Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

Albert · March 8, 2016

People must drop off the list after a certain amount of time if they haven't reloaded the page in a while though don't they?

Yes.

Andromeda Stardust · March 8, 2016

Why no new podcasts or YT videos yet with guys with talking heads discussing the endgame and checkmate of Mike Kennedy and is various endeavors? I will be earnestly surprised if I get my last two issues of Retro. Maybe he should just print 72 pages of ...

Hi, I'm Mike Kennedy. I appologize for my actions and will not lie to the Retrogaming community again.

... ah hell it's garbage anyway.

phoenixdownita · March 8, 2016

Komic Stardust ... we get it.

MagnaRyuu · March 8, 2016

I was once a candidate for the Jr Darwin awards. Number one cardinal rule of electronics kits: One should never play with electricity from the mains!

Once I also shocked the fire out of myself and nearly made my heart stop with a circuit running off a 9 volt battery. I hooked the relay (blue box) so that the coil broke the circuit as it energized, which besides generating a ton of audible wideband RF noise, created a powerful inductive kickback pulse that created a mysterious tingling sensation whenever I placed my index and middle fingers across the relay terminals. It was then I learned that I had a fairly high tolerance for electrical pain. I then took the transformer block from a 9V AC adapter that I previously dissected, connected the low voltage secondary coil in series with the relay coil. Then I grabbed both ends of the high voltage primary winding in either hand, and instantly both my arms felt like they were on fire and my heart seized up for about half a second. It knocked me the hell back, but luckily my heart did not stop, and I did not black out, but i remember laying there on the floor for ten, fifteen minutes, too scared and fatigued to get up, trembling and feeling cold and clammy, beads of sweat dripping from my forehead, and I felt a tingling sensation in my forearms and fingers that persisted into the next day. I never told my parents about it but that night quietly thanked the Lord I was still alive. My parents were both out of the house, and had my heart stopped, nobody would have been there to revive me until hours too late. The transformers in those little DC adapters that reduced the lethal charge in the walls into something that was safe to play with could also convert a harmless circuit into a lethal voltage when operated in reverse.

I later attempted to use said power brick in reverse to light a light bulb, but alas, the transformer was useless for converting DC power, and even if it could, my small bank of AA batteries could never have provided sufficient juice to illuminate the luminary.

EDIT. Sorry if this is OT. I stepped out for a couple hours because real life responsibilities.

Yeah I don't think the extra electronics (one of the boomboxes i found in the trash, a couple of clock radios, parts from an old tv; just to name a few) that i had taken apart and attached to the two electronics sets helped in the whole matter. LOL And it was the same time as a kid that I had gotten into Nikola Tesla so I had actually built a rudimentary Tesla Coil as well. I had big plans apparently

Edited March 8, 2016 by MagnaRyuu

MagnaRyuu · March 8, 2016

It was more of collecting potential indie games that might of been released on it in cart form like shovel knight or something to that like it. But was just a pipe dream thats been crushed.

Why would anyone want to own Shovel Knight on a cartridge? Cause it's on steam and that gets updates.

Amstari · March 8, 2016

Has anyone told Kevin the news yet?

galax · March 8, 2016

Why no new podcasts or YT videos yet with guys with talking heads discussing the endgame and checkmate of Mike Kennedy and is various endeavors? I will be earnestly surprised if I get my last two issues of Retro. Maybe he should just print 72 pages of ...

Hi, I'm Mike Kennedy. I appologize for my actions and will not lie to the Retrogaming community again.

...

Hi, I'm Mike Kennedy. I appologize for my actions and will not lie to the Retrogaming community again.

... ah hell it's garbage anyway.

Yeah OK please stop adding more crap to scroll through.......................

Well don't make things worse by quoting it all!

+FujiSkunk · March 8, 2016

I'm just jazzed about being on the show.

Ahem, sorry, read a Galaxy Quest article recently.

Anyway, first post in this thread, but I've read just about everything here. I have nothing to add except that a lot of what I've read about Mike Kennedy's actions seemed very familiar. Then it hit me. I worked for him.

