The Story of the Colecovision, What Could Have Been! - Video Game Retrospective 

Want more Coleco content? Check out our video on the Coleco ADAM, a Colecovision compatible personal computer that while promising, ended up being a complete disaster! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cQHUSjsRvMs.html

I was 8-years-old that Christmas of 1982 when my dad came up from the basement holding the greatest childhood present we ever got... a Colecovision! I spent that entire morning with my dad and my brother, playing Donkey Kong and Zaxxon over and over again, marveling at the graphics and having the time of my life. I'll never forget it!

Nobody had a Colecovision, but everybody had a friend with one

If you never got to experience the atmosphere that a genuine 80's Arcade gave you..... You truly missed out! Man, those were the best times of my life!

My dad was an engineer during Coleco's height, he was extremely proud of their work with Colecovision...and I remember him making a point of saying he wasn't on the team responsible for Adam. His stories are pretty cool about his time working there, one that stands out especially is the fact that they had to wear special suits because they used actual silver in the making of one of their cartridges. And so they had to remove the suits and completely clean themselves after working with the silver to avoid concerns about theft. I love coming across videos like this, where they talk about stuff my father worked on, because they always say the same thing: these devices never die. Similar story, my dad also worked as an engineer for a company that made a line of computers called Sidearm. Some ten years after that company folded, I ran into someone working for Verizon. He had my dad's console sitting right there, and he was using it. Who uses a computer ten years out of date! So I said, have you had that long? The guy goes, I've had this since 1999, you can't kill this machine! It runs like a champ! Unfortunately, the company doesn't exist anymore who made it. So I said, well if you need any IT help with it, I can call my dad right now. He built that console on our dining room table. And I pointed to the rubber around the unit that he had been saying was so tough, and proceeded to tell him how I helped wrap the original neoprene sleeve. And my mom was one of the officially unofficial game testers for Colecovision and other console units of theirs. The game patterns people would eventually play are more complicated than their original prototypes were meant to be, because my mom kept beating them so quickly.

I'm 53 now, I've been around to witness the entire history of videogames first hand. When I was a kid, from 4 years old in 1975 through all of grade school, my best friends were two brothers, Mark and Steve Chan. Their dad worked for IBM since the early 70's. They were the only family in the city with a computer and videogame system. I would go to their house as soon as I woke up to play pong on the Telstar. Then they got the PET home computer and I played Castlevania, Space Invaders, and Jupiter Lander. After that I think the Comodore 64 came around, and that's when most families bought their first computer. Mark and Steve did have another computer between the PET and the Comodore 64, but I forget what it was, maybe an Atari. In the 80's my parents bought me the Coleco Vision. I also saw the evolution of games at the arcade, starting with the very first arcade games, like Space Invaders, Joust, Centipede, and Pac Man. Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought that computer games and computer graphics would become so advanced as they are today. It's come a very long way in just my lifetime.

I remember as a kid, the Colecovision was the Holy Grail of gaming. Donkey Kong looked like it came right from the arcade. Graphics like that were unheard of at the time.

Colecovision was first home console where versions of arcade games actually looked and sounded like the real thing and in 1982 that was a 11yo dream come true 😎

I went and visited my parents and dug out the Colecovision. It's almost 40 years old but it still plays.

My mom was the Best! Coleco Vision was probably the best Christmas present she ever surprised me with as a kid and it wasn't something I had asked for! She was all about getting me everything Coleco related after that! We traveled *everywhere* to find every game we could get our hands on. Had the Wheel Remote w pedal, the Baseball remotes, the Running Mat and if I remember right we also had an Art game that required a different type of remote that we just could not find. Over the years we always spoke fondly about Coleco. I love my Mom and she was spirited away this year. Thank you for jogging up such lovely memories.

Donkey Kong is STILL one of my favorite games ever. That game was sooooo addictive to me as a child growing up on the 80s man.

