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ColecoVision

The ColecoVision is a second-generation video-game console produced by Coleco Industries. It retailed for $174.99 and had a Zilog Z80 CPU at 3.58 MHz with 8KB of RAM. Due to poor sales of the console (maybe related to the video-game crash in North America) Coleco Industries filed for bankruptcy soon after. It was notable for providing a close-to-arcade experiences for some games. Masayuki Uemura, head of Famicom development, stated that the ColecoVision set the bar that influenced how he approached the creation of the Famicom.

Coleco released the Expansion Module #1 that allowed the ColecoVision to play Atari 2600 games. Atari did not like this, settling out of court with Coleco to be licensed under Atari's patents.

The Expansion Module #3 would be released that would convert the ColecoVision into the Coleco Adam home computer.

This system scrapes metadata for the colecovision group(s) and loads the colecovision set from the currently selected theme, if available.

Quick reference

  • Emulator: RetroArch
  • Core: libretro: bluemsx
  • Folder: /userdata/roms/colecovision
  • Accepted ROM formats: .bin, .col, .rom, .zip, .7z

BIOS

No ColecoVision emulator in Batocera needs a BIOS file to run.

ROMs

Place your ColecoVision ROMs in /userdata/roms/colecovision.

Emulators

RetroArch

RetroArch (formerly SSNES), is a ubiquitous frontend that can run multiple “cores”, which are essentially the emulators themselves. The most common cores use the libretro API, so that's why cores run in RetroArch in Batocera are referred to as “libretro: (core name)”. RetroArch aims to unify the feature set of all libretro cores and offer a universal, familiar interface independent of platform.

RetroArch configuration

RetroArch offers a Quick Menu accessed by pressing [HOTKEY] + South button (B SNES) which can be used to alter various things like RetroArch and core options, and controller mapping. Most RetroArch related settings can be altered from Batocera's EmulationStation.

Standardized features available to all cores of this emulator: colecovision.videomode, colecovision.ratio, colecovision.smooth, colecovision.shaders, colecovision.pixel_perfect, colecovision.decoration, colecovision.game_translation

ES setting name batocera.conf key Description ⇒ ES option key value
Settings that apply to all cores of this emulator
GRAPHICS BACKEND colecovision.gfxbackend Choose your graphics rendering
⇒ OpenGL opengl, Vulkan vulkan.
AUDIO LATENCY colecovision.audio_latency Audio latency in milliseconds, turn it up if you hear crackles
⇒ 256 256, 192 192, 128 128, 64 64, 32 32, 16 16, 8 8.

libretro: Bluemsx

libretro: Bluemsx configuration
ES setting name batocera.conf key Description ⇒ ES option key value
Settings that apply to all systems this core supports
REDUCE SPRITE FLICKERING colecovision.bluemsx_nospritelimits Remove the 4 sprite per line limit
⇒ Off False, On True.

Controls

The default button mapping for the ColecoVision's controls is as follows:

Troubleshooting

For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.

  • systems/colecovision.txt
  • Last modified: 16 months ago
  • by atari