TPR Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Index of Updates! 4/15/15 - Initial post (see below) 4/16/15 - Pixelboy Games Arrive 5/7/15 - New games & Overlays 5/9/15 - Repro Boxes 5/23/15 - Some rare carts 6/1/15 - Clear case SGM 6/4/15 - Some NIB games 6/7/15 - Rey's awesome ADAM Power Supply 7/8/15 - Amazing collection of Repro Boxes 7/31/15 - New Homebrews & a ColecoVision Press Kit 8/8/15 - Opcode's Juno First 8/20/15 - Super Sketch 8/28/15 - Shovel Knight for the ColecoVision! 9/17/15 - Review of an AWFUL European homebrew controller 9/24/15 - Frenzy! 10/1/15 - The awesome F18a ColecoVision review! 10/6/15 - Boxxle & more from Pixelboy 10/8/15 - F18a + HDMI Converter Results #1 10/16/15 - Super Famicom NTT Controller & Taiwan Cooper Games 10/22/15 - F18a + HDMI Converter Results #2 10/23/15 - My final "loose cart" needed to complete the collection! 1/28/16 - Pics of my stuff 2/5/16 - Donkey Kong & DKJR Arcade Flyers 2/11/16 - More arcade flyer scans 2/17/16 - My daughter loves the ADAM! 2/20/16 - Even more arcade flyers 2/23/16 - Coleco ADAM Zaxxon Box 2/29/16 - Yay! More Pixelboy! 3/7/16 - One year anniversary post - My entire homebrew collection! 3/11/16 - USB PC Interface for ADAM Keyboard Review 3/11/16 - Mr. Do! "Alternate" Coleco Box 3/15/16 - Awesome homebrew repro boxes by Pixelboy! 3/26/16 - DK, DKJr, Zaxxon AWESOME ADAM games boxes! 4/12/16 - 5 New Games from CollectorVision - Star Soldier, Drol, Hang On, MORE! 4/21/16 - Track & Field II photos & video! 5/5/16 - New additions to the collection! 5/6/16 - Venture video! 5/12/16 - Opcode Prototype Games 5/20/16 - Mouse Trap Video! 6/8/16 - Mail Call! Sammy Lightfoot! 7/21/16 - Ms. Pac-Man Custom Tabletop! 7/22/16 - My Coleco Tabletops! 8/13/16 - Added a boxed Donkey Kong to the collection! 12/6/16 - Jawbreaker II is here! 10/15/16 - Some recent additions to the collection. 11/3/16 - I really suck at Bump n Jump! 12/6/16 - Nice looking "used" CV Box! 12/10/16 - Video of Jeepers Creepers! 1/30/17 - Video of Frantic! 4/8/17 - Playing ColecoVision on a SpectraVideo SV 328! 4/26/17 - Video of Kaboom! 2/4/17 - Strange "Mini" ColecoVision 7/5/17 - Custom Made Berzerk Tabletop 8/7/17 - German Version of Super Cross Force! 8/9/17 - Unboxing and playing Sydney Hunter! 8/13/17 - Photos of my collection from the 90s! 9/22/17 - Thoughts on Sydney Hunter! 2/7/18 - 3 New Videos! 2/14/18 - Wizard of Wor Review! 2/15/18 - Team Pixelboy Budget Series! 2/21/18 - Donkey Kong Review! 4/6/18 - A Boot Hill Review! 8/31/18 - Some oddly shaped boxes! 11/28/21 - A long overdue update! 1/11/22 - Unboxing a sealed copy of Jumpman Junior! 2/12/22 - Arkadion for ColecoVision is BAD! Full Review 2/15/22 - Reproduction ColecoVision Console Box Review 3/5/22 - Bull & Mighty's Critical Moment Gameplay Video Why I got back into collecting ColecoVision... …It’s all the Flashback’s fault! Seriously! Growing up, the ColecoVision was always “my system.” It really was the video game machine that I grew up on and followed religiously. Sure, I had a 2600 before it and a C-64 and then an NES after it, but it was the system that would change a part of my life as an adult. My “video game childhood” started out with the original Sears Tele-Games Pong which I received for Christmas in 1975, and then two years later Santa put a 2600 under the tree. I was only 7 at the time when the 2600 came out, and while I played it to death, I was still a bit too young to really appreciate games and how important they were about to become. But then 1982 rolls around, I’m reading Electronic Games Magazine and news about the ColecoVision at CES is talked about and I was blown away. At this point in my life I was addicted to any stand-up game to hit the arcades but disappointed in the current home-version offerings. Seeing what the ColecoVision was going to bring home blew me away, and I had to get one! The two childhood CV stories that I remember distinctly… First - I always knew where my parents hid my Christmas presents and one day after school I had discovered that they had bought the ColecoVision system, Expansion Module #1 and several games that were available. But it would be weeks before Christmas and I just couldn’t wait. Knowing the exact schedule of when my parents would be coming home and how much time I had between getting back from school, I would go and take the ColecoVision, and very carefully remove it all out of the box, hook it up to the TV, play it as long as I possibly could, and then with enough time to reverse the process, put it all back into the box EXACTLY as it was before and put it right