ColecoFan1981

It is weird that for a popular game show like The Price Is Right which is still on CBS's morning schedule to this day, that it had been planned for release for Coleco's Adam (by Coleco itself, in 1984) and then for the Nintendo NES by GameTek in 1990, but both were canceled for some reason; my guess is for the Adam version it was dropped after the video game crash of '83 took hold and Coleco's subsequent exit from the video game business in early 1985. Coleco's 1984 press kit for the ColecoVision and Adam also made mention of Wheel of Fortune, The $25,000 Pyramid, Password Plus, Tic-Tac-Dough and The Joker's Wild, but as with The Price Is Right these five were never finished, again, because of the effects of the video game crash of '83. GameTek did have Password Plus and later Super Password considered on its NES release timetable, but neither got through (Super Password, the actual game show itself, was canceled by NBC in 1989). Besides all of these, Coleco and later GameTek could have looked into both Sale of the Century and Scrabble that were produced by Reg Grundy Productions, but I think the latter would be difficult due to the additional connection with Selchow & Righter's board game of the same name (and future ownership by Hasbro via Milton Bradley after Coleco's demise in 1989). ~Ben

That is the exact synth we hear on Dire Straits' 1985 classic "Money for Nothing" (aka "I Want My MTV")! It's used for the secondary bass part. ~Ben

Apparently, Atari's Tetris (1989) went for the POKEY sound chip instead of the Yamaha YM2151 series... the question is... why? My guess is probably because Tengen was going to port this title over to the NES, which it did (briefly), and so it wanted a sound chip with some of the same sounds as the console systems. ~Ben

This reminds me of the original ColecoVision display kiosk used in department stores... ~Ben

Since it's known the Adam computer system was fraught with bugs when it first came out in the fall of 1983, which had caused Coleco to eventually exit the video game market, and while I understand some of the bugs were fixed before the end of production and sale, I wonder what steps I should take to make it a strong performer? Thank you, Ben

It's really because the original seal would have had to be shrunken greatly that the text is too small to read, and it already was on those cartridge labels that did have it. ~Ben

I wonder if AtariSoft and Parker Brothers ever published dedicated release timetables for its games released on such computer systems as the Apple IIe, the Atari 8-bit line (400/800, 600/800/1200XL, et al), the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, the Commodore VIC-20 and 64, and the IBM PC, among others? NOTABLE ATARISOFT RELEASES Donkey Kong Pac-Man Ms. Pac-Man Pole Position Battlezone Defender Jungle Hunt Galaxian NOTABLE PARKER BROTHERS RELEASES Q*bert Popeye Frogger Super Cobra Gyruss Montezuma's Revenge ~Ben

I think the CALL SOUND feature could have been calibrated for both if there was a region check built in. NTSC machines, which are most common, would simply have this particular value as zero, while if PAL then the value of 1 would be loaded. If NTSC machine (region check value is 0), use default duration value (1/60 or 4.25) for CALL SOUND If PAL machine detected (region check value is 1), use 1/50 duration value (5.1) for CALL SOUND. ~Ben

That makes me curious, that Coleco (unlike Nintendo) did not bother making tweaks to the basic NTSC coding to make gameplay faster against the slower 50 Hz refresh rate. Even Atari's 2600, 8-bit computer and 5200 titles did not have any region-specific coding changes from NTSC's 60 Hz. I believe no changes to the NTSC coding were done here in the pre-crash era since the developers would have had to use fractional rates (and sometimes non-integer-based replacement values) to adjust for 50 Hz, and might have made such region-specific versions cost more due to the extended coding work. Also, the graphics chips in the consoles themselves may be different between NTSC and PAL (i.e. our NTSC ColecoVision uses the TI TMS9928A, but for PAL it's the slightly different TMS9929A) and so colors may show differently in PAL than in NTSC. In fact, the only exception to the rule was that some PAL CBS ColecoVisions actually have a short 3-second (!) delay before the skill level select screen appears. ~Ben

Were there any ColecoVision games that had any unused code? This includes but is not limited to things such as extra characters and extra music. Sometimes, intended code may go unused due to errors in coding. Coding errors are also why some games like Donkey Kong have bugs that affect graphics and/or gameplay. I know that Victory for the PAL market was programmed differently in that the "unused" code present in the NTSC release was properly coded, and I would like to fix the NTSC release to do so. ~Ben

I didn't realize Carnival was the pack-in for the Spanish edition. ~Ben

While I know our NTSC ColecoVision had Donkey Kong as a pack-in cartridge, for the world outside North America, didn't the CBS ColecoVision (PAL) also have Donkey Kong as the pack-in cartridge? I mean for those CBS ColecoVisions marketed in the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, wasn't Donkey Kong the usual pack-in cartridge? Some other territories (continental Europe) had Mouse Trap as the pack-in cart instead. ~Ben

https://www.atariarchive.org/colecovision-game-release-dates/ According to the link above, Q*bert's Qubes was the last game released for this system, in April 1985. However, the same list is curiously missing Spy Hunter, which according to the January 1986 issue of Computer Entertainer magazine had been released in January 1985. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/newsletters/video_game_update/computer_entertainer_jan86.pdf#page=6 ~Ben

In the MORE BASIC COMPUTER GAMES book, is it true that the Chris Cerf who did the preface for the book is the same guy who did certain incidental music for Sesame Street and other children's shows, and was related to Bennett Cerf who appeared on the old game show What's My Line? ~Ben

When did all the classic video arcade machines (i.e. Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Q*bert and others) start disappearing from your local CEC? For example: my former CEC was at 9120 SE Powell Blvd., which lasted from 1982 to 2020. It was first remodeled in 1988, two years before "Concept Unification" began, therefore I know that some of the older video arcade games disappeared from there by then in favor of more skill games like air hockey and skee-ball. I know as early as when CEC and ShowBiz first locked horns, and this was after the merger was approved in 1985, CEC ran TV commercials that proclaimed "fewer video games!" so I want to think that they may have removed the classic video arcade games during the same time period they did "Concept Unification" (c. 1990-93) which saw all the former ShowBiz Pizza-centric characters be replaced by those specific to CEC (from "Rock-afire Explosion" to "Mr. Munch's Make-Believe Band") and, eventually, the ShowBiz brand itself phased out. ~Ben