For the uninitiated, Colecovision was a 1982 video game console produced by the Connecticut Leather Company "CO-LE-CO" and was a direct competitor to the Atari VCS/2600, Mattel Intellivision, and (kinda) the Magnavox Odyssey 2 video game systems. It's often cited as being more powerful than the others, with more sophisticated graphics. All the same, Coleco didn't survive the 1980's- and the Colecovision was their last true console. There's a whole Wiki article on it
HERE for those interested.
As for this system here, it had a few other goodies with it, including these crazy things:
Wikipedia describes these as the "Super Action Controllers" and I'm rather impressed with them. It's like the guard on a
pirate's cutlass, and they're surprisingly solid in the hand. Like, if I'd never seen them before and someone said they were for some motion control VR setup, I would have believed it. Four buttons, a number pad, a joystick (not microswitches as far as I can tell, but solid) and a "scroll wheel" that no doubt helps when playing pong round out a wide array of input options for an 8-bit machine. According to Wikipedia, a few games were made with these specifically in mind that use all the buttons, so I did a bit of eBay shopping so we can all give em' a whirl when we're together again.