back to where it was “hidden.” And of course I played off the “surprise” perfectly fine on Christmas day! To this day, my parents still have no idea I did this! The second was when I had saved up all my allowance to buy Donkey Kong Jr. For whatever reason that game came out (at least where I lived) at a higher price than other ColecoVision games and while at the store wanting to buy it, my parents wouldn’t let me due to the higher price. Thankfully, my parents didn’t pay too close of attention, and one day I rode my bike down to Gemco (big box store in SoCal in the 80s) and happily used up my allowance to purchase the game. They never even noticed that I had bought it. My collection of CV games as a kid included pretty much all the “common” games. I had all the arcade ports and many of the original games that came out up until the end, all the add-ons, controllers, etc. The only thing I never had growing up was Adam. Fast forward through the next few years… My gaming career went from ColecoVision to the Commodore 64 to NES/SNES, (One of my best friends had an ADAM so I had a lot of exposure to that as well) etc… But even through all those years, I had kept a ColecoVision plugged in, and it would always be a system I’d go back to. I ended up working in the video games industry from 1989 - 2011, which is an entirely other story, but I got into the industry because I was a retro games fan. During those first 10 or so years, I would go to flea markets and collect games. ColecoVision was always the system I looked out for the most. At one point I pretty much had collected just about everything that was out there at the time. I want to say I had really close to a complete collection of loose carts that were available in the USA, and many games CIB, and at this point I even had an ADAM up and running. ColecoVision was still “my system.” At this point, I was also collecting stand-up arcade machines, and when I was living on the east coast I had about 40 machines in my game room and probably another 50 or so PCB’s that I could plug into various machines. I spent a great deal of time restoring dedicated cabinet 80s arcade games. Here's a few pics of my "game room" (wish I had more and at better quality, but in those days, the smart phone didn't exist!) In 2002 I took a job with Activision and had to move back to SoCal. At this point in my life, I had become jaded with the video games business based on a number of different things that had happened and I was totally disenchanted with the industry. It was no longer a “hobby” for me, but a “job.” Disgruntled and uncaring about video games at this point, I sold everything I had. Didn’t even look back on it. Didn’t really care and moved to SoCal totally empty-handed as far as any retro games went. No consoles. No arcade games. Not even a handheld. For the first couple of years at Activision, I didn’t even look at retro games, even though I was working for one of the companies that is iconic in the eyes of retro game fans, my interest in video games has pretty much died at this point, and my less-than-stellar experience at Activision (it was not a great company to work for during the years I was there) most certainly didn't help. That being said, one of my co-workers was selling off some of their old game machines, and one of the machines was a ColecoVision with a hand-full of games. I instantly flash backed to childhood and I just had to have it. I bought it, took it home, made sure it worked, loved it, but put it in a box, and there it would stay, for probably another half decade. In 2011 I finally got out of the video games business, focused on my theme park travel site and roller coaster video production (yes that is what I do for a living) which I had been doing on the side for many years and we moved to Orlando pursue that more. (When you are doing work in the theme park business, Orlando really is the place to be!) If I said I had totally gotten out of retro gaming over those years, that would be a lie. While I was no longer collecting physical hardware or game carts, I always had an emulator or two on my computer. And it almost always consisted of MAME, ColecoVision, and Atari. I would find myself going back to play my favorite ColecoVision games from time to time. When I worked for WayForward, I did have a Vectrex sitting on my desk with a Sean Kelly multi-game cart, but that was mostly for “show.” In fact, when I moved to Orlando, I gave it away. Orlando was a total fresh start for me. No more video games career, time to shift gears, have a different focus, move forward and not look