Keatah

Man.  You remind me of myself when I was 16, except I had moved on to the NES, SMS and 7800.  You have a very impressive collection for your age (no pun intended).  Even 16 year old me would have been wowed by your collection.  I'm 46, have an impressive collection myself, but am amazed at how a 16 year old is that into the old Atari stuff.  And into vinyl, too?  
You mention being able to talk us older gen folk that lived through it.  You do realize that you are also living through it?  Even if it is used stuff, the ambition and passion is there.  You are really no different than the rest of us who did get to experience it.  

Many many things as long as its something I hadn't seen in a good number or years. Literally anything. Sometime I may expand upon that.
 

Many many things as long as its something I hadn't seen in a good number or years. Literally anything. Sometime I may expand upon that.
 

25 years ago today I knowingly, wantonly, became a classic gamer. It all began with finding E.T. and Asteroids for .99 cents in the clearance aisle at Kay-Bee. The moment I knowingly stepped into classic gaming, a hobby I thought I was alone in. These are the the actual cartridges I bought that day, the kernel of my collection.
 
Prologue
The entire summer leading up to this moment something triggered in my brain that kept bringing me back to Atari. It was like waking up from a dream and remembering that you had left something behind that you truly loved but had forgotten about. These were the peak years of Mortal Combat and Street Fighter 2. Suddenly games seemed violent and aggressive. One day I was hit with a moment of clarity, going "wait wait wait, hold on a minute.. whatever happened to Centipede and Asteroids and Galaga and Pac-Man? Whatever happened to Atari? Where did that all go?" It seemed like secret knowledge or something. Like a lost civilization. The city of Atlantis and all of the advanced ancient technology lost with it. I had so many fun times playing Atari with my family when I was little, and then we moved on. It had been years. I had forgotten what a lot of this stuff even looked like. Suddenly I felt compelled to get my hands on an Atari 7800 and preserve and play as much Atari stuff as I could.
I hadn’t been able to find anything in stores or in classified ads, and my mom suggested dialing the operator and asking for the phone number to Atari in California, calling them and seeing if I could order Atari items through mail order. I called Atari and spoke with Geraldine at the front desk for the first time. She said yes, Atari still had 2600 and 7800 systems and games brand new, and she offered to send out a packet of information to me with order forms for 2600, 7800 and Lynx stuff, along with a brochure. I waited days for that letter to come in the mail. It had been years since I had even seen an Atari game, all I wanted to do was flip through a catalog looking at games, seeing what the game systems looked like again and remembering all the games. Four days later I received my first letter from Atari. It contained black and white order forms for 2600 and 7800 systems, games and accessories, and a nice full color brochure for the Lynx. Unfortunately the brochure was only for the Lynx and didn’t have any pictures or descriptions of anything for the 2600 and 7800. I also realized that I was about to spend the next six months saving up about $300 to take advantage of a special they were running where I could buy a new 7800 with 25 games. I was going to have to wait.
 
 

 

 
 
I spent the next 45 days researching as much about Atari as I could find. I checked out all of the outdated video game books from the library (no good pictures!) I spoke with friends at camp and when school started, asking them if they had any old Atari systems or even remembered what it was. One guy had an Atari 2600 at his grandma's house and clued me in on Combat. Another friend, Adam, told me about this thing he bought at a garage sale called "ColecoVision" and that it came with Donkey Kong. "Oh yeah, I kind of remember that!" I called around to every Big Lots and Sears Outlet in the phone book to see if they had any Atari stock left over. All I could find were a few generic joysticks. Then one day it all began to happen.
 
