THE COLECO CHAMELEON SCAM!!! - An Insane Crowd Funding Scandal !? - Retro Gaming History

as discussed many times on this channel in the past the world of video games is a fast-paced moving industry with constant change being inevitable this has over time led to the humble rom cartridge being phased out and replaced with more practical modern storage mediums in fact in some instances many video games are not available physically at all anymore and can only be procured via digital downloads these days physical paper manuals are a rarity and that wonderful tactile experience of breaking a box's seal then manually inserting media into a device is slowly becoming less and less common a console that was allegedly planned for release in 2016 was looking to rectify this increasing issue by delivering to the world an all-new system that would resurrect cartridge-based media allowing for old-school gamers to continue to add the latest cartridges to their gaming shelves for years to come while this plan sounded like an amazing new game console was in the works sadly for everyone who invested in this product the platform would remain nothing more than a dream i am lazy decade and this is the story of the kaliko chameleon scam to truly get a feel for this story we have to go all the way back to 1982 the year that's a cutting edge for its time game console known as the colecovision saw release a system that up until this point in time at least offered an experience closer to the arcade than any home console had achieved previously look at this version of nintendo's donkey kong for example and what a great job it does of imitating the arcade eric bromley the lead engineer behind this system has wanted to create a game console with arcade quality games since 1979 but this simply wasn't possible at the time due to the cost of components and ram this would all change though after he read an article in the wall street's journal confirming that costs had fallen dramatically meaning that his dream console was ready to become a reality now the colecovision's hell is its own piece of interesting video game trivia in its own right so let me know if you want a video based on this high quality device but to cut a long story short this impressive piece of hardware is often seen as a victim of the 1983 united states home console crash yes i said united states home console crash not video game crash it cannot be emphasized enough that's during 1983 arcades remains profitable and the worlds of gaming on home computers remained buoyant too and that is without even commenting on the fact that gaming around the world remained as popular as ever so calling it a video game crash rather than a national console crash is a little over the top and doesn't really describe the situation in terms of what actually went down as for the colecovision though this device was indeed an all-american game concert so despite its modest sales of shifting close to 2 million units the system would be discontinued as the console gaming medium went out of fashion the system set aside considering that in terms of quality it was one of the best game consoles around up until that point to this day the device has respect and a cult following and even set the bar high for nintendo when looking to top it with their famicom system the japanese form factor of the game console that would sweep america just a few years later however many many years later in a futuristic year of 2015 the name kaliko would appear attached to a game console once more with the emergence of the device simply known as the kaliko chameleon if we are going to be talking about this system we first have to acknowledge the main man behind the project mike kennedy mike kennedy is a person who has prior involvement in gaming relating projects such as a retro magazine and the website known as gamegavel.com the very website where kidsvid666 would post his sega pluto for cerlon another story we have told on his channel in the past so with a background in retro gaming related projects it was not surprising to see his name attached to something yet again as for the chameleon the system was pitched as a platform that was inspired by devices released during the second and fifth generations of consoles and was even touted to use physical cartridges to be inserted into the hardware just like our lovable little machines evolved to put it simply the coleco chameleon literally fits the dictionary definition of retro to imitate a style of the past this system was announced in september of 2015 and thus would create an interesting six month journey which would end up raising around three million dollars that of which we now know in hindsight is most likely scammed money at the beginning of the campaign originally the system was going to be called the retro vgs before it would later have its name changed to the more nostalgic sounding kaliko chameleon so name changes are plenty what was actually going on here was the chameleon trying to camouflage digging deeper into the history of this thing the coleco chameleon or whatever you want to call it would first begin its life on kickstarter with even in these very early days the retro vgs team coming under fire due to ecking off kickstarter and migrating to indiegogo it would unfold that the reasoning behind this major change was due to the fact that the team had breached kickstarter's terms of service as they were raising money for a console that had provided zero evidence of a hardware prototype or even design specifications absolute musts for hardware on kickstarter when wanting to take consumers money mike kennedy himself would issue a statement on all of this confirming that we have had discussions with kickstarter about their policy which requires hardware campaigns to show off explicit demonstrations of a prototype we have since found a few running hardware campaigns on kickstarter to show nothing of the sword and have questioned them about it only to find you really don't need to show a working prototype just to be clear and upfront with backers so they know exactly where you are in the development process we asked if they would then reword their policy to reflect this and at this point they have not done so in this early warning sign with regards to this project's direction as you can see rather than accept any kind of fault the team themselves the team behind the chameleon would instead place the blame at the hands of kickstarter for this first bump in their campaign trail complaining that others had gotten away with accepting money for vaporware on the platform in the past so they should be allowed to do so also so with no hardware to show the chameleon would be moved to indiegogo now with the team essentially being booted from kickstarter one would assume that the first priority would be doing everything possible to win back backers