Coleco has announced a new cartridge-based console

Coleco’s been pretty quiet since the Sonic, but it has just announced a partnership with Retro Video Game Systems to produce the Chameleon, which it plans to launch next year. Long-lost video game pioneer and creator of the ColecoVision, Coleco, is putting out its first console in almost three decades with the Coleco Chameleon. But there’s more. Apparently, there will also be brand new games with similar graphics available too, so Coleco is smartly cashing in on the resurrected popular retro-style 2D titles.

The console’s defining quality is its reversion to game cartridges, a technology that hasn’t been in a major console since the Nintendo 64. Retro VGS’s crowd-funding campaign sought $1.95 million to build a console based in no small part on the Atari Jaguar, but failed to reach anywhere near its goal before the campaign was pulled.

According to Coleco, the console will be releasing sometime in 2016 with two features; the Chameleon will “accurately play compilations of favorite games from the past” and “play brand-new games in the 8, 16, and 32-bit styles”. President Mike Kennedy adds, “The COLECO Chameleon is a love-letter to all the classic cartridge based gaming systems that came before it and we love the fact it will succeed COLECO’s successful Telstar and Colecovision product lines”.

We won’t have to wait long for the Coleco Chameleon. He says the console will transport players to “a simpler time where games were all about great gameplay and fun”.

The Chameleon is going to be shown off at Toy Fair New York 2016 from February 13-16, and will launch in 2016.