The Unexpected
It was Saturday morning, September 18, 1993. I was with my parents at Dutch Square Shopping Mall in Columbia, SC. It was an older mall built in 1970 that we went to less frequently than the new modern mall. It was still a nice place to shop though and we would often go there for a hair cut on the "secret 3rd floor" or to shop around. My mom was making a payment on the phone bill at the AT&T store in the mall. This was back before the cell phone stores we see today. Back then it was all about landlines. You could buy a new landline phone, cordless phone for the home, answering machines and cassette tapes, and pay your phone bill. There was also a place at the mall to pay your electric bill too. I was 11, about to turn 12, and paying bills seemed like a boring idea to me. There was a "locally famous" place in the mall called Cromer's that sold old-timey popcorn and peanuts. My dad and I got a small bag of popcorn and sat on a bench in the mall while my mom did her thing. There was a Kay-Bee Toy Store right next to Cromer's and I asked my dad if it was okay if I went into Kay-Bee and looked around.
 
 

 

 
 
What We Leave Behind
I didn't expect to find anything amazing that day. I headed into Kay-Bee and browsed around. After checking out the goods in the red wire bins up front, and in the "World of Nintendo" video game cabinet, I walked down the left-most aisle and headed towards the back of the store. The whole left side of the aisle was marked "Clearance" with various unloved toys half-open and sprawled across a few shelves that came up to my chest. In the distance, on the left sitting in top of an open shelf was a messy pile of half-crushed boxes, they were a mix of rust orange and silver. Papers were falling out and down onto the floor and I could see a few little black plastic cubes. I can still remember the shock of adrenaline  that rushed through my system. One of the boxes in the distance stood out. It said "ATARI 2600" in the bright red logotype. It was my first time ever seeing this. My jaw dropped. I think I gasped and yelled something out. I ran up to the sprawled pile of boxes, they were an equal mix of Asteroids and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT! It seemed like something out of a dream, it was so incomprehensible that these games could be sitting in this store after what up to that point had been almost my entire lifetime. These game boxes were little time capsules. Many of them were half-crushed and open with manuals, game catalogs, and warranty cards spewing out. The internet as we know it barely existed in 1993 and I didn't have access to it. I hadn't seen an Atari game in years, what amounted to nearly half a lifetime.
Sprawled across the shelf were the illustrated, green 1981 Atari catalogs that came with Asteroids, and the red 1982 catalogs that came with E.T. I picked up a red one, opened it, and for the first time in years saw Atari games. The first image I saw when I turned the page was the ad with the Atari 2600 4-switch floating in space above the blue grid, with the games reaching out to either side, centering in on a TV screen in the middle that showed Pac-Man. To the right was a boy and girl playing Atari with the caption “The Adventure Begins”. The moment I saw that image, it triggered something in my mind and all of the memories came rushing back. I had grown up with the 7800 but I knew exactly what the 2600 was and remembered all of my friends older brothers having it in the house. Vague memories of Atari commercials and the 4-switch 2600 being a cultural icon. Everything came flashing back to me all at once, so many good memories and the drive to discover more. My use of that photo as the first thing you see entering Atari I/O’s home page is intentional, in hopes that the photo will have the same affect on other people rediscovering Atari for the first time as it did on me. The home page graphic is heavily edited, but began as a scan from that page from the very same Atari catalog I picked up and held in my that day on September 18, 1993.
 
 

 

 
 
The Adventure Begins
Some of the boxes were in decent shape, and I took one of each for myself. I realized that I wasn't carrying my wallet that day (I was 11) and hid my two games behind some stuffed animals. I ran out to my dad, breathlessly explained to him what I had found and that I needed to borrow $1.98 to make all of my dreams come true. I ran up to the Kay-Bee counter with $2 in my hand and had never been so excited to buy something in a toy store. I stood there waiting in line for what felt like forever. I was processing all the little Atari idiosyncrasies for the first time. “Asteroids 66 Video Games” and what that even means. It seemed so beyond the pale that I would randomly find anything Atari-related in a toy store outside of Lynx games and an occasional off-brand Joystick. A few minutes later the games were mine, and “The Adventure Begins”.
This was an exciting time. My family had been somewhat poor for a few years but we were just about to move into a new home. Times were so hopeful. When we left the mall I remember doing some other errands. Fall was setting in and it was the beginning of brisk weather. "Kenny Rogers Roasters" was a new thing at the time, so my family stopped there to pick up dinner and bring it to the new house that we hadn't moved into yet, and ate dinner on the back porch/deck at the new house. I spent the entire car ride examining E.T. and Asteroids. I remember how unreal it felt to hold actual Atari products in my hand, as if they were some major discovery at an archeological expedition.
 
