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History of Colecovision

History of Colecovision

#History #Colecovision

“GeekStorian”

Lets take a look at one of the late comers to the early generation of consoles. The history of the company how they got into gaming and ultimately what lead to their demise!

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27 Comments

  1. Having been born in 1978, I was 4 years old when my dad brought home the ColecoVision, so being my first console, I still have fond memories of playing Mouse Trap, Looping and Donkey Kong. While I ended up being more invested in the NES in the years to come, the Coleco box still has a place in my heart.

  2. Coleco Gemini was a stand-alone Atari 2600 clone console. The expansion module for CVIS that played Atari cartridges was simply called Expansion Module 1.

  3. Colecovision was our family's first system too. we got it from an uncle who worked for Toshiba in Japan. He got it with a whole bunch of (probably) illigal copies of games. We had to actually put the diodes (3:15) of the games on the fitting socketboard and he gave along a whole load of games just existing of loose diodes and socketboards wrapped in styrofoam. I remember my parents only being allowed to change the diodes as the teeth of them were very fragile. (10:00) We had the steering wheel too and the spot where you put the gas pedal is actually meant for the controller to sit in and u can use the control stick as a shifter. The gas pedal is meant for under your foot but we used to put in under a pillow as kids and sat on it for constant throttle. (true story lol)

  4. I still remember walking into sears with my mom and brother. We went to the third floor electronics department and got our Colecovision. Then we went to the 4th floor where Sears had a great lunch counter and we had burgers. I can still smell that day, it smells like victory! ❤

    The super action controller was awesome.

  5. Got my 2600 ‘late’. Dec of 1982. One year later my best friend got a ColecoVision. I was super jealous! Oddly, my friend spent tons of time on my unit as there were so very many games. Honestly, I just waned to play WarGames. I loved it so much! Haha!
    Also we were ALL (not just he and I, but ALL our friends at the time) absolutely zero aware of any crash.
    We just played in arcades or at home happily until around about 1985 or so….and then were all very weirded out by the nigh alien thing that was the NES…..

  6. The guy who ended up designing the NES borrowed the prototype of the ColecoVision. He liked it and decided to set the NES specification specifically to one-up the ColecoVision. Sadly for SEGA, they went with the ColecoVision spec for their first home console (the SG-1000). The SG-1000 launched the same day as the Famicom (NES).
    Great games on the ColecoVision include: Q*Bert, Gyruss, Galaxian, Defender, Spy Hunter, Bump'n'Jump, Mr. Do, Centipede, Frenzy!, Donkey Kong Jr , Mouse Trap, Mr Do's Castle, Time Pilot, Frontline, Cosmic Avenger, Tapper, Zaxxon, Tutankham, and Venture.

  7. I remember back Christmas of 82….it was about 3am me and my little sister heard video game music…we rushed down to the living room & there it was….my first console gaming system 😊 the "Collecovision" My mom & dad allow me to get in there game "Donkey Kong", "Pac Man", "Defender", "Star Raiders" & "Centipede"….I must of played that system all Christmas. So much right after the holiday & it was time to return to school I was the envy among my friends. I was the first out my friends to have that system. Thank you Collecovision for fine memories & a great childhood…..
    😀😉😀😀😀😀😀😀

  8. The steering wheel had it's own accessory. Coleco made a C battery plugin adapter. If you look at the battery lid there is a little slot, which was where the plugin adapter cable fits. They knew. They had already planned around it. The price was the same as 4 C cell batteries as I remember my parents telling me.
    The Coleco Adam was WAY ahead of it's time. The worst mistake they made with it was the printer. Which was causing the spikes that would wreck tapes and tape drives. Had they just swapped the on board ROM with their BASIC and later sell the printer plus the word processor as an add on after fixing all the bugs they wouldn't have wrecked themselves. This would have literally just been dumping the BASIC tape image to the ROM. Pretty much any EOS software can occupy the ROM. Some exec got a hair up his butt that the only way they could sell the computer is if it came with a printer. Coleco never had an engineering problem. They had some of the brightest minds that could probably cure a rainy day if tasked with it. But their leadership is what tanked the company. Had they done the same type of fix as they did with the steering wheel as they did with the Adam… who know what would have happened.

  9. well they copied the intellivision's stupid controller scheme, except that they could remove the controllers as they weren't hard-wired..
    Have no idea the concept of why they thought those controllers were 'good'. they sucked sweaty balls in an oily hanky.

  10. I was born in 1974 and remember visiting my dad and grandparents during Christmas in 1982. I opened up a CV and some games. It was my first game console. Looking back how much the console was back then vs todays dollar amount, it's crazy to me to think how expensive that was for my dad and grandparents but it's a memory I'll always have. Ladybug, turbo (with the steering wheel and pedal), zaxxon, donkey Kong, and venture were my favorites. Then got the 2600 adapter and added even more versatility

  11. I think if Coleco had just focused on the ColecoVision and not developed the computer, they would have kept going. The computer lost them a ton of money, and the ColecoVision was way ahead of the other consoles at the time. By 1984 all the 3rd party developers would have been concentrating on Coleco games and they would have built up a huge market before the NES entered the US. The NES would have still done really well, but by then Coleco could develop the 2nd gen console and they may have had Sega's market share.

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