Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

[+GoldenWheels]

[Flojomojo]

And did anyone else notice that if Mike had just listened to the Atari Age crew in the first (and maybe 2nd and 3rd) place(s), that he would have SAVED a lot of money?

 

So while he's hating on you guys, you could have helped save him money and his rep.

But but but don't you see? He just HAD to prove us wrong, because when you have such an awesome vision, and you want it badly enough, you can do anything! Just talk about it in public a lot, make tons of promises, throw money at it, work your legitimate contacts with legitimate industry guys, and your dreams will come true! Cartridges! Simple as that.

[+GoldLeader]

But but but don't you see? He just HAD to prove us wrong, because when you have such an awesome vision, and you want it badly enough, you can do anything! Just talk about it in public a lot, make tons of promises, throw money at it, work your legitimate contacts with legitimate industry guys, and your dreams will come true! Cartridges! Simple as that.

 

Yup! CARTRIDGES!!!

[+GoldLeader]

Ya see if I designed a console...I WOULD listen to Atari Age.

 

So here's what I'm thinking ...

 

The games will be on Betamax tapes and it will look like VCR stuffed into a 3DO console....And have Odyssey 2 controllers...

[+nanochess]

I've seen my name related to CoolCV to be integrated in the Coleco Chamaleon and I can confirm I was contacted by Mike about it.

 

I even sent a draft contract for the source code. He forgot about our following Skype call, I sent a couple of email reminders but I didn't receive further contact from him.

[enoofu]

I'm Surprised that the eulogy hasn't started yet for the Chameleon, since Mike admitted it's dead and no one want's a piece of it

 

Edited April 8, 2016 by enoofu

[Flojomojo]

We will probably need to wait another 30 years, especially if Coleco is Darth Vader and Mike is Kylo Ren.

[galax]

I'm Surprised that the eulogy hasn't started yet for the Chameleon, since Mike admitted it's dead and no one want's a piece of it

 

In the Coleco Chameleon movie its demise will have more ceremony about it:

 

 

Of course Hater Brigader members will be depicted with pitchforks and flaming torches:

 

 

The toy fair prototype will be a MacGuffin, where the contents of the Jag Shell is never revealed to the audience no matter how much they want to see inside it:

 

[Mord]

Ya see if I designed a console...I WOULD listen to Atari Age.

 

So here's what I'm thinking ...

 

The games will be on Betamax tapes and it will look like VCR stuffed into a 3DO console....And have Odyssey 2 controllers...

 

Yes, but will it run Linux?

Edited April 8, 2016 by Mord

[savantskie]

If Albert sells console shells, I'm interested. My SNES needs one.

I'm sorry, I know I'm late to the game on this one, but this is my favorite comment out of this entire thread! And I agree!

[Flojomojo]

Yes, but will it run Linux?

 

See below. I'm thinking ... no.

"has the ability play"

"standards set by the "original" COLCEO"

 

Based on the care given to the scant information presented thus far, I speculate that the newly renamed RetroVGS hardware will be a fire hazard, when it works at all.

 

A more relevant question for me is ... Will it blend?

[+GoldLeader]

 

Yes, but will it run Linux?

 

Sure! It'll run Linux, Linus, Lennox Lewis if ya want...

 

And it'll play all the latest 21-bit games...There will be around 6.5 games per multipack.

[StopDrop&Retro]

And did anyone else notice that if Mike had just listened to the Atari Age crew in the first (and maybe 2nd and 3rd) place(s), that he would have SAVED a lot of money?

 

So while he's hating on you guys, you could have helped save him money and his rep.

 

*gasp!*

 

It almost sounds like the true source of Mike's problems is.... MIKE!!!

[+GoldLeader]

StopDrop&Retro, on 08 Apr 2016 - 1:18 PM, said:

 

*gasp!*

 

It almost sounds like the true source of Mike's problems is.... MIKE!!!

 

Ya know I hadn't thought of that...

 

You think we should tell him?

[Cybermario]

 

#Ruiner

 

"we have the best writers in the industry writing for us" Mike said, really? then why RETRO sucks so bad... Typical Mike lying and trying to sell something that isnt there

[rob_ocelot]

I've seen my name related to CoolCV to be integrated in the Coleco Chamaleon and I can confirm I was contacted by Mike about it.

 

I even sent a draft contract for the source code. He forgot about our following Skype call, I sent a couple of email reminders but I didn't receive further contact from him.

 

Incoming!

 

Everyone please shuffle to the right to make more room under the bus!

[+GoldLeader]

 

"we have the best writers in the industry writing for us" Mike said, really? then why RETRO sucks so bad... Typical Mike lying and trying to sell something that isnt there

 

One thing I will say about magazines, though, is you really can't return them...Can you imagine going into a store and saying "I'd like to return this. I'm not satisfied with it." And how funny it would be to hear them say "You can't return this it's already been read!"