 

 
 
That night we returned home and I spent my entire Saturday night "playing" with my new games even though I didn't have a system to play them on yet. I clearly remember it was the night of the Miss America pageant, Regis & Kathy Lee were hosting, and the girl who won "Miss America" that night, Kimberly Aiken, was from the town I lived in and came to visit my school, so it became a memorable event. We didn't have cable so I only had 4 TV channels (on a good day!) and usually I was pretty annoyed if something like a Miss America pageant came on and interrupted my Saturday night tv schedule of Deep Space Nine and who knows what else. But this night I wasn't annoyed. I was completely drawn to these games. Having to wait to play them left my imagination to wander. Spending so much time focusing on the boxes, cartridge labels and catalogs gave me an immense appreciation for the art and level of detail that went into everything to do with these games. I dove into the E.T. manual like it was a new comic book and marveled at how detailed it was, full color with the shiny printed silver. (They did a very nice job with the printing of that game, for sure). I remember the Atari hologram on top of the box and thinking that was so cool, even for 1993. I spent at least an hour flipping through the two Atari catalogs that came with my games that night, discovering all these wonderful long lost games.
 
The Difference Between Nostalgia & Classic Gaming
This is the event horizon where I crossed over from simple nostalgia into being a classic gamer. It's the difference between nostalgia for the games you grew up with, and forming an appreciation for the games that came before you. Games outside your experience. Seeing all of these early 2600 titles for the first time with screenshots and descriptions clicked with me. Many of them looked ancient. But I saw the play value in them and they appealed to me. I thought about whoever these people were out there whose job it was to sit there and create these games out of 1s and 0s. I didn't know Howard Scott Washaw or Hiro Kimura's names yet, but I appreciated their work. Some games stood out to me as genius, like Warlords. I knew there would be many great Saturday nights with my family and friends gathered around the TV playing games like Warlords and loving them despite their obsolescence. There was play value in these games that transcended graphics, and my appreciation for them transcended my own experience and personal nostalgia of having grown up playing them. Now I was determined not only to acquire the games I used to play growing up, but to collect the ones that came before me, the ones I never got a chance to play. Suddenly I understood there was an art form to these classic games, and it was going to be a lot of fun.
 
 

Thanks to RickR for the computer motherboard donation.  And power supply, optical drive, and the SATA cables.  Without the donations this would not be possible.  I ended up with a great gaming computer without a case.  That and a graphics card upgrade are going to be my New Year's resolution. 
In the meantime I spent about two hours trying to figure out how to piece stuff together just enough to hold up until then.  What I came up with was poster board and hot glue...and a whole lot of imagination.  I guess all of those childhood years playing with LEGOs paid off.  Not pretty but it won't overheat.

Nothing is fastened down.  All I did was cut pieces of poster board to help hold things where I wanted them.  My biggest restraint was the power supplies cords as they did not leave room for much play or ideas.  But, it works for now and I can pick it up and move it if/when I need to.
I even got the plate on the rear mounted.  Held in place with tape to poster board so I can remove it easily when I get a case.  I like it.

Hard drives were a bit of a challenge as mounting screws were way too short to go through poster board and the mounting holes on the drives.  So...this is what I came up with.

Nothing fancy but it works.  We now return to our regularly scheduled gaming already in progress.

