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PR: COLECO to release Chameleon, console that focuses on new cartridge games

Q

Quadraphonic

Member
Sumio Mondo said:
So is this just the SNES architecture with a new plastic coating or what?
Click to expand...

They're trying to pretend they have a really smart prototype retro-style console.

What they are showing off, that they want you to believe, is a modern-day-miracle CPU attached to a custom-designed board, inside a Jaguar shell, that uses an SNES-style connector to play SNES-style games.

In reality, they jammed an SNES Jr. into a Jaguar Shell, and plugged in a SNES flash cart that takes SD cards and called it a day.
eLwfJAL.png


The FGPA could POSSIBLY exist, but no one knows who is working on it, and all their responses about it have shown they don't know what they're talking about.
 
NeOak

NeOak

Member
Is there a link to the discussion about the SNES FPGA at AtariAge?

I found the website, but I'd like to know what board works
 
C

Cheerilee

Member
Boss★Moogle;195308636 said:
Why does the console look exactly like an Atari jaguar though?
Click to expand...

When Atari (the second one) died, they left their "casting molds" behind at the factory which made the outer shell for the Jaguar. That factory lent them to a company that made dental cameras.

sBmwKIq.jpg
Click to expand...

Eventually the factory wanted to get rid of the casting molds, and Mike Kennedy bought them for the price of scrap metal. Then one day he thought to himself "I should make a failed videogame console."
 
dickroach

dickroach

Member
just finished reading thru the AtariAge thread on this.

some guy literally took his SNES Mini board and shoved it into a Jaguar shell and it looks identical to the 'prototype'
hahaha this is so insane.
 
D

dity

Member
Following this thread is quite the ride. Same goes for the AtariAge thread. Like, I'm honestly amazed at what's going on.
 
S

superNESjoe

Member
My favorite part of this thread are the defenders who don't know what their looking at saying that people are jumping to conclusions and the "evidence" is just speculation.
 
R

_Ryo_

Member
From everything I have seen and heard about FGPAs are that they are

1. Expensive in monetary cost
2. Expensive in resource/hardware cost
3. Very hard to program cores for systems past 8bit.
4. There are very few known SNES cores, some which may not even be completely developed and they would be expensive to license either way.

So how would Retro VGS have one in less than 3 months of previously having absolutely nothing, how could they afford a hardware and software engineer to design one for cheap? Why would they sell such a revolutionary piece of hardware for low price?

Other than that, even if they have this supposedly miracle SNES FGPA Core, what about the games from the other consoles they've promised? Surely they dont expect to port Genesis, etc games to the SNES? Not many indie developers have experience with coding for that system and I have heard that there is a steep learning curve so expecting ports from other systems to run adequately, I'd imagine would be a pipe dream.

So, logically I do not believe them when their prototype is an mini SNES stuffed inside a Jaguar shell with the protruding hardware covered with electrical tape, and a SD SNES stuffed inside a Jaguar cart to show at a popular public Toy Fair, especially when they are promising a more detailed overview and explanation of such "miracle" hardware in a matter of days.

If it were true, why not show such at the toy fair with an open and transparent prototype?

It just appears fraudulent in all of its essence to me.
 
D

Dreamwriter

Member
superNESjoe said:
My favorite part of this thread are the defenders who don't know what their looking at saying that people are jumping to conclusions and the "evidence" is just speculation.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you are talking about me, note when I said that the only evidence we had was one single person saying that since it looked like it used a SNES flash cart and had a SNES video adapter, it was a SNES inside. That *is* speculation, particularly when the official statement was that the device was powered by an FPGA with a SNES core. That's not any different from people saying that the box had no electronics in it at all based on the fact that the power light didn't light up. Of course we know better now, with the side-by-side pics of what a SNES Jr. board looks like when stuffed into a Jaguar shell.

