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CollectorVision Phoenix Pre-Order is now live!


Bmack36

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So CV support thru Cartridge or SD Card, Atari 2600 support thru SD Card and later possibly a CV-to-2600 cart adapter.

 

How about going for the "Era Triifecta" with an Intellivision core at release or soon after via SD Card loading? Just thinking out loud because the Inty community is much larger than the CV community and could boost sales signifantly for the initial production run.

...

For Inty support to be worth the trouble, you need an actual Inty controller. So the from-the-get-go question is this: Is the controller included with AtGames' Intellivision Flashback compatible with the front controller ports on the Phoenix?

Intellivision controllers are 9-pin digital controllers. Support for original or flashback controllers shouldn't be an issue. If you have a controller that hasn't been abused they are fairly reliable.

 

The problem with Intellivision is where you are going to get an intellivision fpga source. Kevtris has the only one that I know of.

 

I'm not sure if the intellivision community is bigger but they talk more. Collectorvision sells to both so they should have a good idea. It sure would be nice to have an a2600/intellivision/colecovision all in one fpga system.

 

Edit:

If you want sales address atari 2600 cartridges, analog/paddle controllers, switches. With that stuff the kickstarter would have been achieved easily.

 

Would this set up work differently on the Phoenix than it does for the Colecovision? I do something similar in that I use an Atari 2600 controller in port 1 for gameplay and a Coleco controller in port 2 for game selection. However, this set up does NOT work if any in game keypad presses are required. I cannot select a floor for the elevator in Miner 2049er for example. Maybe there's just something wrong with my Colecovision but if the Phoenix works in the same way, that isn't really a solution.

Wouldn't a y-adapter in controller port 1 do what you're looking for on a real colecovision. Edited by mr_me
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I'm curious what numbers (based on other, similar projects) you were actually expecting?

 

 

Oh, certainly no disrespect was intended... I just know that another campaign I followed received a large number of backers like the ZX Spectrum Vega (over 4,000). I thought that was normal...but again, my bad. Sounds like no matter what, you guys are going to go forward with it, which is cool!

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Intellivision controllers are 9-pin digital controllers. Support for original or flashback controllers shouldn't be an issue. If you have a controller that hasn't been abused they are fairly reliable.

 

The problem with Intellivision is where you are going to get an intellivision fpga source. Kevtris has the only one that I know of.

 

I'm not sure if the intellivision community is bigger but they talk more. Collectorvision sells to both so they should have a good idea. It sure would be nice to have an a2600/intellivision/colecovision all in one fpga system.

 

Edit:

If you want sales address atari 2600 cartridges, analog/paddle controllers, switches. With that stuff the kickstarter would have been achieved easily.

The Intellivision community is definitely bigger than the Colecovision one

 

Regarding the Intellivision FPGA core, well... we would just do like we did for the Colecovision, creating our very own core

Edited by retroillucid
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Oh, certainly no disrespect was intended... I just know that another campaign I followed received a large number of backers like the ZX Spectrum Vega (over 4,000). I thought that was normal...but again, my bad. Sounds like no matter what, you guys are going to go forward with it, which is cool!

The ZX-spectrum next had about 3000 backers and raised over $800k. Although they did have the original industrial design person and one of the big developers from the original zx-spectrum as part of the project.

 

I think the Vega thing was closer to chameleon category or at least had a whole lot of controversy surrounding it.

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The ZX-spectrum next had about 3000 backers and raised over $800k. Although they did have the original industrial design person and one of the big developers from the original zx-spectrum as part of the project.

 

Another factor is that the active Spectrum community is orders of magnitude larger than the active ColecoVision community.

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Oh, certainly no disrespect was intended... I just know that another campaign I followed received a large number of backers like the ZX Spectrum Vega (over 4,000). I thought that was normal...but again, my bad. Sounds like no matter what, you guys are going to go forward with it, which is cool!

 

No disrespect detect or implied. The Spectrum projects like the ZX Spectrum Next (3,000+ backers) are a different beast, much like the C-64 project that recently saw a commercial release. Both of those platforms have wider original name recognition, lifetime sales, and support to boost them, albeit the Spectrum mostly in the UK (although I'm a supporter myself here in the US).

 

While the ColecoVision was one of the more popular pre-Crash systems, it was relatively short-lived, and on top of that, the CollectorVision system had no direct association with the Coleco/ColecoVision name to leverage. Since ColecoVision homebrews sell in the healthy range of what, a few hundred cartridges or so, I don't think it's out of line that only slightly more than that turned out for a relatively high-priced (although worth it) modern console replacement. If this had some type of official association with Atari, Coleco, or some other known brand, I suspect it could have broken 4 figures of support. Grand scheme, though, that's still not really all that much, is it?