I was one of the first 63 people hired to assemble the ADAM computer. I was on line one and I can say it was a dog. The quality control consisted of a tech standing on a box and dropping a packaged unit from about six feet, if it survived and worked when testing they would pass the entire production lot from that run. One day they pulled me from building the ADAM to a "new" line, the repair line. I knew our jobs were in trouble when in one day we received over 500 broken units from a J.C Penny return, soon our warehouse was full of broken units. I was laid off for three months, when I got called back the computers were gone and it was Cabbage Patch dolls as far as the eye could see.

I had a colecovision as a kid. It was my favorite of all the early consoles! 🎮

I still remember the day, my Dad, my brother and myself went to the mall and picked up a Coleco Vision Console. So many hours playing Donkey Kong and Cosmic Avenger.... ah simpler times.

I still have a very clean Colecovision in my collection with a steering wheel, two "Super Action" joysticks and a bunch of games. The AC adapter was broken (common issue), but I found a little adapter online which is directly connected to the console and takes the power from a standard USB charger: that works great!

I was 13 in 1982 and remember vividly my first time playing Colecovision at my Uncle's house. I was playing Zaxxon and was blown away by the graphics. I had to be pried away from that game and system. Once I bought my own (from my paper route money) I ended up having every game that came out and I also had all the expansion module devices and games. It was a great time to be a teenager. Sadly, it was short-lived as the computer age came in. I recall being amazed by a Commodore 20 waiting 15 minutes for a game to upload via cassette tape! Ah, those were the days.

I wrote the code that produced the music for the Colecovision port of the game Lady Bug. It was a side project since our main business was building machine controllers based on the CP1600. We were spoiled by a 16 bit data bus so writing code for the Z80 was a challenge. Fortunately the TI sound chip did most of the work so I was spared the agony of having to code the gameplay itself. We only had the arcade version as the model so the music had to be transrcibed by hand (ear) . These were some of the best times in my career,

My dad actually worked for Coleco during the late 70s and 80s so I had a Colecovision. My biggest problem was always the control stick which would need constant replacement.

I had one of those first ColecoVision's sold. I vividly remember telling my parent's "I want ColecoVision or nothing for Christmas" and my father went out 2 nights before Christmas and found one at, of all places, Albertson's! I am not much of a gamer, never really have been, but that console was amazing! Friends would come over just to play Donkey Kong. I really miss those simpler times.

Colecovision was absolutely amazing. So far ahead of its time.

I remember the Christmas Dad got our Coleco. He was so excited, he gave it to us on Christmas Eve (we usually had to wait for Christmas morning in those days). I still have it and the steering wheel add-on and both still work just fine. It is an underrated system for sure.

I was in my early 20's and in the Air Force enjoying the early days of home console games. Colecovision led to a Commodore64 and then a Nintendo system. It was such a popular time for games that you could go down to JCPenney, Sears or Kmart to find your favorite game or cartridge. Gosh, what a fun and care-free time that was.

Donkey Kong, Q-Bert, Frogger, and one of the most underrated games ever Ladybug.

There's such a weird association between leather companies and games/computers. In addition to Coleco, the Tandy Leather Company became a major player in home electronics/video games/computers via their electronics division and attached Radio Shack stores. It's such an odd coincidence.

My first experience with Coleco was their Electronic Quarterback hand held video game back in ‘78. They had some good handheld video games.

I was 16 when the Colecovision came out, and it was AMAZING!!! I probably spent half that year playing every game I could get my hands on. I remember spending every penny I could get on 8 pack returnable bottles of Mountain Dew to get the bottle caps in hopes of spelling out "COLECOVISION" to win a system in a contest, so that was a summer of caffeine intensity for me. Happily on Christmas "Santa" saved the day (and me from diabetes and a heart attack!). Donkey Kong and Mr. Do were by far the best games on that console. I remember saving up and paying $49.99 for Zaxxon at Service Merchandise, which was ALOT of money way back in 1982, when minimum wage was something like $3.00 an hour. I played it for about 15 minutes and thought, OMG what am I doing with my life! I used a glue gun and sealed the box up, took it back for a refund.

