A Look At Telly Turtle

Well it's blogging time again and its my first blog of the new year so it's time to look back on the old year and look forward to the new year and all that good stuff. But for me, this time as well as winter time in general is more than just looking back on the old year, but looking back many years in personal history. That includes the subject of this blog today, with a simple program from decades ago that got me into logo design long before college.

 

 

Its a program called Telly Turtle. Developed by Carosel Software and originally released in 1984 for $29.95. It was a simple program meant for young children's to help them learn about computer graphics.

But what makes it unusual is the system it was designed to run on. While the program originally launched in 1983 for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8bit line, the version I'm talking about was designed for the Colecovision.

 

The Colecovision 

Much like the MSX, The Colecovision is another one of those systems that I've a few times in previous entries, but never went into full detail. But its getting a look today, as the story behind it is fascinating and like the MSX, holds a significance place in video game history. The story of the Colecovision begins with the company that made it, Coleco. Coleco didn't start life as a video game company, They were founded in 1932 in West Hartford, Connecticut as a leather company selling leather and shoe repair kits. In fact their name is actually an acronym for The Connecticut Leather Company.

 

The Original Coleco store in West Hartford, Connecticut in the 1950s

By the 1950s, they started to diversify into leather craft kits featuring character licensing from different kids favorites of the day like Disney films and The Howdy Doody Show. All of which earned the company some good annual profits and sales.

 

Some of Coleco's kits sold in their early days

They continued to sell leather kits until the 1960s, when they sold that division off and got into the above ground pool business. The reason for this seemingly random shift was because in 1963 they bought the Kestral Corporation, a Massachusetts company that manufactured inflatable vinyl pools and toys. They also started to manufacture products in vacuum formed plastic back in 1957, which slowly eclipsed the sales of their leather kits. As a result, by the 1960's, Coleco became the biggest manufacturer of above-ground swimming pools in the world.

 

An ad for one of Coleco's above ground pools (1972)

But in 1972 Atari's Pong was released, taking the world by storm and subsequently releasing a home version 3 years later. Not only was it a success in both the arcade and the home, but it also gave Coleco an opportunity. At the time, Coleco was losing a significant amount on money mainly due to entering the snowmobile market through the acquisition of The Featherweight Corporation, a Canadian snowmobile manufacturer known for their Alouette line, in 1972.

 

An ad for Coleco's Alouette snowmobiles (1973)

Due to lower than expected snowfall that year, market conditions, and a safety recall of their AX-125 motor dirt bike, led to very reduced sales and poor profits, resulted in Coleco losing $1.2 million dollars in 1973, and selling Alouette Recreational Products, Ltd., which is what they renamed Featherweight to, to Rupp Industries in 1975. Once Coleco had learned about the General Instrument AY-3-8500 chip, The realized if they could make a system to use it, they could make a profit to save their finances. And they became aware of the chip thanks to none other than video game pioneer and engineer Ralph Baer, The creator of the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey.

 

Ralph Baer With a Magnavox Odyssey box (Circa 1972)

According to Baer, he heard about the chip word of mouth while it was in development at GI's Scotland plant in 1975 and was able to get an early demonstration of the chip. He also happened to be friends with Arnold Greenberg, the president and CEO of Coleco and the son of Maurice Greenberg, The founder of the company. Impressed by the chip, he called Greenberg to meet him at GI's New York plant. After getting a demonstration by GI General Manager Ed Saks, Greenberg was impressed enough with the potential to become the first customer for the chip. with the the Coleco Telstar launching in 1976.

 

The Coleco Telstar (1976)

What set the Telstar apart from similar offerings from Atari and Magnavox was that Coleco retailed it for under $50 dollars at a price of $49.95. as a result it became so successful that a survey from Toy and Hobby World magazine ranked the Telstar as the number #5 for top-selling Christmas toys during the 1976 holiday season. With its success Coleco continued to make new consoles under the Telstar brand such as the Telstar Classic, Telstar Ranger, Telstar ColorTron, Telstar Galaxy, Telstar Combat, and Telstar Arcade, which is probably one of my favorite console designs ever with its triangular base with built in controls for pong, gun and racing games on each side.

