would be more constructive than jokes or trolling.

 

Also, I discovered something nice about their Facebook page. After you are erased and blocked for asking a direct question, you can "save" and "follow" them without having to "like" then and have their page show up in your profile. Happy days!

I outta know better by now, but I plan on backing at the lowest teir "token" level of $10-$15 or whatever. Anyone want me to post intelligent, non-trollish questions on their Kickstarter campaign, be sure to let me know. It's a low risk wager and if they succeed and fail to deliver anything, I'm not out much.

[StopDrop&Retro]

^ same

 

I'll bid $1, Bob!

[Newsdee]

Don't make this personal; this is a company selling a product that does not yet exist. I think it's fair to say that COLECO has no clue about hardware and the team they assembled to build one is apparently lacking the expertise to do so (in truth COLECO is a licensed name, but I'm making it consistent with the image they want to project as the original company).

It's as if Nintendo were pitching a new console but they laid off all their hardware and game designers, and just kept their manufacturing guy and advertising manager, and then they put up ads saying "Help-a me builda my nexto console" with Mario wielding a Virtual Boy. The usual tactic is betting on there being enough passionate geeks out there that might be willing to do work for them for chump change while they reap the rewards for "having the idea" and owning the brand name. And I'm not blaming one guy either - this is a classic corporate trick which does work but also ends up parodied in Dilbert.

 

So let's not talk about nostalgia of how old things were, but look at what is in front of us. If we look at it as a business the whole thing is shaky from lack of clear model. if we look at it from a hardware point of view it's vaporware so far. IMHO this is an ad company trying to get support/captivate an audience so they can monetize it in a way that they either don't know or haven't shared publicly. Or maybe they're betting their margins on manufacturing will be enough to make the KS/IGG campaign profitable in itself.

Edited February 20, 2016 by Newsdee

[Retro Nick]

Ok, I am now a member of the "banned from the coleco facebook club". I asked why the Coleco compo cart couldn't just have all the games on 1 cart. BOOM! Comment IMMIDATELY deleted, and I can no longer post comments on their page. I posted annother comment as well, just before that, asking why so many comments have been deleted. These comments were SECONDS apart. Talk about an iron curtain. There is absolutely a person watching that thing like a hawk.

State controlled media, that's exactly what that is.

What a sham whole thing is.

[kevtris]

... and mouthpieces, official or otherwise!

 

But seriously, I finally had the chance to read Kevtris's excellent rundown a few pages back, and I appreciate his taking the time to write it. My only response is to this piece:

 

Kevtris, please stick to your guns on this! Don't license your cores to them, and don't help them in any other way! As Mike gets more desperate, I can easily see him coming after you and waving more money in your face, but please don't allow the fruits of your labor to be used to rescue someone as undeserving as Mike Kennedy! Put it all into the Zimba 3000 instead. I'm sure that all of us will be lining up to support it whenever you have it ready.

 

Don't worry, I won't touch the CC with a 10 foot pole wrapped in electrical tape. They lost my help when they ignored all my engineering advice and surged ahead with their excessively expensive flavor of the week ideas. Every time I talked to them, the design had radically morphed, and they had zero specs or even inklings of specs written down. It was always more chips and parts and more functionality, and the previous work was just thrown out to make way for the next greatest thing. Near the end of discussions, Mike was talking about some great new chip that someone was going to release in november (this was around june? july?) and the datasheets weren't even ready. I dunno but if you're this far along in the design and are trying to design in something not even ready, it's no wonder that nothing was ready by the time the IGG campaign was launched. In fact, I never ever *did* see a single thing written down, never a single picture or idea, never a drawing or shred of documentation at all. Either they kept 'em close to the vest (or more likely) they never existed.

 

They had to have had set in stone specs by June or July at the very latest to have a hope in hell of meeting their targets IMO. When I saw them hemming and hawing about specs and capabilities and changing them fluidly up until the IGG campaign started (harddrives in carts? really? REALLY? REALLY?) I knew the project was in deep stuff. Then when the campaign started and it was revealed that the FPGA wouldn't even maybe make it in, I knew it was never going to come to fruition, at least as far as my cores were concerned. That's when I decided to make that initial post in the thread. I had been quiet up to that point, because I was being professional about respecting their design decisions, but even I have my limits on the insanity. The multiple calls about it just seemed like a giant case of mental masturbation with no direction when it came to make an actual device. It seemed they were just having fun talking about what it could be and not what it can or should be.

 

John had little clue with regards on how to even connect an FPGA and SoC's video together and wanted this really complicated and expensive method of somehow multiplexing two video busses together (yah, good luck) vs. simply passing the SoC video through the FPGA and letting the FPGA do cool things like graphics overlays (my idea I gave). That would've saved money (no multiplexing), board space, and vastly increased functionality by allowing the FPGA to basically "Sega 32X" the video stream in real time. John said if you wanted to do overlays the ARM CPU could have cycle timed code to change the multiplexer source on the fly. He didn't like my passthrough idea with its "chroma keying" methodology (i.e. colour #FFFF00 out of the SoC could cause the FPGA to replace the video on the fly, pixel by pixel).

