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The trashcans of the past are stuffed with consoles that didn't catch on. Play value Episode “Failed Consoles part 1†Jeff: 500 years of books and we still get books on paper. 100 years of film, still pretty much the same medium. Video games change every 5 or so years, the whole market changes. Here is a shake up every five years. And it doesn’t matter what you did. It’s all about the next system. TJ: In thirty five years of video games. You have all these consoles, the big ones. Xbox, Nintendo, even the Genesis, everybody knew what it was. But for every one of those, there are five of them that didn’t make it. Dan: 1978, what’s big in 1978? The Atari 2600, so of course everyone else has to come out with their own consoles to compete with that. One of the ones you don’t really remember anymore was the Magnavox Odyssey 2. Josh: Great system really had some nice horsepower in it. But Atari bought out rights to third party games like Space Invaders and Pacman, so by the time the Atari 2 came out; they really just didn’t have the content to compete, except for KC Munchkin. I don’t even have to describe it in much detail, all you need to know about it is the, it’s a rebuffed Pacman. Dan: There were a couple of differences, there weren’t as many dots, and mazes were different. But it was just close enough to be legally actionable. And if it Atari thinks something is legally actionable, they are going to action it. So why did the Odyssey 2 fail? Well KC Munchkin was there mascot and if he is tied up in court, then you got nothing left. Josh: At the end of the day Atari controlled the content. Which as you will see through history is what dictates which consoles live and which consoles die. Dan: Now the biggest threat to the Atari 2600 came from the Intellivision. This was a cool little system that was actually a 16 bit system, 16 years before the Sega genesis. Josh: This is interesting because Intellivision wasn’t a complete failure. Here you had a company who had a pretty powerful machine, with some interesting innovations. They had directional pad instead of a joystick. Dan: And just like the Genesis and later the Xbox they kind of positioned themselves as kind of the more adult console for the sports crowd, the mature crowd, and the kind of hip young adult kind of people. Josh: They actually really focused on sports games; they had a baseball game that sold more than a million copies. They had George Plimpton the sports caster, Shill as Mr. Intellivision in some ads. And they actually did well because of it. And decided to parley that strength into what I would call video game mistake number one. Dan: What do they do? Well they just completely spazz out. They start releasing all these peripherals. Hey had a keyboard add on, they had the intellivision 2, 3, 4. They had kind of a computer add on, that turned it into kind of a vey primitive computer. Thy had a whole separate computer they built that was a stand alone PC. It was just too much hardware, not enough software. Josh: They cluttered the market and forgot the fundamental rule, if you don’t have good games; no one is going to care. TJ: Atari releases the 5200 console system in 1982. There were a number of problems that plagued that system that really didn’t make it as successful as it could have. Number one, the controllers. These controllers were cool to look at. But what was the problem with the controllers was no centering of the joysticks. Josh: It was a strange thing because I would just flop to one side like you couldn’t get it back in the middle, and it was really. Well this looks really strange right here, but it was really. Yeah the thing was terrible. TJ: Number two was that the 5200 for all its glory wasn’t able to play 2600 games. Your just telling your consumer, hey thanks for spending all your money, and now here is the new stuff that you can’t use any of your new stuff with. Josh: Basically it was the firs instance of this whole backwards compatibility thing. That still plagues systems. The Xbox 360 is still having trouble playing many of the best original Xbox games. TJ: In the long list of things that game companies refused to learn. Backward compatibility. Josh: Let’s talk about another failure. Actually I wouldn’t necessarily call it a complete failure, but the Sega master system was one that just couldn’t quite do it. Jeff: Nintendo made some of the best first party games of all time. Like Mario and Zelda, but beyond that they had some of the best third party support from companies like capcom and konami. They were just giving them gifts in the form of games like castlevania, metal gear, and bionic commando. The list just goes on and on. Josh: Nintendo had pretty much made exclusive deals with its third party companies. Like Konami, like Capcom. Basically saying to them, if you make games for us. We don’t really want you making games for other companies. And basically they effectively black balled Sega from being able to work with some of the best gaming companies that were out there. Jeff: It was up to Sega to make there own games, and they were ok at it. But thy were no Nintendo. It would have been impossible for them to match the creative force of Nintendo, capcom, Konami, just all the companies combined. Dan: there was one flaming car wreck on the side of the video game highway that some people remember kind of fondly and that was the Vectrex. Josh: It was a home based system that played 3d vector graphics. It didn’t actually plug into your TV. It came with its own little nine inch monitor. Now there graphics were interesting because they were actually being used back in the day as a way to create 3d graphics in games. And like one of the best examples is probably one of my favorite games too of all time. It’s the starwars arcade game. It’s that vectrex tried to bring that excitement home. Dan: It failed because you couldn’t hook it up to your TV, there are only so many games you can make out of these white lines coming at you, and today it is kind of a, it’s a curio, it’s a oddity. But it still has its fans. Josh: Let’s add another log to the fire and talk bout the Atari 7800. If the Atari 7800 had came out any earlier it would have been a nice system. Problem was, this is about 2 years too late. Jeff: There big titles are pole position 2 and Miss Pacman. Neither of which are big improvements over the originals, which are great games. Bu they are ancient, they are literally ancient. I mean you have things like Zelda going on. Like really revolutionary stuff. And they are still making maze games. And Pacman is a classic, but there is new classics being made like Mario and Zelda. Josh: Launching with Ms. Pacman in 1986 is like coming out with a DVD player and packing in birth of a nation. Jeff: Every successful console has on game that sells the system. A Mario, a sonic. Just something that moves it, that makes people say that’s the one I need. I need to play this game. TJ: In the industry there is a term that everyone uses called killer app. Now killer app stands for killer application. And a killer application is a application that is a application, a game, a killer title that helped drive the sales of the console. If the console does not have a killer app, or a group of titles that people really want to buy, the system will fail. Josh: Atari knew it, that’s why they locked down the licenses for Space invaders an pole position, for Pacman, these huge games that are sort of driving the success of the systems. TJ: Looking back at 35 years of gaming. The top console had a killer application. Something that is unique to that device. Jeff: Nintendo has Mario an Zelda. Genesis has sonic. TJ: You have the game boy. Game boy had Tetris. The most simplistic designed game, and greatest selling game of all time. Dan: the original playstation they got tomb Raider, they had resident evil. These are games you jus had o play. On the playstation 2 they had grand theft auto. Changed the face of gaming for ever. TJ: Xbox one comes out, the killer app on Xbox, Halo. Jeff: They never would have gotten anywhere without Halo, they really wouldn’t have. Dan: And today on the current generation, the Xbox 360, well gear of war, that’s the killer app for that. For the playstation 3 the jury’s still out, we don’t really have a killer app yet and maybe that’s why it is not selling so well. Josh: These consoles all succeeded because they had games that people were just dying to play. The ones that couldn’t get those games, for whatever reason, were the ones that lost it.
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.
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