So, it's Friday, and you're bored. Want to catch up on a crazy situation that's unfolding right before your eyes that has nothing to do with former FBI directors and the Covfefe-In-Chief? Well, step right up and check this out!

There's currently a war going on between the following parties:

-A social media fan page for a video game console that disappeared from retail shelves long before Zayre, Caldor, and Montgomery Ward shut down

-A bunch of DIY "homebrew" software guys producing games for said system in their basements

-And a company who recently bought a trademarked logo of a long-defunct brand that's run by a guy who makes terrible rap videos on the side and might possibly be selling counterfeit action figures on eBay.

Sound exciting? If that piqued your interest, here's some details, and some history.

Let's go back to 1982, when home video game characters were still squares running around gobbling up other squares. Enter toy company Coleco, who wanted to get in on cartridge-based home console goodness. They developed a console known as the ColecoVision. You know, this thing:

Finally, games at home looked like the ones at the 7-11 down on the corner that you sunk so many quarters into! Then, in 1983, a market crash of sorts occurred in the home video game market, mostly due to the over-saturation of crappy games on the Atari 2600 and the emergence of the Personal Computer market. Coleco tried to turn their console into a computer (called the ADAM), and failed miserably, and they pulled out of the game market.

A few years later, what was once a juggernaut in the toy business sold off their assets to the highest bidder, including the ColecoVision brand. Hasbro bought that, and later, a company called River West Brands picked up the trademark and logo of ColecoVision so they could license the name for those cheap game systems you plug directly into the TV that you find at Walgreens and Dollar General.

Recently, River West Brands changed their name to Dormitus Brands, and started gobbling up old trademarks, like Brim coffee (gross decaf coffee from the 70's), Cross Colours (terrible clothes from the 80's/90's), Spuds McKenzie (the Bull Terrier that marketed beer to kids in the 80's), and more in addition to already having Coleco. In a nutshell, they are trademark trolls, grabbing old trademarks and brands, hoping to make a buck or two when people slip up.

All this time, there were enthusiasts who collected old ColecoVision games still out there (like me!), and since the dawn of the Interwebs, there have been fan sites dedicated to the old game system. And then, when social media sites started popping up, so did the fan pages. One of the most popular is ColecoVision Fan, who has over 20k likes on their Facebook page. In addition to that, there have been DIY homebrew developers that have figured out how to make their own games for the old console, and some of them, like Opcode Games and CollectorVision, have gotten quite good at it. Opcode Games even came out with a device that boosts the power of the console, which was something that was going to come out back in the 80’s that got scrapped due to Coleco pulling the plug on the system. Cool, right? Also, some of these guys even went out and got permission to use the trademarked logo, just to cover their bases.

Now that you have the background and all the players, here’s what’s going down.

A few weeks ago, a guy from Dormitus Brands issued a DMCA-style complaint to Facebook on some images of homebrew games that the ColecoVision Fan page posted. They cited trademark infringement, and tagged a ton of pics of homebrew titles he was sharing on his page, alleging that the page runner was the producer of these games. This guy was NOT the producer of anything, and a fan just like everyone else. He’s a veteran of the video game industry, and got out a few years ago to pursue other interests and does the FB page for fun. So, he protested to FB and the guy at Dormitus, and they refused to back down. In fact, they doubled down, wanting the homebrew guys AND the FB page owner to pay royalties to them… royalties for a LONG DEAD CONSOLE THAT NO ONE EXCEPT HOBBYISTS MAKE GAMES FOR ANYMORE. NOT EVEN THE CURRENT “BRAND OWNER”. It would be like some company buying the name Studebaker and trying to strong arm some guy into paying licensing fees for the windshield trim for early 60’s Larks that he makes in his basement shop and sells on a Studebaker enthusiast site because it fits a Studebaker.

Frustrated, the page owner went to the online forum AtariAge.com and made a post about what was going on. AtariAge is also a business who sells homebrew titles made by DIY’ers, and sells some compatible with the 35-year old console in question. Naturally, people were mad. Fans of the console kept it alive all this time, and just because retrogaming is hot, some guy comes in and tries to extort people. So, they did the natural thing: investigate the background of said guy. Turns out, he’s a scumbag! He’s been working with a known bootlegger of homebrew games that has stolen code and passed it off on his own for profit, he’s possibly selling bootleg action figures on eBay, and he’s presumably going to use whatever money he can get his hands on to funnel into his career as a terrible rap artist. He’s also hosting a “retrogaming convention” complete with “appearances” by scantily clad booth girls, other scammers, and the “official release” of an already existing homebrew game that he bought 150 copies of from one of the DIY guys before this all went nuclear.

