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Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?


phoenixdownita

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Did you all hear that? What was that terrible "BUMP"??? Oh yeah, we've heard it before ... another "hardware guy" getting thrown under the bus.

 

My initial reaction: it's extraordinary to me that the guy in charge of a project to develop a game console couldn't recognize something that was so obviously fake to so many of us who were watching at a distance. It's even more extraordinary that he would write checks worth thousands of dollars to a friend of a friend, based on nothing but vague promises, without even doing any kind of due diligence. If I were in that position, I would have at least asked to visit the guy's office and to see the guy's previous work, and I certainly wouldn't have waited until AFTER all that money disappeared to do a Google search on him.

 

Yes that. And if my prototype of whatever was being called a fake by thousands I'd sure as hell be opening it up to see what was going on inside.

 

And the "hardware guy" telling Mike to not "show the back" or "open it" is a red flag. It's not like this is Psychlo Control panels or anything.

 

But, hey, at least the Video Capture card is more than 2-bits! Was it covering up the real hardware? I don't buy it (even though it was my idea that the real stuff was underneath) because why go through that amount of trouble for a toy videogame..? Eh?

 

I though of offering my services, once again, to set this project straight. But I don't want my name or firm associated with it.

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My initial reaction . . .

I didn't read every word of his post, so I could have missed it. If AtariAge opened his eyes, who was deleting the eye-opening posts at Facebook? It couldn't have been him, since he wasn't in on the scam, right?

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I didn't read every word of his post, so I could have missed it. If AtariAge opened his eyes, who was deleting the eye-opening posts at Facebook? It couldn't have been him, since he wasn't in on the scam, right?

I'm sure some shadowy, anonymous "Facebook guy" will be getting the blame for that.

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....

And please, don’t let this mess carry over to the magazine. I have a great team of people working on it. We are pouring a lot of heart and soul and sweat equity into keeping the magazine going and it’s only getting better.

....

Say what?

 

Fool me three times, shame on Lee?

ROTFL ..... this should be the new title of the thread, bar none, I was having tears to my eyes .... thanks.

 

EDIT (new thread title):

fool me once shame on you

fool me twice shame on me

fool me thrice shame on Lee

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Can Mike tell us who the "local authorities" are that he's in contact with?

 

Police reports are public record and I'd love to request it to see if the story there matches what's being told to us here... or if it even exists. I don't care if the investigation is pending and they redact the whole thing. If a FOIA request comes back telling me they have no record of any reports for a "Mike Kennedy" or a "Sean Lee Robinson," well, then that gives us a lot of answers.

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I've found Sweat Equity:

 

 

Say what?

 

Parrothead said

And please, don’t let this mess carry over to the magazine. I have a great team of people working on it. We are pouring a lot of heart and soul and sweat equity into keeping the magazine going and it’s only getting better.

Say what?

toiletunes, on 04 Apr 2016 - 10:58 PM, said:snapback.png

Fool me three times, shame on Lee?

ROTFL ..... this should be the new title of the thread, bar none, I was having tears to my eye .... thanks.


ROTFL ..... this should be the new title of the thread, bar none, I was having tears to my eyes .... thanks.

 

 

 

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frankly im surprised he even had the nerve to come here and post after saying nothing sooner. im not going to read what he wrote, but did he say whether or not he showed anyone else the hicap proto pics before showing em to the world? what a hot mess.

Edited by shawnphase
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I also hope that you will also wonder why I would go to all this trouble surrounding this venture with guys like Ben Herman (he was a Rockstar at Toy Fair, and had tons of legit retailer interest in this thing) and Phil Adam, Paul Wylie and eventually Steven Rosenbaum. Why would I go out and bring Coleco on board as a licensing partner?

Maybe, just maybe, because you are an "idiot"?

 

According to your last tale, let's call it "the book of Mike", you were scammed 10K$ in this silly venture redux and not 6 months earlier you were trying to get 2M$ in funding ..... whatever dude!!!!

 

On the bright side if it wasn't for your shenanigans I would not have subscribed to AA, and now I am proud I did. So at least one good thing happened (maybe).

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For what it's worth, I'm thrilled that Mike is back in the thick of things! Podcast fodder for months! Wow what a doozy.

 

PS: Issue 10 of RETRO was a huge disappointment, and I've supported this magazine through thick and thin. It was worthless, full of reprinted articles from other publications, and little more than Wikipedia entries for the rest.

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For what it's worth, I'm thrilled that Mike is back in the thick of things! Podcast fodder for months! Wow what a doozy.

 

PS: Issue 10 of RETRO was a huge disappointment, and I've supported this magazine through thick and thin. It was worthless, full of reprinted articles from other publications, and little more than Wikipedia entries for the rest.

I dunno man, Mike seemed pretty proud of it. :D

 

Carl. I am the majority shareholder and the only one that matters. Seems strange I never heard anything about this from you. And, we've had lots of complements on issue #10. Issue #11 is going out this week and will be great as well. So we are continuing to make good on our committments to all our subscribers. And the magazine team is still in tact, less two.

