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Clint Thompson

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Posts posted by Clint Thompson

  4. Coleco Chameleon (formerly Retro VGS)

    in ColecoVision

    Posted

    Can't forsee them getting much of any support now that they've deceived and lost the trust of anyone and everyone. Such a shame too, considering the free press of gaming sites they were given and the amount of people that were actually interested in something like this to materialize. Those poor Jaguar molds.... such a shame I don't have the money or means of obtaining them.

  5. Coleco Chameleon (formerly Retro VGS)

    in ColecoVision

    Posted

    Final verdict: They blew it!

     

    Rarely do you ever get a second chance to try and make right on your first, very royal screw up. Yet somehow, they managed to buy themselves a second chance AND a second name, even landing some very generous gaming news coverage. All for nothing.

     

    They made announcement after announcement, endlessly hyping a non-proven to exist prototype, clearly shoved what is still proven to be nothing other than an SNES into a Jaguar shell, then daily went into the different KS goals, packages, etc. finally leading to the "Tomorrow is the big day!!!" announcement, and then last minute decide to pull out? What a load of crap. They played everyone. Wasting everyone's time and seriously screwed themselves out of being taken serious to any degree of possible recovery. It's a running joke now and can you really trust someone that mass-deletes every single comment on their social media outlets? It'll be a miracle if this thing ever materializes but I wouldn't place bets to it actually happening, especially now.

     

    #Vaporware

  8. Coleco Chameleon (formerly Retro VGS)

    in ColecoVision

    Posted · Edited by Clint Thompson

    They could avoid all this speculation by showing the board at the toy fair which is what I thought they were going to do.

    Exactly this!

     

    As a side note, if you want to secure rights and publish previously unreleased games, then do it and do it right. Creating a new system to play an unreleased SNES game seems like a ridiculous waste of effort and/or time. I can't help but imagine someone ripping it and dumping it unless the way their never-before-seen to the publics eye FPGA is created in a way that would make such a hack impossible.

     

    All I keep seeing on Twitter is "hang in there" for the big reveal on Kick Starter. Maybe all of this is a deliberate hoax. A way to get everyone talking about it. Maybe they really do have hardware to unveil and knew that by shoving a SNES into a Jag casing would bring so much more attention to it otherwise not possible. Now all eyes are just waiting to see and people are keeping up and researching all over this SNES in a Jag shell madness. Could it be that's the idea or plan to drive attention or traffic to the site and project overall?

  13. Coleco Chameleon (formerly Retro VGS)

    in ColecoVision

    Posted

    At least they appear to have gotten the pricing right this time around. It looks like he's using a SNES controller? I feel like the first time around failure isn't going to do them well this second time around and while I didn't particularly care for the RVGS name the first time, I'm not sure I like the Coleco name being used this time either.

     

    Console naming aside, the second game out of the few shown videos is the only one that looks remotely interesting to me and that's only because it looks similar to Golden Axe. It begs the question though, why. If I wanted to play Golden Axe, that's exactly what I would get. Not to mention, it may very well be possible for me to obtain an actual Golden Axe arcade machine for a few hundered dollars.

     

    With all the hoopla around the casing colors, etc, I'm really surprised they didn't show one in a ruby red or royal blue transparent casing instead of just the dull black. Then again, that logo against any color of casing just looks like hell imo.

     

    I'm skeptical on the hardware this is being ran on but that's their fault because of the lack of real prototype or hardware the first time around so I feel like they need to be less secretive of the hardware and show us the guts to prove its legit. But that only solves one part of the problem. The bastardization of the Coleco name on the Atari Jaguar casing is another issue altogether. It can be overlooked. Games is the real issue I see with this.

     

    Why not take the time, money and effort into releasing something of that of an expanded cart for the already existing Jaguar or a modernized Jaguar on FPGA since new boards can't purchased anymore fixing hardware bugs, giving us exclusive shells, and expanding things like the RAM to give homebrewers something fun to tinker with as a Jaguar follow-up of sorts for fun. Even that seems like it would fare better or stand a better chance than this but I don't own the molds nor do I have the money or time to invest in such.

     

    List of programmers?

  14. Atari ST, the misunderstood computer?

    in Atari ST / TT / Falcon Computers

    Posted

    I owned a 1040 for a short while and regret ridding it but had the Falcon to mostly make up for it - until you run into a ton of incompatibility problems for whatever the reason may be. Never got a solid gaming vibe from it going from the 800 and the Falcon trumped the ST so I thought but was definitely a much more expensive machine.

     

    Someday I'll get an STe. I remember in the early 90's around the Jaguar launch, I wrote Atari in hopes to buy a new ST but received a letter stating they had discontinued sales of their computers. I don't remember if they pointed me in any other Atari retailers who may have had stock but it didn't matter, the Falcon was always on my radar for what I wanted anyways since it was to be a multimedia machine with CD-ROM attachments and such.

