The Story of the Colecovision, What Could Have Been! - Video Game Retrospective
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- čas přidán 2. 12. 2020
- It's The Coleco Vision! The Colecovision is an awesome awesome console released by toy and tech company Coleco! It's well know for it's powerful graphics, forward thinking technology, awesome arcade games and interesting expansion modules. We discuss the power of the Coleco vision, the awesome colecovision games, and the reason why the Colecovision failed (spoilers: it's the Coleco Adam)
Coleco Adam video!: • Coleco ADAM, the Compu...
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Want more Coleco content? Check out our video on the Coleco ADAM, a Colecovision compatible personal computer that while promising, ended up being a complete disaster! czcams.com/video/cQHUSjsRvMs/video.html
I had an Adam when they were new. I wanted an Apple II but could not afford one. It was a good system but it ended up being used to play more Colecovision games than anything.
@@danielrjones So the Adam in some shape or form was good?
Funny story about when I got my Colecovision in 1983 for Christmas. Someone my Family knew worked in loss prevention for JC Penney, and there were several of the systems returned for whatever reason (Ours had a busted second controller.) We were pretty poor at the time, but Pops managed to get one of these systems. I heard him joking to a Friend that it "fell off a truck." When I told my classmates what my Father had said, it resulted in a phone call to my Parents, wondering why I was saying these things. I didn't understand the expression, clearly. Many fun times with that amazing system.
Do a review of the Gemini system.
@@davidmichael4428 That was just an Atari 2600 clone.
I was 8-years-old that Christmas of 1982 when my dad came up from the basement holding the greatest childhood present we ever got... a Colecovision! I spent that entire morning with my dad and my brother, playing Donkey Kong and Zaxxon over and over again, marveling at the graphics and having the time of my life. I'll never forget it!
Do u still 🎮
@@pieluvr7362 hi cake lovr
So cool
I got mine Christmas '83. I loved it. I thought the Smurfs game was the greatest thing ever
I'm right there with you. I was 9 and we got ours that same Xmas of 82. I had been playing Football on the Intellivision up till then and the graphics on the Colecovision blew my young mind. Good times!
Nobody had a Colecovision, but everybody had a friend with one
The same thing is for the commodore 64...when I had the commodore VIC20.
I was the friend with one and shared it with all my friends
Correct. I had Atari but my friend across the street had Intellivision and Colecovision! It was actually a pretty damn good game machine for its day.
@@Sandelec-gm2cl I knew a kid in elementary school that got a commode 64 for xmas in 1984 but his folks were rich so he got whatever he wanted.....
I still have mine.
My dad was an engineer during Coleco's height, he was extremely proud of their work with Colecovision...and I remember him making a point of saying he wasn't on the team responsible for Adam. His stories are pretty cool about his time working there, one that stands out especially is the fact that they had to wear special suits because they used actual silver in the making of one of their cartridges. And so they had to remove the suits and completely clean themselves after working with the silver to avoid concerns about theft. I love coming across videos like this, where they talk about stuff my father worked on, because they always say the same thing: these devices never die. Similar story, my dad also worked as an engineer for a company that made a line of computers called Sidearm. Some ten years after that company folded, I ran into someone working for Verizon. He had my dad's console sitting right there, and he was using it. Who uses a computer ten years out of date! So I said, have you had that long? The guy goes, I've had this since 1999, you can't kill this machine! It runs like a champ! Unfortunately, the company doesn't exist anymore who made it. So I said, well if you need any IT help with it, I can call my dad right now. He built that console on our dining room table. And I pointed to the rubber around the unit that he had been saying was so tough, and proceeded to tell him how I helped wrap the original neoprene sleeve.
And my mom was one of the officially unofficial game testers for Colecovision and other console units of theirs. The game patterns people would eventually play are more complicated than their original prototypes were meant to be, because my mom kept beating them so quickly.
The Coleco brand was well-known and highly respected among kids. Had the Colecovision been released a year earlier, Atari would've been wiped off of the map!
Practically every kid I knew, received an Atari for Christmas 1981. I figure, Coleco could've taken a good chunk of those sales...too bad!
Can't believe the originals aren't worth more. I still have mine safely stored at my Mum's place. She bought me Frogger from sears and it was $80!!!! Can't believe she did that for me. I was such an at home video game geek. Even my Dad started to play Donkey Kong. Lady bug, Smurf, Space panic. Then there was Sewer Sam and squishem sam. My friend had BC's Quest for Tires and carnival, Duck shoot. Lovely sound and colourful graphics. Will always have fond memories of the Coleco Vision. I am 50 years young now.
c-could this be the first "my dad works at blizzard" ever?
@@walterwalker2978 I don't know the reference. But I do know it was a great memory and something of a source of pride for us kids.
@@jodileonforte3810 its a WoW meme. when you are predicting something is going to happen in a blizzard game, you jokingly claim your dad works at bliz and he told you. was just poking fun at you. i think its cool your dad was a part of gaming history
If you never got to experience the atmosphere that a genuine 80's Arcade gave you..... You truly missed out! Man, those were the best times of my life!
Absolutely, the first true steps at gaming we were alive to experience and pong couldn't hold a candle to it. I'm right there with ya lol.
Absolutely man, golden times.
Ahh but let's admit things are better today.
@@Ti-nf4fq if it wasn't I'd be worried. Gaming has far surpassed anything we could have dreamed up from those days, phones still were mounted on a wall with a 20 foot extention cord on them, now you carry a super computer in your pocket that can just about do anything.
The point?
We were there for the first steps of the technology boom, no other generation can make that claim. It's a special time when dreams started to turn into reality from 8 bits on.
@@akaLordMelkor yeah we where point made. Oh how I jumped for joy when we got a TV with UHF. Just doubled our channels. 6 8 on a good day. Then cable oh how many times I watched MEATBALLS
I remember as a kid, the Colecovision was the Holy Grail of gaming. Donkey Kong looked like it came right from the arcade. Graphics like that were unheard of at the time.
