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COLECO Modules and Cartridges

The ColecoVision is Coleco Industries' second generation home video game console and was released August 1982. The ColecoVision offered arcade-quality graphics and gaming style, the ability to play Atari 2600 video games, and the means to expand the system's basic hardware.

Released with a catalog of twelve launch titles, with an additional ten games announced for 1982, approximately 125 titles in total were published as ROM cartridges for the system between 1982 and 1984.

Some of the more popular games include Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Carnival, Lady Bug, Mouse Trap, and Zaxxon. Coleco also popularized lesser known arcade games, such as Venture, Cosmic Avenger, and Mr. Do!. In some cases, the console versions were arguably superior to the arcade versions, as seen in Space Panic. Coleco also made ports of many of these games for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision, in an effort to broaden its market.

All first-party cartridges and most third-party software titles feature a twelve-second pause before presenting the game select screen. This delay results from an intentional loop in the console's BIOS to enable on-screen display of the ColecoVision brand. Companies like Parker Brothers, Activision, and Micro Fun bypassed this loop, which necessitated embedding portions of the BIOS outside the delay loop, further reducing storage available to actual game programming.