Complement your lack of spell checking please .... and "in tact, less two" it doesn't even make sense, misspelling aside "less two" it's not intact, because intact means whole ... you mouthpiece!!!

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Did you all hear that? What was that terrible "BUMP"??? Oh yeah, we've heard it before ... another "hardware guy" getting thrown under the bus.

I don't know if "Mr Lee" is a felon or not but man, it's hard to be a hardware guy these days, either that or there are so many freaking buses going around that there's no avoiding them.

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You will all be glad to hear that I am officially tabling the console venture for good.

I have negotiated with Albert (AtariAge) to take over the Jaguar tooling so we can all be assured it’s in good hands and won’t get destroyed or lost to time. And I am sure Albert will do some very cool things with the console and cartridge shells.

9102w1sZL-L._SY355_.jpg

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  • Mike

For whatever it's worth, I believe you and I hope that you are able to work with an attorney to recoup your losses. If I was in your position I don't think I would have realized that the prototypes were fake or that I was being scammed either, and if I had the money to fund a project like the Retro VGS I could easily see myself winding up in the same position that you've found yourself in.

 

The project is definitely past the point of being salvaged, but hopefully now that the full story behind all of this has come to light that your personal reputation can be restored. If you were indeed the victim of a clever scam artist running an elaborate con then the last thing you deserve is to be shamed and shunned for it. Best wishes to you and yours.

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I hope that Albert is actually getting the tooling. Ever since this began with the Retro VGS, the only thing I could think about was the tooling being used to make Jag stuff again.

 

Well that's the only right way to use it - make jag stuff again.

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.... now that the full story behind all of this has come to light that your personal reputation can be restored. If you were indeed the victim of a clever scam artist running an elaborate con then the last thing you deserve is to be shamed and shunned for it. Best wishes to you and yours.

Ahem .... he was the President of the company, he does deserve all the shame it comes his way.

And in his own words:

 

...

During the show we were accused of not having that system even plugged in so I made the decision to take a photo of the back of the unit showing it was clearly plugged in. If that was true about using the composite connector, I really felt people would understand why it was used and decided to show the pics. I didn’t feel we had anything to hide. Then all hell broke loose and it was identified that SNES mini parts or the whole PCB from an SNES mini was inside the console shell. I was left in a terrible spot at this point and I had a decision to make that evening at the hotel. Do I take this thing apart and see what was in it and quit the show or continue on with the show, demoing the games that were going to be on the system, and then address this issue with Sean when we got back from New York. Right or wrong, I continued on with Toy Fair and it continued to impress people and the games were very favorably liked (Thanks Eli! For stepping in with his SNES multicart in place of Sean’s glitching out SD card driven demo cartridge). When I returned back home, I met Sean again and gave him the “prototype” back and he was still swearing that despite the SNES “parts” he used, the games were still running on the SNES FPGA software that he had constructed in a few short months. Again, I believed him and we moved forward. And he told me that during the Toy Fair he was preparing the next “prototype” board so I gave him the clear shells with explicit instructions from me to show “our” PCB inside the shell. This was going to be used to show the “real” prototype

To paraphrase, should I check and find the truth or should I feign ignorance and keep going? ....

let's see what he chose ..... yeahhhhh really the action of a worthy President no question about it ...

"the show must go on even if we are lying thru our teeth and I kind of suspect it already!!!"

 

This guy is still trying to place blame everywhere but himself ..... exactly like he did the last time around ... nothing new.

 

EDIT: and he does such a poor job at it that his own words incriminate him even more.

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I don't know if "Mr Lee" is a felon or not but man, it's hard to be a hardware guy these days, either that or there are so many freaking buses going around that there's no avoiding them.

Yeah, but this is the Mike Bus we're talking about. It seems to be good at seeking out hardware guys, and maybe even software guys, too: depending on how you read Mike's post, not only have Pipercub and John Carlsen and "The Mysterious Mr. Lee" been thrown under the bus, but Steve Woita as well.

 

This prediction from last year is starting to look even more prescient:

 

I am curious what the near-term and longer-term plans for the RetroVGS team are, though.

 

Resignation en mass and restraining orders if they come within 100m of each other? :ponder:

 

jvsyskbdmcoevtqblx8f.jpg

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Ahem .... he was the President of the company, he does deserve all the shame it comes his way.

And in his own words:

To paraphrase, should I check and find the truth or should I feign ignorance and keep going? ....

let's see what he chose ..... yeahhhhh really the action of a worthy President no question about it ...

"the show must go on even if we are lying thru our teeth and I kind of suspect it already!!!"

 

This guy is still trying to place blame everywhere but himself ..... exactly like he did the last time around ... nothing new.

 

EDIT: and he does such a poor job at it that his own words incriminate him even more.

 

That's what bothered me the most in this whole fracas.

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