 

Left to right: The Coleco Telstar Classic (1976), The Coleco Telstar Ranger (1977), The Coleco Telstar Colormatic (1977), The Coleco Telstar Galaxy (1977), The Coleco Telstar Combat (1977), The Coleco Telstar Arcade (1977)

However the Telstar almost bankrupting them again, Because as the home videogame market moved over to programmable, cartridge-based systems, sales of Pong Consoles started to dry up. While Coleco did release cartridge-based entries like Telstar Game Computer and the aforementioned Telstar Arcade, their graphics weren’t much above the previous Pong consoles. Coleco ended up dumping over a million obsolete Telstar machines onto the market, contributing to a loss of $22.3 million dollars and holding over $35 million dollars of bank debt.

Luckily, Coleco had introduced a line of electronic handheld sports games such as Electronic Quarterback and the Head to Head series to compete with Mattels Sports Handhelds. These managed to keep the profits stable, with $200 million dollars in sales for the handhelds in 1979.

 

Left to right: Colecos Electronic Quarterback (1978) and The Coleco Head to Head Football (1979)

By the early 80s, the Golden age of video games was starting to begin. With titles like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaxian, and Space Invaders earning millions of dollars and arcades popping up everywhere, Once again, Coleco saw an opportunity. They decided to make a new video game system but what would set it apart would be that coleco wanted to make a console that would bring the arcade experience home, and this would be reflected in everything from the design of the console, to the hardware, to the marketing, to even the game titles available.

Around the same time, Robert Schenck, an engineer for Coleco, had designed a hobbyist computer in his spare time in his basement to play with computers and learn about computer hardware. It was a basic board with a Z80 CPU and a CRT controller from National Semiconductor running on a video terminal. He eventually swapped it for a TI9918 chip and demonstrated the graphical capabilities by recreating Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. When he showed it to Greenberg, he figured that this would be the console that would fit the bill for their concept. he put Schenck in a team lead by Eric Bromley, Coleco's Senior Vice President of Advanced Research and Development who previously had experience heading R&D departments of arcade manufacturers such as Midway.

 

Coleco's R&D Vice President Eric Bromley in 1987 

With the drop of RAM prices in 1981, Coleco was able to make a demo unit to show off at CES. They called the system the Colecovision, A name Schenck made up on the spot during the demo to Greenberg. Initially it was a placeholder name until the marketing types can think up a better one, But they never did, so the name stuck.

 

An early Prototype of the Colecovision shown at CES (1981) 

After another year of development, The system launched in August, of 1982 for a retail price of $175 with the box containing the console, two controllers, an RF modulator, an AC adaptor, and a pack in game, A conversion of Nintendo's Donkey Kong.

 

An early ad for the Colecovision (1982) 

The console itself is simple enough, on the top you have a bay for the controllers (with the ports underneath) the power switch, the cartridge slot and a reset button.

 

On the front you have a silver name badge and an expansion interface called the Expansion Module Interface. The expansion interface was designed to take a variety of add-on modules to increase longevity.

 

On the back you have a channel selector switch, the RF output and the power plug.

The AC adapter is also huge by the way, You could probably use it as a makeshift mace and smack people with it!

And finally on the bottom you have your standard model information sticker.

 

As for the controllers, They have an ambidextrous design so you can hold them in either your left or right hand and feature a joystick, 2 fire buttons and a keypad. The keypad is typically used to select settings for the game, but in some games their also used as action buttons. There's also a slot for overlays on the side. The cord is also coiled so you can stretch it a good amount of space away from the console. Unfortunately the joystick is on the stiff side, but luckily the controller port is a standard DE9 port and while it differs slightly to incorporate the keypad, its similar enough that you can plug an Atari or Sega genesis controller into it and most games will allow you to select game settings from the second controllers keypad.

 

 

 

There were 3 Expansion Modules released, The Expansion Module #1, which was an adapter that would allow you to allow you to play Atari 2600 games, The Expansion Module #2, which was a steering wheel and gas pedal for driving games, (Probably making it the first racing wheel for a video game console) that came packaged with Turbo (Though this plugs into the controller port, not the Expansion Module Interface. It also requires 4 C Batteries, but you could also use the Perma Power adapter designed for the Coleco Tabletop Arcade series to run it off an AC Adapter), and the Expansion Module #3, which converts the ColecoVision into a computer, But more on that later.

