What is Digg?31 Comments
- beedun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Long live coleco!! I started gamin with Venture & Lady Bug!
- theblooms, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I had a Pac-Man watch, and I had a really cool hockey game that had LED's. I don't remember the name of it, but I would recognize it if I ever saw it again.
I also had the same Football game that everyone on Earth had as well.
But by far the coolest game I had was a Star Wars game that had a grid of 16 LED's and it was a strategy game. I really miss that one.
http://www.geocities.com/starwarstrader_nz/newtoys/battle_command.jpg
And I had a Race to the Death Star LED based game as well.
http://www.geocities.com/starwarstrader_nz/newtoys/electronic_laserbattle.jpg
I posted some pics I found of the games I am talking about. They were awesome. - chatwithaninja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I remember having a galaga one. Loved it.
But current handheld games differ in that you can play different games on the same handheld, unlike those where its one game only. Try packing 3 of those with you to take on a car trip. - cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2All the way back to 1976...
"Mattel Auto Race was released in 1976, and was the first Mattel Electronics handheld game made available to the public (and is also the first ever all-electronic handheld, using no moving parts, just electronic components). "
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Mattel/AutoRace.htm - coffeegeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I had the Ms. Pacman version of the Coleco game. It was a little pokey...but still totally ahead of it's time.
- datagod, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I used to hang out with a guy simply for the off chance that he would bring out his pacman game and let me "watch". I was never allowed to play it. Man, it was so cool.
Each little lightbulb thingy had an image of a pacman, a ghost, and a dot. I still remember the sound..."meeer meer meer.....meep meep meep" - Lumiras, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I remember having one of the mini arcade ones at one time (I think I got it after they were around for a while).......man, that's some nice design on those things, even if it won't fit in your pocket
- Talus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I still have my Pac Man and Donkey Kong :D And they still work!
- k-dogg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Coleco Head 2 Head Football was the best!
Although the games pictured in this story look a good bit more spiffy than the old head-to-head unit I remember:
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Coleco/H2HFootball.htm
Man this sure does bring back some memories! - 8ight, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2[bug enters] do do do doooo, do do do do deee
[border timer starts] doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
doo oo lo do loo [bady releases]
repeat steps 2 - 3
great freaking game
SPECIAL
EXTRA
grew up on the CV, and loved it. aren't you glad you were raised on these classic bad ass games and not the junk of today? i'm just so happy i got to really enjoy these games. you stick a kid in front of ladybug today, he'd be outta there in 30 seconds.
much love to the xbox and emulation.
i remember having the pac-man one of these things. not sure if we had any others. they were actully probably my odler broters. brings back good memories. i still have all my CV stuff -- and my cabbage patch kid, damnit! - Humptydank, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, Auto Race and Coleco Football both came out when I was in Jr. High (gather 'round, youngins) and they were like crack. Too expensive for just anybody to get, only the kids whose parents would spend money had them, and they would eventually spend their free periods deciding who was cool enough to get some time on them.
They also triggered what I'll assume were the first instances of schools banning handhelds. At least in my school they did, after numerous fights, kids late for classes so they wouldn't miss their turn, etc. - tnwake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow, I had forgotten all about those.. I remember the pacman one
- Permanent4, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh, man, the memories. I used to have a Merlin as a little kid and eventually got the Q-Bert tabletop game, though I really beat the hell out of it and ended up selling it at a garage sale for a buck. Kids at one of my elementary schools had both the Coleco tabletop Pac-Man and Entex Pac-Man 2, which let one player play as Pac-Man and another play as a ghost.
I also had Pac-Man and Q-Bert watches at some point in my life, but I lost both of them. In my last year of elementary school, I would get together with a couple of other kids with game watches once a week, and we would trade watches and play each others' games on the monkey bars during recess. Ah, memories... - n3rrd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Way back in the 80s? Yeah, at max, nine years before the GameBoy (came out in 1989).
Were these really out that much before the Game & Watch units? The earliest I see listed for Game & Watch was in 1981. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_%26_Watch - Donerkebab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Duuude Donkey Kong Junior was great! The screen was on top and you had to let light pass through to see the image. You looked at its reflection in a mirror from the front. Countless wasted hours...
- raindog469, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The only Coleco handheld I ever got was Electronic Quarterback, which was Coleco's first electronic game. For "head to head" games I liked Entex better (we had Football, Hockey and the apparently unlicensed but fun Galaxian) and I think all I have left is Bambino Boxing, Tomy Tron (3 different stages! Woo hoo!) and my old Electronic Quarterback with masking tape replacing the missing 9V battery cover.
By the way, the "Coleco" 2 player sports games pictured in the article are just generic Chinese LCD games with the Coleco name on them. They resemble the Coleco "Head to Head" games superficially but will only soothe your nostalgia if you also have memory loss.
That goes double for the "Coleco Head To Head TV Games" thing which is a NES-on-a-chip deal with some Hong Kong originals built in, having nothing to do with either the Coleco handhelds or Colecovision. It's the same sad story as the "Intellivision" handheld units and TV games that came out last year, though at least those made a half-baked attempt at simulating the originals. These Coleco ones are Coleco in name only. - abiding99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Venture was good times, but I was all about Montezuma's Revenge, played that game for hours upon hours, just kept repeating level 9.
- sremick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I had one of those little table-top game things when I was little, mine was Tron. It was similar in design to the Zaxxon shown. Not sure who made it. I played it everywhere. Took like 4 or 6 C cells heh.
- kjbetz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I had one of those Microvisions too (well my dad did) and remember playing that thing for hours... Bowling, Super Breakout and some type of land to air shooting game... oh the memories!
- tahim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1play Zaxxon online...
http://www.tripletsandus.com/80s/80s_games/zaxxon.htm - trekkie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have the green 'Football II' and my Dad and I would play that for hours. I also got a Tron and Scramble that were similar in look to the Coleco one mentioned in this article. I think they were made by Tomy. I think i was cleaning out boxes last fall and sold the Scramble and Tron on ebay.
- Flawless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wow, good times...
The first electronic game I ever had was the Merlin. (http://www.handheldmuseum.com/ParkerBros/Merlin.htm) Damn, that was addictive.
That first game set me on a looong course. Me and a bunch of friends owned dozens of the games found on that site. Which then led me to the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the VIC-20, the Apple // and finally the Commodore 64, which is the best gaming platform ever, IMHO. - dave2112, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I had the Pac-Man tabletop game. I think I threw it out when I left home for college (when I was 18 and stupid). D'oh!!!
- CaseyB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"...Coleco's VERY oldschool handheld videogames..."
God, I feel old.
I had the Zaxxon. My mom offered to get me something special one night when they were going to a party and leaving me with a sitter. I remember agonizing over whether to get a tabletop game, or a new game for the VIC-20. The Zaxxon won out. Unfortunately it wasn't a really great game -- Pac Man was a much better conversion. - a7bat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I remember those quite well, I also had a few small hand held portables and a game watch. Which reminds me, I also had a transformers watch; a watch one minute, a robot the next.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I had Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Pac Man.
I sold them all on Ebay for mega $$$$
If you find them at a thrift store, have a quick nostalgia trip, and cash in! - thecoolestcow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Hahaha, he had an "Aunt Babe..."
- spectre, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2DS indeed.
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