Too Good to be First-Party: Coleco’s Tabletop Donkey Kong Junior

What was home video gaming like in the early 1980’s? You might consider picturing things like the Atari 2600 or the Intellivision, and those were certainly a big part of it. But another big part were the category I’ll call segmented-display games; portable systems like the Game & Watch, but also more stationary “portable arcade” machines. And in the United States, no name in home mini-arcades was bigger than that of the Connecticut Leather Company, or if you’re a friend, Coleco.

Not made of leather

The Coleco Mini-Arcade line were a big deal. In 1982, Electronic Games magazine reported that Coleco was reporting initial advance sales orders of over 4 million for the first four games in its series alone, with 1.5 million units of Pac-Man sold already. Note that at the time of this article two of those four games weren’t even out yet, and even more were added later on. Four million units is more than consoles like the ColecoVision or the Sega SG-1000, nothing to sneeze at.

The technology most of these used were vacuum flourescent displays. These are pretty nice-looking and give off their own light, but beyond that are segmented displays similar to LCD watches (or Game & Watches,