Why is the importance of ColecoVision almost never brought up historically?

[Geoff Oltmans]

No. Only the Add-a-Halt (game pause device), E.M. #1 and E.M. #3 were released for the CV and numerous 3rd Party hardware items were released for the ADAM that use the Expansion Port.

 

You might be thinking of the Practical Peripherals Super Sketch, which plugs into the cartridge port.

I don't think that was it. I was vaguely remembering some details about a expansion port game that used it to support saving high scores or something, but I may be getting my consoles mixed up, or I'm just completely off base.

[Bill Loguidice]

I don't think that was it. I was vaguely remembering some details about a expansion port game that used it to support saving high scores or something, but I may be getting my consoles mixed up, or I'm just completely off base.

 

Probably completely off base. That would have probably gotten a lot of attention by now if something like that were ever created, even as a one-off!

[Q*bertkid]

I think the biggest thing that the Colecovision did was change the consumer, It made you expect more and if a game wasn't almost arcade perfect it sucked after this point in time and I agree that too appreciate the Colecovision's significance you really had to be there. I remember right after I got my Colecovision (Oct 82) I went to a birthday party and my friend got an intellivison and everybody was playing it except me and I remember my friends mom asking me if I liked video games and I said yes and she asked why I wasn't playing it and being an 8 year old kid I told her that thing sucks compared to a Colecovision. So when she took me home her and Kenny and his younger brother Billy went inside and she wanted to see this "Colecovision" well she must have really loved Donkey Kong because the next time I went over there the intellijunk was gone and they had a Colecovision (Your Welcome Kenny Singleton). And I remember every time people that came over who had never played it couldn't put the controller down and had these huge smiles on their faces because all they knew was the 2600 and it really made it that much more fun to play. It was like going from a black and white T.V. to color T.V.

Edited November 22, 2017 by Q*bertkid

[Flojomojo]

ColecoVision was next in line, but it's not as if someone else wouldn't have thought of arcade ports with high resolution graphics and better system specs.

 

If it were truly revolutionary, it would have ushered in more genres and gameplay styles. For example, the Intellivision had a bunch of strategic games, slower and deeper than the average arcade port. ColecoVision got a few of those, but it's not known for that.

[Bill Loguidice]

ColecoVision was next in line, but it's not as if someone else wouldn't have thought of arcade ports with high resolution graphics and better system specs.

 

If it were truly revolutionary, it would have ushered in more genres and gameplay styles. For example, the Intellivision had a bunch of strategic games, slower and deeper than the average arcade port. ColecoVision got a few of those, but it's not known for that.

 

While I agree with the general premise, I think if we look towards the end of the ColecoVision's commercial lifespan, we can start to see envelopes being pushed. Besides all the educational stuff, there were hard-to-classify games like Campaign '84, War Room, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, etc., not to mention unreleased games like RPG Lord of the Dungeon, which would have been the first console game with a battery backup. I think had circumstances been different and the ColecoVision survived through the Crash - for instance, Coleco not going down the Adam rabbit hole or going all-in on the Cabbage Patch thing - we could have gotten some really interesting stuff in the 85 - 86 timeframes. Of course, that premise would also have to assume that many of the third parties developing these games wouldn't have also gone down in flames, etc.

[JaguarVision]

ColecoVision was next in line, but it's not as if someone else wouldn't have thought of arcade ports with high resolution graphics and better system specs.

 

If it were truly revolutionary, it would have ushered in more genres and gameplay styles. For example, the Intellivision had a bunch of strategic games, slower and deeper than the average arcade port. ColecoVision got a few of those, but it's not known for that.

It literally got all the newerr styles that were in the arcades what?

 

It's the PC/Computerdominant genres they were missing. Even then we got games like Alcazar.

 

 

 

While I agree with the general premise, I think if we look towards the end of the ColecoVision's commercial lifespan, we can start to see envelopes being pushed. Besides all the educational stuff, there were hard-to-classify games like Campaign '84, War Room, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, etc., not to mention unreleased games like RPG Lord of the Dungeon, which would have been the first console game with a battery backup. I think had circumstances been different and the ColecoVision survived through the Crash - for instance, Coleco not going down the Adam rabbit hole or going all-in on the Cabbage Patch thing - we could have gotten some really interesting stuff in the 85 - 86 timeframes. Of course, that premise would also have to assume that many of the third parties developing these games wouldn't have also gone down in flames, etc.

 

Coleco did survive through the crash. it was primarily Adamn failing that made the,m choose between electronics and CPK.

[mr_me]

ColecoVision was next in line, but it's not as if someone else wouldn't have thought of arcade ports with high resolution graphics and better system specs.

 

If it were truly revolutionary, it would have ushered in more genres and gameplay styles. For example, the Intellivision had a bunch of strategic games, slower and deeper than the average arcade port. ColecoVision got a few of those, but it's not known for that.