Okay, no, I didn't work for him, but I once worked for someone very much like him, in a very similar set of circumstances. Fresh out of college, I worked for a guy putting together a company whose flagship product was going to be a web-based email service. This was back when such things were novel and potentially still money-makers. You know, the dot-com era. Anyway, by the time I came around, he had already had a few developers working on the service, and everytime anyone asked him about it, he optimistically answered, "We'll be online in a week!" "A week" turned into several months. Then I came on board, fresh out of college and happy to work for peanuts, especially since I also got to work from home. The only programming language I really knew was C, and I knew nothing about running an email server, a web server or even general system administration, but hey, I could learn. Eventually I did learn, and eventually we did get something up and running. It even had active users for a while. It was cobbled together with paper clips and bubblegum, but it worked. (Side note: Never code a website in C. Even back then that made absolutely no sense, but it was all I knew.)

Then, cracks appeared. The web server colo bill wasn't getting paid. The promised ad money never materialized. And then the owner, my boss, sold his house and moved out of state. Immediately at the same time, the paychecks, which at best could only ever be described as "meager", stopped coming altogether. And still my boss promised things would turn around. "I'm making connections. I'll pay you what I owe you! In fact you'll get stock options!" Eventually a contract did appear in the mail. If I were to move to where he now lived (on my dime) and promise to continue working for him, I'd get a piece of the company. I was reading this as I was wondering how I was going to pay my overdue apartment rent, and I was also stinging from a threat of getting sued if I went to our one and only branding partner and gave him any idea of what was really going on. I told my boss I was done, and I found another job.

But even then he wasn't quite through. He said he found money, and even sent me one more paycheck. And then he asked if I'd help him with some new project. I said yes, if he paid me, and a friend who had been the company's only other permanent employee, what he owed us. All of it. I never heard from him again. I suspected the money for that last paycheck was an advance from new people he had convinced he could do a job for, even though he didn't have any workers to actually do that job. By then, though, I'd washed my hands of him, so I didn't dig for details.

I will say, though, while we were building the site, and while it was running, we had something good going on. If luck had been any different, and if he'd actually had some usable business experience to go with his ambitions, I think my boss could have been a very rich man, or at least a very successful one, and I would have happily come along for the ride. But when things went bad, they did in a hurry. And so did he.

So people ask, is Mike Kennedy a con artist, or just someone who dreamed a little too big? If he's anything like my old boss, he's both.

OldSchoolRetroGamer · March 8, 2016

Well don't make things worse by quoting it all!

Yes, I realized that a moment too late, went to try and edit my response but the content is not appearing in the edit window

See the post I made directly after (#6733) JUST TURNED INTO A FRIGGIN MESS................

IT'S A MADHOUSE ! A MADHOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE - OK someone removed them at my request, THANKS ! I shall be more careful quoting long ass posts in future ! :lol: :thumbsup:

Edited March 8, 2016 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

some_canuck · March 8, 2016

Why no new podcasts or YT videos yet with guys with talking heads

give it a day, they'll start crawling in eventually.

toiletunes · March 8, 2016

So what's next? (apologies to the Flashback franchise)

Shawn · March 9, 2016

Hi, I'm Mike Kennedy. I appologize for my actions and will not lie to the Retrogaming community again.

Apology not accepted.

Lincoln · March 9, 2016

I belong to a collector's group started buy some og collectors. MK is a member, and he usually runs a raffle at the meetups. There's typically one in April iirc, so I'm curious if he's going to attend given the meltdown of everything.

Akito01 · March 9, 2016

http://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/giant-bombcast-03082016/1600-1529/

relevant talk begins at 3:00:42 (long podcast is long!)

A little late to the party for the main Bombcast crew (sadly recorded a day earlier as well, and so missed today's developments). Interestingly, they were apparently contacted at some point early on in the process for PR purposes, and Jeff relates his brief experience with that communication. There is nothing here in terms of content that we on AtariAge don't already know, but it is fun to hear the number of times Brad says the word 'Wow!'.

