I had a friend down the street from my house whose family got the ColecoVision in 1982. The neighborhood kids and I would, with exceeding excitement, go there to play it. I was 15.
The ColecoVision was the premier purveyor of arcade game ports. It had the best verions of: Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, Centipede, Defender, Frogger, Front Line, Galaxian and Q*bert. I remember being awed by the accuracy of Donkey Kong and Zaxxon, but I had the most anticipation for playing Front Line. Eventually, the action game Venture became my favorite on the system.
TV Time: ColecoVision Commercial and Steering Wheel Peripheral for use with Turbo.
I missed the Colecovision. I was a little young, and plus my family had computers at home. I didn't get my first dedicated gaming systems until the Game Boy in 1989 and the SNES in 1994, so I had to mooch off of my friends, who went from the Atari 2600 to the NES. I will say that the Atari 8-bit computer version of Donkey Kong was awesome, and it was one of the few versions that had all four levels from the arcade. Most versions dropped the Cement Factory screen, including the NES version that Nintendo itself made.
The Colecovision games that look the most interesting to me are the ports of Exidy games like Mouse Trap, Venture, and Pepper II, mostly because those are hard to find otherwise. I think there's a Colecovision collection on Steam.
One thing I'd like to explore is the Atari decks/computers after the 2600. You remind me that maybe I should look for a 7800. I've never owned that one.
Oh cool! There is the Colecovision Flashback on Steam!
I didn't have a ColecoVision, nor did I have any friends or relatives who had one, so my only experiences with it were from commercials and store displays. I remember one display let you play Donkey Kong, and I remember it being pretty impressive for the time. They should make a ColecoVision collection!
SanAndreas just pointed me to the Colecovision Flashback Collection on Steam. I used to have the Colecovision Flashback deck that came out just before Toys R Us closed up. I imagine these are the games from that deck. There are a lot of them.