???? – 1984retired
Arcadia 2001
“35 games, 18 months, endless clones — the Arcadia lived on in everyone else's living room.”
“It played its rivals' games better than they did — that's a hell of a party trick.”
Launched in North America in August 1982, the ColecoVision promised a closer experience to arcade games than rivals like the Atari 2600 or Intellivision could manage, and for a while people believed it. It came out of the gate swinging: a pack-in Donkey Kong — the first home version of Nintendo's arcade hit — plus roughly 136 cartridges published between 1982 and 1984, from Sega's Zaxxon to cult favorites like Lady B
Coleco even sold Expansion Module #1, a cheeky add-on that let the console play Atari 2600 games, and Expansion Module #3, which transformed it into the Adam home computer. By 1985 it was gone, outlived by the memories of anyone who saw arcade-quality graphics flickering in their living room. Not bad for a console that beat Atari at its own game, on Atari's own cartridges, no less.
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“35 games, 18 months, endless clones — the Arcadia lived on in everyone else's living room.”
“Four knobs, two buttons, one nation hooked before Nintendo showed up.”
“First family of home gaming, bowing out with dignity while the party crashed around it.”