Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

[gwald]

No they haven't. Nobody has come up yet with a commercial or open source full SNES or NeoGeo implementation (to just name a couple).

 

So it's quite a bold claim to make, and if you show up with disguised original hardware you lose all credibility.

 

Had they set realistic and concrete specs, or admitted upfront they just had a real SNES with a new shell it would have been a different story.

 

I didn't say anything about commercial nor full..... but the hardware and cores are out there, just google it.

 

 

@Flojomojo I didn't mention anything about appearances, I'm not hurt, my confusion was about someone reporting a kickstarter project.

 

Thanks, now I'll go back into my dark, moist hole.

[Newsdee]

I didn't say anything about commercial nor full..... but the hardware and cores are out there, just google it

I own two different FPGA boards with console and computer cores, and follow the topic closely on other projects. No existing core that MK had access to is capable of running the games that MK claimed having support for.

 

There is one Japanese guy with a SNES core on an Altera development board but he isn't sharing it other than some videos. I'm also aware of two guys documenting the NeoGeo (independently) but there isn't a full core yet (and until then we can't know what kind of board is needed).

 

This isn't about whether a project like this is theoretically possible (it is), but whether their team could pull it off (they obviously couldn't). There were other things that were very poorly defined like the business model around cartridges or even securing a hardware engineer for the project.

[jaybird3rd]

This isn't about whether a project like this is theoretically possible (it is), but whether their team could pull it off (they obviously couldn't). There were other things that were very poorly defined like the business model around cartridges or even securing a hardware engineer for the project.

Dave Nunez wrote a really good postmortem which touches on many of these same points. I'm sure it was linked earlier in this thread, but it's worth looking at a second time, so here it is again:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgkM8Ilzvnk

 

(Of course, if you read through the comments on YouTube, you'll see that our friend "gwald" was there to say that Dave was "wrong in lots of places" and that it was "very poorly researched," without providing any kind of substantive support for either claim. I didn't think there could possibly be any Mike fanboys left in the world, but I guess I was mistaken.)

[PlaysWithWolves]

Flojo's super power is summoning trolls.

 

There are still some true believers out there.

http://xpcoin.com/2016/03/10/retrovgs-coleco-chameleon-why-it-still-is-a-good-idea/

[Flojomojo]

Flojo's super power is summoning trolls.

 

OMG I'm so sorry. Please put me in Superman II's power removal booth so I may live among mortals.

[Flojomojo]

I didn't say anything about commercial nor full..... but the hardware and cores are out there, just google it.

 

 

@Flojomojo I didn't mention anything about appearances, I'm not hurt, my confusion was about someone reporting a kickstarter project.

 

Thanks, now I'll go back into my dark, moist hole.

"Just google it"

Show us a working, bug-free SNES FPGA core and we will believe you. Works in progress aren't evidence, nor is anything stated by demonstrated fabulist Mike Kennedy.

[toiletunes]

Saw this, and it reminded me of MK's jargonese:

[PlaysWithWolves]

OMG I'm so sorry. Please put me in Superman II's power removal booth so I may live among mortals.

 

The upside to this is you may get lucky in you Fortress of Solitude (Flotress of Mojotude? Attitude? Verisimilitude? Aptitude?).

[Flojomojo]

Someone should make MK jargon bingo ;P

 

*ahem*

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/247145-coleco-chameleon-hardware-speculations/page-91?do=findComment&comment=3447617

and

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/247145-coleco-chameleon-hardware-speculations/page-90?do=findComment&comment=3447525

 

 

[Pipercub]

"Don't bother investigating for themselves"??? Excuse me, but this is AtariAge you're talking to. Let's not forget that, while the "gaming press" was busy lapping up Mike's every word and reprinting his press releases as news stories, the people here were the ones who were doing the hard investigative work, watching his every move and unmasking his lies at every turn. It's because of the efforts of people like Albert, Kevtris, Pipercub and UKMike, triverse, SD&R, pxlsicle, btbfilms76, and many others, that the truth about Mike was uncovered and spread like wildfire. Were it not for that, Mike's first IndieGoGo campaign may well have succeeded, or he might have made it to Kickstarter and succeeded there. As Pat Contri observed on the #CUPodcast, that would have been a catastrophe for such a small and close-knit hobby as ours. We are not a mob, we are a self-policing community, and in this instance, I'm glad we succeeded in chasing away a huckster and a fraud.

