Coleco Chameleon, retro gaming console with Indiegogo, assembled from cardboard, electrical tape and video capture board

Now it is only the third month of 2016, but during this time several interesting projects of game consoles appeared on the Web, which turned out to be a fake. This Dreamcast 2, rumors of which turned out to be just rumors. And this is Coleco Chameleon - the most interesting (as it seemed) project, the initiators of which planned to raise $ 2 million for Indiegogo .

The author of the project is Mike Kennedy, the owner of several online gaming resources devoted to classic consoles and toys. Initially, the project was named Retro VGS. The idea was simple - the creation of a game console with game cartridges, which opened the opportunity to plunge into the world of classic video games. This was supposed to be the opposite of modern consoles with their constant updates, connecting to the web and other problems. The authors even used the Atari Jaguar console case, which the oldfags really liked. True, the cost of the console was rather big - $ 300.

In order to justify such a high price, the creators of the project promised to add a lot of new chips. All this did not help, and it was possible to collect only $ 81,000 instead of a couple of millions. In addition, it was originally planned to create a console based on a multi-functional FPGA chip, but then the developers changed plans, and decided to use the ARM platform. This baffled potential “contributors” even more.
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A photograph of what should be the prototype of the console board ... but it’s more like cardboard

Realizing the failure of the first attempt, the console developers decided to rebrand, and changed the name to Coleco Chameleon. For this, we had to conclude an agreement with the manufacturers of the Colecovision console. Plans were announced in January: a new name, inexpensive hardware, and an exit on Kickstarter.

But again problems arose. At the Toy Fair, the console was presented as promised. But attentive users saw some oddities in the photo and video with the console. For example, why was the cartridge and console covered with black tape? And why are SNES controllers used here?



Immediately there were guesses, the main of which was the following: the developers did not develop anything, but took the basis of model 2 SNES and a special rewritable cartridge.



Suspicions intensified after Kickstarter was postponed. Well, the business started to look quite bad after posting photos of the “prototype” console on the Facebook project.



Inside, as it turned out, the old video capture board HICAP50B CCTV DVR Capture Card was placed, and not a console prototype at all. After all this was revealed, the image was removed from Facebook (literally in 5 minutes).

Now the project is already in doubt and the company Coleco, which gave the right to use its name to this project. According to Coleco management, if an independent engineer cannot confirm the performance of the prototype, the name will be withdrawn.

Soon the decisive moment must come, and the secret will be revealed, as they say. But now one thing is clear - the project is unlikely to survive. And the console entry to the market is a big question.