I briefly touched upon this topic in a thread I created a few days ago. Let me fill those of you who didn't read it in:
I got my light blue Nintendo DSi at the tail-end of its lifespan, on my eighth birthday in January 2013. I didn't realize this until the other day when I was researching the system, but I had actually gotten mine after they were discontinued. So this puppy one of the last-ever DSi systems.
"Why did I get a DSi?" you might be asking. That's a fair question; the 3DS had been out for almost two years at that point. The reason I got a DSi instead was because I chose it over its successor. The 3DS, from what I had seen at that point, had a gross-looking circle pad and a dinky little D-Pad. That's why. Not terribly smart, but I really don't regret getting a DSi at all. Never did, even back then.
If you know me, you'll know I'm not one for analog sticks. I'll oftentimes take the D-Pad route unless it's a 3D game or something. Younger me hated them even more. I eventually did get a 3DS XL a few years later in 2015, and later a New 3DS XL. I never did stop using my DSi, however, be it for animating with Flipnote Studio or listening to music. 
All three of said DS's have seen better days. The OG 3DS XL hasn't worked in years. That one's legitimately broken. The New 3DS XL, which has probably gotten the most use of the three, has the "X" and "B" buttons broken. They'll work if you'd press down hard enough. As for the DSi, both the "L" and "R" triggers are dysfunctional. "L" probably works once every 50 presses while "R" is more like once every 200. I would like to fix them, but I'm too scared to take my systems apart and accidentally break something. 
Furthermore, many of you knew that I grew up with a hacked Nintendo Wii in the household. I wasted many an hour playing emulated versions of NES and 2600 games in particular. Ever since I got my DSi, I've wanted to find a way to take those games on the go with me. I recently started softmodding some of my Nintendo systems like my Wii U and adding more content to the original Wii, so I thought I would finally make this old dream a reality.
So why did I choose to mod the DSi over the 3DS? 
I chose to do this for multiple reasons. For one, the DSi was indeed the system I used to fantasize being able to do this on, and I kind of wanted some closure, however silly that sounds. The 3DS also had Virtual Console (which blew me away back in the day), and unless you could the Game and Watch games, DSi didn't. The biggest reason, however, is that the DSi had an easily accessible SD card slot. My New 3DS's microSD lies behind the back plate, which is so beat up I'm afraid it won't go back on if I unscrew it.
I highly recommend trying this softmod out. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. I plan to make later posts in this thread as tutorials for anyone wanting to do this.

I'll bet someone Hulk'ed out a video card without pushing the little release clip.  It is a shame. 
"EmulationStation" is probably your best bet to start looking at software-wise.  I'm not sure if they make complete install packs like for Raspberry Pi, so you may end up having to install Linux first yourself. 

You do not need a fancy graphics card for a MAME cab for old arcade games.  If any of those have on-board graphics, give that a shot first. 

The biggest decision you'll have to make is what kind of controls to use.  In my opinion, your best bet is to buy a little controller USB board that you can use to wire in your own controls, then add a nice stick and arcade buttons.  There's lots of info on that on youtube.  It doesn't have to cost much. 
And then the other huge PITA is configuring the system.  Getting it to boot directly into some kind of front end and then configuring the controls to let you choose an emulator and game.  It's tough.  But do-able. 
Good luck!  Let us know what you've got there computer wise.  But I've found almost any PC hardware will do just fine.  I'm running MAME from an old Raspberry Pi, and even that has enough horsepower to do arcade games just fine.
 

 
 

