Color Dreams was a company that developed video games for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). While most companies that developed NES games obtained an official license from Nintendo to produce game cartridges, Color Dreams was unique in that it developed NES games without an official license. To produce these unlicensed games, Color Dreams had to reverse engineer the NES to work around the system's "lock out" chip. The company successfully reverse engineered the system, developed a game (Baby Boomer), and released it in 1989. Several other titles followed in 1989 and 1990, including Captain Comic, Crystal Mines, and Robo Demons. Despite Color Dreams' efforts to work around the NES's built in protection, consumers frequently had difficulty getting their systems to play Color Dreams titles, sometimes having to restart their systems multiple times to play the games.

As a result of its reputation for releasing poor games, Color Dreams formed the label Bunch Games in 1990. Bunch Games was meant to be a label that Color Dreams could use to release lower quality games so that its reputation would not be damaged further. In 1991, Color Dreams formed Wisdom Tree for the purpose of releasing Christianity-themed games. The Wisdom Tree label resulted in Color Dreams' best selling titles, including Spiritual Warfare and Bible Adventures. While Wisdom Tree remains active today and is still selling religious video games, Color Dreams quit the video game business in the mid 1990s. Wisdom Tree is no longer associated with Color Dreams.

One Color Dreams project that was never released was a game based on the movie Hellraiser. The game cartridge, or "Super Cartridge" as it was called at the time, contained an extra processor that modified the tiles in the cartridge RAM without the NES processor knowing. Doing this allowed for graphic effects such as having a fully animated moving background, something rarely seen on the NES, running without the lag usually found with such tricks. The extra processor also performed palette swaping between scans of the TV to give the illusion of extra color. Between the delays, development problems, the fact that there wasn't a large market for unlicensed games built on horror movies, and the exhorbinant amount of money it took to make each "Super Cartridge," the project was finally abandoned when Nintendo announced the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Color Dreams games, as well as the games of its two subsidiary labels, are frequently critcized as having sub-par graphics and sound when compared to other NES titles.

Color Dreams NES Games

• Baby Boomer
• Captain Comic
• Challenge of the Dragon
• Crystal Mines
• King Neptune's Adventure
• Master Chu & the Drunken Fu
• Menace Beach
• Metal Fighter
• Operation Secret Storm
• P'radikus Conflict
• Pesterminator
• Raid 2020
• Robo Demons
• Secret Scout
• Silent Assault
• Castle of Deceipt (Bunch)
• Galactic Crusader (Bunch)
• Mission Cobra (Bunch)
• Moon Ranger (Bunch)
• Taggin Dragon (Bunch)
• Bible Adventures (Wisdom Tree)
• Bible Buffet (Wisdom Tree)
• Exodus (Wisdom Tree)
• Joshua (Wisdom Tree)
• King of Kings (Wisdom Tree)
• Spiritual Warfare (Wisdom Tree)
• Sunday Funday (Wisdom Tree)

References

1. NESWorld.com
2. [1]
3. planetnintendo.com