...until Atari released it for the 400/800 computers :) That really was the closest you could get to the arcade version, it was almost arcade-perfect in every detail.
Atari COULD have made it 100% arcade-perfect, but decided to release it as a cartridge only, which meant they had to fit it into 16K.
I still have mine from when I was a kid and my Amiga. Both were ahead of their time.
I lost many hours to Donkey Kong on the Coleco Vision. This makes me want to get a Coleco and relive old times.
@@dunebasher1971 It wasn't the closest, Atari had the better colors (closer to arcade) but Coleco had better copy of arcade graphics.
I loved zaxonn on colecovision
Colecovision was first home console where versions of arcade games actually looked and sounded like the real thing and in 1982 that was a 11yo dream come true 😎
For Christmas of 1983 my father bought the family an ADAM Colecovision Computer. It came with Donkey Kong and it looked arcade perfect to my 6 year old's eyes. It was amazing but not actually arcade perfect. The ADAM had a cartridge slot for all Colecovision games and a tape deck for playing games that looked like normal cassett tapes but were proprietary so no easy game copying. The tape mechanism could rewind and FF incredibly fast. It came with 2 white Colecovision controllers one of which I still have in my game room. The ADAM died in early 90's sadly. It's Printer was also it's power source which is a dumb ass design.
I remember ADAM-as well as the Dragon's Lair version they came out with.
I remember Billy Guyatts (A whitegood store) that had a 2600, intellivision and colecovision on display - used to go in there after school every day till they kicked us out. Now I have all three the coleco is my favourite.
Never had the Adam computer add on - shame it kinda killed Coleco. They also made things very difficult for 3rd party devs to make games for it so I wonder if the console would’ve lasted anyway - funny to think if they had survived as by now we’d be on Colecovision 12 or something :)
I had one! :)😁
My mom was the Best! Coleco Vision was probably the best Christmas present she ever surprised me with as a kid and it wasn't something I had asked for! She was all about getting me everything Coleco related after that! We traveled *everywhere* to find every game we could get our hands on. Had the Wheel Remote w pedal, the Baseball remotes, the Running Mat and if I remember right we also had an Art game that required a different type of remote that we just could not find. Over the years we always spoke fondly about Coleco. I love my Mom and she was spirited away this year. Thank you for jogging up such lovely memories.
Coleco Also had some crazy Boxing Controller. I recall them being really bad but they were intended only for the boxing game. I had a ADAM Computer and loved it mostly for it's ability to play Colecovision games.
Sorry for your loss
Same here
I'm 53 now, I've been around to witness the entire history of videogames first hand. When I was a kid, from 4 years old in 1975 through all of grade school, my best friends were two brothers, Mark and Steve Chan. Their dad worked for IBM since the early 70's. They were the only family in the city with a computer and videogame system. I would go to their house as soon as I woke up to play pong on the Telstar. Then they got the PET home computer and I played Castlevania, Space Invaders, and Jupiter Lander. After that I think the Comodore 64 came around, and that's when most families bought their first computer. Mark and Steve did have another computer between the PET and the Comodore 64, but I forget what it was, maybe an Atari. In the 80's my parents bought me the Coleco Vision. I also saw the evolution of games at the arcade, starting with the very first arcade games, like Space Invaders, Joust, Centipede, and Pac Man. Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought that computer games and computer graphics would become so advanced as they are today. It's come a very long way in just my lifetime.
I went and visited my parents and dug out the Colecovision. It's almost 40 years old but it still plays.
things that didn't happen
@@rocketsmall4547 Do you know him? No! So keep your piehole shut, momma's boy!
@@rocketsmall4547 why would you say that? not exactly an unbelievable story.
dude that’s bad ass.
Believe it or not, once upon a time, electronics companies didn't bake in planned obsolescence into their consoles. Far cry from today when shit starts breaking down a few months after the new consoles are released.
I had a colecovision as a kid. It was my favorite of all the early consoles! 🎮
Me too. I played a Coleco before the Atari. When I played an Atari, I hated it immediately. It would even remotely close to the Coleco.
@@buttonman1831 I started out with bally, which was best, but limited games. Got Atari to get the "in" games all the other kids were playing. Tried intellivision, then got colecovision, which I loved. Then got the adaptor to play my atari games on it if I wanted.
I still have mine. I should probably stick it on Ebay.
Colecovision was a cool during its time.
Colecovision had Way More potential than was realized.
I had Intellivision, great fun.
Donkey Kong is STILL one of my favorite games ever. That game was sooooo addictive to me as a child growing up on the 80s man.
That's one thing I can say about those old games. They may have been simple in comparison to today's games, but they were addicting.
Put alot of money into those machines/games back in the 80s.
@@DocMicrowave they were simple as far as variety and what you could do, but they were way harder. Donkey Kong was super hard. Most games very very difficult and each game only lasted a couple minutes.
I still have a very clean Colecovision in my collection with a steering wheel, two "Super Action" joysticks and a bunch of games.
The AC adapter was broken (common issue), but I found a little adapter online which is directly connected to the console and takes the power from a standard USB charger: that works great!
I was one of the first 63 people hired to assemble the ADAM computer. I was on line one and I can say it was a dog. The quality control consisted of a tech standing on a box and dropping a packaged unit from about six feet, if it survived and worked when testing they would pass the entire production lot from that run. One day they pulled me from building the ADAM to a "new" line, the repair line. I knew our jobs were in trouble when in one day we received over 500 broken units from a J.C Penny return, soon our warehouse was full of broken units. I was laid off for three months, when I got called back the computers were gone and it was Cabbage Patch dolls as far as the eye could see.
Awesome story! Being a huge fan of the Colecovision and always wishing to always find more info on Colecovision/ADAM downfall. I could talk to you all day and listen to your stories! I was 12 when I got a colecovison and I played it non stop.
Very interesting to hear about what happened from an insiders viewpoint highlighting the danger of a lack of focus on quality.
I like colecovision because the sound and gameplay rivaled arcade games.
