Coleco Tabletop Games

[Truffle]

Which of the Coleco tabletop arcade games has the most faithfull gameplay? Which one is the best overall?
Are there any other games that use similer graphics?
I think I recall Nintendo making one...but I really cant remember.
These things sure do look cool, but are they really?

Galaxian :-P

[rbudrick]

Most faithful?

Hmm, I dunno....but I always found these a lot more fun than the grey-black colored characters in all the LCD games that tiger put out.

What exactly do you call the type of display Coleco used in these? They were't exactly LCD...some kind of colored filaments.

My favorites is Donkey Kong. However, I never spent much time with the QBert, Frogger, and the other ones I have.

I do remember seeing a non-working display of a DK Jr. A proto of some sort on eBay years ago. I wonder who got that. I think I saved the auction somewhere.

I'd also like to brag and take credit for finding the first easter egg ever in one of these games. In Donkey Kong, I think if you hold up and turn it on you have unlimited lives, but the score doesn't work....or was it up + the jump button?

I'd like to see someone dump the roms for these and make an emulator.

-Rob

[y-bot]

they are Vaccum Fluorescent Display (VFD) and the Nintendo ones are Donkey Kong Jr. (sold by Coleco), Popeye, Mario's Cement Factory and Snoopy.
y-bot

[Kid Ice]

They're all good. I'd pick Galaxian as my favorite and Pac Man as most faithful, or maybe Frogger. I wish there were a way to turn the volume down though, they're really loud (as were most of the early 80s tabletops).

[diskoboy]

I'd say Frogger was the best. Donkey Kong was fun to play, but it only had 2 levels.

The only thing Frogger didn't have that the arcades did was the otter that got you while you were on the logs. Besides that, it's ulra-faithful to the arcade version.

[digitalpress]

Another vote for Frogger as "most faithful" but all of the Coleco ones are REALLY good. They don't just look good, they're actually quite fun to play. Some of them even have added "new" modes, like Galaxian and Ms. Pac-Man's "vs." mode.

No one talks about the gameplay on these things. I think someone needs to write some reviews!

[heyricochet]

Cmon, anyone actually play Zaxxon? I really don't think its possible to play the tabletop version.

[Damaramu]

Yuppers, I love my Galaxian tabletop. I remember getting back in '80-'81 when I was in kindergarten or the 1st grade, can't quite remember. I still have it, in excellent shape and works like the day I got it!

Got it around the same time I got my 5200 for Christmas. 8-)

[number6]

I mostly collect handhelds and tabletops from the 1980's and it's nice to see topics about this.

I like the Coleco tabletops, but I don't think they play anywhere near as good as the Entex versions (specifically Pacman and Galaxian).

I too found the tabletop Zaxxon impossible to play.

Of the Coleco ones I own I think Pacman is the most faithful. I want to get a frogger one of these days because I have heard a lot of good things about that tabletop.

Reviews of these types of games would be nice Digital Press. I could start with the Entex games I own because that is what I mostly collect and play.

[Iron Draggon]

I never had any of the arcade tabletops, but I had Alien Attack and it rocked. It was hard as heck, but it rocked.

[Truffle]

I have Space Chase by Tandy. I think it uses the same kind of display.

I could never really figure that game out though :(

[digitalpress]

Reviews of these types of games would be nice Digital Press. I could start with the Entex games I own because that is what I mostly collect and play.

A simple PM to our game review God "gamereviewgod" is all you need to get started. Matt manages the reviews section, I'm sure he'd be happy to accept your submissions.

[number6]

Ok I will PM "gamereviewgod" in a few days. I have started work on my review of "Pacman2" by Entex already.

[Sothy]

IVe always wanted to collect these thing but have yet to ever find a vfd game in the wild.

[number6]

IVe always wanted to collect these thing but have yet to ever find a vfd game in the wild.

Me either. I have to ebay all the classic handhelds I want.

[InsaneDavid]

I'd like to see someone dump the roms for these and make an emulator.

Already done, although you don't dump the ROMs, doesn't work like that with these, you have to recreate the whole game...

http://madrigal.retrogames.com/

The games themselves have to be downloaded from the Italian version of the page, just open the English and Italian versions in different tabs to figure out what you're doing. Still nothing like the real games with their glowing VFD's however.

Ms. Pac-Man is the most impressive of the Coleco VFD games with changing mazes, better colors, etc. Frogger is probably the most authentic, as diskoboy said. Honestly they're all different from their arcade originals but are all fun because of their design and presentation. Q*bert plays nicely as well however that's a Parker Bros. tabletop, not Coleco.