   

Left to right: The Expansion Module 1,  The Expansion Module 2, and The Expansion Module 3 

 

Coleco also made 2 special controllers for the system. The first was the Roller Controller, a trackball that came packaged with a conversion of the arcade game Slither. The roller controller uses a special power connector that passed through the Colecovision and isn't compatible with Expansion Module #3, but Coleco mailed an adapter to owners who complained. There's also a joystick mode switch on the roller controller allows it to be used with games without Roller Controller support. The Second was the Super Action Controller, it came in a set of two handheld joystick controllers that came packaged with the cartridge Super Action Baseball. Each controller has a ball-top joystick, four finger triggered action buttons, a 12-button numeric keypad, and a "speed roller". They look a bit like Phasers from Star Trek, and coincidentally Coleco's version of Sega's Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator arcade game was designed for it. other games designed for it was Super Action Football, Rocky Super Action Boxing, and a conversion of the Taito arcade game Front Line.

   

Left to right: The Roller Controller and the Super Action Controller set

 

For the games, As previously mentioned most of the games available for the Colecovision were arcade ports. For example the pack in game was Donkey Kong (As previously said), there was a port of Zaxxon available for it, There was a port of Venture available for it, there was a port of Time Pilot that I mentioned in entry about the Sony HB55 MSX, There was a port of Popeye available for it, all sorts of stuff. In fact about 90% of the Colecovision's library are arcade ports, there are very few non arcade titles for the system (Though there were some ports of games from other consoles and home computer of the time like Choplifter, Boulder Dash, and Activision ported games like Pitfall! and River Raid for the system). That was a big advantage of the Colecovision. While Namco was exclusive to Atari and Data East Exclusive to Mattel, Coleco managed to get many major arcade game manufacturers on board. Many of them are still in business today either still making games or doing other things such as Nintendo, Sega, Universal (Note: Universal is a Japanese company and is not related to Universal the movie studio! Although Universal Studios did have their own game studio in 1994, Universal Interactive that published Spyro and Crash Bandicoot which was bought by Vevendi, which in turn was purchased by Activision, which itself was purchased by Microsoft), Konami and many more.

 

Some of the many games available for the Colecovision. (And yes, those are official versions of Centipede and Defender made by Atari. Back then Atari created official versions of arcade games they own the home rights to on other systems under the AtariSoft name, But that's a story for another day!) 

But what makes Telly Turtle different is that its not an arcade game nor a computer or console game, Its a programing language. Specifically, a version of LOGO with the ability to use Turtle Graphics, Hence the name. Although LOGO was originally created in 1967, it was incredibly popular back in the 80s, particularly in the educational market, Specifically in elementary schools to teach young children about computers, computer programing and computer graphics.

 

A school computer lab running Logo on the Apple IIe (1988) 

Another thing unique is that it since its part of Coleco's Family Learning Software series it doesn't come in the standard cardboard box, but rather a vacuum formed plastic case. containing a warranty postcard, the manual a command reference guide, and the game itself on a cartridge.

 

The case for Telly Turtle and its contents 

The cartridges are pretty standard. There about the same size as an Atari 2600 cart, but it has little ridged bumps  on both side so you can grip it easier. It also has a spot on the back to keep the overlays in when not in use.

 

The Cartridge for Telly Turtle 

Being from 1984, there's also a difference in the label. All First Party cartridges from Coleco from 1982 to 1983 say "Colecovision presents" on the top followed by the games logo, but from 1983 to 1984 say at the bottom of the games logo says "For Colecovision and ADAM Family computer".

 

Left to Right: The Cartridge for Donkey Kong and the Turtle The Cartridge for Telly Turtle 

Now what was the ADAM you may ask? Well that was a home computer Coleco launched in 1983 to compete in the personal computer market. It had all the same hardware of the Colecovison but had a full keyboard, built in cassette storage, a printer, and a built in word processor. It was also available addon version for the Colecovision in the form of the Expansion Module #3 which I mentioned earlier.

 

The Coleco ADAM (1983)  

However the computer ended up failing miserably for a 2 reasons, The first was the price. Coleco originally announced that the system would sell for $525 dollars, but by the time it was released the price was $725 dollars. 

