Odd JC Penney Video Game Catalog Offer:

[Aswald]

This page looks to be from late 1983.

Under Roller Controller Cartridges for the ColecoVision, it offers Victory and Front Line. So far, so good.

But it also has Wild Western and Tac-Scan. There are even catalog numbers following these titles, for purposes of ordering from the store.

Odd, to say the least. They must have run into some trouble over that, since those games were not released at all.

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Well, they probably expected to do Tac-Scan under their license with Sega, before Sega took it back in-house and started doing their own home versions (i.e. Tac-Scan for the 2600, etc.).

Actually, didn't Sega do their own translations of stuff like Zaxxon for the Colecovision, but under Coleco's supervision and packaging?

[Aswald]

I'm not sure about that, but they could've done a better job then.

And in any case, isn't it a good idea to make sure you have the product before offering it for sale?

[Arcade Antics]

And in any case, isn't it a good idea to make sure you have the product before offering it for sale?

Yes. But in this case, that has little to do with the advert.

There are numerous reasons why games never got produced. In this case, it could be as simple as the license expiring. Maybe they got halfway through the games and decided that they didn't want to finish 'em. At the time the advert needed to be finished in order to be published, all systems were go. But millions of things could have happened in the interim that could have affected the actual game production.