CollectorVision Experience Club 2023

[nick3092]

Once again, even though JF said we don't need to use Facebook for updates a few posts back, we apparently need to use Facebook for updates.

 

Thanks for sharing. 

[+discotronic]

On 10/28/2023 at 9:52 AM, nick3092 said:

Once again, even though JF said we don't need to use Facebook for updates a few posts back, we apparently need to use Facebook for updates.

 

Thanks for sharing. 

Are you on their email list? I received an email this past Sunday with the latest update. 

[nick3092]

34 minutes ago, discotronic said:

Are you on their email list? I received an email this past Sunday with the latest update. 

As did I. But I had asked on Friday before it was sent out. And someone else reposted on Saturday from Facebook, that appears to have been posted 4 days prior to Facebook (so last Tuesday or so). Seems like e-mail updates only go out after it's called out here that Facebook is getting updates, and no where else. 

[+discotronic]

20 hours ago, nick3092 said:

As did I. But I had asked on Friday before it was sent out. And someone else reposted on Saturday from Facebook, that appears to have been posted 4 days prior to Facebook (so last Tuesday or so). Seems like e-mail updates only go out after it's called out here that Facebook is getting updates, and no where else. 

Gotcha. I don't have a Facebook account and will never have one so I totally understand. Getting updates here should at least happen at the the same time. 

[retroillucid]

21 hours ago, nick3092 said:

As did I. But I had asked on Friday before it was sent out. And someone else reposted on Saturday from Facebook, that appears to have been posted 4 days prior to Facebook (so last Tuesday or so). Seems like e-mail updates only go out after it's called out here that Facebook is getting updates, and no where else. 

The Facebook page is very active and I'm also the admin on it
I don't visit AA as much nowadays since I want to avoid drama and there's always drama here.... 
That's why you don't see us much here...

But no worries, we are always send update by email

[nick3092]

On 11/1/2023 at 1:57 PM, retroillucid said:

The Facebook page is very active and I'm also the admin on it
I don't visit AA as much nowadays since I want to avoid drama and there's always drama here.... 
That's why you don't see us much here...

But no worries, we are always send update by email

I mean, you can avoid whatever drama is happening outside this thread and just simply post updates here. No one is forcing you into whatever drama is unfolding in other threads. It is also kinda suspect that email updates only get sent out 2 days after they are asked for here, and when they were already posted to Facebook almost a week earlier.

 

At the start of every year, the club is actively sold/advertised here. Based on that we should get the same updates as Facebook. That's all I (and a few others who are not FB users) are asking for. I don't feel like we are asking for anything unreasonable here. 

[retroillucid]

19 hours ago, nick3092 said:

I mean, you can avoid whatever drama is happening outside this thread and just simply post updates here. No one is forcing you into whatever drama is unfolding in other threads. It is also kinda suspect that email updates only get sent out 2 days after they are asked for here, and when they were already posted to Facebook almost a week earlier.

 

At the start of every year, the club is actively sold/advertised here. Based on that we should get the same updates as Facebook. That's all I (and a few others who are not FB users) are asking for. I don't feel like we are asking for anything unreasonable here. 

I'll post update here as well

But like I said, we always send update by email 

[retroillucid]

Latest update:

We are supposed to get the magazines this week (it's the only missing thing)
As soon as we received the magazines, we'll start shipping

Again, sorry for the delay and thank you all for you patience

[retroillucid]

Shipping start Monday! 

[Emad]

Great news!  I just hope you can send me the weight and dimensions of the package so that I can make a UPS ticket and send it to you guys.  Regular shipping is NOT working to Spain from abroad.  One game has already been lost by customs and another package I had ordered has been lost also.  They’ve misplaced two of my packages in the last couple of months.  Don’t wanna take that risk.  Please remind Toby for me.  Much appreciated 🍻!!!  I’ll be damned if I lose another package… especially this one.  Been lookin forward to it an entire year.   Member 17!  

[rwest]

3 hours ago, retroillucid said:

Shipping start Monday! 

Got my email from Canadian Post saying I have a package coming- can’t wait! Thanks

[+sramirez2008]

Received my Canada Post email as well. I’ve set up an account in order to receive tracking updates. 
 

Thanks. 😊 

[OriginalJohn]

The secret games were superb,  you got me for life.

[nick3092]

My package showed up today, and I spent some time with the games.
 

