Can't argue with you there. While I am satisfied I am sure others have a lot more questions. It has been that way on the comments for his video and elsewhere. Either way this whole thing is damaging to quite a few people.

I've seen 4 Gamester81 videos to date. In each one he's either outright lied to his audience, or supressed unflattering information about products he's directly (or indirectly) associated with. His attitude towards Mike Kennedy wasn't much of a surprise.

or he just gonna change the name to COLECO scameleon

Gamester seems to be like a few people in the AtariAge thread that bend over backwards logically to come up with ways that MK isn't completely at fault. Pretty ridiculous.
Maybe there's an explanation for things? While MK provides no explanation and instead blocks people on Facebook etc.
Now he blames Pat for everybody being mad at him.
And ISIS exists.
Comical.
Damn I'm out of popcorn again.
Time for a new batch!!

If you dare to ask Mike for answers, he blocks you on Facebook.

 

I never understood why they didn't just release a thoroughly vetted game engine for SNES. An easy to work with engine would have led to more games etc. I'm not buying a console that looks like the Jaguar and plays shovelware or games I already own in other formats. The engine could be licensed and be updated to support new features.

I'm not even going to address his 'Isis is blowing up everyone everywhere' defense. I'm not going to talk about how he continuously defends Mike, even after all this rock-solid evidence has come to light. I'm not even going to talk about how Mike willfully blocked people on Facebook and tried to flag-takedown dissenter videos.

Instead, I'm going to talk about how Gamester reacted poorly at every level.

Pat never called out Gamester, yet Gamester took Pat's video as a personal attack. Sure, you could infer a little guilt laid on Gamester's doorstep, but the writing was already on the wall regarding that.

People were commenting on Gamester's pinball machine video demanding an explanation. And that makes perfect sense given the situation. Instead of blaming himself and his suspicious activity for all this, such as deleting old videos and having one-sided interviews, he decided to blame it all on Pat and his 'sheeple' viewers (whom he wrongfully accused of being unable to analyze evidence and form their own opinions) and worse, he tried and deflect some of the hatred Pat's way. I'm sure anyone who already hated Pat was eager to jump at this situation, but Gamester's up there trying to defend his integrity and at the same time he's attacking someone else? Sounds like a dirty politician tactic. So much for the 'nicest guy you've ever met' defense I keep hearing.

Really this whole mess is Gamester's fault, because he's the one who attacked Pat personally for about 20% of his video. It came off as unprofessional, and he's the one inciting war. Instead of this 21 minute monstrosity of an embarrassment, Gamester should have taken a deep breath and released an apology video to his fans explaining his side of the story, and apologize to his followers for potentially leading them into a disingenuous and toxic Kickstarter. The problem, obviously, the wildcard in all this, is him deciding to sling personal insults at Pat. Now we have a serious mess.

Well, going back further, all of this was born from Mike not being honest with everyone. Evil begets evil.

This. Although I'd replace evil with "lies beget lies". 
 

It's funny, when Mike first announced the RetroVGS, I was excited for the project. Until I talked to him a few hours later when he couldn't answer some basic (at least to me) questions. The questions I asked were "is there going to be a dev kit to develop for the console" and "is there a specific language with libraries to code for the hardware". Both of these should've been known when he announced the project.

Then he goes to say that SRAM will not be available. There goes SO many options for games (RPG's, achievements, unlockable content, etc). He changed his mind a few weeks/months later, and now all the Genesis, SNES, etc. ROM's are playable on this thing. So... it's just another clone system to play the games we already have. Cool, for those who don't already own the original hardware or one of the many clone systems.

So I talked to someone on Facebook (I forget who, now) and they wanted me to email them with some things about my future releases, only to not hear from them. Also, once one of their major "developers" was being promoted, I knew the project was going to be a disaster, but that's neither here nor there. Like minded individuals seem to group together to do things like this, and if the past is any indicator, it's just best to stay away from this nonsense.

As for the Gamester81 involvement and his video - I like John, and I think he's a really nice guy, but I also don't follow people's YouTube channels or a lot of the drama that surrounds these community projects anymore, so I can't add any thoughts on that (it's not because I'm not interested, I'm just far too busy to stay up on a lot of these things, and when I get that 10 minutes to myself each week, I literally do nothing except relax lol)
 

Because that takes both skills and money, while they had neither  

Wow. Reading through the rest of this and hearing some stuff other places and realizing this thing has blown up way more than I realized. I followed the chameleon a bit and saw the gamester video. Never saw that Pat said nothing directly about him or and anything to follow. It's a real shitshow.

Very interesting insights cirellio and dra600n.

Also interesting to see how the non-Gamester81 side of CollectorVision sees it all: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/... He basically says "we wanted sales/money, should have done more due diligence, we were stupid". If Gamester81 made a view saying exactly that, there would be zero drama. Also later JF says he told John to calm down and Pat wasn't targeting them: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/...

This video will get deleted too.

That is a good read. It seems like a very reasonable but foolish mistake for collectorvision. Shame that they and others got caught up in the chameleon and the face of their companies stirring things up in the wake of it all.

Pretty much.  I think the problem was that this was a quick buck project.  There wasn't any passion for the games themselves - they started with the shell, which should be the last thing you worry about - but rather trying to get money off the retro fad.  Why else would he insist on cartridges, which are really only recently being romanticized.  It's hardly like optical media is incompatible with old-school sensibilities.


Hell, looking at the Turbo Duo makes me think that he could have had an ARM processor with a cheap card-type format, instead of the bulky cartridge.  That is, of course, if Mikey Boy wasn't a cynical bastard looking to make a quick buck.  Something like the beautiful Turbo would have taken effort and a mind for something other than short-term gain.

I like John, and I don't blame him for what happened, but his reactions kind of seem like those of a guilty concience.  Collectorvision pushed the Retro VGS hard witth their videos, promotion of their pack in game, and posts on facebook defending it.  It's easy to see why people associate them with it still.  And trying to treat it like the Retro VGS was a different system is lame.  People aren't idiots.  Just because your business deals didn't go through doesn't mean the RVGS and the CC are seperate systems.  Collectorvision should have made it clear where they stood with the CC as soon as it was discovered a SNES jr. was inside.

 

I'm surprised it took this long, the gaming press is finally reporting on the train-wreck that is the Coleco Chameleon: http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/5/1...

And Coleco axed their involvement. Say goodbye to this atrocity.

The wipe has begun, retrovgs.com and their FB page shut down. Any guesses when/if Mike ever shows himself again? If he actually told the truth for once it could be an awesome story for his final retro mag issue (because that will collapse too).

We'll add an article to that as a reference.
http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/0...

 

Ah, thank you. I didn't even think to grab the link as I'm on my phone.  
 

No problem. Just wanted to document this moment!

 

rip coleco chameleon/retro vgs/a fake cardboard pcb/a video capture card masquerading as a games console/snes jr.

SNES jr. lives forever... just in its own shell.

I don't know about you guys, but I am seriously wanting to purchase a Coleco Chameleon shell with a DVR capture card on the inside as memorabilia from the Retro VGS team. Like I'm not even joking. If it were like $20 bucks or less I'd buy this as a joke basically so I can laugh at it. Who is with me on this?