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Coleco In-House Prototypes Acquired "Jigsaw/Puzzle"


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Several weeks back, a quiet little eBay auction went largely unnoticed by the collector-public. Whereas on the surface, it seemed just a slightly overpriced collection of boxed albeit rag-tag commons, included in the assemblage were two Coleco in-house prototypes of a game that would eventually be published and sold on the open market. Those two prototypes were works-in-progress of "Dr Suess Fix-Up The Mix-Up Puzzler".

 

While not the most thrilling prototype works, there is excitement in that these are the first ever protos that I have acquired!

 

The first cart is simply a still screen of the to-be-released puzzle, and a long "frozen" tone plays when booted up. I will have to clean the contact to see if there is other audio.

 

The second cart is an early revision of the game with a few minor changes, including "Puzzle" rather than "Puzzler" in the title. The music's tempo is a beat faster, which tells me that marketing or someone probably advised that they slow it down for small children in the final release. I think the faster is better! The sound effects are slightly different too.

 

Attached are pictures of the protos. When time permits, I'll get some game-play footage up for comparison. Thanks for looking!

 

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FUTMU Graphics Demo in-house label.

 

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FUTMU Graphics Demo EEPROMs and PCB.

 

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FUTMU Rev "R".

 

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FUTMU Rev "R" EEPROMs and PCB.

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Haha. Totally understand Jim, as I had hoped the same thing! :D

 

But you know, protos are practically an everyday thing over in the Atari subforums. I felt awesome just finally getting a piece of West Hartford!

 

To tell you the truth, I wish we had a better-documented list of known protos in this subforum. A quick search revealed only a handful of findings for our beloved ColecoVision.

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Maybe I'll find the time to do it. I had drawn up plans to do several Atari sites way back when in the mid-90s, but y'all beat me to it! Back then, the primo resource was Greg Easter's site with the .gif of Grover sitting on a toilet.

 

I remember that site. Man that brings back memories...

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  • 9 months later...

I'm finally posting these two ROMs. The dumps seem accurate to my playing experience on a real ColecoVision. I used TOSEC and Ikrananka's excellent documentation with the naming convention.

 

Nothing incredibly special here, but the playable proto is kind of fun, and it's great for young kids.

 

I would love to hear any comments for those interested in pointing out comparisons between this proto and the released software. I particularly like the sound effect for reversing the tile in levels 4 and 5 (use the "5" key to do this). It's very similar to one used by a certain Italian plumber in one of his sequel games. :)

 

Enjoy!

Dr Seuss Proto and Demo ColecoVision (2017).zip

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  • 5 years later...
8 minutes ago, kmg said:

Very late thanks for sharing. Has anyone inspected the Graphics Demo? The ROM is an overdump but the first 8K should have a checksum of 90B3 according to the label. Actual checksum is 90A3. Is there a bad bit (or a few) in this dump?

You’re welcome! I can always dump it again. I use the AtariMax rig to read and dump my ROMs. It’s hard to tell when there is a checksum problem or a bad dump.

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If you have time it wouldn't be a bad idea to try dumping it again. It could be that somebody just wrote the wrong thing on the label. But the checksum being off by 16 could just be one bit that no longer reads correctly (bit rot, bad connection, etc).

 

BTW, the other prototype's checksums are good. The ROM is an overdump and should be 16K though. The second half is all 1s due to the empty slots on the board, though this doesn't matter for emulators.

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