In 1982, Coleco thought they would take a crack at the videogame market by introducing the Colecovision. They needed a catchy title for a pack-in and chose Donkey Kong. It required some heavy bargaining, but they won the bid and so that year's hottest game would be under Christmas trees, along with the only system at the time which could play it. The CV has the distinction of being the only system that was designed with 100% off the shelf parts.

System Specs

This console used a Z80 running at 3.58Mhz, coupled with an SN75489 programmable sound generator for sound, and a TMS9918a style video chip with 16K of VRAM. The Z80 had 1K of system RAM, and an 8K BIOS ROM. Not too much "funny" on the Coleco, since it used all off-the shelf parts that could be obtained anywhere by anyone. Very solid, standard design which probably was thrown together in a hurry to get something to market quickly. Not much more to say really.

Coleco Projects

These are some of my Coleco projects:

Kevtris, my Colecovision game I wrote.
Coleco RAMCart used to test games on a real Coleco before the advent of emulators and other forms of testing.
Coleco Multicart. The protype of my switchless, menued Coleco multicart. No switches required! Plug and play action, with games selected via a menu interface.