 

Quoted for truth. Perhaps one of the most useful and to the point posts in this thread. As I have said earlier one of the core beliefs that Socal had was that he had a voice through the press and some sort of self anointed standing that would carry more authority and have a greater reach than ours (and by ours I mean any of us who knew the truth or were on a path to the truth) and that we would go unheard outside the gates while the crowds roared for him inside. The "official" video gaming press was a shameful failure in this whole débâcle, they are nothing more than talentless hacks on a treadmill of cut, paste, quote, add their bio at the bottom and bang it up on the site so they can move on to the next one. Even when they finally changed the story from cut,copy,paste about how wonderful it was to cut,copy,paste of how it was a fraud they never once got the facts right. If you do a Google search on the topic and read the first two pages of articles you would believe that David Giltinian leaving Retro Mag and Frank Cifaldi tweeting the news of fake prototype #3 were the key moments that turned the tide. Funny enough word is even Socal was astonished that the story was David Giltinian leaves Retro, Chameleon console collapses.

 

The youtubers and podcasters weren't that different, obviously they didn't have direct knowledge, OK fine, but neither they nor the "official press" did one ounce of investigative journalism! None of the people jaybird3rd mentioned above were ever contacted by anyone to ask about the details. Imagine what the media reporting would have been had they contacted those sources (and I would add Clay and John Carlson to that list) and interviewed them to get primary source material. There were a few notable exceptions, Pat and Ian at #CUpodcast, and our own SD&R took the time to research and communicate. There may have been a few others as I recall, but the overwhelming majority just guessed and guessed wrong. I just hope that if someone ever decides to do the book or the documentary on this that they read ever word of the threads here on AA and reach out to the primary sources and get the facts first hand. I still nominate BTB and SD&R as my dream team for the documentary.

[Newsdee]

The gaming press did it again recently reporting that Nintendo released the Nintendo Power issues on the Internet Archive. Only a few actually pointed out it wasn't official so big N would probably react to it (which they did).

[godslabrat]

The gaming press did it again recently reporting that Nintendo released the Nintendo Power issues on the Internet Archive. Only a few actually pointed out it wasn't official so big N would probably react to it (which they did).

 

The "gaming press" barely managed to honestly report on the NES Classic Edition. Most seemed eager to spin it as if Nintendo were literally re-releasing the NES this Christmas. If it weren't for the fact that their press release spelled out that it was a plug-and-play system, I'm positive kotaku and cnet would be knee-deep in "blowing in your cartridge" jokes.

[Flojomojo]

I don't think they're dishonest, just lazy.

[godslabrat]

I don't think they're dishonest, just lazy.

 

Lazy, and greedy for clicks. In either case, not qualities that should inspire great amounts of trust.

[Newsdee]

Dave Nunez wrote a really good postmortem which touches on many of these same points. I'm sure it was linked earlier in this thread, but it's worth looking at a second time

Thanks for (re)posting it, somehow I missed it and it's a fantastic take on the whole thing. He does (very politely) demolish the project completely though but he presents it in a positive way to help future projects avoid repeating several mistakes.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Newsdee

[Pipercub]

Thanks for (re)posting it, somehow I missed it and it's a fantastic take on the whole thing. He does (very politely) demolish the project completely though but he presents it in a positive way to help future projects avoid repeating several mistakes.

His analysis would be spot on had he been talking about a different project, the problem with it is that he doesn't even touch on the project never intending to develop legitimate hardware until they were funded by deception with "smoke and mirrors". I think his video would have applied had the crowdfunding gone through, after the money was spent and there was nothing to show for it, the thing would have failed for those reasons as well as being tied up in court.