back. And things have been going very well since. Still have the emulators on my laptop and would play from time to time, but I had pretty much forgotten about games and anything retro. I had not given up on games entirely though. I always had whatever the latest Nintendo system was and a few games, but nothing really interested me to be fanatical. We’d play Mario Party with groups of friends, I was slightly addicted to Animal Crossing and always had a handful of NES Virtual Console games, but that was about it. And then the ColecoVision Flashback system came out… I thought “What a cool idea… so many of my favorites as a kid all in one place, and easy to hook up to the TV!” (I totally understood the licensing aspects of games so I knew some games couldn’t be included.) Two things went through my mind while playing the system: 1. This Flashback just isn’t good enough, it didn’t *feel* right, and that right there sparked my interest in pulling the ColecoVision I had sitting in a box for many years out of storage and playing the real thing, and 2. WHAT ARE ALL THESE HOME-BREW GAMES ON THE FLASHBACK!?!?! When I had gotten out of collecting games around 2001, there really wasn’t any home-brew (that I was aware of) out there for the system. At least not to the level that I was seeing on the Flashback system. I did some research and I simply could not believe that people were STILL MAKING GAMES for my childhood system keeping it alive! And not just tinkering around, or home-brew games that looked like someone punched in some code from Compute! magazine, I had found legit boxed games of arcade ports and original content that was just as good if not better than the original games that came out for the system 30 years ago. This blew my mind! I had to do a double take… “People are STILL making games for a system that hasn’t seen a retail store shelf in 30 years???” This was something that I realized that I needed to be a part of! And all of a sudden, something I hadn’t felt in 20 years was back… I was once again a “fan” of games instead of it being a “job.” As I played games like Circus Charlie, Buster Bros, and Girls Garden, I’ve just sat there thinking to myself “I honestly cannot believe I’m playing these games…on a COLECOVISION!!! WTF?!?!?” I had known of sites like Digital Press and Atari Age, had browsed them for reference when working on other games, but hadn’t really paid close enough attention to them to really understand what was going on in any of the retro gaming communities. Doing some searching around, it seemed like Atari Age was *the* community for ColecoVision fans and I registered. Seeing just how much I needed to get caught up on, I spent hours and hours neglecting my own business to read up on hundreds of threads (and I’m still getting caught up!) Through the help of many of the forum members I have now collected over 100 of the home-brews that have been produced over the years and have re-collected many of the loose released carts. I have been totally blown away by this community since I found it and I haven’t been this excited in anything game-related in years. So that’s my story… my introduction, etc… And if you read this whole damn thing then I’m even MORE impressed with this community! Looking forward to getting more caught up on the past and what the future of the system has in store! Thank you for reading! 32 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 tswm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VectorGamer Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Didn't read entire wall of text... Holy phuck you had a Tac/Scan and Reactor!?!? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 (edited) Didn't read entire wall of text... Holy phuck you had a Tac/Scan and Reactor!?!? Yeah, sorry about it being so much text. While I don't have a list of all the cabinets I owned over the years (bought, sold, and traded quite a lot) here are the ones I had when I sold them off at the very end: Asteroids Astro Blaster BagMan Battlezone Berzerk Blaster Burgertime Carnival Centipede Crazy Climber Defender Deluxe Space Invaders Discs of Tron Domino Man Donkey Kong Dragon's Lair Galaxian Gorf Journey Kickman Mad Planets Mappy Moon Patrol Mouse Trap Ms. Pac-Man Omega Race Pac-Land Pac-Man Phoenix Q*bert Rally-X Reactor Robotron 2084 Satan's Hollow Sinistar Space Duel Space Fury Space Invaders Deluxe Space War Star Castle Star Wars (Upright) Star Wars (Cockpit) Stunt Cycle Super Street Fighter II Turbo Tac Scan Tapper Tempest Tron Tutankham Vanguard Venture Wacko Wizard of Wor Xenophobe Zookeeper Edited November 25, 2017 by TPR 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VectorGamer Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Was the Discs of Tron environmental or chopped in half? