Justin

On the topic of rough boxes, here's a feeBay purchase that came in the mail yesterday.  Another title I haven't previously tried; it's come up in several books I've recently read and has been mentioned several times in the Atari discords amongst all the 2600+ excitement!
 

Yesterday, I met up with a member of a local retro computer society and made a trade (something I rarely do). He was offering the Lego 2600 set. He said he didn't get any joy from it sitting on the shelf and had more fun assembling it. I'm totally the opposite 🙂 Assembling stuff is not my favorite pastime anymore, so being able to get one fully assembled was a bonus. He did include the manual if I wanted to take it apart and put it together myself though 😂 
I traded my spare heavy sixer. In my mind, I traded one display piece for another. The Lego 2600 has heft and it feels about as heavy as a real 2600. I am very impressed by the quality. If only it was cheaper (around $75), I probably would have bought it new, but there was no way I was going to buy a display piece for what this set costs at retail. Having said that, it is a marvel and $200 doesn't seem unreasonable.

Stellar Track for 2600!
Well, I already owned a box and cart (both in really bad condition), which you can see in pic #1.  That's my cart on the right.  I purchased a cart and manual on ebay.  It turns out, the seller was Willie from ArcadeUSA! 
My box has a price sticker on the top (original price $29.99 with a sale price of $23.99 in pencil).  Anyway, I put the better cart and manual in my old box and now you can see it on my shelf.
Question for you guys:  Where is the best place to buy the protective clear box covers for Atari games?

I finally got around to unboxing my copy of the Atari XP re-issue of Centipede.  It's my favorite cart so far.  I love the green case, "marquee" and full color screen print.  The box art is too dark on black though.  Here are some pics and a link to my stop motion unboxing.

I *finally* found a nice box for Atari 400.  It came with all the inserts as well.  And a bonus 400 that is very dirty but does work. 
My plan was to put my pristine 400 into this box, and I still may do that...BUT the serial number of this dirty 400 matches what is on the box, so it should probably stay together. 
New plan:  Clean up this 400 as thoroughly as possible, make sure it fully works and has a GTIA (not CTIA), and then attempt to upgrade the memory to 48k.  If all that goes well, maybe sell off my current 400. 
 

It hasn’t even been two years since my last update again but I’m back! I moved some stuff around when I was back for thanksgiving to see my family. I’m in college now so I don’t live with all of this stuff anymore. Maybe tomorrow I can post some pictures of my dorm room video game setup if anyone is interested. But this is what the old game room looked like when I left yesterday.

OK, this one is just a cool optical illusion...

Speaking of monetary value. is this dud worth anything?

Oh the 1970's wood paneling, small TV screens that seemed large and of course the Atari 2600!

One would hope so.

Because they are using an emulator, I can almost guarantee this will be fixable with a firmware update. 

I have to wonder why they chose to map the 7800 buttons reversed.  There might a technical reason for this.  Perhaps a question to add on my thread of questions for Atari related to the 2600+?  Atari 2600+ Questions

HA!! I guess we missed the memo - NOT supposed to take the cart orally once daily

Hey guys, I've been busy building a backlog of videos for the holidays and I've been pretty successful but it hasn't left me with much time to browse the forums or engage too much.  Sorry about that but I think we have some cool stuff coming up and some even cooler stuff that just released!
Everything is becoming so expensive these days!  I want one with the mod to let it output to televisions and monitors and man, I don't know if I can swing that anytime soon lol.  I might get a stock one if I find a good deal and just record gameplay via emulation for the videos but that sort of feels wrong to me.  But we'll figure it out eventually we always do!
 
Thank you so much, I really wanted to just stimulate people to dig a little deeper and think more independently or at least find out what it was all really about.  And honestly it made me dig deeper too after seeing some of the comments and thoughts.  So a follow up might be in the future at some point!
 
Great point, a video on some of the unsung heroes would be pretty cool, or the more ignored figures who influenced Atari.  I wanted a big part of the channel to feature the creators and key community members so I think that's a fantastic point and something I could help shine a light on.
Thanks for the great input and comments guys, your all fantastic!
So I started my week of giving thanks to the Atari 5200 on Thanksgiving with my Five to Try series on the Atari 5200.  My intentions was to start a series over the holidays that I could get out quickly and hopefully still have it be entertaining and help people discover some new games or give recommendations for people just entering a collection for a console.  The series will continue over December with Five to Try Hidden Gems on the 7800 and Five to Try Atari 2600 Red Box Games.  Keep an eye for those over the next few weeks, but lets get back to the 5200!
So 3 days later, on Sunday our Thanksgiving series, giving thanks to the 5200 continued as I put out our first 5200 review on the channel for Gremlins.  This was one of the games I used to drool over wishing it had come to the Atari 7800.  But it remained a 5200 exclusive... that I can finally play!  So I jumped right into it and I give my thoughts on whether or not its worth the high asking price on eBay.  With so many great titles going for much less, is it worth spending 60-100 dollars on that single game?  I don't know but I can tell you if it at least plays well!
And now I have an extra surprise video releasing on Tuesday, 5 days after Thanksgiving and wrapping up our week of giving thanks to the 5200 (while everybody else gives thanks to the 2600+... maybe my timing wasn't great lol) as I do another review on my first 5200 homebrew game, Adventure 2!  This one I had my eye on since before getting the console, and I'm excited to share some thoughts and a little fact with you guys as well.  As a new owner of the 5200, I'm curious to find out if the homebrew scene is as fun to explore as the 7800 scene is.  And I have a lot more cool games I want to explore from Video61 and GoodDealGames as well, so 5200 homebrew will hopefully be a big part of the channel this upcoming year.  So check out the Adventure 2 review tomorrow, November 29th at 2pm Eastern Standard Time.  Or whenever you want to watch it!  Its a youtube video after all its not going anywhere.