 

So these are the reasons that I don't want to have anything to do with this project when it was the RVGS, let alone now with its horrible, horrible showing at the toy fair. Speaking of this, I found it pretty ironic that they were showing off a SNES at the toy fair, which probably last saw a SNES back in 1991 or 1992 -- 25ish years ago. Just a real shame no one got to take a flash picture of it head on into the yawning chasms of the controller ports to see what really was inside.

 

The original deal I made basically was a fee up front per core and then some hourly rate to make it work on their hardware, and I was going to get paid up front for this work- there was no way I would work for free. If I'm going to work on a project for free, it is going by MY project, designed the way I think it should be designed. I basically told them my required specs and what the hardware needed to do to be able to run my cores. I feel bad for whatever poor sucker he ropes into working on this thing. I know for sure that said person will never ever get paid unless this thing is funded- which it most likely won't be. So whoever you are, please don't waste much time on this. I suspect John and Steve wasted way too many hours on this white elephant of unpaid time that they will never be able to get back. I guess the siren song of lots of easy money clouded their judgement until the harsh rocks of reality came crashing through their hulls of despair.

 

As for them finding cores cheaper than I could supply, good for them. I hope they are vetted and tested as well as mine, and compared against logic analyzer traces of the real systems. I did a little poking around on teh googlez and only managed to find a single reference in passing to an Intellivision FPGA core, and nothing about SNES except that Japanese one. There was a college final project for making an SNES but it never got far enough to run an opcode so that doesn't count.

 

For Intv, I found refs to my designs including this one I found quite amusing. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/214190-intellivision-on-a-chip-is-this-real/ Then there was the "FPGA-based video surveillance comes of age | Intelli-Vision" which gave me a chuckle. The only other reference to an INTV I can find is here:

 

http://www.fpgaarcade.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=177

 

 

We also made the intellivision, but legally I can't open source it for sure, although I can answer questions

[Retro Nick]

Don't make this personal; this is a company selling a product that does not yet exist. I think it's fair to say that COLECO has no clue about hardware and the team they assembled to build one is apparently lacking the expertise to do so (in truth COLECO is a licensed name, but I'm making it consistent with the image they want to project as the original company).

 

It's as if Nintendo were pitching a new console but they laid off all their hardware and game designers, and just kept their manufacturing guy and advertising manager, and then they put up ads saying "Help-a me builda my nexto console" with Mario wielding a Virtual Boy. The usual tactic is betting on there being enough passionate geeks out there that might be willing to do work for them for chump change while they reap the rewards for "having the idea" and owning the brand name. And I'm not blaming one guy either - this is a classic corporate trick which does work but also ends up parodied in Dilbert.

 

So let's not talk about nostalgia of how old things were, but look at what is in front of us. If we look at it as a business the whole thing is shaky from lack of clear model. if we look at it from a hardware point of view it's vaporware so far. IMHO this is an ad company trying to get support/captivate an audience so they can monetize it in a way that they either don't know or haven't shared publicly. Or maybe they're betting their margins on manufacturing will be enough to make the KS/IGG campaign profitable in itself.

If I were clouded by past nostalgia, I would be defending Mike's project, and giving it the benefit of the boubt. I have done neither.

[RupanIII]

He could ofcourse also be trying to rip/clone a MiST board, which us in the Amiga community are very familiar with.
Here's a good vid of that in action, for those have never seen and ACTUAL FPGA machine running (which you haven't here, lol).
I fear this most due to the Amiga core. Next he'll have an AtariST

 

I'm mainly wondering/worried if he's tapping into FPGA Arcade now.

anyone know?

 

http://www.fpgaarcade.com/platforms/

 

Click Forums, look around.

[RupanIII]

Here's a guy from FPGA Arcade/Replay Boards.

 

[Bryan]

Obviously there are a lot of smart guys out there who could say, "I've got an FPGA board that plays games from a number of systems. Help me fund a project to make it into a nice retail package" instead of "I've got Jaguar molds and a dream. Give me lots of money so I can figure out the next step."

 

It's nice to see Ian here. I enjoy the Podcast even though my wife often says, "what the heck are you listening to??!" when Ian yells something like, "EAT MY DICK!"

[StopDrop&Retro]

Ok, I am now a member of the "banned from the coleco facebook club". I asked why the Coleco compo cart couldn't just have all the games on 1 cart. BOOM! Comment IMMIDATELY deleted, and I can no longer post comments on their page. I posted annother comment as well, just before that, asking why so many comments have been deleted. These comments were SECONDS apart. Talk about an iron curtain. There is absolutely a person watching that thing like a hawk.

State controlled media, that's exactly what that is.

What a sham whole thing is.

 

I was trying to find some good Soviet propaganda to illustrate how Mike reacts to non-believers on Facebook.

 

The internet did not disappoint.