A great comment. Thanks for sharing! We had the Adam Computer for awhile. Until it stopped working. After the Adam computer broke. We bought a Commodore C64 computer. Always loved the old Coleco games. They were great and fun times too!
I had an ADAM when I was a kid, worked great for years. Mom ended up throwing it out decades later lol
I wrote the code that produced the music for the Colecovision port of the game Lady Bug. It was a side project since our main business was building machine controllers based on the CP1600. We were spoiled by a 16 bit data bus so writing code for the Z80 was a challenge. Fortunately the TI sound chip did most of the work so I was spared the agony of having to code the gameplay itself. We only had the arcade version as the model so the music had to be transrcibed by hand (ear) . These were some of the best times in my career,
One of my favorite classic arcade games. Way better than Pacman! The intro riff is burned into my memory! My brother in law was a master at this game! He could consistently get to level 18 and most of the letters. My personal best is level six! I once took over his game when he was on level 15, I couldnt keep up!
I played the shit out of Lady Bug in the 80's Thanks for the code. I still have my Colecovision and have the Super Game Module that upgrades the Sound and memory and allows it to play new games and MSX ports
I remember the Christmas Dad got our Coleco. He was so excited, he gave it to us on Christmas Eve (we usually had to wait for Christmas morning in those days). I still have it and the steering wheel add-on and both still work just fine. It is an underrated system for sure.
Same thing happened with my wife! She loves telling the story of her Dad giving them the Colecovision on Christmas Eve because he couldn't wait. They stayed up most of the night playing!!
I was 13 in 1982 and remember vividly my first time playing Colecovision at my Uncle's house. I was playing Zaxxon and was blown away by the graphics. I had to be pried away from that game and system. Once I bought my own (from my paper route money) I ended up having every game that came out and I also had all the expansion module devices and games. It was a great time to be a teenager. Sadly, it was short-lived as the computer age came in. I recall being amazed by a Commodore 20 waiting 15 minutes for a game to upload via cassette tape! Ah, those were the days.
My dad actually worked for Coleco during the late 70s and 80s so I had a Colecovision. My biggest problem was always the control stick which would need constant replacement.
yup. the controllers were crap
That ended my Coleco binging. I was addicted to Ladybug.
I still remember the day, my Dad, my brother and myself went to the mall and picked up a Coleco Vision Console. So many hours playing Donkey Kong and Cosmic Avenger.... ah simpler times.
Cosmic Avenger! I remember that game - from the local arcade to my living room! One of the first games that I remember shooting lasers and also missle's at ground targets....
Yes, simpler times my friend.... :) Space Panic, Dig Dug, Elevator Action, Mr. Do, Venture, Zookeeper...... ( the arcade days.....) what a different world it was..... It makes me feel happy but also, so sad...... 😪
I remember 'Bee Seventeen Bow-merrrr' - the speech synth of B-17 bomber!!
Colecovision was my favorite as a kid. Smurfs: Smurf Rescue, Ladybug, Donkey Kong, Mouse Trap. All great games!
Smurfs!! I forgot about this game. So good
My first experience with Coleco was their Electronic Quarterback hand held video game back in ‘78. They had some good handheld video games.
Yep, remember those. We bought em at Sears. I was always going through batteries!
@@highwayman1218
I know. Never could hang onto enough 9 volt batteries!
I was a Colecovision kid! I had the upgraded game pads that had a joystick on top and 4 buttons lined up with your fingers. LOVED that system! Zaxxon was my favorite Coleco game. My best friend had a 2600 with a huge library of games, but my dad made the right choice buying me the Colecovision instead.
I agree with the Zaxxon was my favorite
Man I remember those game pads with the joysticks…used them for the Baseball game. Great memories 👍
I was in my early 20's and in the Air Force enjoying the early days of home console games. Colecovision led to a Commodore64 and then a Nintendo system. It was such a popular time for games that you could go down to JCPenney, Sears or Kmart to find your favorite game or cartridge. Gosh, what a fun and care-free time that was.
Colecovision was absolutely amazing. So far ahead of its time.
The PlayStation 2 later reminded of it.. Its PSX backwards compatibility reminded me of Colecos backwards compatibility with Atari as per expansion module.. I’ll never forget I think Christmas ‘84 dad got soo many games both Atari & Coleco.. It took well into January to check everything out!
Coleco and intellivision were two of my favorite gaming systems of all time the full number keypad controls and peripherals were amazing. There was one control for the Coleco which kind of looks like the basket tilt of an old sword it had a joysticks on top with a full number pad and on the handle portion for four buttons one for each finger color coded.
In a baseball game each of the colored buttons was a different pitch for your picture or swing type for your batter.
On the side of the keypad though are the usual four buttons and these were used to steal and pick off while the number pad was used to sit your defense pull up your batting order and possibly change your or pinch Runner and of course to change pitchers in the bullpen. I loved that thing and still had it at parents until a few years ago. I think they gave it away.
I had one of those first ColecoVision's sold. I vividly remember telling my parent's "I want ColecoVision or nothing for Christmas" and my father went out 2 nights before Christmas and found one at, of all places, Albertson's! I am not much of a gamer, never really have been, but that console was amazing! Friends would come over just to play Donkey Kong. I really miss those simpler times.
I had a Coleco as a kid and man I loved playing Donkey Kong and Zaxxon. Mousetrap was another favorite that got the whole family addicted to playing.
I had a Colecovision with the Atari adapter. I bought it myself. I had a lot of games, too. Zaxxon was definitely one of my favorites, along with Donkey Kong. Having the game at home saved me a lot of quarters. I lost the game console during a move years ago, but still had a bunch of the games until recently.
My parents bought us a commodore 64. Colecovision had been out for a few years I think. Some of the games were equivalent to the colecovision but it was the amount of games you were able to copy and swap with friends. That was nice because we all ended up with whole libraries of hundreds of games. Actually, now that I think about it you could buy most colecovision and intelivision games on cartridges for it as well.
