Did Coleco make bad games on purpose?

[Kid Ice]

It has been widely speculated that Coleco did lousy versions of its licensed arcade titles (Donkey Kong, Venture, Zaxxon, etc) for the VCS and Intellivision so the Colecovision games would look better by comparison.

IMO the VCS versions were not that bad. I thought they roughly approximated what Atari would have done themselves considering the limitations of the system. I kind of like VCS DK, Venture, Zaxxon, DK Jr (especially) and Carnival...I don't think any of those games are among the best on the system, but they were certainly playable. I thought the VCS versions suggested a tacit surrender rather than sabotage. It also seems strange that Atari rereleased some of them if they were indeed intentionally made lousy. I can't write about the Intellivision games because I never played them.

What do you think?

[kainemaxwell]

I don't think Coleco would sabatoage like that. I'd think they did the best they could with the VCS and Intellivision's design compared to the design of their own CV.

[Arcade Antics]

What do you think?
Tough to say for sure without the straight info from the programmer(s), but I will say this: 2600 Mr. Do! alone really makes it look like they made poor quality games on purpose. :) There's no reason it should have been released.

2600 Mouse Trap, on the other hand, is pretty darn respectable, even moreso than the any of the games already mentioned.

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I think their earlier titles were indeed a case of deliberately trying to make the other consoles look lousy. It's hard to look at Donkey Kong on the Intellivision, and then see Beauty & The Beast, released the same year, and not come away with the impression that Coleco was trying to sink Mattel's battleship.

[Wavelflack]

I take a more benign point of view: I simply think they didn't really care about making an excellent product (2600 versions) and were just trying to cash in on the 2600's success. In other words, boss to programmers:
"Hey, while you're at it, why don't you guys whip up a 2600 version? Don't bother being a perfectionist about it, just get one out the door. We might as well milk these licenses as far as we can."

I can't see a serious company such as Coleco actually spending company time and resources developing and marketing a purposely inferior product so as to illustrate the superiority of their other products.

Put yourself in "their" shoes:

1. You own the console rights to Donkey Kong.
2. You have a great version out for your console.
3. There will be no 2600 version if you don't sublicense or release it yourself.
4. The 2600 has a huge userbase.



Additionally, if you wanted to sabotage your product so as to show how inferior the 2600 was, you would have to magically get rid of Imagic and Activision.

"Look how shitty the 2600 version of Donkey Kong is! That's the best the 2600 can do! You're gonna have to buy a Colecovision!"

"But what about [Imagic/ Activision game]? Those are 2600 games, and they look a million times better than this!"

[Pantechnicon]

I doubt it was anything deliberate. What I can envision, however, is a mindset among Coleco's developers who, upon being cross-trained to program for the 2600 or INTV, would throw up their hands like a bunch of primadonnas and say, "I've got nothing to work with here!"

After a while, this mindset takes deeper hold and evolves into a culture...(Not knowing the background of Coleco's developer team, this is just my imagination at work.)

Bob the Coleco Dev Manager: "How's that Donkey Kong port coming, Larry?"
Larry: "Looks like crap, Bob. But it's an Atari 2600, so what do you expect?"
Larry: "Yeah. Well...you can't put lipstick on a pig (soft chuckle). Just do what you can with it...I'll be back to check on you later."

You get the idea.

[smork]

2600 is older and less capable hardware -- I always liked Venture, Mouse Trap, and Zaxxon, as others have said. I don't think they would deliberately sbaotage their 2600 ports to try to sell more systems, 'coz back then most only owned one, and weren't going to switch.

Jr:"Mom, my 2600 is old and sucky. I want a new Colecovision!"
Mom: "Sit down and play all your cool games like River Raid or Pitfall II or and of the cool Imagic titles you love. You're not getting another system."

And that's the way it was if you were a kid. Me, I like my Atari.

[kirin jensen]

"You can't put lipstick on a pig..." LOL LOL LOL

Beautiful.

I gave you 200 meseta for that Panny.

[GrandAmChandler]

[quote=Kid Ice]
2600 Mouse Trap, on the other hand, is pretty darn respectable, even moreso than the any of the games already mentioned.

This is definitely my favorite coleco game for the VCS, it's very fun, and I think I played it more than Pac-Man atari when I was a kid.

[Kid Ice]

Plus consider that Coleco had no in-house VCS programmers - everything was sub-contracted out to guys like Garry Kitchen, Steve Kitchen, Ed English, and Ed Temple.

I figured as much.

Coleco guy: "Hey think you could do a really bad version of Carnival for us?"

Atari guy: "Wha?"

But wouldn't they most likely have hired Intellivision guys to do the Intellivision versions?

[zektor]

I really don't know for sure if there was any sabotage where the VCS comes into play, but after witnessing Donkey Kong on the Intellivision, I can guess that yes, that was definitely deliberate.