Demon Attack was publicly announced as one of the games, so it should be fair to comment details publicly on it. This was one of my favorites on Intellivision growing up. But not really a fan of this conversion. First thing I noticed was the box had the Intellivision screen prints on the back. Odd, but whatever. The game itself just doesn't feel as fun as its Intellivision counterpart. It lacks the escalating background music. And the base battle is almost completely different and not as fun. And since the Intellivision box was copied verbatim, it describes the base battle differently than it's played. The manual has a couple oddities that obviously don't reflect the game, but do make it feel like the game was rushed. The first page inside the manual (back side of the front cover) is actually the instructions for the arcade game. As is the inside of the back cover.

 

I found that the arcade game starts up only about half the time with the SGM attached to my Coleco. I just get a red screen with a logo on it when it fails with SGM attached. It seems to start up 100% of the time with it removed. Kind of annoying that I have to remove it or keep hitting reset in hopes the game will start up. One minor typo in the manual has the left/right action buttons mixed up by default. But you can change those in the options, so not that big of a typo. Other than that, seems like a solid game.

 

The third game overall is solid. Fun little game. No issues I found with the gameplay.

 

I haven't actually read the magazine yet, but flipping through it looks good. I noticed that our member number was dropped from the card. Certainly not the end of the world, but was kind of neat as someone who has been in the club since the beginning. 

[Crapahute]

11 hours ago, nick3092 said:

..
Demon Attack was publicly announced as one of the games, so it should be fair to comment details publicly on it. This was one of my favorites on Intellivision growing up. But not really a fan of this conversion. First thing I noticed was the box had the Intellivision screen prints on the back. Odd, but whatever. The game itself just doesn't feel as fun as its Intellivision counterpart. It lacks the escalating background music. And the base battle is almost completely different and not as fun. And since the Intellivision box was copied verbatim, it describes the base battle differently than it's played. The manual has a couple oddities that obviously don't reflect the game, but do make it feel like the game was rushed. The first page inside the manual (back side of the front cover) is actually the instructions for the arcade game. As is the inside of the back cover.

 

To make this box, I took inspiration from Imagic games for the ColecoVision like Moon Sweeper: http://colecoboxart.com/coleco_moonsweeper.htm

 

I always try to be the most accurate in my work. As you can see on these original boxes, the screenshots on the back are not from a real ColecoVision, so I tried to do the same.

My goal is to make the boxes as they would have been at the time. Usually, boxes don’t differ much from Atari VCS, Intellivision and ColecoVision, especially when made by third parties like Imagic. So I make a mix to guess what it would have looked like.

For the storylines in manuals, I may add information from any sources, even arcade manual. What’s wrong with that?

Whenever it’s interesting, I also add trivia.

Programmers often don’t give any information about their game as the gameplay is obvious or notoriously known.
I’m provided a pre-version rom to discover the game and write the manual. I’m not a hardcore gamer and I often suck at playing the games, so with no infinite lives I don’t go far in the game but I try to figure out the mechanics. And yes, sometimes I don’t remember which button is left or right in my emulator.

I’m really sorry that you don’t like my work, my box and manual. Now I guess you can’t please everyone.

[nick3092]

4 hours ago, Crapahute said:

To make this box, I took inspiration from Imagic games for the ColecoVision like Moon Sweeper: http://colecoboxart.com/coleco_moonsweeper.htm

 

I always try to be the most accurate in my work. As you can see on these original boxes, the screenshots on the back are not from a real ColecoVision, so I tried to do the same.

My goal is to make the boxes as they would have been at the time. Usually, boxes don’t differ much from Atari VCS, Intellivision and ColecoVision, especially when made by third parties like Imagic. So I make a mix to guess what it would have looked like.

 

While the CV Moonsweeper screen images may not be from a ColecoVision, they certainly are very close to it.  Looks like some kind of artificial smoothing was applied to the box art.  Maybe even hand drawn based off some early prototype screens.  In fact the box screens don't even resemble directly any of the versions of Moonsweeper I have seen.  Which to me puts more weight behind my theory they were probably hand drawn in some early prototype stage.  Eitherway, this is close enough no one would really call it out if they noticed.

 

 

But what is noticeable is Intellivision graphics on a ColecoVision box.  They are two very distinct graphics.  And back in the day when publishers used the screen images from a different system, they almost always called out what system it came from.  My biggest complaint about the box though is the fact it describes how the base level plays out.  Which doesn't even match the actual game play of the Coleco version.

 

5 hours ago, Crapahute said:

For the storylines in manuals, I may add information from any sources, even arcade manual. What’s wrong with that?

Whenever it’s interesting, I also add trivia.