The second problem was it had poor build quality. Look back above at the photo of the ADAM. You see that printer on the right? Well the power supply was build into it, so if the cable or the printer breaks, get lost, or are unavailable, you couldn't turn on the computer.

Another flaw was the built in tape drives. These used what Coleco called Digital Data Packs (Or DDP for short), which could hold up to 500K and could be accessed faster than most cassette drive on computers of the time. The problem was that the computer created a electromagnetic surge every time it was turned on, so if you left any tapes in or near the drive, it can corrupt or erase the data on the tape.

 

 A Coleco Digital Data Pack 

Coleco lost millions of dollars due to the ADAM and discontinued it 2 years later in 1985. However for using Telly Turtle, the ADAM makes more sense since it has a full keyboard and storage, the Colecovision only has 2 joysticks with 2 fire buttons and a 12 digit keypad. So how does this work? Well lets boot it up and find out. 

At first your greeted, like with many first party Colecovision games, with a boot screen with the colorful Colecovision logo, the name of the program, who its by, and a copyright message on the bottom. one thing to note is that there's a 12.7 second delay before presenting the next screen. While most assumed that it was a bug, the real reason was for brand recognition. After that your greeted by the the game select screen. Normally your greeted with 8 settings, split into 2 with 4 levels of difficulty for 1 or 2 players. But with Telly Turtle your granted with 4 levels each with a different degree of control. Level 1 only allows you to move the turtle with commands, Level 2 allows you to set a number of steps to move, Level 3 allows you to place the moves in a sequence, and Level 4 allows you to create multiple sequences of commands and branch to them. You can exit the current Level by pressing * or #.  The way Telly Turtle works is instead of typing in commands like most version of LOGO, Telly Turtle uses commands represented by icons that you select and place with the joystick and fire buttons. Each is for the standard commands you'd expect such as rotating left and right, moving forward, placing the pen up and down, changing the pen color and clearing the screen.

 

 
 

It also has the ability to make sound. there's a note icon that will generate some random notes, a horn icon that will make a horn sound, and the turtle will make a crash noise and shake when you run into the border walls which stops the program as well. it also gives you an error sound when you use up the maximum of 10 commands in a sequence.

 

 
 

There's also a bin icon that will take you to a file storage screen where you can load and save programs. There is one free slot for your current program, and 3 that are taken up by some preprogramed examples, a program that draws shapes, a program that draws a simple maze, and a program that draws a more complex maze. They're incredibly slow, especially the circles, but at least it gives you an idea of what you can do with the software. You can also delete the examples saves to make more space if you need it. This is slightly pointless though since there's no battery backup, so one the systems turned off or reset, you lose your programs and it goes back to the default files.

 

 

 

While were on the topic of graphics and sound, Lets have a look at the hardware. It uses a Zilog Z80 processor clocked at 3.58 MHz, 1K of RAM, 16K of VRAM, and 8K of ROM.

The graphics are generated with a TI TMS9918, providing graphics modes such as 40 x 24 and 32 x 24 text modes, A 256 x 192 Hires graphics mode, and a 64 x 48 low-res Multi color mode, and 32 sprites. All with 16 colors available (with the 16th is a transparent color).

The sound is handled by a Texas Instruments SN76496 sound generator, providing 3 programmable square wave voices and a noise channel.

   

Inside the Colecovision

 

For 1982, Thats pretty impressive! Compared to the competing Atari 2600 and Mattel Intelivision, It was a big leap forward in hardware. To give you an idea, here are 3 console ports of Donkey Kong, The Atari 2600 version, The Intelivision version, and the Colecovision version.

 

 

         

 

The graphics and sound were certainly ahead of most consoles at the time, and are actually on par with most home computers of the time like the Apple II and the Commodore 64. The system defiantly fulfilled Coleco's intention, In fact, some argue that some of the Colecovision arcade ports are better than the actual arcade!

As for Telly Turtle though, While it's decent enough for what it is, there really isn't much point to it since there were many more capable versions of LOGO already available on home computers. In fact, Coleco already had a version of LOGO for the ADAM called Smart LOGO released around the same time. And with that version you had access to a real keyboard, faster drawing speed, the ability to make more complex programs, and access to cassette and floppy drives to store your work. But considering it was aimed at kids, I think that its shortcomings were little to worry about.