Not long after, the guy shows up to allege more crap on the AtariAge forum, and as you can imagine, it does not end well. Blogs pick up on it, YouTubers start talking about it, as does one of the biggest retrogaming podcasts. And of course, the trademark troll can’t leave well enough alone, so he goes after all of them. Basically, he’s alienated 99% of his potential customers at this point. Then, he goes on his Coleco FB page to “address the situation”, trying to offer a backhanded apology without even apologizing, and everyone sees right through it.

Personally, I find it all fascinating. I’ve learned more about patent, copyright, and trademark law in the past two weeks than I thought I would ever know. I’m obviously rooting for the little guys, and I hope this trademark troll crawls back into the hole he came out of and we get a sweet docufilm out of it kike the King of Kong movie that came out a few years ago.

If you want to read more about it, check out the original thread over on AtariAge. It's completely insane. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/265739-coleco-strong-arming-homebrew-publishers-and-fan-sites/page-1

TL/DR: Some fake rapper from NJ bought the rights to the old Coleco brand, and is trying to extort the fans and guys making games for a 35 year old dead console.

It's a real shame there's no penalty for filing a false DMCA request.

I like this...but Im not sure why. Us kids got a NES for xmas in '88 - took dad a half hour to hook it up, and then he played it for about 2 hours before we got a turn...told us he had to make sure it was hooked up correctly. I bought a used TurboGraphix 16 at a garage sale a few years later, and my buddy spent like $350 on an Atari Jaguar when it was new somewhere around '92 or '93 - those are my only ties to console gaming of that era.

I bought a 1st gen Playstation (the big square one) with the first Gran Tourismo, and a game called One for $15 at a local gamestop knockoff that was going out of business.<img src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fHbC06XO9gg" />

Wow... Welcome to the digital age with laws and case laws firmly grounded in the 18th and 19th century.

Fortunately this is coming to an end here shortly. The Google/Uniloc decision has ended the change of venue issue with East Texas and the Court of Appeals just slapped down RCDI in it's case against ADS. So that takes care of the patent side of things.

For this one though: I'm curious how he expects to collect royalties for development. It'd be like Microsoft charging me for developing a C project within Windows. It's not like you have to source a dev kit to develop for ColecoVision.

What?!?!?!? Spuds MacKenzie was the EIGHTIES?!!?!?!?! Say it isn't so. Seems like yesterday.

GameboyRMH wrote: It's a real shame there's no penalty for filing a false DMCA request.

I agree. After some large company automating these things finally gets the E36 M3 slapped out of them by the courts that finally move in to the 21st century it'll stop. Until then it's a god damn nightmare.

Part of me hopes that'll happen with the Prince vs "Dancing Baby" lawsuit. But that's... 10 years old now? and the collection of justices on the supreme court don't really give me any hope it'll turn out well.

We had a Coleco Vision back in the 80s and it was FAR superior to the Atari 2600 in most respects. So many great games. I had the driving game "Turbo" which utilized a special steering wheel and gas pedal controls. I need to try to find that thing in my parent's attic and see if it still works.

Man, I wanted a Colecovision so bad when I was 12.....

WilD wrote: We had a Coleco Vision back in the 80s and it was FAR superior to the Atari 2600 in most respects. So many great games. I had the driving game "Turbo" which utilized a special steering wheel and gas pedal controls. I need to try to find that thing in my parent's attic and see if it still works.

I just got one earlier this year!

They actually had three "expansion modules":

1 was a thing that plugged in the front that allowed for the use of Atari 2600 games:

2 was the wheel that came with Turbo:

and #3 was the Roller Controller, which was a trackball controller to play games like Centipede and Slither. Slither is a Centipede clone that came with it:

They were going to release another one called the Super Game Module, but they quit the industry before that. One of the homebrew developers I mentioned earlier actually built them and re-released them! It expands the RAM to a whopping 32KB!

So, for instance, new games like Donkey Kong Arcade will look like this:

Instead of the 1982 pack-in Donkey Kong that looks like this:

For comparison, the real arcade game looks like this:

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

I met George Plimpton when I was in college.

Martha Plimpton was in Gonnies

D'oh! That was Intellivision!!

Sorry. Carry on.

In reply to Woody:

Close enough!

Semi on topic.

I read books about video games from time to time. Right now I am reading Replay (Link) and it covers this era pretty well and is very interesting. I wish it covered the technical side a little bit more, but I understand that most people would be bored to death reading that.