 

 

Not really sure where you are going with this.  So you are saying you intentionally left the back story, control scheme, partial enemy list, and copyright info from a completely different game in the Demon Attack manual?  Not to mention the pages included in the Demon Attack manual that belong to the arcade game from this years club appear to be written by/attributed to someone else.  As for the trivia section, I'm fine with that.  Actually, that is a nice touch.

 

5 hours ago, Crapahute said:

Programmers often don’t give any information about their game as the gameplay is obvious or notoriously known.

I’m provided a pre-version rom to discover the game and write the manual. I’m not a hardcore gamer and I often suck at playing the games, so with no infinite lives I don’t go far in the game but I try to figure out the mechanics. And yes, sometimes I don’t remember which button is left or right in my emulator.

 

This appears to be in response to my comment about the mix up in the arcade manual about the default actions of the left and right buttons.  Which I clearly said that was fairly minor since you can change it in the options.  Not to mention, that manual doesn't even appear to have been written by you.  So I'm not sure why you are taking personal offense to that.  If it's also in response to the fact the base level in Demon Attack is misrepresented because you never played that far in the game, then that is just a lack of coordination and proof checking between team members.  However, the manual does seem to reflect the changes to the Coleco base level.  Which implies you knew it was different at some point.

 

My overall point is that CollectorVision positions itself as a premier game publisher.  But frequently quality issues like this trip them up.  For example, last year one of the club games shipped with a very glaring bug.  If you are playing the game with controller 1 (which it is a single player game, so why wouldn't you play with controller 1?) and you take a hit, your character starts moving on it's own without you doing anything.  The workaround is to play the game with controller 2 where this bug oddly does not exist.  Luckily a simple, but not very obvious workaround.

 

And these quality issues are not limited to just Coleco games.  When they published Gorf for Intellivision maybe 1-2 years ago or so, they included optional support for the voice module.  Except several AA members including myself had issues with the game crashing when the voice module was attached.  I even have multiple consoles and multiple voice modules and the crashes occurred across almost all of them.  It was reported in the Gorf thread and CV/JF was tagged a couple times and never even acknowledged it.  I just gave up hope on ever getting that resolved.

 

 

[Crapahute]

I don’t see your point about Demon Attack except that you don’t like the box, don’t like the manual and don’t like the game, which is your right.

 

Anyway, here are more details to help you play the game:
Six enemy types plus two stage boss.
level 1, phase 1: big enemies only, straight shots only
level 1, phase 2: enemies can use angled shots
level 2: big enemies split into two smaller enemies
level 3: upper enemies can drop exploding bombs
level 4: lower enemies can also use bombs

 

As for the rest of your complaints, sorry I can’t help you.

[rwest]

I received my games today. Like others have said, I won’t ruin the surprise for those of you still waiting for yours! Just like Christmas the excitement is in not knowing what’s under the tree.

 

Fun games and great production values.

 

Thanks,

Rutager

[xdurable]

Mine showed up today as well... looks like some fun ahead.

[E. King]

Great 3 games. I played 2 of them today for a little while and both were great fun.

 

The arcade game really surprised me and is awesome to have on Coleco though the background scrolling takes a bit to get used to as the screen scrolling is not as smooth as I would like but other than that it is great.

 

Well done!

[lucifershalo]

2 hours ago, E. King said:

Great 3 games. I played 2 of them today for a little while and both were great fun.

 

The arcade game really surprised me and is awesome to have on Coleco though the background scrolling takes a bit to get used to as the screen scrolling is not as smooth as I would like but other than that it is great.

 

Well done!

 

Scrolling is never smooth on Colecovision, that is part of its .....charm....lol

[Aking]

no shipping label , no package either here

[+sramirez2008]

Received my games, etc. in yesterday's mail. Look forward to playing the games (nice selection IMO) and reading the magazine.

[+GoldLeader]

1 hour ago, sramirez2008 said:

Received my games, etc. in yesterday's mail. Look forward to playing the games (nice selection IMO) and reading the magazine.

^This!

 

Mr. Ramirez said Exactly what I was thinking.  (It was even Yesterday for me too

 

Probably just a matter of time for anyone else who hasn't gotten theirs yet...Although if a week or 2 goes by,  Then I'd mention it.

Edited November 21, 2023 by GoldLeader

[+sramirez2008]

34 minutes ago, GoldLeader said:

Probably just a matter of time for anyone else who hasn't gotten theirs yet

FWIW, I live in Texas. Not sure how long it’s taking to get to either coast or other locations. Game On everyone!

 

Like the topics that were covered in the magazine.👍