Here is my contribution to the nostalgia portion of your
    great page.  Please feel free to include it if you can.
    
     -Tim Stradling
      TStradli@Ameriquest.com
      Philadelphia, PA  USA
    

Awash in nostalgia I sit and begin my story...

From unknown origins, we got a Telestar system.  I was extremely young
at the time (maybe 5), and I don't remember much about it other than it 
was brown, had a gun attachment, some paddles, and maybe even a steering
wheel.  I can't be sure about the steering wheel though.  Anyway
as it had only a few games (or maybe it was just us who only had a
few games) my older brother and I grew bored of it.  To this day I
don't know what became of that unit.  It just mysteriously disappeared.
Jump ahead a few years...I had my allowance revoked until I cleaned my 
room, and since that wasn't about to happen anytime soon I rarely got 
to play coin-ops.  I really sucked at just about every arcade game I played
except for maybe Galaga and Astro Blaster.  I still remember playing Astro
Blaster in an arcade on vacation one year for what seemed like an hour.
Lots of people had Atari 2600s, including the neighbor triplets, but I 
don't think I ever liked the graphics enough to want one.  When we saw 
the Colecovision though, it was as if everything changed.  
We needed one.   We had begged, pleaded, and promised our souls to 
the room-cleaning fairies if we could get one for Christmas. 
We came down the steps on Christmas morning and tore through our presents.
No Colecovision.  It was afterwards that my Mom pointed us over towards the
tv.  A big box and a smaller box with my brother's and my name on them.  
Sure enough, they came through.  My Dad hooked it up and we played Donkey 
Kong all morning.  Another hot game at the time was Zaxxon, and my Mom put 
herself on a waiting list for it, and we got that game too.  I was better
at the Colecovision than my older brother and he eventually stopped playing 
it.  I think the third game we got was Cosmic Avenger, and the fourth was
Venture which was bought with collected change that my Dad cashed in for
us at the bank.  The Colecovision migrated to the basement from the kitchen
and the basement became my gaming domain.  We got the occasional game at
Kiddie City when they were cheap enough.  I think I wound up with about 35
when the dust settled.  The Adam computer got clearance tagged a few years 
later and I talked my Mom into getting it one Sunday.  
I hooked it up and also managed to swing a data pack with Choplifter and 
another game on it (A.E.?)  I really had little use for a computer at the 
time, and I didn't know that the whole system was going under.  I was so 
curious and remember calling Colecovision Tech Support to ask how to turn 
the screen different colors in Basic.  I think the extent of the computer's 
use other than the few Adam games we had was printing out my high scores 
and phone numbers.  Eventually the printer string broke and it's use was 
strictly for gaming.  I was also interested in the idea of the cassette.  
I cut holes in audio tape cases to match the Data pack holes thinking I 
could use audios for blank data packs.  Eventually I got bored of the 
games I had and they stopped production of the system.  It sat and it sat, 
but I had so many fond memories of it that I couldn't bear to put it away.  
My brother eventually put it away when rearranging the basement.  A few 
years ago I dug it out, but the controllers were shot.  A few months later, 
one of my brother's friends fell ill and picked up a Colecovision at a flea 
market.  My brother "loaned" him all our games.  The guy eventually died 
and we didn't have the heart to call up his family and reclaim our games.

 Last week I was playing a clone of Ms Pac Man on my computer at work, 
and wondered if someone, somewhere had made a Donkey Kong clone.  After 
about 10 minutes of surfing I stared at my screen.  The AdamEm Colecovision 
emulator stared back.  We looked longingly into each other's eyes.  
After a brief downloading interlude we tangoed.  Armed with sixty-something 
games I dove into my childhood in the basement once again.  I was once more 
sprawled out on the black and white checkered couch (which was the most 
comfortable couch ever made, by the way) playing the heck out of those 
games.  Unfortunately I don't have the roms for all of the games I owned
as Telegames seems to have pressured the sites into removing their rom
images.  If anyone out there wants to send me the Telegames roms or tell
me where I could ftp them I would be forever indebted.  So here I sit,
telling my story to whomever has kept reading this far and think of how
remarkable it is that so many memories have been rekindled 14 years later,
and wonder if those programmers knew what kind of joy they were creating 
in a little kid's mind so long ago.  Perhaps it's time I visited a few
flea markets and yard sales of my own and reclaimed a few more memories.