I spent an entire month one summer drooling over the Coleco game catalog.

I had a Coleco as a kid and man I loved playing Donkey Kong and Zaxxon. Mousetrap was another favorite that got the whole family addicted to playing.

Had an Adam computer and we had just about every Colecovision game, most copies on cassette... Also had the steering wheel, roller controller, those weird pistol grip controllers.... It saw so much use by the whole family.

My parents bought us a commodore 64. Colecovision had been out for a few years I think. Some of the games were equivalent to the colecovision but it was the amount of games you were able to copy and swap with friends. That was nice because we all ended up with whole libraries of hundreds of games. Actually, now that I think about it you could buy most colecovision and intelivision games on cartridges for it as well.

This was well put together, thank you. Having just turned 50, I saw my childhood flash before my eyes, while being educated on the orgins of famed Colecovision and will check out eBay for a console. Thanks again.

We had a Colecovision as a kid - it was our first home video game. All of my friends had Atari or Intellivision for years before we got a chance to plop ourselves in front of a TV and play. But man, they were envious when we finally got it. The games were great; no joke that the ports they had were far and away the best available. Many games (hello, Ladybug!) still hold up extremely well today.

Colecovision was elite level gaming. Every kid in school wanted to come to my house to play video games.

I had an Atari 2600 and my friends had Coleco Vision. I loved it and did notice even at 8yo it had better quality games. Still I loved that we all had different games to explore between each other. Good times.

I had a Colecovision with the Atari adapter. I bought it myself. I had a lot of games, too. Zaxxon was definitely one of my favorites, along with Donkey Kong. Having the game at home saved me a lot of quarters. I lost the game console during a move years ago, but still had a bunch of the games until recently.

I got this in 1982 when I was 11 years old. So many great games and memories. Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, Venture, Miner 2049er, Mr. Do, and football were my favorites. The football game was cool because it had plays you could select. My friends and I had epic battles on the gridiron.

So, Coleco fell because they shifted to home computers. And Ol’ Gill is still trying to sell them. One buyer said “Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers. I’m learnding.”

I got my coleco in 83, got the steering wheel for Turbo that Christmas and was in awe in 84 when a friend of a friend invited me over and showed me the Atari interface and a massive collection of games. at 8 years old then, that was something else.

I had a Colecovision. it was AMAZING. The Baseball game was absolutely revolutionary and it took many decades for any other basball game to match up. Sure, the graphics for baseball games got better, but with the super action controllers, you had unprecedented control of all the players on the field, including baserunning speed, which you controlled via the wheel on the top of the controller. In fact, I don't think there is a control scheme that compares to the Colecovision baseball controls to this day.

I still have my original console from the '80s with over half the games still with it tucked away in my attic.

I was 11 in 1982 living in North Hollywood, CA, my buddy Frankie got this for Christmas, my mind was blown at Donkey Kong being EXACTLY like the arcade, it was amazing, my mom bought me an Atari which was fun but I was still jealous of Frankie's Coleco Vision.

Zaxxon was soo frigging addictive.

Coleco and intellivision were two of my favorite gaming systems of all time the full number keypad controls and peripherals were amazing. There was one control for the Coleco which kind of looks like the basket tilt of an old sword it had a joysticks on top with a full number pad and on the handle portion for four buttons one for each finger color coded. In a baseball game each of the colored buttons was a different pitch for your picture or swing type for your batter. On the side of the keypad though are the usual four buttons and these were used to steal and pick off while the number pad was used to sit your defense pull up your batting order and possibly change your or pinch Runner and of course to change pitchers in the bullpen. I loved that thing and still had it at parents until a few years ago. I think they gave it away.

Colecovision was my second favorite system of that generation right after Vectrex. Both we're awesome and I still have them to this day.

