The story of an upstart leather company that took on a corporate titan.. Play Value Episode “Colecovision” Dan: Now a lot of kids growing up had an Atari 2600, they had a Nintendo maybe even had a Sega Genesis, but not everybody had a Colecovision. If you did I salute you, you are a true video game fan. TJ: You did not see too many Colecovision’s, you had one friend who had one, but still everyone knows what a Coleco is. Jeff: Like all the important video game consoles the Colecovision started in Hartford Connecticut with a leather company. TJ: Coleco stands for Connecticut leather company, Co le co that is where the name came from. Jeff: They started out in the leather industry, and in the fifties they started making above ground pools, in the sixties that kind of turns into a business where they’re making foosball tables and tabletop hockey games. Then in the seventies finally they started developing video games. Dan: Beck in 1976 they started the Telstar line, and this is a line of basic boxes that you would hook up to your TV and they each played one game. They had a shooting game and they had a pong knock off but then Atari came out with a system where you could use interchangeable cartridges a brilliant idea. You could play different games on the same box, and that was how the Telstar was buried. Jeff: After Atari comes in and captures the entire home market Coleco said is what is left? They start developing some of the world’s first a handheld video games. The most famous of which was electronic quarterback. Josh: They also maybe solid state little mini arcade games that people loved. TJ: They had Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and Space Invaders. Jeff: Which are great for taking home, and they are full size arcade machines if you have any tiny people around. Josh: But Coleco was waiting trying to make its next move to get back into the home market in a big way. Jeff: What nobody realized it is about Atari’s Technology is that there’s so much competition in the video game place that it was getting a little old. And Coleco comes in with this brand new system. It is five years later technology wise which is enormous amount of time; it is an entire generation of video game consoles. This is the difference between a Super Nintendo and a PlayStation. TJ: Even though the Atari 2600 is five years old at the time it does not matter because Atari has so many games and so much money. Dan: Atari is the 800 pound gorilla of the video game industry and any good arcade game that comes along Atari locks up the rights and home version, so where is Coleco going to find an in? TJ: They scour the arcades and find the cult classics that Atari missed, these great games that Atari just never picked up like Zaxxon, Mr. Do. Josh: The other thing they did it, which is crazy is they created an adapter that you can actually play Atari games on the Coleco vision. Dan: It had never been done before and it had never been done since. If you had tried to pitch an idea like this today your lawyers head would just explode. Josh: The last piece of their planned to launch this in a big way, they needed to have a secret weapon and Coleco’s secret weapon was Donkey Kong. TJ: In 1981 Donkey Kong is the second big as arcade game in the world. Pac Man is number one, and Donkey Kong is made by this real small Japanese company no one had heard of it at the time called Nintendo. Dan: Nintendo wanted to get a home version of donkey Kong into living rooms across America and they said that we are a small guy, lets partner with another small guy like Coleco and maybe we can help each other out and take a little bit of the wind out of Atari sails. Jeff: The two small companies at the dance, they see each other from across the room, they lock eyes and the rest is history. Libe: So in July of 82 Colecovision comes out with Donkey Kong and it happens to be a really great translation of the arcade game. Dan: Now keep in mind that this is only after two months that Pac Man came out for the Atari 2600 and that was a complete debacle, completely terrible. So in one step they are already making the head guy look bad. Jeff: Donkey Kong for all intensive purposes was the Mario of Colecovision, the only problem is that it was about to throw a barrel at them and they did not know it, and they were nowhere near the hammer. Josh: Very close to when their about to launch they got a very not so nice call slash letter from Universal Studios and it was the equivalent of a cease and desist. Jeff: We are on the eve of the launch of the Colecovision, it is about to come out and Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal here is about it and says hey, Donkey Kong, King Kong, guerrilla, that is kind of similar, I could probably make money on this. TJ: He goes after both Nintendo and Coleco and he says look you have 48 hours to provide me with all of the receipts from all of your sales of Donkey Kong related material and you have to destroy all of your inventories and any kind of Donkey Kong related merchandising that you have. If you don’t, we’re going to sue you. Josh: Coleco, they were a company that had been around for a long time but they were not a huge company. They immediately buckled. Jeff: Nintendo, Donkey Kong is this huge hit for them, this huge hit and they’re not willing to settle as easily. Josh: Through a little digging Howard Lincoln of Nintendo of America found that only a few years earlier Universal had brought a lawsuit that actually disproved their claim to the copyright. TJ: In 1975, which is just seven years earlier, Universal Studios does a remake of King Kong, starring Jeff Bridges of the movie Tron fame and Jessica Lang. Josh: To bring that film to market they actually had to prove that the rights to King Kong have lapsed and it had become public domain. TJ: So basically Universal Studio seven years ago is in court proving that King Kong is public domain, and nobody owns the rights to it, now they’re doing a complete 180. Jeff: Universal kind of gets caught in there own lie and they’re forced to pay Nintendo 1.8 million dollars for a frivolous lawsuits, just for wasting that the American legal systems time, Nintendo’s time, your time, you’ve had to hear about the story now. TJ: And all Universal Studios was trying to do was scare these two little companies into giving them free money and it backfired. Jeff: Universal flat out abused the legal system; they flat abused it much like Donkey Kong would abuse Mario. TJ: So thanks to Nintendo, Coleco comes out with a DK cartridge, it ships with the Colecovision and now the Colecovision is on its way. And Donkey Kong was not the only great game that was going to come out on Coleco; there was Montezuma’s Revenge, Miner 2049’er. Jeff: Games like a Gateway to Apshai, the first home RPG. TJ: Rocky, Popeye, Pit Stop, I mean the list goes on and on. Dan: But unfortunately they got into the business at exactly the wrong time. 1982 was cool, 1983 that was when the whole home gaming business fell apart. TJ: And the big video game crash happened and swept Coleco, Atari, and everyone else off of the map. Jeff: It looked like Coleco was going to be the next big thing, just kind of bad timing. TJ: So after the big video game crash of 1983 the public has moved on to personal computers, they do not want anything to do if your games anymore so Coleco responds with two products, one is a huge success and the other is a huge failure. Josh: Trying to compete with the influx of personal computers and this interest with that they came out with the Adam. Jeff: Unfortunately they were really rushing to get it out the door, and about half of the units did not work. TJ: If you have half of your product return as defective then your name is soiled, you’re never going to recover from that, so that is what happened. Jeff: The other product was a huge success, something a little low tec but the Cabbage Patch doll. TJ: The fact that they come up with Cabbage Patch Kids is great, it is a huge success for them. But the problem with having a huge success with a toy is that it is only for one year after that Christmas season people move on. Jeff: You know the next year is replaced by Teddy Ruxpin, in 1986 Teddy Ruxpin is replaced by laser tag, the year after that laser tag is replaced by Nintendo. TJ: So we have come full circle video games at the top, the huge crash, to being on top again, but this time Coleco is nowhere to be found. Jeff: By 1988 Coleco had filed for bankruptcy and so ends the legacy of their great Connecticut leather company. Dan: It was fun while it lasted, sorry you had to go.