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Is the Coleco Chameleon a Scam?

Is the Coleco Chameleon a Scam?

Have you hard about the Coleco Chameleon saga? It’s been quite a ride. The “too long; didn’t read” version goes like this. Mike Kennedy tried to start an Indiegogo campaign for a new, cartridge-playing console called the Retro VGS in September 2015. It failed. He rallied, got Coleco Holdings to allow them to call it the Coleco Chameleon, promised a February 2016 Kickstarter, didn’t launch said Kickstarter, and prepared a 2016 New York Toy Fair prototype debut. OK! You’re caught up! This is important, because now we’re at the good part. Observant gamers and fans called a company’s bluff and exposed something shady.

Because that’s pretty much what happened. The second Retro VGS started showing off the Coleco Chameleon, people saw it for what it was. The company was deluded or arrogant enough to think people wouldn’t notice what was really going wrong. They underestimated the people who love games, and those people ended up being what brought them down.

Back to that American International Toy Fair incident from last month. The Coleco Chameleon was there, but it wasn’t running any of these newer indie games that would allegedly be on cartridges at launch. There was no Read Only Memories or Gunlord . Instead, there was a taped-up, Coleco Chameleon running SNES games. It even used SNES controllers instead of original ones. People experimented and determined it could very well have been a SNES Jr. , the smaller model of the system, inside the Coleco Chameleon shell. People made videos showing how it would work .

In response, Retro VGS uploaded a picture to its now defunct Facebook of a transparent Coleco Chameleon unit, to show off its inner workings. This was the biggest mistake yet. While earlier prototype boards for the system had looked skeevy, this slip allowed people like AtariAge’s Galax to point out another problem. The investigation revealed the inner workings were a HICAP50B CCTV PC capture card.

Is the Coleco Chameleon a Scam?

This started something. Brian Thomas Barnart, a YouTuber, released a video detailing his experiences with Kennedy and the Coleco Chameleon. Coleco Holdings saw people’s reactions and, on March 2 , said it was demanding to have prototype units inspected. On March 8, it pulled all support from the project , taking the Coleco name away from it. And why? Because the people made it happen. People who love their hobby saw a company was trying to get money to manufacture a product that didn’t add up, and they rallied.

It shows the power of the people when a business attempts to misrepresent itself. Since Coleco Holdings pulled its support, Retro VGS has disappeared from the internet. The Retro VGS Twitter has been silent since February 22, its website and Facebook have shuttered. Bluffs were called and a project that could have possibly taken money from people and not delivered was halted. It demonstrates how people can never hide behind false advertising in the information age.

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