Newsdee · March 9, 2016

Apology not accepted.

Yeah why are you doing the work for him? You'll get thrown under a bus because "we decided the wording wasn't just right so we will wait and produce an apology that will blow everybody away"

SoulBlazer · March 9, 2016

Given what happened, I don't think Mike will show his face ANYWHERE for a good six months if not longer...not at cons, not at gaming events, not on podcasts, not on YouTube, nothing. He's just going to lay low and wait for the worst of the damage to clear. What he does after that? Only time will tell. I'm a forgiving person by nature and I believe in second chances, but Mr. Kennedy has HAD his second chance already. Is anyone really going to give him a third?

Retro Nick · March 9, 2016

After expending much time, and personal resources, I managed to locate Mr. Lee:

jaybird3rd · March 9, 2016

Is anyone really going to give him a third?

Not me. Let's bring this thread full circle and remind ourselves of what he said the last time he was being "sincere" (emphasis added by me):

Hello Everyone.

It is the end of a very tumultuous year for me and in the spirit of Christmas and the holidays I wanted to come in here and ask those of you who will listen to let the past be the past as it relates to this (ad)venture. RETRO VGS is the past and COLECO Chameleon is the future. The Chameleon is not just a rebranded Retro VGS. Despite sharing some of the same internal components the hardware has been completely redesigned to lower the cost while maintaining much of its ability to play a wide variety of games in a variety of ways. To boil this all down to its essence we just want to produce a product that is different, affordable and will bring joy to people’s lives. The market will ultimately decide if we are crazy enough to believe a cartridge console can stand its ground in this age of digital delivery. There are clearly lots of people on both sides of this fence and ultimately it will all come down to the games that can be played and if they are compelling enough to vie for peoples hard earned money.

The COLECO branding was a business decision I made to bring instant brand recognition to the Chameleon. But I did not enter into this licensing agreement lightly, knowing that if done so, we have a lot to live up to. COLECO made some very influential, high quality and fun video gaming and electronic products during their time and we will try endlessly to carry on that tradition with the Chameleon. The recognition of having the COLECO logo on the system and the (game and console) boxes will make the Chameleon immediately identifiable by millions of people right from the beginning. In the end this is a good thing for all involved including us, our customers, our suppliers and distributors, our contract manufactures, potential retailers and probably most importantly to game developers. Mark and Chris at River West/Coleco Holdings are also very behind this product and will be helping out in a variety of ways, beginning by inviting us into their booth at Toy Fair which is where they want to officially begin rebuilding this brand in more concrete ways.

We know we have a mountain to climb and are prepared to do what it takes to plant a flag at the top. I will once again apologize to all of you for at times dissing some individuals and this community but it was hard being criticized by a group of my Atari and classic game lovin’ peers. I let it get to me on occasion and I do regret all of it. I am aware that we gave you all plenty to poke fun at and criticize but in the end, I believe the product will be much better for going through all of this. In my mind, the best way for me to apologize once and for all is to ultimately create a game system that will make most of you turn a 180 and win over your support and positive influence. And given the chance that is what I will do.

All I ask is moving forward into the New Year is you try and give the Chameleon a fair chance to stand on its own, and again forget about the past. Let it speak for itself when we reveal it to you all early this New Year. And finally, let’s respect one another and our opinions (some advice I am directing towards myself) and that goes for both believers and non-believers of what we are trying to do. In the end, we all love and are passionate about video games and sometimes this passion causes us to do uncharacteristic things.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and I hope you all have a very Happy New Year!

- Mike

In light of everything that's happened since, this reads like somebody's idea of a twisted joke.

+Nathan Strum · March 9, 2016

Did I miss anything this morning? I haven't been able to check this thread all day.

(1 1/2 hours later...)

Like others have posted, I'm a little disappointed that it's over. Now where am I going to get my online entertain...

Oh... look!! Somebody's making cheese!!

