Did you have a Colecovision back then and what did you think of it?

[ImmortalA1000]

Title says it all, my experience of the Coleco was a bit skewed, I got it for £40-50 new in 1985, Turbo Expansion for £20 and the games were £10 each (same as C64 tape games roughly). Some shop must have got a whole load of bankrupt stock etc, this shop sold all sorts of junk from dinner plates to brooms and lots of nick-nacks. The previous Summer in 84 they had some C64 Commodore released carts for £10 but IIRC they were only £15 RRP anyway.

Controller was uncomfortable but for £10 a pop I actually liked some of the games. Zaxxon may be smoother on Synsoft release on tape for C64 but Coleco looked better. Gorf was somehow more 'epic' and Turbo was better than Pole Position on Atari 400/800 and C64 to me back then and you did get a steering wheel and accelerator pedal.

If I had to sell 3/4 of my 8bit PAL/UK consoles I couldn't say if I would keep my VCS six switcher, my Intellivision, my Coleco or my Vectrex. That would be a real tough choice. I know I would choose some sort of C64 compatible as the only 8bit home computer to keep, probably my brand new 128D, if I sold all my gear but with these consoles I like them all enough that I would miss each of them, they all have their charms.

[NorthWay]

There was a local shop that rented them out where I grew up.
Shit hw, fantastic sw. Advertising material to die for.
I still want one...

[Pyromania]

I enjoyed my ColecoVision. I had to save up for it and it was nice upgrade from the 2600.

[gimbal]

I wish, I went directly from Atari 2600 to Amiga.

[lionagony]

It was my first system when I was 6 or 7. I remember the whole family couldn't even do the first jump over the fence in Smurfs for like 20 tries. Pepper II and Ladybug were my favourites, a fun system. I went from Colecovision to C64 to A500 to A1200.

[ImmortalA1000]

I went from Pong type console, VCS, VIC-20, C64, Coleco in that order myself. I guess 1985 is very late to be playing Coleco games in retrospect but as it was so cheap and the games no more than some full price C64 tapes in 1985 it was a nice option IMO.

I should point out that although the Coleco is similar to the MSX computer technically where I am from in the UK all but the Japanese developed cartridge games for MSX were rubbish Sinclair direct ports for MSX tape games here. I actually thought the MSX was overpriced garbage back then because I had only seen the pathetic port jobs from UK publishers.

I looked at doing Smurf Rescue on the C64 and straight away you need to be using the 8Kb bitmap hi-res screen just to do the backgrounds, and a cheeky bit of multiplexing between score/status panel and game window so it's not like you could do the same games as well with zero effort, you'd need machine code just to do static screen mockups.

Controllers are the biggest problem, you can swap them out but some games make use of the 2 indepenent fire buttons, like Space Panic.

[Anubis]

Sadly, where I grow up, we only had A2600. I wish that I had access to one, as games generally look better than A2600 counterpart.

[kamelito]

My friends had one, it was great. looping, Tutankham, Donkey Kong, Zaxxon… we enjoyed it.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Anubis

Sadly, where I grow up, we only had A2600. I wish that I had access to one, as games generally look better than A2600 counterpart.

But I did have a VCS until around 1984 when I briefly had the VIC-20 and then a C64 before the Spring. To be fair to the VCS it did have some cool games even then, Phoenix on the VCS is brilliant and it's not on the rival consoles. Vanguard was also really cool and again not on the other systems.

The VCS had some better games than similar games on the cheaper home computers around in 1982-1983 period so no need to be sad about it

[Tigerskunk]

Was like the rich mans Atari back in the day.

Graphics looked really good compared to the weird abstract 2600 graphics we were used to.

That said, I think the Intellivision is the more interesting system, hardware wise.

[ImmortalA1000]

Sadly my Intellivision needs some work, I only have one and it is in garbage condition but over the weekend I did find some lovely condition replacement controllers I had bought for it well over a decade ago now in the 2000s. I had a really nice boxed Intellivision too but bills had to be paid and it was one of the things that did sell quite quickly on ebay so stuck with this spare console. I have about 23 cartridges for it though so a few caps/resistors and maybe some dry joints sorted and it should be more reliable than a 1970s British Leyland family car!!!!!!!

[TEG]

Never had one but I had the occasion to admire and play a bit at Zaxxon.

First time I saw isometric 3D. I was mesmerized! And the look of the console was pretty good.

For the anecdote: the parents (or great parents, I don't remember) of the person who launched the Colecovision, started and made money with a business of leather accessories for shoemakers and then plastic soles. The Colecovision was a way to invest the money.

[tommywiz]

To me back then the Colecovision came the closest to duplicating the arcade version of games.

[Snoopy1234]

The Colecovision was IT when we were givn one from the parents. My sister wasn't so enthusiastic although she did like Smurfs. I loved Turbo, played Mousetrap for months and traded my Mattel Green Machine for a copy of Zaxxon which was "the future" then. We had an Atari adapter too and I played Spikes Peak and Ghost Manor from a double-ender cart while my sis enjoyed Hangman. Since 2016 I've been collecting stuff as I sold most of my childhood gear years ago. I bought and sold an Intellivision and have a Vectrex which has no video atm. I also bought a Colecovision with exp modules and carts. One thing I've bought; which I'm not so sure of is a boxed ADAM expansion (euro) which has a non working psu/printer. Who know's what I'll do with that. We always wanted on when our school had a TRS-80 and Wang has just released a PC clone that seemed good.