The C64 and coleco came out the same year in 1982. The C64 was quite more powerful: hardware scrolling, much more sprites capacites, way better sound. Even without considering piracy, games were also much cheaper, tapes were about a quarter of the price of the coleco cartridges.
This was well put together, thank you. Having just turned 50, I saw my childhood flash before my eyes, while being educated on the orgins of famed Colecovision and will check out eBay for a console. Thanks again.
I would rush over to my friends house after school to play his colecovision. It was the coolest thing ever. We played arcade quality games right on the TV for free! What a time to be a kid.
I was 16 when the Colecovision came out, and it was AMAZING!!! I probably spent half that year playing every game I could get my hands on. I remember spending every penny I could get on 8 pack returnable bottles of Mountain Dew to get the bottle caps in hopes of spelling out "COLECOVISION" to win a system in a contest, so that was a summer of caffeine intensity for me. Happily on Christmas "Santa" saved the day (and me from diabetes and a heart attack!). Donkey Kong and Mr. Do were by far the best games on that console. I remember saving up and paying $49.99 for Zaxxon at Service Merchandise, which was ALOT of money way back in 1982, when minimum wage was something like $3.00 an hour. I played it for about 15 minutes and thought, OMG what am I doing with my life! I used a glue gun and sealed the box up, took it back for a refund.
Ah, the old Service Merchandise catalogs. Always loved those.
By the time I was 16 i had a truck and a girlfriend and wasn't interested in video games anymore
@@danieldaniels7571 And here you are now...
@@tapoemt3995 yes. Now I'm old, my kids are grown and gone, and my wife is dead. What of it?
I remember vividly getting the console in the fall of 82, the graphics were more identical to the actual arcade games at the time.
Remember the following cartridges: Donkey Kong, Cosmic Avenger, Zaxxon, The Smurf Game, Venture, Jungle King, Donkey Kong Jr.,
We eventually got the adapter in order to play the Atari games.
Great nostalgia. Did not know that Coleco was a leather company based in Connecticut.
I had a Telstar in late 1978 as a young kid. From what I remembered, it had a triangular shape with 3 games (Pong, A Shooting Game, and a Racing Game??) My brother and I would mess around with the gun and aim it at each other while it made the shooting noise.
Awesome video
Had an Adam computer and we had just about every Colecovision game, most copies on cassette... Also had the steering wheel, roller controller, those weird pistol grip controllers.... It saw so much use by the whole family.
Dude I totally forgot about those pistol controllers had those too and they had those thick multicolor buttons on the grips
I had a Coleco Adam Computer & the games on the Cassettes were more advanced! I heard there were a lot of problems with the Adam,never had a problem with it & unfortunately sold it in the early 90’s.
There's such a weird association between leather companies and games/computers. In addition to Coleco, the Tandy Leather Company became a major player in home electronics/video games/computers via their electronics division and attached Radio Shack stores. It's such an odd coincidence.
I wonder if it is entirely a coincidence. The path was similar--both companies went through selling consumer leathercrafting kits to more general toy or craft retail. In Tandy's case, Radio Shack was an acquisition, but the craft kits were what made Radio Shack a logical fit. They knew how to market hobby supplies.
Leather and video games? You got something spicy there.
It's funny just how long Tandy Corporation/Tandy Leather Company held out hope that they could go back to selling leather boot repair kits to Texas cowboys. For decades they refused to retire the Tandy name and just rename themselves Radio Shack, even though that had been most of their business for a long time.
I loved Radio Shack as a kid, as it was the only real electronics store you'd find in a lot of small towns. In hindsight, it's actually kind of a miracle you could go to Radio Shack and they'd have a little rack full of drawers full of resistors and capacitors, with soldering irons and supplies nearby. The Color Computer and Tandy 1000 series sold across the country at Radio Shack were also pretty great entry points into computing for a lot of people.
@@shadowpresident4203 Yeah, it's even worse now. Entire swaths of the country lack electronic supply stores and everything has to be mail ordered.
The CoCo was a great little 8-bit, but IMHO they only got it right with the CoCo 3. The CoCo 1/2 couldn't stand against the Atari 8-bits or the C64 in terms of capability even though the 6809 was nice to program for.
The Tandy 1000 was their breakout success for a reason. It did exactly what the PCjr intended to do, in a better way, while being actually affordable.
Goes well with wood grain!!!
I had an Atari 2600 and my friends had Coleco Vision. I loved it and did notice even at 8yo it had better quality games. Still I loved that we all had different games to explore between each other. Good times.
I had a Colecovision. it was AMAZING. The Baseball game was absolutely revolutionary and it took many decades for any other basball game to match up. Sure, the graphics for baseball games got better, but with the super action controllers, you had unprecedented control of all the players on the field, including baserunning speed, which you controlled via the wheel on the top of the controller. In fact, I don't think there is a control scheme that compares to the Colecovision baseball controls to this day.
I was in my shop the other day looking at those controls remembering playing baseball and frantically spinning that roller wheel while running bases. Had football too. And Rocky :)
I got this in 1982 when I was 11 years old. So many great games and memories. Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, Venture, Miner 2049er, Mr. Do, and football were my favorites. The football game was cool because it had plays you could select. My friends and I had epic battles on the gridiron.
You are right on the money about the football. It was amazing at the time with the roller controller. Program the offensive/defensive plays on the keypad. Select your player with the triggers and control the kicks and pass distance with the rollers. My brother and I played some epic battles we still talk about when we get to havin a few and reminiscing.
We had a Colecovision as a kid - it was our first home video game. All of my friends had Atari or Intellivision for years before we got a chance to plop ourselves in front of a TV and play. But man, they were envious when we finally got it. The games were great; no joke that the ports they had were far and away the best available. Many games (hello, Ladybug!) still hold up extremely well today.
My favorite Christmas ever was the year my mom bought the household a ColecoVision. We stayed up taking turns playing Donkey Kong for 24 hours straight. We were a poor family and the rich kid next door came over saying "my mom bought Donkey King for the Atari, come over and play".... meanwhile we showed him the Coleco and he stormed off home, alone. Little spoiled bastard had his mom take it back and buy him a ColecoVision.