Galaxian is HUGE for a tabletop and is the only tabletop to run on D batteries. It actually has two VFD's, one for the playfield and one for the player ship, along with a mirror (and the only VFD tabletop to have an 8-way joystick) it's a damn nice conversion considering the limitations of the technology.


No one talks about the gameplay on these things. I think someone needs to write some reviews!

I've mentioned this site a couple times but it was in the Technical and Restoration Society. For all your tabletop gaming needs, check out the ultimate all-in-one well designed resource - http://www.miniarcade.com! It's an excellent place to start with lots of pictures and short reviews of each game. Also is a good place to start to figure out what games you'd like and get some background on the history of each company.

I was thinking of requesting to review these tabletops for Retrogaming Times Monthly after my "Titles of Tengen" column runs out of NES Tengen games to review (in a few months).

If you do ever need to repair these games, check out this this thread (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=72396) in the T&RS where I posted some good links for godsey1 to address issues with some tabletops he had. (which later showed up on eBay, some went for low prices too!)

As for finding them in the wild I picked up a Caveman by Tandy for $20 loose at a flea market a couple years ago. I picked up a Pac-Man for $20 at the same time from another seller but it was totally rotted out on the inside from acid and overload damage - but the upper shell had ALL the stickers and was mint.

About a month ago RickyRacoon had an untested Pac-Man tabletop in his Buying & Selling thread that had no stickers except for one, he sold it to me for $10 shipped and it worked perfectly. I swapped the mint upper portion of the one I had onto the working lower portion of the one I bought from him and now have a mint Pac-Man tabletop for $30. :D

[Videogamerdaryll]

IMO Ms. Pac-Man is the most Faithful..And I can't play the Zaxxon tabletops for shit..
Feels better as I thought it was just me.. :P I was trying again the other day.

I like Galaxian the best as it has this silent demo mode...as I leave it on sometimes..


IMO Ms. Pac-Man is the most Faithful..And I can't play the Zaxxon tabletops for shit..
Feels better as I thought it was just me.. :P

I like Galaxian the best as it has a silent demo mode...as I leave it on sometimes..

http://videogamecollectors.com/albums/Videogamerdaryll/2005_0713_214315AA.jpg

[number6]

I'd like to see someone dump the roms for these and make an emulator.

Already done, although you don't dump the ROMs, doesn't work like that with these, you have to recreate the whole game...

http://madrigal.retrogames.com/



True you cannot dump these games. The problem I have found is that there is no design data that exists for these old games and the only way to truely emulate them would be to run the systems through a logic analyzer while the game is running. So it is impossible to actually get 100% true recreations of these games currently unless someone out there who cares actually has the hardware to do this. I like the work that the author you point to has done, but most of the really complex handhelds of the era will be much harder to simulate.





No one talks about the gameplay on these things. I think someone needs to write some reviews!

I've mentioned this site a couple times but it was in the Technical and Restoration Society. For all your tabletop gaming needs, check out the ultimate all-in-one well designed resource - http://www.miniarcade.com! It's an excellent place to start with lots of pictures and short reviews of each game. Also is a good place to start to figure out what games you'd like and get some background on the history of each company.

I was thinking of requesting to review these tabletops for Retrogaming Times Monthly after my "Titles of Tengen" column runs out of NES Tengen games to review (in a few months).



I have been to that site and it is nice for an overview of the games. I was thinking of a more ambitous full review of the games I have. This will take some time and hopefully people will find the reviews here will contain even more information.





If you do ever need to repair these games, check out this this thread (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=72396) in the T&RS where I posted some good links for godsey1 to address issues with some tabletops he had. (which later showed up on eBay, some went for low prices too!)



Another good resource is www.handheldmuseum.com .

Rik has an excellent step by step walk through for repairing a broken Coleco Pacman here:

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Coleco/ColecoRepair/index.html



As for finding them in the wild I picked up a Caveman by Tandy for $20 loose at a flea market a couple years ago. I picked up a Pac-Man for $20 at the same time from another seller but it was totally rotted out on the inside from acid and overload damage - but the upper shell had ALL the stickers and was mint.



Where do you live? I would be most interested in hearing.

[InsaneDavid]

Another good resource is www.handheldmuseum.com .

