Every Atari 2600 Coleco Game

This video features gameplay footage and box art for all 16 games Coleco created for the Atari 2600.
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#Atari #RetroGaming #Gameplay

[@teodorogonzalez9911]

Just want to say thank you for making these videos I recently got into Atari and have building up a nice collection with your help

[@TheLairdsLair]

Glad you like them, have fun!

[@danielespeziari5545]

How bold they were to say on the DK box "plays like the real arcade game"!

[@AloanMoreira1]

they can say it plays... but can´t say it looks! :D

[@patsfan4life]

From a certain point of view I guess

[@williamcrowe2576]

The Kid-Vid series was somewhat similar to the ZX Spectrum computer game Deus Ex Machina in that the player is guided along by the accompanying audio cassette.

[@AloanMoreira1]

Smurfs is my favorite of the bunch, second place is cabbage patch kids (because it´s a side shifting platformer) then Mr. Do at third!

[@DollyNipples]

My family had a Colecovision and lots of games. I used to long for an NES, but over the years I've realized I just wouldn't like it as much.

[@tyjohnston8573]

Venture and Carnival were the best 2600 games from Coleco, but I always found Donkey Kong quite playable. And as goofy as it was (compared to the arcade version and that for other systems), I actually got pretty good at Coleco's Zaxxon for the 2600.

[@TheLairdsLair]

I had Zaxxon back in the day too and became pretty good at it.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Cool video, K.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@blackenedheart9592]

I know Coleco purposely made the Donkey Kong games bad for the 2600 but damn. Especially on DK junior, they didn't put much effort at all in it.

[@colinmcdonald2499]

Yeah... The only Coleco game I had for Atari 2600 was Donkey Kong. That POS sucked even in 81 or 82. That is probably why I never bought an other Coleco label. Too bad, Venture ( in the 4 play) and a few others looked decent.

[@baroncalamityplus]

Its worse for the Intellivision. Its a more capable machine than the 2600 and sometimes the Coleco ports to the Intellivision were worse that the Atari 2600 versions.

[@TheLairdsLair]

That's very true, I think the Intellivision ports prove that Coleco were intentionally trying to make their system look better. Although the Inty port of Venture is very good.

[@markshanehayden4648]

The 2600 versions of DK games weren't intentionally made bad as much as they were made quickly, and due to the nature of the games being difficult to port. I found that the levels they included actually play alright..the games were "bad" mostly due to missing music and levels. Due to the way the playfield is made (line by line since the 2600 didn't have enough RAM for a frame buffer) if it isn't symmetrical (mirror image) or repeated at least twice you have to use only 40 pixels across or do even trickier than normal hacks. On DK only one playfield is symmetrical so the missing content would be especially tricky. Also these were early efforts and they might not have had time to try advanced hardware based hacks like bank switching so more than 4K could be used. I think in the case of these 2 games they were disappointing because management really rushed development. In later games they did better (Mr. Do, Smurf Rescue, Cabbage Patch Kids, Venture...), but some of them they should've just not even tried because they were just too for this hardware to take on (Turbo, Zaxxon, Looping) The Intellivision efforts, however, are mostly inexcusable lol.

[@sandal_thong8631]

I think it's a myth that Coleco made them bad deliberately to make their games look better, since who would buy a game they already had? It's more likely they were just being cheap and didn't want to pay for an 8K ROM for Donkey Kong, like Atari did with Pac-Man. Those names sold millions! Also, Atari somehow got the rights to Coleco 2600 games and released them on the red label, but without upgrading or improving them for the late 1980s. Activision made a couple of their games for the Intellivision but didn't bother to enhance them from the Atari versions. However, M-Network tried to make good Atari games based on their Intellivision games, but changed some names just in case. After all there were 10 million Atari customers (going on 15) compared to 2 million Intellivision cutomers going on 3. But I think they got lost in the glut of 1982-3, and didn't have a 1-player option mostly

[@ITGuyinaction]

😎👍🖐 P.S. Lately I've bought Atari 2600 in "wooden edition" in a very good visual state but in an unchecked technical state. I will have to verify soon if it works or what has to be done and I hope to play some of games on "real machine". It would be cool!