trusts and appear as consumer friendly as possible amusingly though once the campaign began on indiegogo of course the reverse would occur instead the chameleon crew would instead successfully manage to upset many previous kickstarter backers by raising the entry-level price from 150 to a whopping 350 which wouldn't have even included the price of shipping this time around either this was a major price hike in comparison to what had been placed on offer previously the retro vgs team would attempt to justify their actions by announcing a new stretch goal hilariously a stretch goal that cheekily would let gamers play retro games on the system to put it simply they now wanted the public to pay them well over three million dollars before they were even going to include the main selling point of the platform as well part of the platform the initial promise of what retro vgs was going to be had been reduced to a stretch goal to squeeze out extra cash previous broken promises would of course not end here as the company would fail to show any prototypes or design specs anytime soon as points though the system's controller would be shown off which would transpire to be just a third-party nintendo wii u controller with the system soon being confirmed that it would have no online functionality it would also become clear that if there were problems with any upcoming hardware or software there would be no way for the chameleon to be debugged online or even received software updates now considering that the chameleon promised modern day indie games on physical cartridges this did not bode well for backers but this was just the tip of the ridiculous chameleon iceberg it was quickly becoming impossible to get excited about this proposed system or any future game for that matter as the list of complaints surrounding this campaign was beginning to become endless it really was looking like the chameleon truly was going to make history just for all the wrong reasons through the period of chameleon drama the team advised the public that they were planning to create their cartridge-based console featuring the same form factor as the atari jaguar of all things a great system to take inspiration from in an amusing twist to be fair it would be confirmed that this was part of a cost cutting measure using the old jaguar mould would present both a retro aesthetic and allow them to save some cash design wise it would be laid out that they were going to integrate both 9 pin controllers as well as usb controllers with the usb controller being shipped with the device but as mentioned earlier these were just a modified third party wii u controllers some of the other promises i made regarding this console was that it was going to be compatible with many types of tvs including hdmi composite video and stereo rca adapters when it comes to the systems games there is little i can say on the matter as so few were announced we had the adventures of the tiny knights and sydney hunter and the cavers of death which were both going to be developed by kaliko themselves prior to them withdrawing from this absolute debacle there was also reeds only memories by a company called midboss songbringer by a firm called wizard foo and a couple of other small games still though the turret has not quite hit the fan yet and the juicy parts of this story are still yet to come a lot of the controversy arose formally around this console during the american international toy fair when a prototype was finally introduced in an act to prove that the chameleon was not vaporware once and for all the system of this event would be shown using a snares controller with the platform being seen working with an awful lot of black electrical tape being visible around it why so controversial about all of this you may be wondering well according to atari age forum the prototype was nothing more than the motherboard of a super nes jr inside an atari jaguar case this was then paired with a flash cartridge that could emulate super nintendo games to create the illusion it was a functioning chameleon forum users were able to compare a photograph of a snez junior motherboard with the chameleons one and get an exact match after being clearly exposed as a scam you would think that this was the end of the coleco chameleon story however the man in charge mike kennedy was no quitter so this scandal would continue kennedy would attempt to defend the incident with the following excuse claiming to have no knowledge he would be displaying a super nintendo at the event until it was too late kennedy states it was a day before i was traveling to the toy fair that the person came over to my house with the toy fair prototype with his instructions to not show the back of the unit no matter what but without any specific information as to why i shouldn't show it i believed him and went to the show with that unit during the show we were accused of not having that system even plugged in so i made the decision to take a photo of the back of the unit showing that it was clearly plugged in i didn't feel we had anything to hide then all hell broke loose and it was identified that mini parts or the whole pcb from a snes mini was inside the console shell i was left in a terrible spot at this point and had a decision to make that evening at the hotel do i take this thing apart and see what was in it and quit the show or continue on with the show right or wrong i continued on with toy fair and it continued to impress people and the games were very favorably liked face palm as this was all unfolding magic mike kennedy would challenge the apparent mysterious person who handed him this fake prototype with the mystery man apparently responding to kennedy by putting his mind at ease and informing him that the system may have been built using old snes parts but it was still a retro vgs software that was running on the console making the prototype in his opinion 100 legitimate in regards to this kennedy said again i believed him and we moved forward past this very embarrassing public embarrassment to be as transparent as possible in a very literal sense the plan would be to show off the circuit board pcb inside clear console casing next time around this big reveal was set to unfold on facebook where kennedy could finally show the real prototype to the world according to kennedy with this next phase and his communication with the chameleon devs he states when he first emailed me the images he indicated this was our prototype 100 he even joked about how people online were trying to identify the board in our shell laughing and telling me that they won't find it because it's our original work again i believed him so the prototype would be unveiled and at first everything seemed to be fine and it looks like coleco had finally presented a real prototype to the world after all why would they show