Colecovision was my first upgrade from a Sears version of Pong, and what an upgrade it was. My friends loved coming over to play Donkey Kong and I got the Atari expansion so they could bring their games and play them too. Of course I got some Atari games of my own because they weren't available as Colecovision games. All these years later I still have it stored away somewhere in the attic. I really should dig it out and relive some great memories.

This was my 1st console when I was a kid. I also had the plug in Atari attachment. I miss those days.

Colecovision was my favorite as a kid. Smurfs: Smurf Rescue, Ladybug, Donkey Kong, Mouse Trap. All great games!

I remember vividly getting the console in the fall of 82, the graphics were more identical to the actual arcade games at the time. Remember the following cartridges: Donkey Kong, Cosmic Avenger, Zaxxon, The Smurf Game, Venture, Jungle King, Donkey Kong Jr., We eventually got the adapter in order to play the Atari games. Great nostalgia. Did not know that Coleco was a leather company based in Connecticut. I had a Telstar in late 1978 as a young kid. From what I remembered, it had a triangular shape with 3 games (Pong, A Shooting Game, and a Racing Game??) My brother and I would mess around with the gun and aim it at each other while it made the shooting noise. Awesome video

I worked at Nuvatec, the Chicago area consulting firm that designed the Colecovision and the Adam computer. I played a slight role, in that I wrote the program that got the reverse engineered Atari 2600 emulation working. Once it was started various coworkers wrote the video games. There were some early issues with static electricity breaking the units, which they fixed with a hardware retrofit. The 5 partners in the firm bought Coleco stock before Colecovision came out. The 4 smart ones sold their stock before the Adam (bomb) computer came out. Coleco actually went bankrupt in 1988 because of more electronics - Talking Cabbage patch kids. I worked on that as well, but I was working at Texas Instruments at that point. 3 companies came out with talking $100 dolls because of the success of the $100 talking Teddy Ruxpin the previous year. But the stock market did badly in 1988, so people weren't buying $100 talking dolls. Too bad. The Talking Cabbage Kid actually had a collision detection based radio network, so that if two random Cabbage Patch Kids got close to each other they would start talking to each other. Before Coleco made Colecovision, they also had LED based games, and I worked on a couple of those too.

We never had a Colecovision but we had the ADAM system instead when it went on clearance from K-B Toys. A great system and a ton of fun despite its issues. What memories!

I became a programmer because of colicovision. i could play all of my colico games, AND all my atari games thanks to an adapter. I have massive love for this old console!

I can't remember how many hours that I played Mr.Do, on my ColecoVision console!

In 82 experience, I was 7, my brother was 9, and we caught our parents in the basement late at night, having an early go at the family Christmas Present - the first release of Colecovision! We started with Donkey Kong, Gorf, and Ladybug, but soon had dozens of games. The console was a juggernaut and finally died this year, with the last working games being Ladybug and Mr. Do! It outlived our crappy Adam Computer by 35 years!

Thank you so much for this video. As an old (65 now, lol) lifelong 'tec guy' and 3-D modeler and programmer, I have been through every generation of console video units. From Atari, Sega, Commodore, Play Station and X-Box. Yet, as one who has lived it through it all, I must say - that THE most impressive introduction of any platform, for it's time, was DEFINITELY this unit! In game quality and graphics. It's sad how forgotten it has become. It was simply spectacular for it's time.

I got mine a little over a decade ago and it sits prominently on the top shelf of my retro gaming setup. It's easily my favorite pre-NES era console, and one of my favorites overall. My favorite games include: Root Beer Tapper, Pepper II, Frogger, and Time Pilot. There's also an excellent homebrew community surrounding it.

My cable company streamed Coleco Vision games as a subscription. I had access to every game. It was incredible.

I had one of these when I was in HS. What sold me was the Atari 2600 expansion module which allowed me to continue to play with my large collection of 2600 games at the time and also the fact that one of my favorite games of all time (Zaxxon) was only available on this platform. Great memories.