Rik has an excellent step by step walk through for repairing a broken Coleco Pacman here:

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Coleco/ColecoRepair/index.html

Yeah, I had that URL in the T&RS thread where I was helping godsey1 with his Ms. Pac-Man, very useful if you don't know how to dissassemble the Coleco games.


Where do you live? I would be most interested in hearing.

Back and forth between two places, Silicon Valley (San Jose) and the central valley, both in California of course.

[KingCobra]

I never had one of these's Tabletop's back in the day, but I knew a few friends that did, and let me tell you, BOY were they cool! They were really bright at night. 8-)

Thier worth every penny for the cherry ones. I have a Donkey Kong one and love it.

[Sanriostar]

I do remember seeing a non-working display of a DK Jr. A proto of some sort on eBay years ago. I wonder who got that. I think I saved the auction somewhere.
-Rob

Could you dig it up, please? If it's the Red DK Jr. Proto case seen in Electronic Games in June of '83(?), that's one of my personal biggest unanswered questions from Classic gaming; WTF happened to that?

I'd also kill to see the proto Coleco Berzerk and Omega Race VFD's in person.

The Pac-Mans were the most faithful for Gameplay, but I could play the Zaxxon.

[Captain Wrong]

IVe always wanted to collect these thing but have yet to ever find a vfd game in the wild.

I've seen them as Flea Markets every now and again but they're always almost completely trashed and priced at high watermark eBay prices. ($100 for a Pac Man with half of the side stickers scraped off and a broken stick? Good luck with that.)

[Lady Jaye]

I have the Defender Entex handheld. It's not per say a tabletop game because it has a flat handheld shape, but I guess you could still include it in this category. It also has a VFD screen, and it looks very nice. That's a really good one to get too.

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Entex/Entex-Defender.jpg

Just one note: C batteries made nowadays are slightly smaller than those made 20-25 years ago. As a result, you may need to insert of piece of paper or something like that to nudge the batteries in place, or else they won't stay in place. Of course, it depends on the way the battery case is made -- I have to do the nudging trick with Defender, but not with my Tomy Scramble tabletop (another fine VFD game, although not as attractive as the Coleco tabletops or even the Entex Deferder).

[number6]

Yep Defender is one of my favorites too. I think it is Entex's best work and I will want to write a review about that game as well.

About the batteries. I use Energizer NimH batteries and I find that they are quite a tight fit (AA and C). I mainly rely on AC adaptors though (if the game has a jack that is :) )

[diskoboy]

Yep Defender is one of my favorites too. I think it is Entex's best work and I will want to write a review about that game as well.

About the batteries. I use Energizer NimH batteries and I find that they are quite a tight fit (AA and C). I mainly rely on AC adaptors though (if the game has a jack that is :) )

Actually, I think Crazy Climber would probably be Entex's best work. How they managed to pull it off still astounds me to this day. Out of all my tabletops, CC was my favorite.

Super Cobra wasn't bad either. Entex was huge... Why didn't they survive the 84 crash? If they were around today, I bet they could give Nintendo a run for their money in the handheld department. :D

[number6]

I have never played Entex Crazy Climber so I will defer. Crazy Climber is one of my favorite arcade games and I want to get the Entex version one of these days.

I will add that I am not just judging the gameplay in Defender, but also the ergonomics. I have never found a more comfortable playing handheld as Entex Defender.

Entex Super Cobra is good I will admit that, but I found that the control was not as good as most Entex games. Another weird thing about Entex Super Cobra is that there are 2 different models with slightly different button configurations. I definitely prefer the model that has the fire and bomb buttons to the right of the joystick.

[Kid Ice]

Cmon, anyone actually play Zaxxon? I really don't think its possible to play the tabletop version.

I never considered Zaxxon a part of that series because its appearance is so different from the other ones. I know it's a Coleco tabletop and it came out around the same time as the others, but in my book it's too different than the others. And yeah, it's hard to play, but at least interesting in the technical aspects.

Agreed with Lady Jaye on the Entex Defender, it's really amazing how much gameplay they stuffed into that thing.

[Truffle]

:D Wow, thanks for all the awsome pics and opinions.
I have never heard of the Crazy Climber one, and that sort of surprised me. Well I guess Ill have to track it down now ;)

[NE146]

:D Wow, thanks for all the awsome pics and opinions.
I have never heard of the Crazy Climber one, and that sort of surprised me. Well I guess Ill have to track it down now ;)

Bandai Crazy Climber is very good as well. Also, look out for the keychain version :)