 

Even the Atari VCS, which did have the name association and other factors working in its favor (along with all the justified negativity, of course), only had a little over 11,000 backers, and a notable percentage of that was just for the controllers. So either way, we're really not talking big numbers.

 

It's fascinating how deceptive seeing how the final dollar figures are. At first blush, it seems like mass support, but even some of the very biggest Kickstarter/Indiegogo projects that seem like blockbusters money-wise are pretty minuscule user/owner numbers in the grand scheme of things. We only need to look at the highs and lows of something like the Ouya to see how crowdfunding success is incredibly different from success in the regular marketplace.

 

Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying that's why I'm not really surprised that the CollectorVision project got the numbers that they did. In truth, that's extremely respectable.

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The way it is setup on the Phoenix is the Controller ports, ps2 keyboard, and snes controller are all active at the same time. Right now the keyboard and SNES controller are only mapped to Player 1, so you could use all 3 at the same time to control player 1.

 

I think something like this might work for just a numberpad option, but i haven't tested it.

https://www.amazon.com/Numeric-Keypad-Windows-Desktop-Notebook/dp/B0161V1R30

Not sure about the keypad as it doesn't have a "#" key but maybe there's a workaround. From what you say, it sounds like my current controller set up will work for in game keypad presses on the Phoenix though, which is great. At least until something better comes along like the Edladdin Super CV becoming available for non Kickstarter pledgers, whenever that may be. It seems to be taking an awfully long time. Or when CollectorVision produce a controller to go with the Phoenix.

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... I'm not really surprised that the CollectorVision project got the numbers that they did. In truth, that's extremely respectable.

 

Completely agreed!

I think we all knew (at CollectorVision) the KS campaign was going to be used as a ''gauge interest'' than more than anything else

 

That being said, we're quite happy of the reception so far :cool:

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While the kickstarter failed, I think what is more telling is that only 400+ people actually put down the money for it. That's a shockingly low amount of people and should probably worry CollectorVision. If they wanna keep this a small batch / one off thing, then that's cool... but I would have thought the ColecoVision community would have come out stronger.

 

I don't recall, did you make a video about the Phoenix or the Kickstarter? With almost 600K subscribers who love retro games, your reach would have been substantial.

 

Perhaps you would consider making a video now letting people know that they can indeed preorder one. :)

Edited by AtariLeaf
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I don't recall, did you make a video about the Phoenix or the Kickstarter? With almost 600K subscribers who love retro games, your reach would have been substantial.

 

Perhaps you would consider making a video now letting people know that they can indeed preorder one. :)

He did send out a tweet about it and it he covered it in his PRGE video.

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Completely agreed!

I think we all knew (at CollectorVision) the KS campaign was going to be used as a ''gauge interest'' than more than anything else

 

That being said, we're quite happy of the reception so far :cool:

 

Of course. It's why we didn't pledge anything. Our interest is expressed here in the message forums.

 

I'd have been laughed at had I mentioned that's what was going on.

 

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Sounds like no matter what, you guys are going to go forward with it, which is cool!

 

The ColecoVision community is not huge, but it is strong, and the community should have enough people to support it via pre-orders. I think you are going to be extremely impressed with the system once you get your hands on it and I can't wait to see you do a video showing it off!

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The Intellivision community is definitely bigger than the Colecovision one

 

...

Based on cartridge sales, roughly, how much bigger. 15%?

 

...

 

Regarding the Intellivision FPGA core, well... we would just do like we did for the Colecovision, creating our very own core

It's always easier to create emulators when you have an example to look at. The colecovision and atari chip sets have been done in fpga and shared, intellivision hasn't.

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Regarding the Intellivision FPGA core, well... we would just do like we did for the Colecovision, creating our very own core

 

To be clear about this, the colecovision core is based off of an open source code. It has just had a lot of work done to fix issues and bugs as well as adding in additional support for things like the F18a.

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I don't recall, did you make a video about the Phoenix or the Kickstarter? With almost 600K subscribers who love retro games, your reach would have been substantial.

 

 

I covered it briefly in my PRGE video. That was the first time I had seen it in person but I didn't have time to mess around with it. And immediately after I reached out to Gamester for a review unit...but that was too close to the finish line of their campaign. So... we'll see... In general I like to only do videos of devices I can hold in my hand and actually test. I'm not really interested in covering press releases and things like that.

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Based on cartridge sales, roughly, how much bigger. 15%?

 

It's always easier to create emulators when you have an example to look at. The colecovision and atari chip sets have been done in fpga and shared, intellivision hasn't.

Well, Kevtris did it. Isn't the Phoenix supposed to be open-source in terms of FPGA cores? Perhaps Kevtris could be interested in porting his core to the Phoenix. :)

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