  15. Atari 5200 Console Overview

    in Atari 5200

    Posted

    I owned a 5200. Actually, I ended up owning about 6 of them in total because some local couple that ran a flea market booth had a bunch of them and a ton of other Atari items for sale for dirt cheap. I only assumed something to be wrong with the units at $4 each but decided to get them anyways. Such huge beasties with not a single controller to be found for them locally and the ones that eventually did pop up years later simply did not work. Plus, the sellers always wanted $20-$25 for one controller because they were so rare and the same applied, something was always wrong with the controllers.

     

    Meanwhile, I also picked up the almost as big as the 5200 trakball controller and played the living daylights out of Super Breakout. I loved the styling of the console and the games and continued to slowly collect games over the years until I finally made the mistake of landing a pair of actual, working controllers.

     

    By this time, I had quite a large and well rounded Atari collection which consisted of multiple Atari 800 and XL computers, 7800, etc. and learned that the 5200 was basically a repackaged 800. The controllers destroyed any hope of keeping the system around as a real console for me when I could just play most of the games I had slowly collected on the 8-bit computers anyway. So it didn't make sense to keep this huge console around, let alone six, to play identical games with inferior controls. I ridded everything I had very shortly after and even to this day with little regret, with the exception of keeping a trakball and Super Breakout, best version I've played and it was a ton of fun!

     

    If Atari had packaged the 5200 in the smaller size that of the Atari 2700 and included the well known joysticks with it, having the option to upgrade to analog controllers for specific games later, then the machine may have done well. Maybe not, I don't know.... but I do know I would have certainly kept one had that been the case.

     

    As cool as the system was or had hoped to be, I doubt I would ever go out of my way to own one again unless I just so happen to run across a cheap unit with trakball and super breakout. I was always fond of the Atari logo, copyright year and name of the game on bootup though.

  16. Jaguar Memories

    in Atari Jaguar

    Posted

    Fantastic Jaguar stories, thanks for sharing you guys =)

     

    I remember the Radio Shack ads you're mentioning Kamakazi but I already owned a Jag at that point. I want to say I remember Radio Shack having a huge Iron Soldier cardboard cutout but that could just be my hazy memory playing tricks on me. To this day, I don't seem to recall stumbling on any advertising related to the Jaguar and at one point in the late 90s I remember going into a local Radio Shack to ask if they had any of the promo material left over but there were none.

  18. The Jag Bar

    in Atari Jaguar

    Posted

    True story about Battlemorph - They should have just made that the pack-in seeing as how Cybermorph was the original pack-in... I think having several games that required game saves would have definitely pushed more people to go out and pickup a Memory Track at the same time of purchase or soon after. It took me some time before I could afford a Memory Track from what I remember. I did however feel you were getting a pretty good deal for the upgrade at $159 with basically 2-games, demo of Myst and the soundtrack to Tempest 2000 and the VLM was just an awesome bonus!

     

    Video was cool btw! You don't realize just how badly Blue Lightning has aged on the JagCD... still really cool music though! =)

  20. The worst system to code for...

    in Atari Jaguar

    Posted · Edited by Clint Thompson

    Found this online today and even though it's a small tidbit, it does make a lot of sense:

     

    "You've coded on a lot of different systems. Which ones did you think were the worst and best, in terms of hardware implementation, development environment, manufacturer tech support (for developers)....?

     
    Rebecca Heineman: The worst had to be the Atari Jaguar. Forcing everyone to use an Atari Falcon as a dev system and expecting us to use bug ridden and barely working compilers and other tools, it was a miracle any game was completed on that system. Best? The Apple II in it's simplicity. I loved programming the Apple II and then the IIgs, although the IIgs was really slow without an accelerator (Which was likely a marketing decision to force people to buy Macintosh computers). Dev environment? CodeWarrior! I wrote so many plug ins to allow me to use numerous scripting tools, it's a shame it's all but abandoned today, and at least Visual Studio is in a state today that it's my IDE of choice. Tech support? It was 3DO, they did everything they could including sending me at their expense to get training on making code on their platform and going out of their way to make sure I got my games out the door. Pity, their business model wasn't sustainable."
     
     
    Truth be told, the idea of coding and/or completely developing on the Falcon does seems kind of insane, especially considering the extremely limited software available for the Falcon at the time... nevermind the fact that they just completely dropped it only after a year anyway. I completely understand what Atari was trying to do or ultimately wanted to do... create an eco-system where the Falcon was necessary to create games for the Jaguar on and push sales of their computers with hope that software would flourish and soon follow. Obviously there were a ton of other issues preventing that vision from materializing.
     
    That same year the Pentium was released, software options alone would quickly overule any chance of using the Falcon as a standalone development workstation viable, nevermind the obvious speed difference the Pentium chips offered.

  24. Halt and Catch Fire

    in Television & Movies

    Posted

    I've only taken the time to watch the first episode and really enjoyed it. Wanted to see more but it's kind of been on the back burner for some time now as I prefer to somewhat binge watch my series, like I just did with Silicon Valley the other day. Haven't had Netflix in a while but I'll be signing up again for it soon so I can burn through these two seasons as well :D

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