DiRoccoVision • 2026 • Homebrew • Strategy / Simulation
Run the video store. Keep the shelves straight. Be kind - rewind.
Speech Synthesizer EnabledThis game talks when the ADAM Speech Synthesizer by Lundy Electronics is connected.
| Platform | ColecoVision |
| Category | Homebrew |
| Genre | Strategy / Simulation |
| Release Year | 2026 |
| Players | 1 Player |
| ROM Size | 32KB |
| Media | ROM File |
| Controller | Standard Controller |
| Speech | Enabled — ADAM Speech Synthesizer by Lundy Electronics |
| Publisher | DiRoccoVision |
Welcome to BKR. It's the late 1980s, and you're the clerk at the neighbourhood video store on the busiest nights of the week.
The whole store is on one screen. The New Releases wall runs along the back, under the store's neon BKR sign. The racks in the middle hold Comedy, Action, Family, Horror, Drama and Classics, each in its own colour. At the front is the counter: the returns, the rewinder, the register and the snack display.
Customers come in the door. Some bring back one, two or three tapes and leave them on the returns counter, which has room for six. Some are late, and the fee is collected when you pick the tape up. A tape whose label is on the wrong side wasn't rewound: put it in the rewinder, which runs by itself for a few seconds while you get on with something else, and come back for it. Take each tape to the shelf of its colour.
Other customers browse. They take a tape to the register and wait in line, and if you leave them waiting too long, they walk out. Some want candy, so run to the snack display and bring it to the register. Some stand in the aisle with a ? over their head and need help finding a movie. And some browse, change their minds and put the tape back on the wrong shelf, where it lies sideways until you notice it and take it home.
You carry up to three tapes at a time, of any colour, so the game rewards a good route. Every lost customer counts against the store's rating, and run out of stars and the store closes for good. There are three nights: a quiet Monday, a busy Friday and a Saturday rush. At 11:00 the doors lock, but the night isn't over until the line is served, the counter is clear, the rewinder is empty and every tape is back in its place.
With a Lundy speech module the store talks: a welcome at the door, a reminder to be kind and rewind, and the call at closing time. Switch the voice on or off on the menu. Press * to pause.
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2026-09-22_12-34-09.mp4
Be Kind, Rewind started as a one-page idea: one store on one screen, and the challenge is deciding what needs you next, not reflexes. The store was built tile by tile for the ColecoVision's Graphics II mode. Each 8-pixel row of a tile may only have two colours, so the tapes on the shelves are graphics, not objects. Only the tapes in play are tracked, all 84 of them, slot by slot, and a tape a customer leaves on the wrong shelf stays exactly where it was put.
The neon sign doesn't redraw its letters. The game rewrites only the colour of each letter's tiles, a letter at a time, so it costs almost nothing while the store is busy.
Every revision is played by a pilot program in the MAME emulator for whole weeks at a time. It runs at a normal pace, at a slower human pace, distracted, and under deliberate rushes of customers. The checks confirm that no tape is ever lost, that the store can always be recovered, and that the clerk can always get out from behind the counter. Those runs found problems that would otherwise have reached players: a way to get stuck holding tapes nobody could take, and a Monday that sent almost nobody to the checkout.
| Developer | DiRoccoVision |