[godslabrat]

His analysis would be spot on had he been talking about a different project, the problem with it is that he doesn't even touch on the project never intending to develop legitimate hardware until they were funded by deception with "smoke and mirrors". I think his video would have applied had the crowdfunding gone through, after the money was spent and there was nothing to show for it, the thing would have failed for those reasons as well as being tied up in court.

 

He says early on that he wanted to side-step the "internet drama". I agree with you that it does leave out a huge chunk of the story, but I can see his point that he wanted to illustrate why the project failed from a design perspective. There was plenty of commentary elsewhere that described the dishonesty and huckstering of Mike Kennedy, the post-mortem video did a great job of showing why the project would have failed under even the best of intentions.

 

I do think he let the Retro crew off way too easily by saying "It's a tough position to be in, and they said some things they shouldn't have said." That implies that these were honest mistakes, not intentional deception. We know that to not be the case, so to give them that out as a courtesy is, IMO, not necessary. I would have preferred the author not say anything rather than that.

[Great Hierophant]

Although Nunez does not specifically mention John Carlsen's name, much of what he said is a pretty thorough indictment of the only individual who on the RetroVGS who had professed any hardware or engineering experience. From all I have read, John Carlsen cannot design even a simple TTL to analog RGB converter right, nevermind a console.

[jaybird3rd]

Although Nunez does not specifically mention John Carlsen's name, much of what he said is a pretty thorough indictment of the only individual who on the RetroVGS who had professed any hardware or engineering experience. From all I have read, John Carlsen cannot design even a simple TTL to analog RGB converter right, nevermind a console.

Carlsen's "official" bio on the RVGS IndieGoGo and on LinkedIn did seem to include a lot of resumé padding and name-dropping, stuff like "He happened to go to the same school as Steve Wozniak!" and "He was hired to design a Playstation because he reverse-engineered a Playstation!" (or something along those lines).

[Newsdee]

It felt like an indictment of the wbole thing to me. His first point was asking "which problems does this solve" and basically outlined that the project goals already had existing solutions or were not grounded in reality (bug free carts).

 

Well now the NES AVS is about to come out. They worked on it for years and didn't go the KS route. I'm tempted to get one just on principle that its a HW project done right.

[jaybird3rd]

Well now the NES AVS is about to come out. They worked on it for years and didn't go the KS route. I'm tempted to get one just on principle that its a HW project done right.

They had some fun at the Coleco Chameleon's expense, too, with their own clear-shell "prototype":

 

[Flojomojo]

From all I have read, John Carlsen cannot design even a simple TTL to analog RGB converter right, nevermind a console.

 

 

Carlsen's "official" bio on the RVGS IndieGoGo and on LinkedIn did seem to include a lot of resumé padding and name-dropping, stuff like "He happened to go to the same school as Steve Wozniak!" and "He was hired to design a Playstation because he reverse-engineered a Playstation!" (or something along those lines).

 

 

Yeah, being on the same team as big shots at a big company isn't the same as doing things yourself, especially without the safety net of other people's money when you fail.

 

I almost* feel bad for Mike Kennedy, who spent so much time and energy doing what he did best ... talking ... even though that wasn't really a relevant skill at any stage that this project attained.

 

*almost, but not so much

[godslabrat]

 

Yeah, being on the same team as big shots at a big company isn't the same as doing things yourself, especially without the safety net of other people's money when you fail.

 

 

...but...but... The Coleco Chameleon had that mysterious private investor who bailed them out, that's why they don't need to do a kickstarter!

[Flojomojo]

...but...but... The Coleco Chameleon had that mysterious private investor who bailed them out, that's why they don't need to do a kickstarter!

 

Is that the same "family friend" who paid for the Toy Fair trip?

 

[Pipercub]

That is one of the biggest unanswered mysteries of this fiasco. I can't recall the exact point it happened at but Retro Mag tweeted that they weren't going to crowd sourcing because they had private backing, then moments later the RVGS facebook posted something totally contradictory but I can't recall for sure, anyone? Obviously the private funding was BS, but what was the move? They still had to go the crowdfunding route so why claim they had funding?

Edited August 10, 2016 by Pipercub