I've certainly messed around with it quite a bit a couple points in the past. When I was in high school, I was given a designated school Chromebook, A Lenovo N22.

   

 A Lenovo N22 Chromebook, Similar to the one I used

In my Spare time I often messed around with online emulators to play games on it and one winter afternoon I was messing around with Telly Turtle to show my art teacher it drawing a snowflake.

   

  

Not long after, I realized that the snowflake also resembled a maple leaf. I thought that it would be the perfect logo for MapleSoft, A game company name i thought of earlier. Back when my family was searching for houses in Newport, I was in the car thinking out of the blue that MapleSoft, sounded like a good name for a Vermont video game company. So i took a screen shot of the snowflake, modified it a bit in Photopea (A browser based clone of Photoshop), and was able to make a logo out of it.

   

 

It came in handy too, because for my game design class we had to make a elevator pitch document for one of our projects and I had the logo on hand to add.

   

The Elevator Pitch document I made

 

Later on I changed it because there's already a mathematics and simulation software company under the same name, So I changed it to MapleVision, taking cues from similar Vision based names in gaming like Activision and the Intellivision.

   

The MapleVision Logo (Note on both versions there's a typo that i just realized with 2 P's)

 

I actually hope to turn MapleVision into a real company someday, but for now its just an image idea. After I graduated high school I started to go to NVU and by the time I was taking vector graphics in college last year, I was inadvertently doing what I just did for fun, so I defiantly have come full circle, and i have this game to thank for that!

So what happened afterwards with the Colecovision? Well unfortunately The Video game Crash of 1983, various production problems with planned Expansion Modules, and the poor reception of the Coleco ADAM caused Coleco to pull from the market, discontinuing the Colecovision sometime in 1985. Afterwards Coleco began focusing on making dolls, Specifically the popular Cabbage Patch Kids line that they introduced in 1982.

   

An original cabbage Patch Kids doll (1982)

 

Coleco kept falling down financially ultimately filing for for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and shutting down in 1989. With most of its toy properties being purchased by Hasbro. However the story doesnt end there.

16 years later, In 2005, River West Brands, a Chicago brand revitalization company, re-introduced the Coleco brand to the marketplace. That same year they introduced the Coleco Head-to-Head Direct-to-TV game Plug and play console, which recreated the Coleco Head-to-Head handheld games. However these had very little relation to the original other than the name.

   

The Coleco Head-to-Head Direct-to-TV game Plug and play console (2005)

 

In 2014, River West Brands established the subsidiary Coleco Holdings for their Coleco-branded projects. That same year, Shenzen based AtGames teamed up with Coleco Holdings to release the Colecovision Flashback, A plug and play console with most of the original games included with it (Which also happens to be where I discovered Telly Turtle, as it was built into the unit).

   

The Colecovision Flashback (2014)

 

Unfortunately much like the Intellivision, the story doesn't end well from there. In December 2015, Coleco Holdings announced the development of the Coleco Chameleon, a new cartridge-based video game system that would be able to play new and classic games in the 8, 16, and 32-bit styles, and would launch the following year.

   

The Coleco Chameleon Mockup (2015)

 

However in reality, it was a re-branding of the Retro VGS, a crowdfunded console announced the year before whose Indiegogo campaign failed to secure funding when it ended in early November 2015, with only $63,546 raised of its $1.95 million goal, raising controversy along the way due to the lack of information and concrete plan to finance game development and cartridges for the system and working prototype for fans before the crowdfunding campaign, with the rushed video after the campaign launched showing a supposedly stripped down prototype in action leading to people quickly deducing that it was a scam.

The Re-branding wasn't much better, in fact it may have made things even worse! When it premiered at the Toy Fair in February 2016, Mike Kennedy, The man responsible for both consoles, did his best to astound reporters and followers with a simple demonstration of the system’s hardware capabilities and processing power. At a new launch price of $135 for early backers, and with proper gameplay footage. However in reality all it was was just an SNES 2 (A redesigned cost reduced version of the SNES released in 1997) inside of an Atari Jaguar shell with a flash cartridge to emulate game ROMS.