Hey Atarians!
I have been thinking (I know, dangerous) for a while now about trying to build my own PC based arcade machine.  At least get the guts of it put together and working.  What triggered that idea is the fact I found a bunch of computer parts in our dumpster.  Someone threw out about 5 motherboards with processors and cooling fans still attached, a few brand name towers still loaded, and hard drives.  I saved two motherboards, one of which was still in a Compaq tower.  I am unsure of age but they might be newer than the other desktops I already own.  I have not yet went through them yet to get a complete list of what is there but I do know one motherboard has an Intel chipset and another one has an AMD/ATi chipset.  Unfortunately the one with the AMD chipset someone ripped the PCIe port off of it leaving behind all the pins.  My thought is if it has video on board I can still use it if I cut all the pins down.  Either that or replace the port completely.  The Intel board appears physically unharmed.
Both boards are from ASUS which usually makes decent motherboards.  None of them have any RAM and I only managed to save one power supply.  There are a couple of optical drives in the tower as well to add to the three or four I already had.  Hard drives are not a problem either.  I already had some older IDE hard drives of 80 GB or less and have now added two more to the army of PC parts.  One is a Hitachi Deskstar (I assume IBM style Deskstar) that's 80 GB and the other is a Seagate Barracuda 100 GB.  Both are 7200 RPM drives.  I haven't tested them yet to see if they work or if any of this stuff works or will work. 
My thought is that I can use these to build at least one working MAME arcade.  I'm open for suggestions and also interested how others made their MAME arcade.  I'm mostly interested in arcade games up to maybe 1990.  I know I'd be missing a lot but that era contains most of the game I enjoy playing the most.  Also, would I really need a high powered graphics card or could I go without that PCIe port.  
As soon as I can I will take pics of the hardware and get a list of their features.  I don't even know what processors are on them but I don't want to rip them out yet as I don't have any thermo paste at the moment.

Cool, I've saved the video to watch later.  🙂

This is a great topic for a video.  I am going to save this one to watch later.  I'm mostly interested in your Intellivision choice.  Thanks.
 

Many many things as long as its something I hadn't seen in a good number or years. Literally anything. Sometime I may expand upon that.
 

I grew up with Atari VCS, Intellivision, Colecovision, Astrocade, Odyssey2, Commodore64, Atari 400/800, Vectrex, Amiga, Ti-99/4A, CoCo, and other pre-NES stuff. I kind of skipped the NES, PS1, SMS, Genesis, NeoGeo, and SNES generation while it was happening.
Today I just have my original Apple from bitd. And all my gaming is done on a state-of-the-art PC, both vintage through emulators and a few select native modern titles.

As a kid, I used to play (or watch my mom play) a clone of Pac-Man for Apple II called "Snack Attack". The version we had was a bit different from the video below. Ours was probably cracked and only had 2 mazes, and I think the character graphics may have been changed to look more like the actual Pac-Man.
 

OK.  I've figured it out.  Took me long enough.
The game that defines me is Star Raiders (5200/A8).  The one aspect of life that has always fascinated me has been outer space.  I've always been curious about what else could be in all that space out there.  As a kid I loved Star Wars, Space Invaders, Space LEGO, and other things.  Star Raiders gave me an insight to what it would be like to fly a space ship around.  While it is 2D the presentation was more of a 3D aspect.  You were sitting IN the cockpit of a ship, you were FLYING around in a ship, and you were SHOOTING down enemies.  Pretty cool stuff.  Something about our galaxy and everything else out there has just interested me. 

Hello. I have mentioned once before that my relationship with my mother right now is not great for various reasons I won't get into here. Recently, she took all of my Atari stuff and other video game things like chargers, controllers, other systems, mini arcades, DS styluses, etc. We had an argument last night. She thinks that video games cause VARIOUS things, like gambling (don't use microtransactions in any games I play because mostly they weren't invented yet), rotting your brain, etc. She says I can't get anything back until I get a "real hobby".
I told her this was a real hobby, it just wasn't one she liked. She said If I ask anyone, they would disagree with me. So, I'm asking all of you here at Atari.io.  It's not just playing video games she thinks isn't a hobby. She thinks almost everything related to them isn't a hobby, like:
Playing video games  (of course) Making video game related content (using screens to animate, making video game related videos and the like) Fixing/Repairing video games Collecting video games (I compared to things like rocks, bugs, and baseball cards, but she says it is completely different) Talking about video games  (being involved with the video game community) Watching video game related content Reading about video games and video game literature Creating video games  (I used to make video games on Scratch a lot. Don't anymore, but I thought I'd include it) I know I'm right here, but I need some people to prove my point so she can give me my stuff back. Please take this poll to help. 
I'm currently having some problems with my mom. Shortly before I joined the I/O she kicked me out of the house and I had to stay with my grandparents. That was actually a much better alternative than staying home. The pandemic has really taken a toll on our family's relationship with one another. Thank you all for being here in the I/O for a sort of escape from it all. Thank God it's the week and not the weekend anymore so we can be apart for a bit. I know these aren't really bad problems compared to problems others are having right now because of the wildfires, pandemic, hurricanes, etc, so I'm grateful for that. It has not been a good year for anybody. People are losing everything all over the world. I have it good comparatively thankfully, but I am asking for just a little bit of help, so please consider asking this simple yes or no question. 
 