While we are on the cliche train:

"Cliché train" - second favorite phrase of the day. Just behind:

Wow, very interesting! Thanks for putting these charts and graphs together. I'm honored to "officially" be a Top 10 Hater Brigader!

"Hater Brigader". That needs to be an Activision patch.

I blew the little metal can lid off a transistor on one of those kits, which was quite a surprise. I had the solar one first and then the wooden box 75 in 1, exactly the images already posted. I dreamed of having the 200 in 1 with the real dials on the front. In the UK they were sold by Tandy stores.

You aren't supposed to hook those kits up to car batteries.

I like the idea of starting a new thread, since this begins a new (and perhaps final) chapter in the lifecycle of this console. However, I want people who read this thread to be able to respond to it. After all, there are over 6,500 replies in this thread, and it would be aggravating to read a post and discover the topic is locked and you're unable to reply. Manually copying a quoted post from one thread to another is a pain.

I'd just let this one go as is. Interest in this whole thing is going to die off pretty fast now anyway.

Word Mark CHAMELEON VIDEO-GAME SYSTEM Goods and Services IC 028. US 022 023 038 050. G & S: Video game consoles Standard Characters Claimed Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK Serial Number 86897164 Filing Date February 4, 2016 Current Basis 1B Original Filing Basis 1B Owner (APPLICANT) Retro Video Game Systems, Inc. CORPORATION CALIFORNIA 28516 Sorano Cove Trabuco Canyon CALIFORNIA 92679 Type of Mark TRADEMARK Register PRINCIPAL Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

The Live/Dead Indicator is apparently in need of an update.

Finally, one more for the road:

RVG_Steve · March 9, 2016

Given what happened, I don't think Mike will show his face ANYWHERE for a good six months if not longer...not at cons, not at gaming events, not on podcasts, not on YouTube, nothing. He's just going to lay low and wait for the worst of the damage to clear. What he does after that? Only time will tell. I'm a forgiving person by nature and I believe in second chances, but Mr. Kennedy has HAD his second chance already. Is anyone really going to give him a third?

I would not financially support anything he spearheads, but I don't wish him ill will either. Whole saga has been a train wreck on top of a train wreck. While he's burned all his good karma, I hope he takes care of himself and finds peace in his life. A suicide report for example would make me feel real sad. You might not respect him but no need to take it any further than that.

Retro issue #11 either comes out summer 2016 or never I bet. What a downfall for Mike.

Andromeda Stardust · March 9, 2016

Was trying to do a Simpsons clipboard style gag but held dow CTRL+V for too long. :dunce:

Komic Stardust ... we get it.

My web browser was unresponsive and it triple posted... :dunce:

Yes, I realized that a moment too late, went to try and edit my response but the content is not appearing in the edit window

See the post I made directly after (#6733) JUST TURNED INTO A FRIGGIN MESS................

IT'S A MADHOUSE ! A MADHOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE - OK someone removed them at my request, THANKS ! I shall be more careful quoting long ass posts in future !

Yeah, tried to edit my own posts, no dice. Sorry for breakig the server... :dunce:

CPUWIZ · March 9, 2016

jaybird3rd · March 9, 2016

"Hater Brigader". That needs to be an Activision patch.

:rolling:

Wow, wouldn't that be great?! I can see it now: a modified Kaboom patch, with an AtariAge logo on the bomb!

carlsson · March 9, 2016

Perhaps he did have some talented hardware developers at the end of 2015, who for some reason dropped out, got very ill or worse (!) over New Year. It may have left him with empty shells and nothing to show, and rather than explaining it to Coleco and the world, he tried to keep up the facade as long as possible?

jaybird3rd · March 9, 2016

Perhaps he did have some talented hardware developers at the end of 2015, who for some reason dropped out, got very ill or worse (!) over New Year. It may have left him with empty shells and nothing to show, and rather than explaining it to Coleco and the world, he tried to keep up the facade as long as possible?

Or maybe he just lied. Again.

Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Recently Browsing 0 members