There was nothing revolutionary about coleco vision technology. It is the same graphics system from the 1979 TI-99/4. It was offered to Mattel in 1979 and Milton Bradley also planned a games machine in 1979 with the same graphics chip. It is thought that the TI home computer division cancelled on Milton Bradley because they didn't want to share the chips. Unlike Coleco, Nintendo took that same graphics technology and made significant improvements. Coleco did have Donkey Kong and they weren't going to make it for the Atari 5200.

 

Like Qbertkid mentioned the high res graphics had a huge impact. It was higher res than the 5200. As long as it looked like Donkey Kong it didn't matter that it didn't play as well. Being the market leader, coleco vision was attracting third party software and more interesting games. But once coleco dropped coleco vision in 1985 third party developers looked elsewhere.

[Pixelboy]

Being the market leader, coleco vision was attracting third party software and more interesting games.

[Jinks]

Cause it was a small blip in video gaming history. Just like intellivision.

Someday 30 years from now atari will be seen as a Studebaker and nintendo lasting 60 some years will be like Ford.

[Q*bertkid]

^{Just like HDTV said "If OPCODE's Pacman Collection game would have existed back in 1983, 1 million more ColecoVision systems would have been sold"}

[mr_me]

Atari had the license to Pac-man. The Atarisoft, unlreleased 1983 version of coleco vision pac-man is quite good. I wonder if it wasn't released for competitive reasons; just as Donkey Kong was not released for the 5200.

 

To me, Donkey Kong is the better "killer app".

Edited November 25, 2017 by mr_me

[pacman000]

There was nothing revolutionary about coleco vision technology. It is the same graphics system from the 1979 TI-99/4. It was offered to Mattel in 1979 and Milton Bradley also planned a games machine in 1979 with the same graphics chip. It is thought that the TI home computer division cancelled on Milton Bradley because they didn't want to share the chips. Unlike Coleco, Nintendo took that same graphics technology and made significant improvements. Coleco did have Donkey Kong and they weren't going to make it for the Atari 5200.

 

Like Qbertkid mentioned the high res graphics had a huge impact. It was higher res than the 5200. As long as it looked like Donkey Kong it didn't matter that it didn't play as well. Being the market leader, coleco vision was attracting third party software and more interesting games. But once coleco dropped coleco vision in 1985 third party developers looked elsewhere.

If I remember right V-Tech did use that chip in 1981's CreatiVision. Let me check...

 

CreatiVision Specs: http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/pg80-creativision.htm#specsTexas Instruments TMS9928\9929 VDP (video display processor)

 

Coleco Vision Specs: http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/pg80-colecovision.htm#page=specsTexas Instruments TMS9928A (VDC)

 

Hmmm.... Sounds similar, but not exactly the same.

 

Videos of both systems:

 

CreatiVision:

 

Coleco Vision:

Edited November 25, 2017 by pacman000

[pacman000]

Cause it was a small blip in video gaming history. Just like intellivision.

Someday 30 years from now atari will be seen as a Studebaker and nintendo lasting 60 some years will be like Ford.

I usually go with Felix the Cat and Disney, with Sega as the Fleischer Bros, but this is a good analogy too.

[almightytodd]

I maintain that if Coleco had properly executed on their vision of the Adam computer - if it had been released at a price $200 less; if it had been rock-solid reliable, our conversation about ColecoVision would be radically altered. A dedicated word processor system with a letter-quality printer, that was also a general-purpose computer, and an arcade-graphics quality home game console, all for less than $550... ...that would have been killer in 1983.

 

Even if the game titles available for the CV had continued to be mediocre throughout 1984, hundreds of thousands of families who'd started out with a CV for Christmas in '83, would have upgraded to the full computer system for Christmas of '84, and that would have kept CV sales alive for hundreds of thousands more. Additional expansion options would have been inevitable; new floppy-drives, dedicated higher resolution monitors, memory expansion, and so-on. Computers were crazy expensive back then; getting into a very basic IBM or clone PC system with floppies and a printer required thousands of dollars. Even a fully expanded TRS-80 system with memory, floppies, and a letter-quality printer was thousands of dollars.

 

The strategy of starting out with something useful for a few hundred dollars; a ColecoVision console, and then growing it into a full system for a few hundred more dollars at a time, was brilliant. But the marketing side promised more than the engineering could deliver. Coleco should have recognized that if a technology company like Texas Instruments was having so much trouble getting the right mix of technology and economy, this move of a toy company into technology was overly ambitious. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. I suspect that the thinking at Coleco was somewhere along the lines of, "To have any hope of winning the race, you've got to be in the starting blocks before the gun goes off".

Edited November 25, 2017 by almightytodd

[LoTonah]

Unlike Coleco, Nintendo took that same graphics technology and made significant improvements.

 

Huh? I agree with most of what you said, but this stood out. Since when did Nintendo use the TI 99xx chip? I believe you were thinking of Sega.