hobby noun , plural hobbies
: a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation   Yup, I think gaming fits the definition for the most part. Of course, it shouldn't get in the way of other life priorities, such as family, school & work. Also there are both positives and negatives. On the plus side, it can help keep the mind active, engage in new learning, promote problem solving, and in some cases, promote social interaction (just look at the forums). On the negative side, it can be addictive, certain games may encourage poor behavior for those prone to it, and it's possible the light emitted by screens can inhibit sleep if played late at night. As with just about all hobbies, there are pros and cons, and it's up to parents to do what they think is best for their kids. For instance, we never allowed any screen time for our kids until they were two, and then at that point, it was limited to under an hour a day, and the programming had to be slow paced for younger children. Now our kids are full of imagination and rarely beg for certain toys, because they almost never saw commercials, lol. I hope all goes well with your mom. I encourage you to do your best to show respect when discussing your point of view, as well as for whatever decision she makes. My guess is she's doing what she believes is best for you in the long run. No parent is perfect, but most of us try to do what's best for our kids!

Don't recall exactly, specifically the very first moment. But close enough.
 
It was a rather pedestrian experience, some nondescript winter evening or Saturday afternoon in 1977. I remember exploring the "worlds" of combat. All the different terrain. That and playing Surround. The full aweseomness of the VCS would be revealed to several decades later, when I could appreciate how much was done with so little.
 
I don't think I ever had a first "wow" moment with videogames because I grew up with them. It's as if they always existed and the exploration of the electronic gaming field was a given. Even back in like 1976 and 1975.
 
The "wow" moment was with the discovery of red LED handhelds. Those were amazing, and I always thought there was a special sort of intelligence inside the chips. I didn't know how they all worked. And it would have been totally plausible (to me) that they were like mechanical mazes inside, with control levers and chutes and valves. Like a big-ass Hot-Wheels track setup going everywhere.
 
Of course each console from the dedicated pong units to my latest emulation PC, each one, had their impressive moment. I was rarely disappointed.

Wow @atarilbc I genuinely love this. What a stunning setup. This is exactly what I love to see and what I wish I had in my home. This looks like a great space to entertain in. You're able to invite people over and they aren't vaulted in by shelves of games and toys. It's the perfect Atari Day setup for a 4-Player game of Warlords! Everything wired nicely and game systems easily accessible whenever you want to power up and play. I love the mid-century modern furniture with the glass of wine. The credenza, glass table, the rug and coasters, that all sets the right vibe. And that view of the skyline outside Wow, just perfect. What a great space to entertain people. I'd love to see this when you have people over.

I finally got a TV stand for my new place and hooked up some of my favorite consoles: a PS4 Pro, AVS, Saturn, Jaguar and 2600. I'm running the classic consoles through a RetroTINK to a 49" Samsung 4K HDR TV. It looks amazing! 
I did have my 7800 hooked up but the RetroTINK and the LHE mod don't seem to get along too well.  After about 20 minutes, I started getting really weird interference. The LHE mod is temperamental  so I'm going to try a simple modded 7800 eventually. 
Anyway, here are a few pictures. The screenshots are from my phone and do not do the picture justice. I also wanted to show my attempt at cable management to get everything off the floor. Because this TV stand has tall legs, it looked really messy at first. I even grabbed a wooden box for the power strips and bricks. 
 

