Karyyk

I really do miss Kay Bee, and it kind of saddens me that my kids will never experience it (along with Babbages, it was the only reason that I ever really enjoyed anything associated with entering a mall). You never really knew what you were going to get when you walked in there. It was one of the few places I can remember going to get 2600 games when I was a kid (along with Roses and K-Mart, I believe), and later I would hit it up regularly for Jaguar stuff. Good times...long gone.

I'm actually really looking forward to this. I do have a 30" widescreen CRT TV that I used to use for classic consoles, but the thing is a beast and currently in storage (though I've got it ready if I ever do get a chance for a dedicated setup some day). That means I'm stuck with the HDTV, and although I think older consoles look ok on it (it's an older LG plasma), they definitely don't look their best.
 
I have a Retron 5 and am pretty pleased with it overall, so for a quick way to play old Atari carts on a modern TV at a low price, this will work pretty well for most people. As long as they keep that price around $50, I'm almost willing to bet that there are plenty of people out there who have some old 2600 carts that they've picked-up over the years or have hung onto since they were younger (probably long after their original VCS or 2600 Jr. failed) that would pick something like this up in a heartbeat. With the also-HD Retron 1 HD selling for $40, there's no reason that they shouldn't be able to keep the price-point low, although they're probably expecting the demand for the 77 to be of a much smaller scale.

I hope I'm wrong on this, but whatever the Atari Box ends up being, I have the distinct feeling that I'm going to be disappointed...

I really do miss Kay Bee, and it kind of saddens me that my kids will never experience it (along with Babbages, it was the only reason that I ever really enjoyed anything associated with entering a mall). You never really knew what you were going to get when you walked in there. It was one of the few places I can remember going to get 2600 games when I was a kid (along with Roses and K-Mart, I believe), and later I would hit it up regularly for Jaguar stuff. Good times...long gone.

I remember getting mine for Christmas in '86 (we got into gaming a bit late...my father was always worried we'd turn into cave dwellers if we ever started playing them). It was the "Fun is back for $50" 2600 Jr., along with Space Invaders (Battlezone and Chopper Command followed within a week, so I usually count those as my first games). For the life of me, I don't recall us having any pictures of it, although we still have an old reel-to-reel tape recording of the request, telling my family that I wanted a "BMX Bike and an Atari system." It was the 80's after all...

I'm actually really looking forward to this. I do have a 30" widescreen CRT TV that I used to use for classic consoles, but the thing is a beast and currently in storage (though I've got it ready if I ever do get a chance for a dedicated setup some day). That means I'm stuck with the HDTV, and although I think older consoles look ok on it (it's an older LG plasma), they definitely don't look their best.
 
I have a Retron 5 and am pretty pleased with it overall, so for a quick way to play old Atari carts on a modern TV at a low price, this will work pretty well for most people. As long as they keep that price around $50, I'm almost willing to bet that there are plenty of people out there who have some old 2600 carts that they've picked-up over the years or have hung onto since they were younger (probably long after their original VCS or 2600 Jr. failed) that would pick something like this up in a heartbeat. With the also-HD Retron 1 HD selling for $40, there's no reason that they shouldn't be able to keep the price-point low, although they're probably expecting the demand for the 77 to be of a much smaller scale.

I'm actually really looking forward to this. I do have a 30" widescreen CRT TV that I used to use for classic consoles, but the thing is a beast and currently in storage (though I've got it ready if I ever do get a chance for a dedicated setup some day). That means I'm stuck with the HDTV, and although I think older consoles look ok on it (it's an older LG plasma), they definitely don't look their best.
 
I have a Retron 5 and am pretty pleased with it overall, so for a quick way to play old Atari carts on a modern TV at a low price, this will work pretty well for most people. As long as they keep that price around $50, I'm almost willing to bet that there are plenty of people out there who have some old 2600 carts that they've picked-up over the years or have hung onto since they were younger (probably long after their original VCS or 2600 Jr. failed) that would pick something like this up in a heartbeat. With the also-HD Retron 1 HD selling for $40, there's no reason that they shouldn't be able to keep the price-point low, although they're probably expecting the demand for the 77 to be of a much smaller scale.

I really do miss Kay Bee, and it kind of saddens me that my kids will never experience it (along with Babbages, it was the only reason that I ever really enjoyed anything associated with entering a mall). You never really knew what you were going to get when you walked in there. It was one of the few places I can remember going to get 2600 games when I was a kid (along with Roses and K-Mart, I believe), and later I would hit it up regularly for Jaguar stuff. Good times...long gone.

I remember getting mine for Christmas in '86 (we got into gaming a bit late...my father was always worried we'd turn into cave dwellers if we ever started playing them). It was the "Fun is back for $50" 2600 Jr., along with Space Invaders (Battlezone and Chopper Command followed within a week, so I usually count those as my first games). For the life of me, I don't recall us having any pictures of it, although we still have an old reel-to-reel tape recording of the request, telling my family that I wanted a "BMX Bike and an Atari system." It was the 80's after all...

Sorry that the deal didn't go through. When you do have another one, I'm just going to say that it really doesn't matter, because either way you're going to have to get an external hard drive (a lot of data gets written locally, even with physical games). I haven't bought a huge amount of games for it (mostly the older Virtual Console games and a few Wii downloads that were on sale, like the Metroid Prime Trilogy), but I'm using a 500GB Western Digital drive and it's around halfway full. Please note that you'll probably need to get a USB Y adapter so that you get enough power out of the Wii U's USB ports to reliably run the drive (apparently, unless the drive is powered, trying to run it from one runs the risk of corrupting data).

So recently I had a revelation when I sold a common 2600 game, Target Fun, on eBay.
The cheapest games on eBay for almost any system, usually start at about $4 including shipping.
For my commons, I have listed them for $3.94 for quite a while. My goal was to earn $1 after expenses for common games, and it used to be that I did. But when I rechecked how much money I cleared on Target Fun, I was in for a surprise.
 
Allow me to break it down:
Sale Price: $3.94
Money after PayPal fees of $0.30+ 2.9% of sale: $3.53
Money after cost of First Class Shipping (-$2.61): $0.92
Money after eBay Final Value Fee (10% of total sale including shipping):$0.53
Money after cost of bubble mailer (bought it bulk at $0.27 each):$0.26
 
So there you go. When all is said and done, I make about a quarter. Thankfully, I used a free listing, otherwise that would've cost another 30 cents just to list it, at which point the sale would lose me money. The total also doesn't count my time, or materials to clean the games or paper/toner/tape for shipping. And, if I ever had to take a return on a game, I'd need to sell about 16 games at the same price to break even. I believe the big problem is that shipping costs have rose. It was not too long ago that shipping one game cost less than $2. 
 
So what does that all mean? If I raise my prices, I most likely won't sell the game since everyone else is selling it for $4. That means it's time to either bundle the games in lots where I hope to make more per game or send them to AA for store credit.
 
A quarter just isn't worth the time or effort. 
 
 

I remember getting mine for Christmas in '86 (we got into gaming a bit late...my father was always worried we'd turn into cave dwellers if we ever started playing them). It was the "Fun is back for $50" 2600 Jr., along with Space Invaders (Battlezone and Chopper Command followed within a week, so I usually count those as my first games). For the life of me, I don't recall us having any pictures of it, although we still have an old reel-to-reel tape recording of the request, telling my family that I wanted a "BMX Bike and an Atari system." It was the 80's after all...