Forgotten Consoles

[HoloDust]

Wman1996 said:

HoloDust said:

ColecoVision

Launched in '82, with motto of arcade-quality games at home, it not only did that, bringing arcade ports like Donkey Kong and Galaxian, but greatly influenced Famicom's creation as well. Arguably the actual start of 3rd generation (given that SG-1000 launched a year later with same hardware and it's considered 3rd generation). Killed prematurely by Coleco loosing faith in console market after the crash of '83 and focusing (unsuccessfully) on home computers (with ADAM, which ate into ColecoVision production line).

I feel like ColecoVision uses the line between forgotten and not forgotten like a jump rope. It only sold around 2 million units and was only in NA and EU. Be that as it may, it was a relatively close third place to Intellivsion's 2nd place, but everyone was way behind Atari 2600. 

And to quote AVGN

The Nerd: But before I end it, let's take a look at the ColecoVision Expansion Module. Yeah, what gaming system is complete without some kind of peripheral? You plug it in, and now you can play Atari 2600 games. That's right, I'm playin' Atari on ColecoVision, its competitor. Okay, that would never happen today. That's like if Sony said, "Okay, we're gonna come out with this new expansion module for the PlayStation 3. You're gonna be able to play Xbox games on it." There would be lawsuits up the a**.

And there was a lawsuit.

Yeah, ColecoVision is definitely remembered, given that it has active retro community and even expansions and FPGA model of it.

But in mainstream, barely anyone ever heard of it, which is real pity - it was best money can buy when it launched in '82, selling like hotcakes (there is even 6 millions mentioned, combined with CBS version for Europe, though that seems bit high) and it is direct influence to people in charge of Famicom to make it what in the end was.