[@colinmcdonald2499]

The AC adaptors are often the first things to go. If it does not work.. replace that first.

[@ozmond]

“Sounds fun”

[@colinmcdonald2499]

@@ozmond I got mine working in the late 90s... I had so many games from garage sales and bargain bin in the NA video game crash. It is a lot of fun to play still.. But man, most games hold your interest for a matter of minutes. It is a shame I spent most of my money renting games in the 8 and 16 bit era. I would have a great collection if I put 30 bucks a month into a new game, rather than rentals!

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@colinmcdonald2499 Don't feel bad. I bought some SNES games used or on sale, then played until I won, then took them to a used place for credit to buy the next one.

[@bubbythebear6891]

As far as I'm aware, there isn't an emulator for the Kid-Vid. I guess it's not much of a loss, considering there's only two games for it.

[@williamcrowe2576]

Emulating a Kid-Vid cartridge would also require emulating the accompanying audio cassette. And what may have worked for Deus Ex Machina for the ZX Spectrum probably won't work for a Kid-Vid cartridge.

[@brandonsanchez8197]

Out of all of these, I think Donkey Kong and Front Line on the 2600 are games I'm okay with. I'm not sure what's so inferior about this version of Donkey Kong. Maybe it's the realization that the sounds would be used for a bunch of fictional games in cartoons and TV in the following decades. But at least it kinda plays like its original arcade source. As for Front Line? I found it a bit easier to play than it was on the NES, arcade, and ColecoVision. Or maybe on those systems, I was just pretty bad at it.

[@TheLairdsLair]

I'd say that it only having 2 levels and being very easy has a lot to do with it . . . .

[@sandal_thong8631]

I played Donkey Kong at another kid's home, and it was so-so; I didn't really like DK at the arcade; same with Zaxxon. I liked Commando at the arcade, and got Front Line as either a hand-me-down or at the thrift store years later. It required cleaning, but once I did that, it was OK, not great. I loved Turbo at the arcade, and you can't really tell how it compares to Pole Position and Enduro in this video since they didn't pass anyone (Player SUCKs!). I'm glad I didn't get it in case it was disappointing. I was looking for it on an Arcade Classics CD-ROM, but it was Sega, so not on a Playstation disk.

[@landmind666]

I can see why the video game crash happened so many game where mostly rip off of others or looked like others.

[@colinmcdonald2499]

3:23 Front line: "We seriously need to imitate Raiders of the lost arc". Which looks worse?

[@TheLairdsLair]

Look at the original arcade version of Front Line, it also looks crap!

[@colinmcdonald2499]

@@TheLairdsLair That is true. Taito seemed to always be a frontrunner in great game concepts, but presentation was often weaker than the Namcos, Konamis, Capcoms and some of the North American competitors. Basically Ikari warriors seems to be a direct ripoff yet improvement of Frontline. I don't think I ever played Frontline. Are the tanks you can jump in and fight in, in the 2600 version?

[@TheLairdsLair]

Both Commando and Ikari Warriors took the concept and improved on it greatly. The tanks are in the 2600 port of Ikari, if that's what you meant?

[@colinmcdonald2499]

@@TheLairdsLair I didn't even know there was a 2600 port of Ikari!!! I watched a bit of Frontline arcade walkthrough... I didn't know it also had tanks. Ugly but looked like fun gameplay for '82

[@TheLairdsLair]

Yep, it's a really impressive port too!

[@whimsicalsprites]

Thanks for the video! I love Carnival. Pretty interested in Mouse Trap now as well.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Carnival is a real favourite of mine, Mouse Trap and Venture are both pretty good.