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 It was the smaller version. Sadly, the environmental cabinet was a little too big for the space I had. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValkerieSilk Posted April 15, 2015 Share Posted April 15, 2015 Yeah, sorry about it being so much text. While I don't have a list of all the cabinets I owned over the years (bought, sold, and traded quite a lot) here are the ones I had when I sold them off at the very end: Asteroids Astro Blaster BagMan Berzerk Blaster Burgertime Carnival Centipede Crazy Climber Deluxe Space Invaders Discs of Tron Domino Man Donkey Kong Dragon's Lair Galaxian Gorf Journey Kickman Mad Planets Mappy Moon Patrol Mousetrap Ms. Pac-Man Omega Race Pac-Man Pac-Land Phoenix Q*bert Reactor Robotron 2084 Satan's Hollow Sinistar Space Duel Space Fury Space Invaders Star Castle Star Wars (upright & cockpit) Stunt Cycle Super Street Fighter II Turbo Tac Scan Tempest Tron Tutankham Vanguard Venture Wacko Wizard of Wor Xenophobe Zookeeper Wow! I guess I missed that retro party... That's a load of cabinets... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 15, 2015 Author Share Posted April 15, 2015 ^ It was fun while it lasted! Although kind of expensive to keep them all running, which I was adamant about! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 16, 2015 Author Share Posted April 16, 2015 I received a box of awesome in from Pixelboy today! Here are 13 more reasons why I got back into collecting ColecoVision games! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VectorGamer Posted April 16, 2015 Share Posted April 16, 2015 I received a box of awesome in from Pixelboy today! Here are 13 more reasons why I got back into collecting ColecoVision games! Star Force, Bank Panic and Track & Field are all excellent titles. Gulkave isn't too bad it's just a little too difficult. I don't own the other games to comment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shmup Lover Posted April 17, 2015 Share Posted April 17, 2015 (edited) I did read the entire wall of text. Glad you are back into it again. I think some of us have drifted out of gaming only to realize that it was a mistake and come back with a newfound appreciation for things. I too got interested in CV again from the flashback but refused to buy it as I needed the real thing again. Impressive collection of coin-ops man! That would rival some of the best arcades I can remember from back in the day. Edited April 17, 2015 by Shmup Lover Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 17, 2015 Author Share Posted April 17, 2015 I did read the entire wall of text. Glad you are back into it again. I think some of us have drifted out of gaming only to realize that it was a mistake and come back with a newfound appreciation for things. I too got interested in CV again from the flashback but refused to buy it as I needed the real thing again. Ha! I went the opposite way and actually bought all three version of the Flashback system! =) Although after doing that, I also realized I needed the real thing again. At least it was cool to get some of the bonus overlays in one of the bundles! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelboy Posted April 17, 2015 Share Posted April 17, 2015 Ha! I went the opposite way and actually bought all three version of the Flashback system! =) Although after doing that, I also realized I needed the real thing again. At least it was cool to get some of the bonus overlays in one of the bundles! Bonus overlays that you could buy from pboland at any time... ;P EDIT: This forum needs a winking-with-tongue-out smiley icon... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 17, 2015 Author Share Posted April 17, 2015 Bonus overlays that you could buy from pboland at any time... ;P EDIT: This forum needs a winking-with-tongue-out smiley icon... And if only I had found this forum before hand... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 28, 2015 Author Share Posted April 28, 2015 (edited) I've been working on my "loose cart" collection of official released titles, and I only have the following left to go. While I know there is a "Want to Buy" board as well, I figured it wouldn't hurt to post this in here to see if any of you guys had some extras you wanted to sell to me. Thanks in advance! Alcazar Amazing Bumpman Dragonfire Gust Buster Oil's Well Q*Berts Qubes Rock N Bolt Rolloverture Sector Alpha Skiing Tank War Wiz Math I also do not have any of the Xonox Double Enders. I know that a few of these may be pretty hard to come by, but I figured it was worth a shot listing them out! Edited April 28, 2015 by TPR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariBrian Posted April 28, 2015 Share Posted April 28, 2015 I've been working on my "loose cart" collection of official released titles, and I only have the following left to go. While I know there is a "Want to Buy" board as well, I figured it wouldn't hurt to post this in there to see if any of you guys had some extras you wanted to sell to me. Thanks in advance! Alcazar Amazing Bumpman Dragonfire Gust Buster Oil's Well Q*Berts Qubes Rock N Bolt Rolloverture Sector Alpha Skiing Tank War Wiz Math I also do not have any of the Xonox Double Enders. I know that a few of these may be pretty hard to come by, but I figured it was worth a shot listing them out! Oil's Well in my opinion is one of the most addicting games on any console . Go for that first ! Al has also made it available on the 5200 and I highly recommend picking one up from him . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted April 28, 2015 Author Share Posted April 28, 2015 ^ Agreed. I've nearly picked one up on eBay a couple of times, but the carts weren't in the best shape and the prices seemed a little steep for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted May 5, 2015 Author Share Posted May 5, 2015 (edited) I can update this list a bit: I still need: Alcazar Amazing Bumpman Dragonfire Gust Buster Rock N Bolt Skiing Tank War Wiz Math And I now have one of the Xonox double enders: Tomarc the Barbarian/Motocross Racer Getting closer to having a complete loose collection of all the released carts! Thanks to everyone here who messaged me with some available games. Edited May 5, 2015 by TPR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted May 6, 2015 Author Share Posted May 6, 2015 Looks like I can knock Dragonfire off that list now. According to NIAD's list, I think the only loose carts I need for a complete collection of released carts (note that I'm not going for label variants) are: Alcazar Amazing Bumpman Boulder Dash Gust Buster Skiing Super Sketch Tank War Wiz Math I also do not have any of these reproduction prototype carts: BurgerTime (Intellivision on label) Escape from the Mindmaster Fall Guy M.A.S.H. Porky's Yolks on You If you have any of these you're willing to sell, please let me know! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColecoDan Posted May 7, 2015 Share Posted May 7, 2015 wow you really got down to the ones that are going to be very hard to find and cost you money. Probably the easiest one on your list is Artillery Duel/Chuck Norris Double Ender, gust buster might be easier to get just because of the boxes that were found you can probably get a CIB of it for 40 - 50 bucks or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted May 7, 2015 Author Share Posted May 7, 2015 wow you really got down to the ones that are going to be very hard to find and cost you money. Probably the easiest one on your list is Artillery Duel/Chuck Norris Double Ender, gust buster might be easier to get just because of the boxes that were found you can probably get a CIB of it for 40 - 50 bucks or so. Yup. I figured that would be the case! =) I was able to cross Rock N Bolt off the list tonight. Just gotta keep an eye on eBay or if anyone on AA wants to sell, although I kind of thought that probably won't happen, but it doesn't hurt to ask, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted May 7, 2015 Author Share Posted May 7, 2015 New additions to the collection came in today thanks to Pixelboy & pboland! Thanks guys! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcks73 Posted May 8, 2015 Share Posted May 8, 2015 Oh how awesome it is to see Tomarc / Motocross double ender. Must of been a steep price! Great none the less! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted May 8, 2015 Author Share Posted May 8, 2015 ^ And I just picked up the Artillery Duel/Chuck Norris Double Ender today! ColecoDan was right, that one was the easiest of my current list! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPR Posted May 10, 2015 Author Share Posted May 10, 2015 Some fun additions arrived today thanks to coleco_master, crapahute, and Collectorvision! These reproduction boxes are fantastic! Thanks guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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