From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Gottlieb’s orange oddball hops his isometric pyramid, dodges Coily and changes every cube under his feet. Parker Brothers’ ColecoVision conversion is the classic eighties home version.
Stern’s Frenzy took Berzerk’s robot mazes and added destructible walls, rooms with machinery to shoot and a skeletons-and-tanks remix. The ColecoVision got the definitive home version.
Exidy’s Mouse Trap arms a cheese-hunting mouse with colour-coded trapdoors and a dog transformation. The ColecoVision conversion keeps the full arcade maze — all six doors of it.
Sega’s Turbo was the driving game Coleco bundled with Expansion Module #2 — a steering wheel and pedal in the box. Vertical-scrolling racing with weather, tunnels and nerve.
One button, one Smurf, endless fences to hop: Coleco’s gentle platformer sent a Smurf through fields and forest to rescue Smurfette, and charmed a generation of younger players.
Universal’s clown digs his own maze, drops apples on bad guys and spells EXTRA with diamonds. The ColecoVision version is the classic home port of a genuine arcade masterpiece.
Exidy’s Pepper II stitches four mazes into one sprawling chase, arms you briefly with pitchfork fury, and puts the devil himself on patrol. The ColecoVision’s most frantic maze game.
Exidy’s treasure-hunting oddity sent a smiling hero into monster-filled chambers years before dungeon crawlers were a genre — and the ColecoVision version keeps every room and every Hallmonster.
Universal’s spinning-door maze chase was the ColecoVision’s secret weapon in the Pac-Man wars — a brighter, cleverer maze game that many players preferred to the famous one.
Sega’s isometric fortress run was the ColecoVision’s great visual flex in 1982 — and the home version kept the altitude gauge, the fuel pressure and the robot finale.