ColecoVision Flashback Classic Console

[TrekMD]

Well, I went by another Dollar General and, voila, they had all three Flashbacks.  I went ahead and got the CV Flashback with the extra game.  I'm giving the one I had bought (it's still in its box) to my niece. 

[onthinice]

That is a good way to share and maybe start a new fan.

[sloan]

Awesome. You will love Antarctic Adventure. Not surprised you didn't get the 61 game INTV with baseball being the bonus game.

[ls650]

My review is up! You can click on my Youtube channel link in my signature to find it. 

I really liked this review.  Lots of info and a short clip of all 61 games - very nice.  I have read a lot of so-so reviews of the CV FB, but your review is more positive.  From looking at the clips, there are a lot more decent games than I had been led to believe.

[zapiy]

I have to agree. Hell for the price it appears to be a great product.

[ls650]

I received my Colecovision Flashback and have played a few hours on it the last couple of evenings...

I'm reasonably impressed with it. It has some flaws (I'd give it 3.5 out of 5 stars) - but it is still a lot of fun. I used to own a 'real' 80s Colecovision with a fair number of cartridges, so I can compare the two fairly. The new Flashback controllers are fairly close to the originals in both look and feel - but not exact. The stick in particular has a clicky, snappy feel to it that I don't think the original had. The video output on my LCD flatscreen is decent enough, but the sound in some games is off, with a few games much more so than others.

The selection of 60 games includes some classics such as Zaxxon, Space Panic, Frenzy, Space Fury, Pepper II (my fave!), Venture, Cosmic Avenger, etc. Of course, Nintendo would not licence them Donkey Kong, but where are Ladybug or Mousetrap?

The quality of the emulation is fairly good: not as precise as the newer Windows emulators, but decent enough. Honestly, I have to say that playing most of these games really doesn't look or feel much different than on my original system. Even the plastic keyboard overlays look like the 1980s originals!

So... what's not to like? Well, frankly, the selection of games is seriously lacking! I understand that it is hard to get some of these licences without having deep pockets, but there is quite a lot of 'shovelware' included. I would say that perhaps 15 or 20 of the games are good, decent games, but some of the remaining 40 games.... yikes!

I think that because the Intellivision Flashback has 60 games included, they felt they had to do the same with the Coleco version - and ended up padding out the included library. A good twenty or more of the included games are from lesser known 80s publishers such as Spectravideo, Eclipse, or Interphase. There's a reason these companies are largely unknown - most of their games were not that good! And there are many mediocre 'homebrew' games included too.

Honestly, I think they should have skipped some of the included games, and just stuck to 20 or 30 of the better games. Including the crummy games only weakens the overall product.

I really hope that in the future version, some 3rd party games from Activision, etc. I realize that there are licencing issues and that may not even be legally possible, but I have my fingers crossed.

Overall, I am really pleased with my purchase.

[TrekMD]

Nice review, ls650.  Thanks for taking the time to post it.

[Shadowrunner]

I spent some time last weekend playing each game for a few minutes, and I completely agree about the quality! There's probably a dozen games that I really enjoyed playing, another hand full that were still pretty good, and then a whole bunch that I will never play again! Really makes me want to get an actual Colecovison again so I can play all the great games that aren't on this.

[retromod]

A quick look to the PCB reveals there is a big fat flashrom installed. I'll guess it contains all those nice games....

so by trying to reverse engineer the flash you'll get the format/data stored and are able to replace them.
or simple switch addresslines in the right moment ;-)

[ls650]

so by trying to reverse engineer the flash you'll get the format/data stored and are able to replace them.

There's a thread on AtariAge about a guy who did exactly that.  He put 60 different ROMs on there, including all the top arcade ports, and left out all the filler.  Apparently the emulator works reasonably well with all but one or two of them.

[TrekMD]

Well, that sounds nifty!

[retromod]

well than it is small step to a cartridge port for standard cartridges..... not really rocket science.

[zapiy]

It is for me lol...

[Shadowrunner]

That would be really cool Retromod

[retromod]

That would be really cool Retromod :105:
the coleco RGB mod has highest prio...(beside the Atari one of course)