 

I haven't been too happy with the latest Retros, but I figure as long as he delivers them, he's lived up to his end of the bargain. Personally I think it'd be cool if it were more like Video Game Collector magazine if anyone's read that, (Just trying for a somewhat modern example)...

 

But back in the day, I think part of the hobby was to buy a magazine and hope it was good when you got it home (kind of like the games themselves).

 

I remember being blown away by some early Electronic Games issues or by some of the layouts of 16-bit games in Diehard Gamefan, where they'd take the time to put together multiple screenshots and lay them together seamlessly onto one page...

 

But I also remember buying some unknown one off magazine in the '80s where the advice was telling me philosophically, to be one with my ship and attempt to achieve "perfect unity" when playing Asteroids Deluxe...

[toiletunes]

Flojomojo, on 08 Apr 2016 - 12:00 PM, said:

...throw SOMEONE ELSE'S money at it...

-fixed that for you ;P

[wf_]

http://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/the-giant-beastcast-episode-46/1600-1563/

 

relevant talk begins at 00:03:35

 

As always, the guys of Giant Bomb East and CNET bring the well deserved mirth.

 

It does disappoint me hearing these casts & reading these articles where the only thing they read was Mike's posts, and not all the fact-checking, now vs then analyses, and other first party reports that came immediately after.

[+rdemming]

 

 

 

 

 

[+FujiSkunk]

 

Oh goodness, I have that same t-shirt.

[Flojomojo]

But back in the day, I think part of the hobby was to buy a magazine and hope it was good when you got it home (kind of like the games themselves).

 

 

True enough, I felt that way too ... but in retrospect, that's kind of the kid's perspective, the consumer view. Assuming you didn't just read it in the store, like a normal little hooligan (like I often did).

 

The publishers would have seen it from a different perspective. To them, the magazines were just pulp to move around in order to sell advertising. The writers were often underpaid young writers who happened to love games. I don't feel like a whole lot has changed even as print dried up and went digital. It's hard for me to say whether RETRO doesn't seem to have the same kind of roots and soul, or perhaps I've just gotten older.

 

The idea that Mike has a "child's mind" as mentioned earlier makes sense -- not in an insulting way necessarily, but he really did seem to come at this from the perspective of a fan, a consumer, the way we might have dreamed it up in our school notebooks as a kid. The entrepreneurial spirit he thinks he has, the feeling of pumped up self-esteem, thinking he's talented and entitled that I hear in his voice ... the fall must be especially hard for him. I would not be surprised if he listens to stuff like the small business rhetoric of "what could you accomplish if you knew you could not fail" and things like that, which probably didn't do him any favors. I've re-read his answers, and I can feel the insistence that he did the best he could, and that he really did want to will this thing into existence. I think he's delusional, so "good intentions" don't really matter -- especially with all the big-mouth marketing lies he told, so often and so loudly. I would have quit one hundred times when he just got back up and kept going. In another situation, this behavior could have been admirable (or maybe just gotten him killed for stupidity).

 

It's too bad Mike didn't look out for himself better, or had someone to keep him from flying into the sun like he did. No bank would have approved a small business loan for a dream that was this poorly developed, just as no one wanted to crowd fund a Kickstarter for an empty box with nothing inside but hopes and wishes.

 

Why he insisted on running his mouth, promising stuff that never existed, dreaming up Kickstarter reward tiers for things that were (at best) in the nascent phase of development ... that's what keeps me in this thread. It's simultaneously fascinating and disturbing to me, that someone could be that fixated on something that was obsolete 30 years ago, but wanting to bring it back into existence, using the tools and skills available to him -- old console shell molds, a personality that likes to talk and be in the spotlight.

 

If any part of his version of events is true, it makes sense that at first he wanted the public to front the whole cost, at little to no risk for him except for his mouthpiece time. As that proved impossible, he got more and more desperate, putting some of his own money in, but not enough to actually achieve anything, just enough to hurt himself.

 

Anyway ...just thought I'd share a little of why I find this "hater" "circle jerk" "beating a dead horse" situation so interesting. It's not often that we get someone in this hobby that is able to make so much noise and flop so hard.

[Flojomojo]

Flojomojo, on 08 Apr 2016 - 12:00 PM, said:

...throw SOMEONE ELSE'S money at it...

-fixed that for you ;P

 

I think that was the goal at first, in what MK so wonderfully calls the "John Carlsen era." Carlsen didn't want to work for free, which is a realistic and reasonable way to approach an engineer-for-hire job. That's how I would have played it, too. Of course I wouldn't want anyone running his mouth about the project without something more tangible to offer. Wasn't it remarkable how the list of cartridge games was completely different between the RVGS and CC stages of the fever dream?