I'm an optimist, and I tend to think that the people in charge of a project like this in which they have a lot of passion about, won't lie about it. Note that in the original Retro VGS project, Mike didn't out and out lie about anything, he just over-communicated, talking about wish-list items and things before they had been decided on/figured out/priced, and then not doing a good job communicating when things changed (and then making enemies and burning bridges through miscommunication too...)

_Ryo_ said:
So how would Retro VGS have one in less than 3 months of previously having absolutely nothing, how could they afford a hardware and software engineer to design one for cheap? Why would they sell such a revolutionary piece of hardware for low price?

Other than that, even if they have this supposedly miracle SNES FGPA Core, what about the games from the other consoles they've promised? Surely they dont expect to port Genesis, etc games to the SNES? Not many indie developers have experience with coding for that system and I have heard that there is a steep learning curve so expecting ports from other systems to run adequately, I'd imagine would be a pipe dream.
Click to expand...
They didn't say they designed an FPGA core themselves. There is at least one full SNES core available that they could license, and while yes the consumer price of the FPGA powerful enough to run it costs $50 to consumers, a company manufacturing tens of thousands of them can probably get it for cheaper (and really, I think they could manufacture the rest of the system for under $100 anyways if they were smart about it, so $50 for the main chip is doable).

As for the other consoles, they actually haven't announced any for this device other than Colecovision. All of the games they've shown are available or were in development for SNES. If I were them, I'd have stretch goals in the Kickstarter to pay for the development/licensing of additional cores - at one point Kevtris said he'd still be willing to license/develop cores for them as long as they paid up in advance.
 
D

Dreamwriter

Member
isamu said:
What controller is this and where can I obtain one? Serious question.
Click to expand...

It's the "Controller Pro U" by Interworks. They only have it for Wii U right now (and you don't want that one, it has wireless communication issues). Chameleon supposedly is going to have a special USB-wired version of it.
 
D

Dreamwriter

Member
Heh - I just thought of a fun theory that will make more people laugh at me :) What if the Chameleon is going to be a Chinese SNES clone with an FPGA and ARM chip added to it? Then putting an actual SNES into the box *could* be considered a valid prototype!
 
N

NoFaceNico

Member
Dreamwriter said:
Heh - I just thought of a fun theory that will make more people laugh at me :) What if the Chameleon is going to be a Chinese SNES clone with an FPGA and ARM chip added to it? Then putting an actual SNES into the box *could* be considered a valid prototype!
Click to expand...

ha. ha. It's almost like that's what Mike wants us to believe he's doing.

If I ever commit murder I want you to be on my jury. You're the type of personality that will blame someone other than me because the prosecution didn't rule out the possibility that the victim's jewelry was made of Nazi gold and therefore she must have been murdered by a 97 year old man living in Argentina.

Your arguments make no fucking sense and you take advantage of other people's lack of knowledge about the subject.

Yes, Dreamwriter is correct, there is one person in Japan who has a working SNES FPGA core. But it looks nothing like a SNES Mini board, it looks like this:

images


You act like the FPGA chip is something he could hot glue onto a SNES Mini board and call it a day.
 
T

Tempy

don't ask me for codes
ascii42 said:
It uses the same mold as the Jaguar. Atari sold them to a dental equipment company, and that company sold them to "Coleco"
Click to expand...

RetroVGS people != "Coleco".

RetroVGS people bought Jaguar molds.
RetroVGS people bought ColecoVision license from ColecoVision license holders.
 
M

Mega

Banned
Dreamwriter, why do you defend Retro VGS and Mike so much? Are you his close friend? Are you affiliated with the company? Are you developing a game for the Chameleon? I'm not accusing you of anything. I genuinely wanna know because your willfully ignorant posts are infuriating and border on misinformation to people just joining and not up to speed.