Great piece!! I’m 49 years old and had a Colecovision in the ‘80s, it really was heads and shoulders above anything else. Specifically, the game The Smurfs, was extra awesome along with Zaxxon. I remember my mom (who sadly passed on 9/27/2022) bought me the Major League Baseball controller and cartridge combo on clearance at Toys R Us. It was a wild multi-color controller specifically made for the baseball game. What an amazing system. You could get the system and especially the games on clearance at Toys R Us in the late 1980s for a song! This video made me tear up thinking about my mom in the best of times. Thanks for making it. ❤🙏🏻

Good memories of the 80s. Born in 1970.. Lived in a section of town that was separated from other areas by expressways and cemeteries. There was about 8-9 kids within a year or two of my age and we all hung out together because it was a long way or dangerous to get to the other areas in town on foot or bike. Several of us had ataris, but one had intellivision, two had colecovision, one had vectrex, one had an odessey and yet another had a system I cant even remember the name of anymore (Bally maybe?). We'd play one till we got bored of it's games, then hop house to house cycling through all the systems and several different atari libraries. Everyone of those systems had unique games or charms to enjoy. Then around 84 or so most of us got Commodore 64s and started a whole new gaming craze in the area till we hit driving age and were able to branch out.

Man....Colecovision played with my then 7 year old emotions. My uncle was a cop, and worked part time as security during the holidays at The WIz. He picked this up for me, and we must've returned it at least 4 or 5 times until we got one that worked. (Bonus, I got a free Cabbage Patch Kid with the purchase too at the time). Once we finally found one that actually worked, I was hooked. Carnival, Smurf, Donkey Kong, Venture, Zaxxon.....these games were insane considering the times we were living in. The following year we got the Atari expansion pack. Such an amazing console for the times. I played this non-stop until the NES was released. The rest is history.

The Colecovision is Awesome! Have you ever used one?

This Adam Pc Destroyed my Hometown of Amsterdam, NY. Where most of Coleco factories were. We were riding High with the Cabbage Patch doll, then the Colecovision Gaming system and than the Adam came out.........Everyone got laid off......The End 😥 But, yes, I'm 51 yrs old. I lived through the End of COLECO. 😥

My uncle had one of these when I was growing up. Zaxxon blew my mind!

I worked at Texas Instruments (TI) (1980-1983) and was a member of the product engineering team ramping production and delivering production test solutions for the TMS9918 Video Display Processor, I spent many months setting in the lab using a Colecovision development system and a Microprobe system debugging “dumb shrink” bugs in the new integrated circuits. It was the wild and difficult time at at TI especially Christmas 1982, with a number of production challenges that required crazy work ethics and angry customer calls and customer visits. The other challenge we had there was a sister product the TMS9928, it used Difference Signaling Vs. Composite Video on the TMS9918 and was used in the TI Home Computer. This lead to competition for wafers from the same factories. There was also a severe test capacity limitations given the extremely high volumes for both end products in the early 1980’s. I offered my resignation in September, 1983 for Motorola after living through extremely poor TI management decisions, but we shipped millions of both devices before my departure. - a Fried Product Engineering Team Member.

I never owned the ColecoVision but had cousins that did. Definitely was impressive back then. I eventually skipped owning a console since I wanted a computer. I was 13is and really wanted the Adam, maybe because of the ColecoVision. Eventually my mom and I chose to finance the IBM PCjr instead (almost $1000...very expensive!). Back then it was a full on computer to me, never gave me any issues and was great introduction to computers. We didn't know about the PCjr eventually being regarded as a flop and very happy memories with it. Very glad we did not purchase the Adam!

What about the card inserts for the controllers with different games, so much fun back then.

We got a Colecovision for Christmas that first year they came out and it was awesome! Can't believe you didn't mention one of the biggest drawbacks, it took FOREVER for games to load! Unlike an Atari you had to wait like 60-90 seconds for the game to load. That's a long time! As much as we all loved it me and my brother loved visiting our friends so we could play Space Invaders and Pitfall on the Atari.

I remember having this as a kid. This is the first home system to have at the time arcade accurate conversions (mostly Turbo, Battlefield, Time Pilot, etc. ).