By far, Coleco dominated that Christmas and remains my sweetest memory of my youth 🙂
I had the Coleco with the Atari expansion module, I remember my father going out and getting a second TV because I played so much. lol
I don't care what anyone says, Coleco will always have a special place in my heart even with the technology that's out today. Nothing beat the simplicity and hours of high scores that rolled over while playing Defender, Zaxxon, etc.... one of my happiest memories with my family.
I got my coleco in 83, got the steering wheel for Turbo that Christmas and was in awe in 84 when a friend of a friend invited me over and showed me the
Atari interface and a massive collection of games. at 8 years old then, that was something else.
I bet!
I spent an entire month one summer drooling over the Coleco game catalog.
I had the 2600 with a ton of games, but always loved babysitting my cousins who had the Colecovision! Really loved the car racing game and Zaxxon.
My mom wouldn't buy me one, but I used to go to my friend's house to play it. I loved Zaxxon. The graphics were amazing, just like in the arcade. It was generations ahead of its time. Great video man.
Colecovision was my first upgrade from a Sears version of Pong, and what an upgrade it was. My friends loved coming over to play Donkey Kong and I got the Atari expansion so they could bring their games and play them too. Of course I got some Atari games of my own because they weren't available as Colecovision games. All these years later I still have it stored away somewhere in the attic. I really should dig it out and relive some great memories.
I got mine a little over a decade ago and it sits prominently on the top shelf of my retro gaming setup. It's easily my favorite pre-NES era console, and one of my favorites overall. My favorite games include: Root Beer Tapper, Pepper II, Frogger, and Time Pilot. There's also an excellent homebrew community surrounding it.
The Super Action controllers they came up with for the sports games were incredible. We played football and baseball for hours as they were so easy and unique to use with the four buttons at your fingertips and the roller on top.
Colecovision was my second favorite system of that generation right after Vectrex. Both we're awesome and I still have them to this day.
I was 11 in 1982 living in North Hollywood, CA, my buddy Frankie got this for Christmas, my mind was blown at Donkey Kong being EXACTLY like the arcade, it was amazing, my mom bought me an Atari which was fun but I was still jealous of Frankie's Coleco Vision.
Donkey Kong, Q-Bert, Frogger, and one of the most underrated games ever Ladybug.
I agree with all of this, as well as Mr. Do! That game got hard to get through after awhile! Lol
Don't forget roc n rope...
ladybug=pacman knock off.
LadyBug....great game.
I liked Pitfall also.
This 7 year old got the CV for Christmas 82. Absolute winner. Loved it 😍 Venture FrontLine and Frogger 👏🏻
I recall seeing a Colecovision at a Hill's Dept. store, with the "Smurf" game playing on it. I was amazed at the graphics! The Smurfs looked as good and realistics as the cartoon characters on televsision !
It was sweet...
I LOVED the Smurfs game!!! I think the other one I liked was Ladybug.
I think remember playing that.
I can still see the computer isles at Hills and can still smell the popcorn from the refreshment stand near the front doors. Great times.
This was my 1st console when I was a kid. I also had the plug in Atari attachment. I miss those days.
Zaxxon was soo frigging addictive.
Thank you so much for this video. As an old (65 now, lol) lifelong 'tec guy' and 3-D modeler and programmer, I have been through every generation of console video units. From Atari, Sega, Commodore, Play Station and X-Box. Yet, as one who has lived it through it all, I must say - that THE most impressive introduction of any platform, for it's time, was DEFINITELY this unit! In game quality and graphics. It's sad how forgotten it has become. It was simply spectacular for it's time.
I worked at Texas Instruments (TI) (1980-1983) and was a member of the product engineering team ramping production and delivering production test solutions for the TMS9918 Video Display Processor, I spent many months setting in the lab using a Colecovision development system and a Microprobe system debugging “dumb shrink” bugs in the new integrated circuits. It was the wild and difficult time at at TI especially Christmas 1982, with a number of production challenges that required crazy work ethics and angry customer calls and customer visits.
The other challenge we had there was a sister product the TMS9928, it used Difference Signaling Vs. Composite Video on the TMS9918 and was used in the TI Home Computer. This lead to competition for wafers from the same factories. There was also a severe test capacity limitations given the extremely high volumes for both end products in the early 1980’s. I offered my resignation in September, 1983 for Motorola after living through extremely poor TI management decisions, but we shipped millions of both devices before my departure.
- a Fried Product Engineering Team Member.
I can't remember how many hours that I played Mr.Do, on my ColecoVision console!
We never had a Colecovision but we had the ADAM system instead when it went on clearance from K-B Toys. A great system and a ton of fun despite its issues. What memories!
Your lucky you got the 1 in 10 that actually worked. If you actually managed to get one that was soldered together correctly, they were a great system!
@@niklass1641 I had no clue that these had such a bad quality issue. We didn't have any problems that I recall, but that doesn't mean that we didn't have them. I was 12 when we got ours and thought it was awesome. I played Dragon's Lair until my fingers bled. Now, did I understand the manual. No.
@@niklass1641 I had to return two of them (expansion module 3 version), then had the idea to go to a different Toys R Us for the third one. The attendant there said their first shipment had a near 100% return rate. The second batch had _no_ returns. Naturally, nobody publicized that Coleco had cleaned up their act...
Mine worked till about 1999 when I accidentally munged one of the contacts in the computer module's edge connector (tried to bend it to make better contact, but went too far and it got crushed when I pushed the modules together). At the time I had euipped it with twin tape drives, twin disk drives, twin 3.5" drives (equipped with EEPROMs coded to make them appear to be third and 4th disk drives to the OS), and aftermarket serial and parallel interfaces for 1200 baud modem and dot-matrix printer. And on top of that was a device that allowed the twin tape drives to function as a data-pack dubbing device--I could format conventional cassettes to be readable by the ADAM tape drives (once you drilled the two locator holes in the cassette shell)
I still have all the components of that Adam system and could concievably resurrect it by jumpering around the crushed contact, but I lack the horizontal space to set it up :D
@@RailRide That's fantastic! I've never seen a set up like that.