So after 1 year and 4 months later (and me forgetting about this thread 😖),  here's the current setup in the gameroom! 
 





 

You guys have given me a great excuse to post something I've been meaning to share here for six months. I love DS9, watched it from day one when it was new and I think it's held up really, really well 25 years later. It may be my favorite Trek, they really reached new heights with that show. I loved the whole Star Wars cantina feel of everything, especially Quark's Bar. You never knew who was going to come through the airlock and walk into Quark's. Maybe for a Raktajino, a round of Kanar, some Hasperat or to play the Dabo wheel. Or, you know, some prune juice. Ferengis get a bad rap but Quark was one of Star Trek's more interesting characters and he definitely kept things lively on the station.
There came a point at the end of last year as fall became winter and it began to get "cold" here that I slipped into binge watching the show every night. Just an episode or two, but I kept with it all through the winter. There's something about November-January that always get me in the mood for DS9 and Jaguar. I think because DS9 first premiered in January, I spent my entire winter break looking forward to this new show, now it's etched in my mind that cold weather = DS9 adventures by the fireplace.
Well, couple the idea of warming up on a chilly night with hanging out at Quark's Bar and suddenly this idea pops into my head that if I could have one thing off the station (something that actually exists) it would be mugs from Quark's. They're cool, and they're actually something I would use. Drink something warm while watching the show on a cold night. A quick search showed that the mugs used in Quark's Bar were intended to be different from the replimat mugs used throughout the rest of the station, and were not specially made props for the show but rather alien-looking "Hotjo" mugs from a company called Highwave:




 
A little more searching and I found that Highwave was still in business, they still made the Hotjo mugs (although they had updated the design slightly after 25 years) and yes, you could order them online. This was back around Thanksgiving, and when I was checking out their website they had a Black Friday Deal for 30% off your order plus free shipping. I ended up ordering two of the modern Highwave Hotjo mugs, as well as two matching JoPilot travel mugs too. I really love the look of these! They're clean and cool and I absolutely love them. The bottom photo is one I took of my mugs when I unboxed them. I ordered one of each in black and white. I was going to post this forever ago, but it wasn't gaming related and wasn't a priority and time slips by quickly. If you're a DS9 fan though I highly recommend these, they're super cool and not overly expensive.


 

Here's another one that I posted to my facebook and twitter.
M-Network game cartridges are my least favorite design due to the tiny labels and the difficulty in storing them due to their Intellivison cartridge shell Frankensteined to fit in a 2600.

EDIT: New version BREAKOUT2002 LASERBEAMS! 
Can you make it to the playable green treasure room ending scene on level 10?
Button control reversed; reserves finite LASERBEAMS that run out before the end of each level.
BREAKOUT2002_LASERBEAMS_NTSC.bin  BREAKOUT2002_LASERBEAMS_NTSC.wav
BREAKOUT studies 
A collection of seven BREAKOUT stories featuring an inspired new rendition, BREAKOUT 2002 with a 10 level quest and a harmonized sound that is different.
 
Breakdown of the studies
Five stories of the continued evolution of Atari Breakout design with examples of games and links to prototypes
Stories of old and emerging technologies for creating more dazling and colorful retro videogames!
Party Gameplay instructions for BREAKOUT 2002
 
Printing it out
To create a 4-page mini book, print the PDF on one piece of double sided paper and fold it in half.
 
Best play experience
Use either classic hardware or full screen settings if you are running an emulator and turn off phosphor/merge frames.
 
BREAKOUT discussion
 Hope everyone enjoys! Share your thoughts and ideas about BREAKOUT on this thread!
 
BREAKOUT 2002 Party Games Manual.pdf