[mr_me]

I didn't say Nintendo used the TI graphics processor. The Famicom/NES graphics system is based on the TI innovation of managing many more sprites, in hardware, than it can actually draw and works similarly. They both can draw 64 total sprite pixels on a line but Nintendo sprites are 8 pixels wide and TI's 16 pixels wide. Nintendo made significant improvements like doubling the total number of sprites managed, more colours, scrolling, and most importantly extended the graphics bus to the cartridge. Sega however used the TI chip and it's one of the reasons the Famicom oldsold Sega and was the market leader in Japan. Sega responded with similar improvements to the TI graphics processor a couple of years later.

Edited November 25, 2017 by mr_me

[Jinks]

I usually go with Felix the Cat and Disney, with Sega as the Fleischer Bros, but this is a good analogy too.

I just made it up... sounded pretty retarded as usual..

[mozartpc27]

That's exactly how my uncle ended up with a CV system BITD. His daughter had to have the doll that Christmas and purchasing a CV was the only way he could get it at the time. They were literally bundled together - what a racket! So when we'd visit, played the system of course. Funny though... even he ended up purchasing Expansion #1 for it, so we could bring our VCS carts over. Remember playing 2600 Pole Position, Combat, Ms. Pac-Man, Venture, Mousetrap, SuperChallenge Football and Super ChallengeBaseball as much as or more than the CV stuff he had at the time.

This is how we got our CV too. Mom wanted to get my sister a cabbage patch doll and had to buy me a ColecoVision. Fortunately our birthdays are 8 days apart so we each got our gift, and I think my cousins already had a ColecoVision so I had some familiarity. My mom then went on to buy an ADAM so we doubled down on the Coleco thing, and indeed it is the ADAM that I use today.

[Flojomojo]

I maintain that if Coleco had properly executed on their vision of the Adam computer

 

[JaguarVision]

Cause it was a small blip in video gaming history. Just like intellivision.

Someday 30 years from now atari will be seen as a Studebaker and nintendo lasting 60 some years will be like Ford.

CVG was more than a small blip for years until the 2000's when also wikipedia had that era of consoles labeled under 2-bit for years.

 

Speaking of if only we had more info on how many CBK got sold when bundled with the Coleco we would have a better idea of its sales range, because it never made sense to me that the Coleco sold only 2 million when it was already at that number quite a bit before the Coleco sales fell and even then it weathered the crash unlike the other two.

[mr_me]

Anyone who says 2M coleco visions were sold should also say "as of 1984/04/17". That 2M number comes from a statement from Coleco on that date. http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Second_generation_of_video_games#cite_note-coleco_report-24

 

Coleco visions remained in production after that and as jaguarvision mentioned we don't know how many more coleco visions sold. Do serial numbers indicate how many were manufactured?

 

Edit: Even if they doubled those sales, the numbers would still look like a blip overall. You might have to look elsewhere to make a case for its significance.

Edited November 28, 2017 by mr_me

[zzip]

Atari had the license to Pac-man. The Atarisoft, unlreleased 1983 version of coleco vision pac-man is quite good. I wonder if it wasn't released for competitive reasons; just as Donkey Kong was not released for the 5200.

 

To me, Donkey Kong is the better "killer app".

Instead of suing Coleco for allowing their Donkey Kong to run on Adam, Atari should have allowed their own 800 DK to run on 5200. Stalemate!

[mr_me]

Did Atari sue Coleco over Adam Donkey Kong? By the time Adam DK was released, Warner's Atari was out of the home computer and home videogame business. I don't think those licenses tranferred to Tramiel's Atari. There's no way Atari could make their version of DK for the 5200 in 1983 without getting sued.

[zzip]

Did Atari sue Coleco over Adam Donkey Kong? By the time Adam DK was released, Warner's Atari was out of the home computer and home videogame business. I don't think those licenses tranferred to Tramiel's Atari. There's no way Atari could make their version of DK for the 5200 in 1983 without getting sued.

Well according to Wikipedia, Atari raised a stink about it, maybe they didn't actually go to court

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong_%28video_game%29

 

Atari had the computer license and Coleco had the console license, but things were obviously much murkier than that. Just the threat of "Get that off the Adam, or we might do a 5200 port..." might be enough

 

This happened in 1983, while Warner was still very much in the business.

[mr_me]

It's an interesting question. The Donkey Kong cartridge, released in 1982 and designed for coleco vision, runs on an Adam computer. In 1983 the Adam computer was released and that same cartridge runs on the Adam but since Donkey Kong was a coleco vision packin you couldn't buy the cartridge if you only owned the Adam. If Atari, who has DK rights on computers, were to sue Coleco they couldn't argue any sales of that cartridge for the Adam. Could they have stopped distribution of the coleco vision cartridge after the Adam was released? Probably not.

 

The adam donkey kong tape cassette wasn't released until 1984, after the Atari asset sale to Tramiel. Ocean's version of donkey kong also showed up after that.

Edited December 4, 2017 by mr_me