@@1teamski It was a great set up. I don't know exactly why so many mistakes were made on the line or how all of that got passed by their QC. but aside from putting the main power transformer in the printer... it had potential to be revolutionary.
We had one. That thing was fun! I remember there was a game with cats, dogs, and mice and you put a little overlay into a slot so that the keypad buttons were labeled for the game
Colecovision was elite level gaming. Every kid in school wanted to come to my house to play video games.
They were just using you huh-huh.
I didn't know anyone with one. Maybe they kept it to themselves? I did still go to kids' homes to play Atari, but they didn't have good two-player games.
I still have my original console from the '80s with over half the games still with it tucked away in my attic.
Wanna sell it?...haha.
Awesome. Does it still work?...and do you have a CRT to play it on?
No I'm going to keep it. I'm sure it still works it was in perfect working order when I stored it. With all this retro stuff coming out I think I'm going to have to pull it out and do a little testing.
@@BobbyPhoenix I can't say that I blame you--that is a nice little piece of retro-game history right there...enjoy...speaking of which, think I'll get my Vectrex out--another gem from the past haha.
We got one of these in 82. Man, gotta love the Donkey Kong. I also seem to remember Centipede and Lady Bug among the games we had.
Also a hazy recollection of Dig Dug, Burger Time and possibly Galaxian. Can someone tell me if I'm off on these last few titles being available?
It was all I wanted for my 17th birthday...that was 40 years ago today! That ColecoVision sure made me a lot of friends, too---every kid in the neighborhood was coming over to play it.
We got a Colecovision for Christmas that first year they came out and it was awesome! Can't believe you didn't mention one of the biggest drawbacks, it took FOREVER for games to load! Unlike an Atari you had to wait like 60-90 seconds for the game to load. That's a long time! As much as we all loved it me and my brother loved visiting our friends so we could play Space Invaders and Pitfall on the Atari.
That mustve been the coleco adam computer u r talking about b/c colecovision is cartridge games which has no load times.
Yeah, your childhood was second best.
What about the card inserts for the controllers with different games, so much fun back then.
War Games had a card inlay.
So did Mousetrap. My favorite :)
@@gwynthegnome2050 Hands down my favorite as a young kid 30 plus years ago.
Spy Hunter had them as well. =)
Buttons 1, 4, 7 fired the Rockets
Buttons 3, 6, 9 released the Smoke Screen
I remember playing a demo of Caleco’s Donkey Kong & Asteroids at Sears I believe, It was amazing 😮
Got one. Christmas of ‘82. Friends loved to come over and play it. Wish I still had it.
Ahh the Colecovision. The OG of OG’s. When Donkey Kong actually looked like Donkey Kong. My buddy had Intellivision which meant he had Burger Time. But I had Colecovision and Zaxxon!!
I think Burger time made me the cheeseburger eating machine I am today.
Kid: Mom I want Zaxxon!
Mom: We have Zaxxon at home
Kid: (looks at Atari Zaxxon)
Zaxxon!!!!
Intellevision 2
I had one of these when I was in HS. What sold me was the Atari 2600 expansion module which allowed me to continue to play with my large collection of 2600 games at the time and also the fact that one of my favorite games of all time (Zaxxon) was only available on this platform. Great memories.
zaxxon was amazing
I was reading about it and how Bromley was struggling to face component prices and make the project possible. There were a lot of possibilities in the beggining and it must have been great to have a console back then that could play games from other manufacturers.
We started with a Pong game, then got the original Atari, following that with an Intellivision, and finally a Colecovision. The Colecovision was by far the most fun, especially when you got the different accessories. The controller that had four "trigger" buttons and joystick was great, and the steering wheel and accelerator accessory was amazing. I was in high school when the Colecovision came out and I eventually got tired of playing the games; we had an Apple ][e computer by then and I was more interested in fooling around on that. I wish I still had the Colecovision, though. It would be fun to play with occasionally. I have an emulator for my iMac, but it’s not the same experience.
Colecovision was me and my siblings first console in the early to mid 80s. All our friends in the neighborhood would come over to play it because no one else had one. It felt empowering.
That's sweet! Should have charged them a quarter a play and started your own arcade!
I became a programmer because of colicovision. i could play all of my colico games, AND all my atari games thanks to an adapter. I have massive love for this old console!
COLECO
A truly legendary game system.
You're not spelling it right.
In 82 experience, I was 7, my brother was 9, and we caught our parents in the basement late at night, having an early go at the family Christmas Present - the first release of Colecovision! We started with Donkey Kong, Gorf, and Ladybug, but soon had dozens of games. The console was a juggernaut and finally died this year, with the last working games being Ladybug and Mr. Do! It outlived our crappy Adam Computer by 35 years!
I never owned the ColecoVision but had cousins that did. Definitely was impressive back then. I eventually skipped owning a console since I wanted a computer. I was 13is and really wanted the Adam, maybe because of the ColecoVision. Eventually my mom and I chose to finance the IBM PCjr instead (almost $1000...very expensive!). Back then it was a full on computer to me, never gave me any issues and was great introduction to computers. We didn't know about the PCjr eventually being regarded as a flop and very happy memories with it. Very glad we did not purchase the Adam!
The Colecovision is Awesome! Have you ever used one?
Yes actually, it's ok.
When i was very little its broken in my parents basement
It's about time some one did a video on Colecovision
I have 2 & I Composite modded one. I also have 2 Expansion module 1 units.
Frogger, H.e.r.o, popeye, Gorf... with the emulator I can no longer do without it.
I remember having this as a kid. This is the first home system to have at the time arcade accurate conversions (mostly Turbo, Battlefield, Time Pilot, etc. ).