 
That wraps up our week of giving thanks to the 5200, I hope you guys enjoyed it.  This Thursday I look as some Jaguar games that have been labeled as awful and give my thoughts if I agree or not, based on first impression!  And then on Sunday, I review Atari Mania for the VCS 800, Switch, Steam and everything else, probably your toaster too! 
Tons more videos have been worked on and completed or close to it as I'll be away for most of the holiday and wont have time to work on videos, but their all set to auto upload.  As long as I'm healthy and able I'll keep the 2 video a week promise!  Ok guys, let me know what you think of the videos, what you want to see from the channel, and thank you all for the supports!  Have happy and safe holidays if I don't hear from you anytime soon and remember to stay classy Atarians.  And yes I robbed that from Ron Burgandy and I kind of like it lol

I got a good one that I just signed up for:  Hulu and Disney+ for $2.99 per month for one year.  Just go to the hulu homepage and sign up, and make sure to choose the Disney+ add-on.  Deal expires on 11/28
 

@Smell Dawg what a coincidence— look at what my personal copy looks like! 

So if I want to improve any cartridge game I just have to put it in an Atari shell and put a better label on it??  Will Gradius fit in an Atari shell?

237220.  Don't tell the boss, but I played during my lunch time today when I'm not so dang tired and BOOM.  The shields turn pink at 200k and things get wild.
 

My first score. 51776 played on junior with europad controller.
 

Had a lil gaming timing this evening. 
149,670
Holy smokes Ultimate gets hairy quickly - you the man @socrates63!
edit: Played Atari50 on Xbox

124681 game 6

Check this out, quite promising in my opinion:
Hope to see it finalized some day...

The fun is back... well, it never left for many of us but this Atari 2600+ might bring in more admirers of the Atari platform.  Nice HDMI direct connection with widescreen mode and plays 2600 and 7800 games.  See what I found inside the physical system.

00:00 - Intro
00:26 - Opening the 2600+
02:10 - Close Look Inside the 2600+
04:36 - Playing 10 Games in 1
06:25 - Playing Original 2600 Pitfall
07:23 - Playing 7800 Food Fight
08:02 - Recap

I can’t believe I missed this post.  
 
At one point I had all three systems in my collection about a decade ago.  I will give my biased opinion.
I understand why people loved the Intellivision.  I get it.  But I’m a single child and it felt like most of the Intv games were aimed at two players at first.  I did enjoy Lock n Chase, Beauty and the Beast, Snafu, and Auto Racing but I couldn’t use the controllers for very long.  I absolutely hated those side fire buttons.
Colecovision I had more fun with discovering games that my 5200 didn’t get.  Space Fury and Pepper II were my favorites. The controllers were more comfortable than the INtV controllers so I could do an endurance run if I chose to.  I actually enjoyed the CV and should have held on to it.
Now we come to the 5200.  As much as I love my 5200 it is not without its fair share of issues.  I agree the controllers are the breaking point of the entire system.  I got use to the controllers as a kid.  It was an Atari and I wasn’t going to ask to exchange it for fear I wouldn’t get one at all.  So I learned the system.  It grew on and up with me.  
 
Now…if all three would have continued to support themselves and each other they all might have survived the game crash.  A game crash that went by me unnoticed.  There were prototypes for the 5200 that appear complete that should have been released.  I’m sure those with 5200 systems would have loved Jr PAC-Man, Super Pac-Man, Sinistar, Millipede (mom was actually expecting that one), and others.  Those would have been huge sellers, game crash or not. I’m sure there were unfinished games for the other two as well.  But all three companies, even if they hated each other, made games for one another.  And you don’t see that these days.  I know the 5200 didn’t get games from Mattel or Coleco but those two did support the 2600 and Atari developed games for both competitors.
Bottomline: I agree. All three should have just continued to make games for themselves and each other. In doing so they might have survived the crash.
As it is today each one could not be here without the others.  Their games fill blanks the other guys didn’t fill. I don’t like the intellivision controllers but I liked the games. I enjoyed the Cv more but at times the controllers seemed sloppy.  The 5200 I do enjoy most but I can honestly say that my hands have grown and make the controllers a bit uncomfortable…and that’s something I don’t remember experiencing before.
id love to see the 5100 get a release and id love to add the Video System X to my collection as the holy grail item.