[@adm712]

When I was a kid I used to look at the back of the Coleco boxes in Toys R Us to compare each version (Atari,Colecovision,Intellivision) version. On another note, for those who say "ET was the worst game ever for Atari", ET looks and plays like Halo Infinite compared to Donkey Kong JR on the 2600. DKJr is the worst game I've ever played on the 2600 by far

[@sandal_thong8631]

I don't know when I bought mine (1986 or so?), but I should have taken Donkey Kong, Jr. back to the store. Atari bought it from Coleco but didn't enhance or update it when releasing it on their red label. If I'd known it was a Coleco game and 3 years old I would have stayed away from it. I almost never bought 3rd-party games for Atari new.

[@Monkowii]

I don't get the hate for DKJR on 2600. I love it. Got it maybe in 86. I thought it was great and I still play it. Maybe its not the same as the arcade but its still fun. I would say Turbo is the worst coleco 2600 game.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Mr. Do is kind of a triumph on the 2600!

[@dragokills6990]

I always liked 2600 Zaxxon, cool 3D effect for the time, even though everyone else seems to hate it.

[@TheLairdsLair]

I kinda liked it once I got used to how different it was.

[@cd-lf8xm]

As a coleco kid these make my eyes bleed :-) especially zaxxon and dk I do know coleco purposefully made the atari versions bad but yikes

[@mcorleonep]

At least the Mousetrap game was superior to Pac Man on Atari…

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@mcorleonep Um. No it wasn't. This was a lousy knockoff and they solved the flicker problem by only having three cats. But kids would play any maze-with dots game 1982-3.

[@dreamcaster4754]

I think this video proves that Coleco were one of the worst 3rd party publishers for the 2600. Smurf was good, but the rest were meh to terrible.

[@baroncalamityplus]

Venture was decent as well for the 2600

[@sandal_thong8631]

They say the controls for Time Pilot was messed up as you don't turn like in Combat. Of course Atari could have updated Combat in 1980+ if they wanted to into something like Time Pilot plus Armor Ambush and a 1-player version. But they just kept shoveling this 1977 game with new consoles.

[@TVindustries5000]

people talk about coleco making 2600 games bad on purpose but alot of the Coleco atari games are pretty well done or atleast serviceable. zaxxon is the only one i havent really liked that iv played but will admit they tried and there was ambition to make it work I guess that tidbit of information is based on some kind of fact. but it doesnt fully make sense that Coleco would make poor atari games on purpose when they had the Super Game Module and later the Gemini clone console that was advertised with their 2600 games. I just feel if atari owners bought coleco games and werent happy with them at all, why would they trust the coleco brand enough to buy a colecovision? they didnt have to make the games inferior on purpose, it was just inferior hardware. Donkey Kong is still super impressive to me. even the newer "better" hack doesnt have slanted platforms.

[@madmax2069]

0:24 there's just nothing there to even count as a video game. 1:02 talking about a rubbish game, can't even jump over puddles before melting like you stepped in a vat of acid. 2:38 I remember being frustrated when i received the game and found out it only had two stages. 7:20 pretty much just a modified version of the flying stages in combat Colico games would have been a lot better on 2600 if they actually tried to make the game decent. But the majority was just low effort versions of the games, they made darn sure to make an effort on their own console.

[@NegativeYoutube]

How are you so bad at these games?

[@TheLairdsLair]

No idea, because it's not me playing them . . . . . They are Hyperspin clips.

[@NegativeYoutube]

@@TheLairdsLair And you don't credit the creators? People put a lot of work into these things, and you just take them to make a few bucks on youtube and patreon... nice.

[@TheLairdsLair]

The Hyperspin library is free to use and the creators of the clips are anonymous, so who am I supposed to credit exactly? Also who says I make any money from this video, that's a bit presumptuous! And my Patreon is for all my creative work - people back it for my documentaries, books and articles - not for a throwaway video like this. Perhaps you need a new hobby, because you're really shite at trolling.

[@joejacobsonwales]

oh no, the awful 2600 donkey kong!

[@sandal_thong8631]

Top-seller! How could 4 million people be wrong?