Man....Colecovision played with my then 7 year old emotions. My uncle was a cop, and worked part time as security during the holidays at The WIz. He picked this up for me, and we must've returned it at least 4 or 5 times until we got one that worked. (Bonus, I got a free Cabbage Patch Kid with the purchase too at the time). Once we finally found one that actually worked, I was hooked. Carnival, Smurf, Donkey Kong, Venture, Zaxxon.....these games were insane considering the times we were living in. The following year we got the Atari expansion pack. Such an amazing console for the times. I played this non-stop until the NES was released. The rest is history.
I grew up 1 mile down the street from Coleco headquarters in West Hartford Ct. it was the early 80’s when the Cabbage patch kid was all the craze. As a community gesture, Coleco would rent out The Elm Theater across the street from them, and throw a holiday party for the kids of the local schools. We would be shown a movie and then received a round plastic sled AND an electronic hand held toy. Coleco eventually moved away and the building was turned into high end apartments. The Elm theater closed and is now a Walgreens. It’s been 40 years, but those memories still live vividly in my head.
I had one when i was a kid, in Germany it was called "CBS" i loved the game Looping, with that small airplane where you had to shoot rockets to open a gate.
Zaxxon!
I love the curls in the joystick cable! I wish consoles would come with those back in the days consoles brought cabled joysticks like the snes or genesis, that seems much more comfy than the straight cables!
But what good is that when the core & the controls are stiff?
Ah, the nostalgia. For Christmas of 1983 my folks went on an unprecedented gift-giving spree and bought the family a ColecoVision plus the 2600 expansion unit and a stack of both Coleco and 2600 games. I don't remember what they all were now, but I do recall on the Coleco side that we had the Smurfs game (a reasonable early-80s side-scroller) and Ladybug (a Pac-Man derivative), and on the 2600 side the trifecta of Terrible Movie Games: Superman (two players can control him cooperatively, for a terrifically unplayable experience!), Indiana Jones (incoherent and nearly impossible to win!), and ET (millions of copies buried in the New Mexico desert!).
We loved them all, even the terrible ones. It was our first gaming console, and everyone in the family used it. We acquired more games before Coleco went bust, titles like Pepper II (which was also a Pac-Man-like, I think) and Q-Bert. We had at least one game that had Mylar inserts for the controller keyboards - they had a slot for overlays - though I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I know my mother was still playing games on it in the early 1990s. Don't know what eventually happened to it, though.
Coleco is also famous for getting the rights to Cabbage Patch Kids, which was a huge coup; they were among the best-selling toys in the mid-1980s. Hasbro picked the license up when Coleco went bankrupt in 1988.
Incidentally, if anyone's wondering why Coleco and Mattel had consoles but Hasbro didn't, there's a bunch on that in Miller's /Toy Wars/. Hasbro tried to come out with a really advanced console in the 80's, and had to cancel the project after millions in R&D. Then they did the same thing with a VR console project in the early 90's. They simply aimed too high each time.
When I was in middle school, my best friend's father worked for Coleco; I was too young to know details, but he had to be part of whoever was creating the electronics at Coleco, because my friend had everything, and I mean everything before it was released when it was sitll in alpha/beta stage. He had Adam, and I dont' even know, like 40 games on tape that may or may not have ever been released. The only one I truly remember was Rocky 3... on tape. But I remember to make everything work, he had an actual Colecovision docked with some adam shell cobbled together on the floor in his room. We played SO MANY games that other kids never even got a chance to see. It was just so cool.
My cable company streamed Coleco Vision games as a subscription. I had access to every game. It was incredible.
Walking with my family in Sears I always saw this on display. Never had one but it was like walking by technology gold as a kid.
That's funny i had the same experience in sears, and we begged our parents, and finally we got one, sorry to hear you never did.
@@christopherdunn317 we had an atari 2600. Then a C64. So we'll had devices, just not the colecovision. It has really cool controllers and seem to always have fun games playing to me at that time.
@@BrianClem games were great….. controllers, not so much
I think I still have my Colecovision system somewhere. I remember how amazing it was for the time. I had friends that had Odyssey and Atari systems and I was jealous until that Christmas (must've been '82) when we got the Colecovision. It blew everything out of the water. The graphics were amazing and the games seemed much more interactive than the other platforms. Funny I never heard about Coleco's rather rapid descent into oblivion, which makes me a little sad for what could have been.
Living in central Connecticut as a 13- and 14-year-old, I got lucky and was able to start playing the ColecoVision in July of 1982, as my best friend's dad worked for the company (in a carpentry/maintenance role), and he had been given a ColecoVision to take home for his kids to play with prior to its general release. They only had Donkey Kong and Smurf Rescue (no other cartridges were ready at that point AFAIK). The graphics and sound were really amazing, needless to say, though those joysticks took some getting used to.
DK was by far my favorite arcade game, which I'd been playing since January or so, and I was anxious for it to be released on the Atari 2600, which I had bought a few months earlier with my paper route money. This really whetted my appetite. Well, when Atari 2600 DK came out in August, I was deflated at how awful it was. Two screens, terrible graphics, poor sound, clunky... nothing like arcade Donkey Kong. Meanwhile, ColecoVision DK was a joy to play, even if it was missing the cement tubs screen.
Barely a month later, I sold my 2600 and all of my cartridges via newspaper ad, and spent the money on one of the brand-new ColecoVisions at Toys 'R' Us, along with Venture and Lady Bug. Zaxxon came along a month later, followed quickly by Carnival and MouseTrap. Pepper II, Looping, Donkey Kong Junior, Time Pilot... we couldn't get enough of those early ColecoVision games. What a great time we had. Too bad the port of Popeye (a Parker Brothers release) was clunky and felt stiff to play. I'd wanted that one BAD, as that had become my other favorite arcade game.
I had always wondered what happened to them. I remember colecovision being the game system all the kids wanted. I also remember the store Zayres having pallets full of Adam computers by the front door on Clearance as well.
