(Insert stupid Blog name here)

I suppose I could do a more convincing April Fools hoax than this.

You already did (Turbo).

supermassive version looks awesome on a rotated 4K monitor

supermassive version looks awesome on a rotated 4K monitor

 

Sweet!

 

(As an aside - your photo caught me red-handed. I changed a line of text after the initial posting because I felt it read better. Yours shows the original.)

Pretty amazing run! Are you sure you'll be able to end it here, though? It doesn't seem like Mike Kennedy to give up and slink away silently.

Well, I did write "may very well be..." in the strip.

 

I'm getting tired of the whole thing, personally. The forum thread has degenerated into a series of personal attacks on people who aren't even responsible for the whole mess (game developers who bought into Mike Kennedy's promises). The amount of anger coming from some of the trolls over there is astonishing, considering that they personally haven't actually lost anything in the project themselves. I find the whole RetroVGS story fascinating, perplexing, astonishing, shocking even. But I'm in it more for the entertainment value - not looking for people to burn at the stake.

 

I'll be very interested to see what Coleco Holdings' findings are regarding the "prototype":

 

Chameleon Product: We are thankful to have a large group of passionate engineers and retro game enthusiasts who follow Coleco and other product lines. It has come to our attention that the community has certain concerns over the prototypes involving the Retro VGS model. The team at Retro remains confident that their product is developed to the extent as describe; HOWEVER, in order to confirm or debase these concerns, Coleco has demanded to inspect the prototype units within a seven day time frame. At which time, independent engineers will review their findings and determine if those units are up to our standards. We will report some or all of those findings to the community so as long as they do not interfere with proprietary information. We remain hopeful that the community's concerns are merely speculations, but if there is merit to the concerns, then we have no choice but to abandon the project rather than release a sub-par product. During this time, we ask that the community allow us time to complete these inspections. Time extensions will only be granted if requested by the independent engineer. Time extensions and results will be posted here.

 

I don't know where Mike Kennedy is located, but Coleco Holdings is based out of Chicago, so there are likely some long-distance logistics involved with making this happen, and could help explain why it hasn't happened already.

 

Personally, I think Coleco is going to yank their license back, leaving Mike with nothing but some empty Jag shells and the RetroVGS fiasco as a permanent stain on everything he does for the rest of his professional life.

Although I haven't followed the entire story, I suspect the whole tale is basically Mike's effort to make money from the Jag molds. There wasn't a large enough market for actual cart & console shells, so the idea of a new "retro" console is hatched. But Mike doesn't really understand the market or the technology. So he fumbles along, trying various quick fixes (spending as little money as possible) to try to get money, create a sellable product, and generate market "buzz".

 

However, as Mike has demonstrated, creating a console when all you have is a mold for the case is putting the cart before the horse. And even that is an understatement, 'cause Mike doesn't have a console. Nor does he understand his ideas are DOA in the market.

 

I agree he will likely lose the Coleco license. Probably the best he could hope for is they tell him to come back once he has a ready for manufacture prototype.

From Colecovision's facebook:

The Update that you were all anxiously awaiting: Retro VGS has decided that the work that they have created is not sufficient to demonstrate at this time. Consequently, we can no longer proceed with the project and the Chameleon project will be terminated. This separation is amicable. We wish them luck in the future. - We thank the gaming community for their continued support, input, vigilance and trust.

 

 

Also in the thread: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247145-coleco-chameleon-hardware-speculations/?view=findpost&p=3463001

I'm glad it's over, for a whole bunch of reasons (mainly because it was a giant time-suck to keep up with that thread), but a little bummed because it was easy source material for the strip.

 

I had a couple of other strips written, but may not bother with them, unless I can figure out a way to turn them into an epilogue of sorts.