Less Coleco Vision related, this podcast with Nolan Bushnell is interesting:

How I built this

interestingly, I just came across this in the search to post the above link. I will now have to have a listen:

link

If you dig retro games and dig back stories read All Your Base Are Belong To Us.. Birth of Atari, the Russian who created TETRIS, the story of the Mario Bros theme, it's all there.

Tom_Spangler wrote: Man, I wanted a Colecovision so bad when I was 12.....

My grandfather was a technophile. He bought a VCR in 1977 when it cost $1000 in 1977 money and tapes were $20 in 1977 money and movies were $80 in 1977 money. He would buy calculators, electronic this that and the other, the last car he ever owned was an '84 Mark VII that he bought in 1983 and that thing was like a spaceship compared to the Buicks and Cadillacs that he had before it, etc.

He also bought a Colecovision. And the Atari adaptor. My mom mostly played it although I played the heck out of some things.

I had it for a while, but for some reason I took it back to my grandparents' house. I found out a couple years ago that my oldest aunt sold it at a garage sale in the late 1990s for $20 with all of the games and the Atari adaptor.

It could be worse. Another of my aunts had an Atari 7600. (Or whatever the 7xxx was. NOT the 2600) She threw it away after nobody bought it at a garage sale...

Tony Sestito wrote: I just got one earlier this year! They actually had three "expansion modules": #1 was a thing that plugged in the front that allowed for the use of Atari 2600 games: #2 was the wheel that came with Turbo: and #3 was the Roller Controller, which was a trackball controller to play games like Centipede and Slither. Slither is a Centipede clone that came with it:

Holy carp, I had the wheel too. I found it easier to use the regular controller, though.

I liked how certain games came with a little film that you could slip into the controller's number pad to tell you what each button did.

Tony Sestito wrote: In reply to Woody: Close enough!

We had this. It sucked. IIRC no real trademarked games.

Then we got the 5200. Pole Position was pretty good on that one.

I now have a 2600 and games I bought ON THIS FORUM a few years back. Someone was selling off stuff to fund a car budget (imagine that!).

I had a ColecoVision when I was 6 or so. Loved to play with my brother until one day all the games would start to pixelate (?) after playing for a while.

I remember my brother and I would play Smurfs, Monctezumas Revenge and Cabbage Patch kids from memory as we could only see 20% of the screen.

We also liked playing Smurfs and Cabbage Patch kids backwards, we would go left instead of right.

I remember playing Smurfs. I don't remember the game mechanics at all, but I remember playing it. I'm not going to sleep much tonight am I?

...and this is why I think copyrights should expire on everything THE INSTANT it becomes no longer generally available from its ORIGINAL creator.

Note that I'm an electronic music producer & pixel artist (aka content creator) before you accuse me of not respecting content creators.

We also had an Intellivison and it truly did suck. We inherited from my uncle when he realized it sucked. He gave us three games with it, a tank battle game that sucked, an sucky car racing game, and some kind of truck driving game that even in my young truck obsessed days where I would try playing it while listening to the Convoy Soundtrack still managed to both suck and blow. It probably sucked harder than George Plimpton did playing for the Lions.

Appleseed wrote: If you dig retro games and dig back stories read All Your Base Are Belong To Us.. Birth of Atari, the Russian who created TETRIS, the story of the Mario Bros theme, it's all there.

Thanks, is on my wishlist.

vwcorvette wrote:

Tony Sestito wrote: In reply to Woody: Close enough!

We had this. It sucked. IIRC no real trademarked games. Then we got the 5200. Pole Position was pretty good on that one. I now have a 2600 and games I bought ON THIS FORUM a few years back. Someone was selling off stuff to fund a car budget (imagine that!).

Ha, that might have been ME that sold you that 2600! I think I sold one on here years ago. The one I sold was a Sears Tele-Games 2600 with the 6 switches.

I also have an Intellivision. I place it a distant 3rd behind my ColecoVision and Atari 2600. My gripe with it is the controllers. Not only are they hard wired... they are stupid. I mean, look at this:

They have the number pad like the ColecoVision ones, but instead of a control stick or knob, there's a disc. It's a PITA to use. They do have the number pad overlays, which is cool, so there's that.

Even though I prefer those other two consoles, the Intellivision does have some great games and one really cool accessory: The IntelliVoice Module.

I found that one recently at an antique shop. It works with certain games to "speak" to the player, which was a HUGE deal back then, and something we take for granted today.