 

I mostly believe that MK wasted his own money on the fabulous fakes of Mr. Lee, otherwise, why would he be so butthurt about the situation? From his actions, I believe that losing the money is probably more painful to him than spoiling his reputation. But what do I know, posting anonymously on a video game board about a project that is the toy equivalent of an imaginary friend?

 

If Mike could dial his ego down a little bit and worked for someone else who could direct his energy in more productive ways, he could have been like Major Nelson, an energetic face to an interesting product, maybe even one that is relevant in modern times!

[+GoldLeader]

 

Oh goodness, I have that same t-shirt.

 

I think I have maybe 2 Atari shirts now, but had at least 1 other that simply wore out. And FWIW, the other day I wore a tan "Coleco" shirt out on a bike ride through the park, and I ran into a guy out with his kids who was wearing an Atari shirt... I've actually said before to my friends, that maybe Atari would still be in business if they were (also) in the business of selling T-shirts.

[atm94404]

Darn. You stop reading for a week and then the floodgates open...

 

But i am absolutely baffled and deeply distraught at the decision to NOT open up the console and look it up at the hotel after the first day at the fair, even as the internet were exploding with evidence it was fake. By simply deciding not to take a peek and see what all the fuss was about and instead decide to continue the show, knowing it was a fake it is 100% knowingly comitting fraud from Mike from that point on. No excuses.

 

I'll do you one better. Why didn't he open it up the second the show closed? He has no excuses at that point. There is no downside to opening it up after the show. If it's real, he can post photos or periscope or whatever the kids are doing these days and prove all the haters wrong. If it's not, then he has no reason to pay Sean an additional $4000 and he can save himself further humiliation. Now anticipating Mike's excuses for this question ("I'm not a hardware guy"), do you think if he sent a photo of the "prototype" to Steve Woita, that Steve wouldn't have said "Don't pay that guy another cent!"?

 

In Mike's latest explanation/minimization of his responsibility, he falls back on the "I'm not a hardware guy" defense by throwing Steve Woita and Clay Cowgill under the bus. First, Mike does everything to imply that he only knew Sean because of Clay. Now we find out that Mike not only knew Sean before talking to Clay, he had Sean do website work. When the "I met this guy through Clay" excuse fails (and he unfriends Clay), Mike tries to imply that he only hired Sean because of what Steve said. Yet when all these questions about the fake SNES and the DVR-in-a-box come up, Mike doesn't consult his partner and go-to hardware guy, Woita? Not believable.

 

Not to pat myself on the back, but myself and others predicted this "I'm a patsy" excuse from Mike when the show was going on:

 

And here comes Mike's plausible deniability. "I'm not a hardware guy. He told me it was an FPGA running an SNES core. I've been duped just like you guys." This anonymous HW guy is being set up as essentially John 2.0: The Next Scapegoat

 

 

They were so pressed for time, yet on their FPGA dev board, they went to the trouble to implement an SNES edge connector, the proprietary SNES video out, the SNES controller port (instead of using the USB port of the dev board) and the SNES power connector. And for extra points they put them in the exact same positions and spacing as an SNES Jr. You'd think if they made this from scratch they would use all that extra space in the front of the Jag shell rather than having those ports protrude out the back and have to be covered by black tape.

 

I think the theory that Mike knew this was a scam all along (from December on) is the most likely. Mike needed a fake prototype to get the Kickstarter money so he could hire a real hardware team, and who better to make him a fake than someone with experience. Mike was very quick to provide a ton of links about Sean's misdeeds, so we know Mike can Google. So does anyone believe that Mike, who has never paid cash to one of his "partners" before (only shares and vague promises of royalties) would open his checkbook (THREE TIMES) to a guy he didn't first run through a Google search and verify he had some mad hardware and FPGA skills? Even after by his own admission, alarm bells are going off in his head? Even when Mike was supposedly tapped out by the whole RVGS fiasco?

 

So we've seen images of payments to Sean, but that could be for services rendered (fake prototypes). If Mike truly has been scammed, how about we get copies of the police report? Why wouldn't Mike file one? It's the first step in getting his money back and necessary to get a prosecution against Sean. How about copies of the court filings? Again, Mike wants to get his money back. If Mike's version of events are true, it's a slam dunk case in Small Claims Court. Given the amounts involved, he'd get the most back in Small Claims because he wouldn't have to use a lawyer and it could be settled in just a couple of months. I believe Mike's in contact with a DA on the same level that he's in discussions with Konami, Sega, Blizzard, etc.

 

To Clay and Steve, please collect your Ex-Partners of Mike Kennedy T-Shirt