The Super Action controllers they came up with for the sports games were incredible. We played football and baseball for hours as they were so easy and unique to use with the four buttons at your fingertips and the roller on top.

I got Colecovision in Christmas of 82. Donkey Kong was certainly better than the 2600/Mattel ports but still not that great. Many other games like Mouse Trap and Carnival were near arcade perfect. The so called crash (which I lived through) mainly involved gaming consoles. 8 bit computers like the C64/TI/Atari 800 were really taking off. I got the Commodore 64 for Christmas of 84 and realized how much more variety it's games had. Donkey Kong on the 64 had ALL FOUR BOARDS and the cut-scenes. Also the C64 would go very heavily into RPG's & adventure games starting in the mid 80's. As good as the Colecovision was with arcade ports - there were few original games and even less RPG or RTS games.. Even the 64's predecessor - the VIC 20 had some good games. VIC 20 DK also had all 4 boards & cutscenes - and with the exception of Jungle Hunt - most of the VIC-20's arcade ports were superior to their 2600 counterparts.

Walking with my family in Sears I always saw this on display. Never had one but it was like walking by technology gold as a kid.

I had one when i was a kid, in Germany it was called "CBS" i loved the game Looping, with that small airplane where you had to shoot rockets to open a gate.

To totally dismiss the crash of '83 being one of the downfalls of the Colecovision is being blind and shortsighted. The crash hurt EVERY game company.

I live in the Netherlands and I had the Colecovision, but one very important thing happened, the whole supply for Europe was stored in a building and that building was destroyed by a fire, after that the old Colecovision was not competitive anymore. They lost the market in Europe. It was a phantastic gameconsole, I loved it. It is now a rare thing.

Gawd this brings back memories that I actually feel in my gut. My buddy skipped out of school the day it was released and I was a jealous 15 year old.

How do not talk about zaxxon the 1st 3-D game it was amazing

I remember playing Donkey Kong jr. on my friend's Coleco Vision back in the 80s when I was a little kid

I had the 2600 with a ton of games, but always loved babysitting my cousins who had the Colecovision! Really loved the car racing game and Zaxxon.

I remember getting a ColecoVision (which I still have) back in '82 and being blown away by how faithful the graphics were to the arcade counterparts. I bet a TRON game on ColecoVision would have looked AWESOME!!! Wonder why Coleco never came out with one? Would have looked hella better than those Atari2600 and Intellivision TRON games. . .

Wow man, that's one damn fine-looking Coleco Vision.

I always wanted one of these when they were out. I had the Atari 2600 and was jealous of Coleco Vision’s games and better graphics. Great video.

I had always wondered what happened to them. I remember colecovision being the game system all the kids wanted. I also remember the store Zayres having pallets full of Adam computers by the front door on Clearance as well.

This 7 year old got the CV for Christmas 82. Absolute winner. Loved it 😍 Venture FrontLine and Frogger 👏🏻

Ah, the nostalgia. For Christmas of 1983 my folks went on an unprecedented gift-giving spree and bought the family a ColecoVision plus the 2600 expansion unit and a stack of both Coleco and 2600 games. I don't remember what they all were now, but I do recall on the Coleco side that we had the Smurfs game (a reasonable early-80s side-scroller) and Ladybug (a Pac-Man derivative), and on the 2600 side the trifecta of Terrible Movie Games: Superman (two players can control him cooperatively, for a terrifically unplayable experience!), Indiana Jones (incoherent and nearly impossible to win!), and ET (millions of copies buried in the New Mexico desert!). We loved them all, even the terrible ones. It was our first gaming console, and everyone in the family used it. We acquired more games before Coleco went bust, titles like Pepper II (which was also a Pac-Man-like, I think) and Q-Bert. We had at least one game that had Mylar inserts for the controller keyboards - they had a slot for overlays - though I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I know my mother was still playing games on it in the early 1990s. Don't know what eventually happened to it, though. Coleco is also famous for getting the rights to Cabbage Patch Kids, which was a huge coup; they were among the best-selling toys in the mid-1980s. Hasbro picked the license up when Coleco went bankrupt in 1988. Incidentally, if anyone's wondering why Coleco and Mattel had consoles but Hasbro didn't, there's a bunch on that in Miller's /Toy Wars/. Hasbro tried to come out with a really advanced console in the 80's, and had to cancel the project after millions in R&D. Then they did the same thing with a VR console project in the early 90's. They simply aimed too high each time.

