ColecoVision

The ColecoVision's development began in 1981 when Coleco Industries, historically a manufacturer of leather goods and later plastic swimming pools, decided to enter the booming video game market. Coleco's CEO Arnold Greenberg saw an opportunity to differentiate from Atari by focusing on arcade-accurate ports rather than original games. He hired engineer Eric Bromley to lead the hardware design team. Bromley's team made the critical decision to use the Zilog Z80A processor and Texas Instruments TMS9928A Video Display Processor ??the same VDP used in the TI-99/4A computer and the MSX standard. This chip combination was well understood by engineers and offered strong sprite-handling capabilities. The Z80A at 3.58 MHz gave the console enough processing power to handle complex arcade game logic, while the TMS9928A provided hardware sprite support for up to 32 simultaneous sprites with collision detection. The licensing of Donkey Kong from Nintendo was a masterstroke negotiated by Greenberg himself. He flew to Japan and personally convinced Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi to grant Coleco exclusive home console rights to Donkey Kong. The deal reportedly cost Coleco several million dollars in licensing fees, but Greenberg correctly predicted that Donkey Kong would be the console's strongest selling point. Nintendo's decision reflected their cautious approach to the American market prior to the NES launch. The controller design was controversial from the start. Coleco opted for a joystick with a numeric keypad, influenced by the Intellivision's controller design. While the keypad allowed for game-specific overlays that could label buttons for different functions, the joystick itself was stiff and prone to fatigue during extended play sessions. Many developers later released games that supported the Super Action Controller, an improved gamepad with a more ergonomic grip. The Adam computer expansion, announced in June 1983, was envisioned as Coleco's entry into the home computer market. The Adam would turn the ColecoVision into a full computer with a keyboard, high-speed tape drive, and 80 KB of RAM. However, development was rushed, production quality was poor, and a devastating design flaw caused the Adam's power supply to generate electromagnetic pulses during startup that could erase data on nearby magnetic media ??including the game cartridges inserted in the ColecoVision slot. This defect, combined with overall unreliability, generated massive returns and effectively doomed both the Adam and Coleco's electronics division.