The Kickstarter was delayed, with Mike claiming they were simply improving the prototype. The team sent pictures of the console in a clear shell to deter detractors which immediately backfired when it was discovered that inside was just a DVR capture card, used for capturing and streaming video and no other hardware what so ever. Now with two fraudulent systems back to back, and still had no actual proof of what the team was working on, backlash as companies, fans, and critics all attacked Mike and the team for what seemed to be nothing more than a hoax followed.

When Coleco Holdings’ request to view a working prototype was left unanswered, they officially pulled their name from the project soon after. With the loss of Coleco Holdings, Mike Kennedy was forced to terminate the project in April, 2016, With Mike’s reputation ruined and the Chameleon never seeing the light of day. Mike would later have some on the Intellivision Amico, which of course also ended in disaster.

Coleco Holdings reputation didn't improve much either, Mainly due to its head Chris Cardillo, Who began to threaten Retro Gaming hobbyists with cease and desist notices while publicly claiming that he supported their work, effectively causing people to go on the attack toward them and even questioning who really owned the rights in the first place. 

In 2018, Coleco Holdings was on Kickstarter again, This time for a limited production of the Coleco Evolved Mini Arcades, modernized versions of Coleco's Table Top arcade series. While those did eventually ship to backers, They were quickly forgotten about.

   

The Coleco Evolved Mini Arcades (2018)

 

As for the original Colecovision, it still does have its loyal fans and is considered by many as one of the greatest game systems ever made. In 2010, IGN ranked the ColecoVision the number #12th place on their list of the 25 best video-game consoles, stating "its incredible accuracy in bringing current-generation arcade hits home.

And that isn't it's only legacy, as it inadvertently caused the home console boom in Japan. According to Masayuki Uemura, the engineer at Nintendo who was head of development for the Famicom (The Japanese version of the NES), The ColecoVision set the bar that influenced how he approached the creation of the Famicom, because during the development stage, Takao Sawano, The chief manager of the project, brought a ColecoVision home to his parents house and they who were impressed by the system's capability to produce smooth graphics, which contrasted with the flickering commonly seen on the popular Atari 2600. Thus the ColecoVision influenced the design of the Famicom and in turn the NES, Not only getting the console market booming in Japan, but revitalizing the video game market in North America.

   

Masayuki Uemura testing the Famicom in 1985

 

The Colecovision is also believed to have to have influenced Nintendo's rival Sega to create their first game console, the Sega SG1000.

   

The Sega SG-1000 (1983)

 

Supposedly Coleco approached Sega in early 1982 with a deal to both license their arcade games for the Colecovision, and distribute the Colecovision in Japan as a Sega product. However for some reason the distribution part of the deal fell through and Sega decided to copy the Colecovisions hardware design for their own console.

There is some evidence to support this theory, as there are some mentions of this licensing deal in the press, as you can see from this issue of Cash Box here, It has an article titled: "Sega, Coleco Announce Distribution Pact", stating that David Rosen, the chairman and chief executive officer of Sega at the time, and Arnold Greenberg, announced that an agreement has been reached for Sega to become the exclusive distributor for the ColecoVision and its game cartridges in Japan, starting in 1983, And this issue of Cash Box is dated April 3rd, 1982, 4 months before the system even launched, So there is definitely evidence that this theory may be true.

   

The issue of CashBox magazine disscussing the Coleco Sega Deal (4/3/82)

 

The story behind the SG1000 is defiantly a story for another day, but true or not, the SG1000 would eventually pave the way for the Sega Mark III (Which became the Master System) and the Sega Mega Drive (Which became the Genesis ) both competing in the market with Nintendo and leading Sega to become a force in the console market right behind Nintendo for 18 years.

   

Left to right: The Sega Mark III (1985), The Sega Mega Drive (1988), The Sega Master System (1986), and The Sega Genesis (1989)

 

So needless to say, without the Colecovision, perhaps the NES and the Sega Master System might have never happened and ultimately never causing the video game market to survive in America beyond 1984. The Colecovison is also still popular with homebrew developers creating new games for the system. While Telly Turtle wont be much for most people beyond just making simple patterns, the rest of the Colecovison's library is defiantly worth a look either through original hardware or emulation.

Anyway that wraps it up for my look at the Telly Turtle for the , and the Colecovision itself. I hope you've enjoyed it, and as always, Thanks for reading! see you next time!