Around 1981, Bromley saw an article in The Wall Street Journal that asserted the price of RAM had fallen and, after working the cost numbers, Bromley found the system cost fell within their cost margins. As early as 1979, Bromley had drawn out specifications for a system using a Texas Instruments video and a General Instruments audio chip, but could not get the go-ahead due to the cost of RAM. Īccording to Eric Bromley, who led the engineering for the ColecoVision, Coleco president Arnold Greenberg had wanted to get into the programmable home console market with arcade-quality games, but the cost of components had been a limiting factor. Coleco was able to survive on sales of their electronic games through to 1982, but that market itself began to wane, and Greenberg was still interested in producing a home video game console. The company also developed a line of miniaturized tabletop arcade video games with licensed rights from arcade game makers including Sega, Bally, Midway, and Nintendo. When that market became oversaturated over the next few years, the company nearly went bankrupt, but found a successful product through handheld electronic games, with products that beat out those of the current market leader, Mattel.
Development Ĭoleco entered the video game market in 1976 during the dedicated-game home console period with their line of Telstar consoles. Coleco had already contemplated shifting focus to their Cabbage Patch Kids success after the costly failure of their Coleco Adam computer. A later module converts ColecoVision into the Coleco Adam home computer.ĬolecoVision was discontinued in 1985 when Coleco withdrew from the video game market. "Expansion Module #1" allows the system to play Atari 2600 cartridges. Approximately 136 games were published between 19, including Sega's Zaxxon and some ports of lesser known arcade games that found a larger audience on the console, such as Lady Bug, Cosmic Avenger, and Venture.Ĭoleco released a series of hardware add-ons and special controllers to expand the capabilities of the console. The initial catalog of twelve games on ROM cartridge included the first home version of Nintendo's Donkey Kong as the pack-in game.
The console offered a closer experience to more powerful arcade video games compared to competitors such as the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. It was released a year later in Europe by CBS Electronics as the CBS ColecoVision. ColecoVision is a second-generation home video-game console developed by Coleco and launched in North America in August 1982.
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