I guess that's where their profit on ColecoVisions went: a total loss on the Adam. I'm thinking Atari's profit on consoles and Pac-Man went to the landfill by manufacturing millions of cartridges that didn't sell (or were returned) in 1982-3. I guess Atari tried to save money by not printing new catalogs or posters for late '82 through 1983 (because I didn't get any with my games) and then printing instruction manuals in black & white. Some genius thought saving money on advertising to customers buying their latest games was the way to go.
As a kid, Colecovision was my first real gaming console. One Christmas my mom got us Rocky and Baseball. It was gaming bliss...until my mom brought it back bc my brothers would be up all night playing it and cursing each other out (all in good fun, but my mom disagreed). Couple years later I got a Commodore 64 and the rest is history. I miss playing Subrock and Cosmic Adventure :)
Same here, this was my first console as well. The good ol days. LOL
Haha my brother and I got Baseball and Rocky as well with the Super Action Controllers and we played the hell out of them. We used to go bananas when we got knocked out in Rocky and get into fights and curse too. lol. Good to know we weren't alone.
@@gertrudemcfuzz74 Man I'd give anything to go back to that time and play those games again. We'd go sled riding all day, come home to hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream and play Coleco. Remember Venture? The hall monitors scared the shit out of me. LOL
@@Audioholics Venture was awesome. I recently got a brand new ColecoVision and dug up all of my games. I even bought a couple of new, sealed in box copies of Zaxxon and Carnival because my old ones were so corroded they wouldn’t work. Got a new roller controller with Slither too. Good times! 🍺🍺
I loved Rocky and Baseball lol played them all the time with my brother. 2600 was my first console in 81' lol.
I had one of these with the 2600 expansion. Loved that system!
Great video!
Coleco was amazing; trailblazers of the Colecovision and Cabbage Patch dolls. Also, their interactive Sectaurs toys were nice, but the commercials were so creative, made as episodes of 1 big toy story.
I don't remember anything about the Adam; I always thought highly of Coleco as a company.
lol! The Cabbage Patch craze! I worked part time at a retail store then.
My co-worker had the dubious task of putting them on the shelves. Then
the storm hit when the store opened. I sat on a platform on the other side
of the store, and watched the whole melee. Women, women, women, were
fighting, kicking, and yanking the boxes out of my co-workers hands before
he could put a box on the shelf. He should have had police protection for that
task! How he escaped w/o workman's comp I'll never know. It was like one of
those cartoons with the character's cloths ripped, bruises on the face, and lucky
for him, no blood, though I don't think anyone would have cared. Well over a
hundred, maybe 200 customers. I'll never forget the sight of him at the center
of it all. It looked like a prize fight between him, and a hundred women out for
blood. All for that one smile, or moment when that kid opens up that wrapped
present expecting their letter to Santa to be answered! It was a learning
experience about what human nature was about that day. He probably still has
nightmares today about that episode. Those dolls should have already been
on the shelves before the store opened, but of course some knucklehead manager
didn't think that was a good idea. The really smart kids did not open their box.
Those dolls will fetch a very tasty sum if auctioned on eBay today! Anyway, my
co-worker should have got the employee of the year for his bravery, or the
congressional medal of freedom for his act! lol!!
So, Coleco fell because they shifted to home computers. And Ol’ Gill is still trying to sell them. One buyer said “Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers. I’m learnding.”
Good ol’ Gill
Genius level unlocked.
@@JonsBasicGaming 🤣
Ha! Ya beat me to that! Well played! " Now how much can Ol' Gil put ya in for? Say a lot, please say a lot..."
The ADAM was plagued with problems and was the downfall of Coleco's video line.
Wow man, that's one damn fine-looking Coleco Vision.
The ColecoVision was hugely popular in the UK, my Uncle was the director of procurement and purchasing for Shell Oil in the UK in the mid-80's and was one of the people responsible for procuring them for sale in their UK petrol stations and they sold really well. After Coleco shut down, due to the amount of stock procured, in the late 80's, Shell were giving the games away with Stamps at their stations. I still have the console, all of the expansions, and all of the games sitting in my loft (curtesy of my uncle), and until recently every now and again i got it down and played it for nostalgia. I can't play it now though due to all of my TV's not accepting the analogue signal from it, i'; going to have to source an adaptor of some sort if i want to play it again.
I remember getting a ColecoVision (which I still have) back in '82 and being blown away by how faithful the graphics were to the arcade counterparts. I bet a TRON game on ColecoVision would have looked AWESOME!!! Wonder why Coleco never came out with one? Would have looked hella better than those Atari2600 and Intellivision TRON games. . .
How do not talk about zaxxon the 1st 3-D game it was amazing
That was the reason I bought one those consoles. I loved zaxxon.
Zaxxon ruled
I always wanted one of these when they were out. I had the Atari 2600 and was jealous of Coleco Vision’s games and better graphics. Great video.
Me too
Great video. I still remember the Christmas when I got my Colecovision. Best gift ever. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Great system, but uncomfortable controllers that hurt my left hand on the palm-side of the first knuckle on the Index finger after playing a while. The membrane keypad was a very clever addition and I really liked the inserts that some of the games included to make use of it; like the one for Spy Hunter so you knew which buttons activated which vehicle features. It was much more convenient than the number keypad peripheral that Atari came up with for their games. The cartridges had a slot in the backs of them to store the inserts when not in use.
Picked mine up in between the Summers of '85 and '86 (not sure which one it was... been a while) secondhand at a pawn shop, but most of the games I think I scavenged from Wal-Marts and Toys 'R Us before they all sold out. Got the Track Ball and Steering Controller, as well.
I managed to secure 27 games for it before I couldn't find any more at the time:
B.C.'s Quest For Tires
Burger Time
Campaign 84
Congo Bongo
Cosmic Avenger
Destructor
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Junior
Frenzy
Gorf
Jumpman Jr.
Ken Uston Blackjack/Poker
Lady Bug
Looping
Miner 2049er
Mouse Trap
Slither
Space Fury
Spy Hunter
Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
Star Wars: The Arcade Game
Tarzan
The Heist
Turbo
Venture
WarGames
Zaxxon
I completely agree with you. It was a brilliant system that really should've lasted longer.