I personally think I have been as positive and receptive to this endeavor as someone in the target demographic can possibly be (check my positive remark a couple pages back to the pic of the console hooked up to a CRT). Yet here I am, again, disappointed and frustrated at the endless shit show that Mike consistently puts out as if he learns no lessons. It's always SOMETHING awry. Can't he just get a thing done and say here it is, as promised? And good, bad, mediocre, pleasantly surprising, shoddy, great, cheap, expensive, whatever... it stands on its own and we buy it or not based on the fact it's a real thing that exists and we can judge for ourselves. But no, it's always fucking smoke and mirrors with this character.

The SNES Mini thing... who lies like that to potential buyers who are far more wary and vigilant about being sold crap than anyone else out there? Yeah, this constitutes a lie. No, it's not the first time he lied via deceitful and misleading acts in the hopes no one would catch on that he had nothing to deliver. If he's not a liar, he's delusional and highly incompetent. He better have complete, unobscured, working hardware on display soon or the writing's on the wall and he's done.
 
N

Ninja Scooter

Member
This whole thing is a prime example of just how and why it's so easy to prey on people's nostalgia. You have people willing to set aside any kind of reason or rational because someone throws words like cartridges and Coleco at them. This is why you get so many half assed kickstarters and crowdfunding campaigns.
 
F

Friend of Sonic

Member
This is funny. But only up until the point that people are ripped off, then the joke is over. I don't think the internet will let it get that far, though
 
V

Vamphuntr

Member
Dreamwriter said:
They didn't say they designed an FPGA core themselves. There is at least one full SNES core available that they could license, and while yes the consumer price of the FPGA powerful enough to run it costs $50 to consumers, a company manufacturing tens of thousands of them can probably get it for cheaper (and really, I think they could manufacture the rest of the system for under $100 anyways if they were smart about it, so $50 for the main chip is doable).
Click to expand...

They clearly said on their FB page that they wrote the core themselves. Someone screencapped it on Atariage here

You seem to forget the current board that works with the chip is a couple of hundreds of dollars. Atariage has it in the 300$ ballpark. It won't be something he can sell at 150$. Even if you think only the 50$ chip is all that matters he still need to pay for the board, the components, the cables and AC adapter, the money invested in the molds, the controller, the pack in game, the shipping, the manufacturing cost, the licensing of the cores and of the proprietary stuff he might use.

I don't want to be pessimistic but if they "wrote" an SNES FPGA core and can afford to offer the console for 150$ they wouldn't show up at a convention with a SNES shoved into a jaguar shell. It should be a breakthrough.
 
IrishNinja

IrishNinja

Member
this started out as an interesting oddity...at this point, i literally cannot imagine why anyone is seriously considering this

Rich! said:
If anything, I'm happy that this project has led me to being aware of Kevtris' FPGA console project. Now that is something worth waiting for.
Click to expand...

+1 so hard, sad to see it stalled out or that he's retooled it? i need to check back on atariage, i really was looking forward to a neo-geo/etc faithful system!
 
D

Dreamwriter

Member
Vamphuntr said:
They clearly said on their FB page that they wrote the core themselves. Someone screencapped it on Atariage here
Click to expand...
Probably an exaggeration, with Retro VGS they talked about the cores as things they were making but they were actually planning to license existing ones and pay to have new ones developed (as came out in the open with the falling out between Retro VGS and Kevtris, their FPGA core guy).

Vamphuntr said:
You seem to forget the current board that works with the chip is a couple of hundreds of dollars. Atariage has it in the 300$ ballpark. It won't be something he can sell at 150$. Even if you think only the 50$ chip is all that matters he still need to pay for the board, the components, the cables and AC adapter, the money invested in the molds, the controller, the pack in game, the shipping, the manufacturing cost, the licensing of the cores and of the proprietary stuff he might use.
Click to expand...
A chip's dev board's price means nothing to people actually having their own board manufactured. Similar to how the Tegra 3 dev board from nVidia cost $200, but Ouya still shipped as a $99 game console with a Tegra 3 inside a custom case along with two wireless game controllers. The dev board is kind-of a full console itself, and not optimized for cost/size. And the Jaguar molds were cheap and already paid for themselves and more (the first thing they did with the molds was sell over $10,000 worth of clear Jaguar cases).
 