off the internals this system through a clear shell if it wasn't for real unfortunately though yet again this system was quickly identified to be yet another fake put out by the company online observers would manage to establish that this system was no more than a dvr capture card placed in a see-through case this system they presented as part of this plan that they had literally no chance of getting away with was a case with no gaming hardware inside it whatsoever meaning that the additional images that were shown of it working as a system were entirely staged and completely misleading as one would expect the chameleon company realized that they had been caught out they hilariously took down their facebook post immediately but it was too late as the analysis on the atari age forum had already begun this time around kennedy claims that the person who built this system had previously told him that the real chipset was indeed in this prototype just no one could see it as it was located underneath the dvr board perhaps one of the funniest excuses ever which you would expect to see pop up in a sitcom rather than real life let's be fair this whole situation could be dramatized into a situation comedy is that ridiculous with everything that had happened kennedy would finally make a wise decision for a change and that would be to finally bring the crowdfunding campaign to an end so that he could in his own words re-evaluate this venture as for this whole debacle there are still some unanswered questions as for example who is this mysterious person who kept giving kennedy fake hardware and did they even exist at all either way what kennedy had told the public is that he and the chameleon builder have never actually met face to face and he has no idea where he lives kennedy did report though that he has since learnt that this person who he claims is behind the scam had a so-called checkered background which just adds fuel to the whole coleco chameleon scandal fire either way mike either ran one of the most blatant scams in history or he is one of the most gullible idiots on the information superhighway never scenario though paints a particularly pretty picture of him as all of this drew to a close on the 2nd of march 2016 coleco holdings released an official statement on their facebook page regarding the whole controversy and prototypes advising they wanted independent bodies to review the prototypes and confirmed if the allegations turned out to be true they were going to withdraw their relationship with the chameleon team six days later on the 8th of march 2016 calico holdings announced their formal withdrawal from the project declaring this was down to retro vgs not being able to prove to them that they had a working prototype in calico holding statement they would confirm retro has decided that the work that they have created is not sufficient to demonstrate at this time we can no longer proceed with the project and the chameleon project will be terminated this separation is amicable we wish retro luck in the future ouch in the scam's death throws the chameleon team changed their system's name to retro chameleon to represent the separation from coleco holdings but would swiftly close their websites and all other social media pages soon after as for mike kennedy and his other working endeavors during the aftermath of this event the managing editor of mike's retro magazine dave giltenan decided to resign from his post and issue an explanation for doing so online dave had this to say i apologize for any ignorance on my part for not fully following through with my desire for the truth when speaking about the console instead i allowed myself to become a vessel for misinformation and for that i am again sorry those of you who believe we were simply trying to scam consumers or take advantage of the retro gaming community don't know the whole picture there was no ill will or maliciousness on the part of the team all we had in mind was to make a modern day retro inspired console so this is where the kaliko chameleon scandal ends but there would be more projects reviving retro brands in the future which i'm sure we can look at further down the line for example the controversial atari box which was marketed as the atari vcs and the intellivision amico which is currently in development which at this time is attracting all sorts of negative attention online in its own right besides all this though in my country of the uk the ever cade handheld has seen a successful release and has thus far been very well received an all-new cartridge-based handheld advanced plays both retro and indie games achieving exactly what the coleco chameleon claimed it wanted to do but this time actually managing to deliver the goods in fact the evocate has proved to be so popular that an evocate home console is set to see a release soon as well so consumers are getting a coleco chameleon-like home system but finally for real this time which is certainly a nice silver lining to this scandalous tale so i am lady decayed and that was the story of the kaliko chameleon scam a special thank you to daniel from slopes game room who played the voice of mike kennedy for this video along with the despicable top hats gaming man and my editor ryan for taking up additional speaking roles links to all their channels will be in this video's description let me know in the comments section what you thought of today's video and if content on the likes of the atari box in television amiko and the other codes would interest you in the future if you are new here be sure to hit that subscribe button and ring that notification bell as i have plenty of videos on obscure console history for you to enjoy on this channel in the meantime why not check out my recent content on the amiga cd32 finally i would like to close off by giving a huge thank you to all the great people who back this channel on patreon inspiring me to continue to pump out regular entertainment for all of your amusements speaking of patrons the shout outs go to green cooper sebastian velez house of the ted carl thomas tebow baggins sir landry does gaming christopher de villeo scott healey dandrity william j scott iii richard turnbull gaspahilla david john wright awesome jacket dude metty hp matthew rindell paul watson triforce of shadows beyond many johnny holly ventros jesus gonzalez irk the irk opc emu movies.com joseph dixon pwnd games consoles accessories john mccormick corey de kirk joshua collars ben harady instant gratification monkey sanchmeister eggo and mark williams as well as all of the rest of my lovely patrons thank you all very much and i shall see you all in the next video you

Channel: Lady Decade

Views: 67,022

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Id: VY1ggGvE5QI

Length: 23min 30sec (1410 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021