The Colleco-Vision came out in 1982 and was the home console that helped a little jumping plumber you may of heard of become a super huge icon…
That’s right, before Nintendo had their own home console they had wisely licensed their arcade killer app “Donkey Kong” to Coleco.
But what is Coleco? Interestingly, Coleco was the Connecticut Leather Company….Okay, so its a little more abstract then Nintendo starting with trading cards, or Sony being conceived of by a radio repair shop owner.
Still, this American company managed to enter the gaming market with a then-state-of-the-art machine that offered Arcade quality graphics. Unfortunately, the game crash of 1983 wiped out the market and the Coleco suffered a swift death within 3 years of release (they called it quits in 1985). Luckily Nintendo rose like a phenix from their ashes and thus gaming grew to rival the film industry as a primary form of entertainment.
What set the Coleco appart from everything else on the market was it’s ability to attach to the Adam computer (I took it apart as a destructive kid), could be used with accessories like a steering wheel (nifty!) and had a phone-like controller with analog stick! In total the machine had 125 games and everyone had Donkey Kong..it was a pack in title!
Though my favorite game was Artillery Duel! In the game you and another player had to adjust cannon fire and compensate for wind resistance in order to defeat each other! Classic!!!
In case you’re feeling a bit geeky today, here’s the specs of the wonderous device:
CPU: Zilog Z80A @ 3.58 MHz
Video processor: Texas Instruments TMS9928A (like a scientific calculator!)
256×192 resolution (not even standard def!)
32 sprites/16 colors
Sound: Texas Instruments SN76489A
3 tone generators/1 noise generator (instead of producing music, this bad boy makes noise!)
VRAM: 16 KB/RAM: 8 KB
Storage: Cartridge: 8/16/24/32 KB (didn’t Bill Gates once say that this is all we’ll ever need?)
Check out the arcade-like experience as advertised by the commercial! Notice it goes from awesome to regular old Donkey Kong…
And here’s another more down to earth commercial with realistic promises…and Mr. Do!
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