My mom wouldn't buy me one, but I used to go to my friend's house to play it. I loved Zaxxon. The graphics were amazing, just like in the arcade. It was generations ahead of its time. Great video man.

Ahh. The Coleco Adam. The computer that's famous for slowly erasing your tapes, in the tape drive, every time you used it, so that over time, the tape would get worse, and worse, and then be.. just destroyed.

The TI-99/4 was released in 1979, long before the ColecoVision. The 4A update was 1981, still beating it. (In the bit on the sound chip, you noted it would "later" be used in the home computer).

Back in the 1980s, my grandfather of all people had a ColecoVision. This was back in the day when it was unheard of for an older person to own and play video games. I would tell kids at school about it and they didn't even know what it was. When he retired and moved west in the 90s he gave me his ColecoVision. I have kept and treasured it ever since

When I was in middle school, my best friend's father worked for Coleco; I was too young to know details, but he had to be part of whoever was creating the electronics at Coleco, because my friend had everything, and I mean everything before it was released when it was sitll in alpha/beta stage. He had Adam, and I dont' even know, like 40 games on tape that may or may not have ever been released. The only one I truly remember was Rocky 3... on tape. But I remember to make everything work, he had an actual Colecovision docked with some adam shell cobbled together on the floor in his room. We played SO MANY games that other kids never even got a chance to see. It was just so cool.

We had one of these when I was a kid. I remember how awesome Donkey Kong was. I also remember playing Mouse Trap (like PAC Man) for hours with my brother and Dad. It was an ongoing contest to see who could get the highest score. It was a really good gaming system.

As a kid, Colecovision was my first real gaming console. One Christmas my mom got us Rocky and Baseball. It was gaming bliss...until my mom brought it back bc my brothers would be up all night playing it and cursing each other out (all in good fun, but my mom disagreed). Couple years later I got a Commodore 64 and the rest is history. I miss playing Subrock and Cosmic Adventure :)

My aunt and uncle had the intellivision II back in the early 80s, I remember being enthralled by that thing. Dracula, ladybug, advanced d&d, I spent many a summer night as a kid playing those games. Really good memories.

I played on that console so many hours I can still remember the feel of the controller in my hand. The mushroom shaped stalk and the two side buttons.

Got one. Christmas of ‘82. Friends loved to come over and play it. Wish I still had it.

Awesome retrospective. However, I'm not totally convinced of Coleco's intentional malice behind the Donkey Kong ports. The Atari 2600 port, while limited, is really not bad. The Intellivision port is, however, way worse than it could have been. So I guess I kind of agree, haha. Good work.

I was the first kid in Western Australia to play it. The wheel and everything!

I had one of these and my friend had one. They both would lockup playing donkey kong. Big disappointment for me because my parents retuned it and got a atari 5200 instead. I always wanted donkey kong and I never was able to have it growing up. I discovered the arcade game in a pizza parler and to this day the smell of pizza reminds me of playing the donkey kong coin operated arcade.

It was all I wanted for my 17th birthday...that was 40 years ago today! That ColecoVision sure made me a lot of friends, too---every kid in the neighborhood was coming over to play it.

We had one. That thing was fun! I remember there was a game with cats, dogs, and mice and you put a little overlay into a slot so that the keypad buttons were labeled for the game

I grew up with a colecovision and wish i still had it. The system was super cool and super fun. I liked the cards that would slide into the controller. Sega mastersystem was what replaced it in my childhood household.