K

Khaz

Member
Remk said:
Wait a second, the second game shown on the first video is an actual SNES game.

Did they go and license a crappy1993 game for release on this thing? I can load roms into it? this whole thing is so weird.
Click to expand...

iirc, at some point they wanted their console to be able to run SNES code. The idea was so that code developed for the current SNES homebrew scene could run on the RetroVGS. Many people pointed out the stupidity of having to manufacture two different types of cartridges, and that going head to head with the current SNES userbase was suicidal. The idea changed into having a cartridge adapter of some sort, then it changed again and I just can't keep track on their forever moving goalposts.
 
M

Mega

Banned
djSyndrome said:
Well, Kotaku surely fell for it.
Click to expand...

Someone in the AtariAge thread said:
What I find crazy about all of this is that Mike honestly believes he can fool the people who make up his primary market.
Click to expand...

Part of me thinks Mike knew he couldn't get away with this when it came to the hardcore enthusiast demographic and pushed on anyway. Since the VGS team has a bunch of marketing people advising and helping make decisions, the plan must have been to show up at Toy Fair at all costs and not miss out on all the free press, SNES in a Jaguar shell be damned. They chose getting potentially thousands interested with optimistic PR-like reports that miss the whole story vs. pissing off the far smaller group on forums who are caught up on the long string of lies and shenanigans surrounding this mess. I mean, look at the press this has gotten: Kotaku, IGN, CNET, Engadget, Gizmodo + a bunch of other sites.
 
N

NoFaceNico

Member
It's going to be so great to do a Where Are They Now? type of show about the COLECO Chameleon project 10 years from now..... y'know if the warden lets us interview Mike Kennedy...
 
C

caffeware

Banned
どっかの掲示板で「ヤツのSNES FPGAはフェイクか本物か賭けようぜ」ってなってる

その掲示板でColeco ChameleonにFPGAが使われててSNESもサポするみたいな感じで書かれてるみたいだけどどうなの（流し読み

Can anyone translate? This is a tweet from the Japanese guy who is/was developing a snes core.
 
R

_Ryo_

Member
I don't understand the people that are saying that they don't want this to fail. It's arguable that it is fraud and meant to trick consumers that they're going to obtain something of value when what they'd get is not what is proposed. And at the very least it's an extremely disingenuous campaign.

Frauds shouldn't gain success in any market place, regardless of what revolutionary promises (lies) they're offering. People like that, should fail, imo.
 
gunstarhero

gunstarhero

Member
Man - I wish someone could sum up what is going on in this thread - lol

Fraud, lies, deceit and jaguars - sounds like a hit!
 
N

NoFaceNico

Member
*profit


Unless you really meant "prophet" as in "false prophet" which could be a very true description of what's going on here when you look at what the die-hard facebook fans say.
 
R

rav

Member
NoFaceNico said:
Yep! It was a Chameleon themed CU podcast special!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deOe1y2arJk
Click to expand...

Why are they bitching so hard about hdmi not being able to work on a CRT?
Wikipedia said:
HDMI can only be used with older analog-only devices (using connections such as SCART, VGA, RCA, etc.)
Click to expand...

source

Edit: I'm not saying what is going on with Coleco Chameleon isn't shady at all. I'm just pointing out they're not entirely correct on a couple points; All the tape could be there for many reasons too. It's not entirely clear what is going on
 
Y

YianGaruga

Banned
rav said:
Edit: I'm not saying what is going on with Coleco Chameleon isn't shady at all. I'm just pointing out they're not entirely correct on a couple points; All the tape could be there for many reasons too. It's not entirely clear what is going on
Click to expand...
Nah it's pretty clear what's going on
They didn't make an HDMI out that somehow connects via a proprietary Nintendo AV cable and piped it through a converter to display on a CRT
 
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