ADAM Supergames

The readers post their own reviews.
Alienblue

ADAM Supergames

Postby Alienblue » October 27th, 2007, 9:13 am

Okay, Atarifever loves his 7800 more than life itself. I can dig that. I felt that way about my ADAM computer. For those who've never seen one, Adam came complete with a daisy-wheel printer and Dattasette drive (like a cassette but continuous loop- the good: it loads as fast as a disk. the bad: it broke easily. My Donkey Kong tape is broke!); it was the first "complete" computer package and cost $700 (for $600 you could buy it as an add-on to Colecovision; it really just used the CVs power). I loved it because it could play almost ALL the Colecovision games (you should see FROGGER on an RGB monitor!) and as I just said hooked up to a monitor, PLUS it had up to 128K of RAM on the Dattasetes and some of the best games EVER MADE were released on tape. Most of these also came out later on Disc:

Donkey Kong A+
This has EVERYTHING the coin op has, from the opening scene of Kong climbing the ladders to the conveyers and Kong falling AND it presented the screens it the right order. Magnificent!

Donkey Kong Junior A
Unlike DK, they used the Colecovision cart ROM as a starting point (DK was re-programmed from scratch), so the graphics are just okay, but the play is arcade perfect. Again, all four screens; Vines, chains, vines, jumpboard chains twice, THEN a cute intermission shows junior floating on balloons with the words "Keep going to Marios hideout!"; Again the best DKJR!

Zaxxon A+
BETTER than the coin op! It starts just like the cart but at the end of Asteroid 2 you fight ZAXXON JUNIOR!; beat him and there are FOUR MORE asteroids to fly through before you get to a mean ZAXXON! Beat him and-this may be a first, before NES- you get an actual game ending! Superb!

Dragons Lair A+
If, like me, you HATE the "real" Dragons Lair you will love this! Actual action screens (jump on ropes,swing over lava; use sword against green rats; fight SINGE in real time!) interspersed with three "watch the flash" screens-Skeleton heads, tentacle and bridge. The graphics, on a monitor, or MUCH better than ANYTHING I've ever seen on NES!-3 years earlier!

The following games are prototypes but complete:

Super Cabbage Patch kids C+
Good graphics and sound but I prefer the simpler cart. Probably stopped too soon, not "super" enough. The bees are cartoony and animation more fluid though.

Super Sub-Roc A
I never liked Sub-Roc 3-D but this game converted me! They again started with the cart ROM but added a LOT... more bonus ships, an underwater minefield, a BOSS mechanical Octopus and amazing 3-D scenes of planes and ships hitting you-OUCH!

All in all, you can see why I love ADAM so much! It was an amazing computer, somewhere between C=>64 and Amiga in capability. If you ever find one with these games grab it!
One more thing; the first 3 games came in boxes shaped like the coin-op cabinet-too cool dude!

gleebergloben1
Posts: 687
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

ADAM Supergames

Postby gleebergloben1 » October 28th, 2007, 12:16 pm

hey alienblue.  thanks for the reviews.  i've been reading some of my old "video games" magazines circa 1983-84, and the mags had many articles related to the adam computer.  coleco was planning a 'super games module' that was supposed to make the colecovision many times more powerful, and then dropped the device in favor of the adam computer.  the problem with the adam computer is that when it first came out, over 30% were defective right out of the box.  that negative response killed the system.  'video games' magazine and several others said that the the adam computer was a pretty good one, but it couldn't overcome the bad initial publicity from the early defects.  it's too bad because i think colecovision was a really great system, and if it had played its cards right, it could have beaten out nintendo and the NES as the system of the 80's.


Alienblue

ADAM Supergames

Postby Alienblue » October 29th, 2007, 4:36 am

Thanks Gleeber....the crash of 83-84 was both bad and good; good because I got a LOT of Colecovision boxed games for five bucks and the $700 computer for $399! The Dattasette is iffy but better than a standard cassette to be sure (are there ANY old 1981 computer casstete games that still load?); the system looks and feels just like a mordern PC clone, with it's detachable keyboard and all-a HUGE milestone in cheap computers at the time. I agree that the best Adam/CV games can go toe-to-toe with NES anyday! There WERE problems with the initial run, but so were there with lots of other systems (coffX360coff). In my own experiance what killed ADAM was the COLECO brand. When I tried to get a new printer ribbon "COLECO? THAT'S A TOY!" were the exact words. Coleco was a TOY company and not taken seriously at all. Atari felt the sting from being "just games" so imagine how hard it was to market a computer with the same brand as Cabbage Patch dolls!


Return to “Reader Reviews”