RickR

Wico bat handles
 
 

Wico bat handles
 
 

I'm assuming that among the lot of us, we have a pretty boss 2600 joystick collection.  Please post the unique joysticks you have.  I'll bet that together,  we have every one made back in the day.
 
Here's what I have:
 

 
Top row:  Pointmaster, Quickshot II, Epyx 500XJ, GemStik, Wico Boss
Bottom row:  Atari Flashback 2, Original Atari CX-10 (it has springs inside!), Atari CX-40, Slik Stik, Suncom Tac30, Kraft.

Wico bat handles
 
 

I'm assuming that among the lot of us, we have a pretty boss 2600 joystick collection.  Please post the unique joysticks you have.  I'll bet that together,  we have every one made back in the day.
 
Here's what I have:
 

 
Top row:  Pointmaster, Quickshot II, Epyx 500XJ, GemStik, Wico Boss
Bottom row:  Atari Flashback 2, Original Atari CX-10 (it has springs inside!), Atari CX-40, Slik Stik, Suncom Tac30, Kraft.

I'm assuming that among the lot of us, we have a pretty boss 2600 joystick collection.  Please post the unique joysticks you have.  I'll bet that together,  we have every one made back in the day.
 
Here's what I have:
 

 
Top row:  Pointmaster, Quickshot II, Epyx 500XJ, GemStik, Wico Boss
Bottom row:  Atari Flashback 2, Original Atari CX-10 (it has springs inside!), Atari CX-40, Slik Stik, Suncom Tac30, Kraft.

I'm assuming that among the lot of us, we have a pretty boss 2600 joystick collection.  Please post the unique joysticks you have.  I'll bet that together,  we have every one made back in the day.
 
Here's what I have:
 

 
Top row:  Pointmaster, Quickshot II, Epyx 500XJ, GemStik, Wico Boss
Bottom row:  Atari Flashback 2, Original Atari CX-10 (it has springs inside!), Atari CX-40, Slik Stik, Suncom Tac30, Kraft.

God of war is one of my favorite games. I love it too much!

Complete!

Play an M Network game on that thing for me!!!

The latest trade from one Mr. No-Swear Gamer arrived over last weekend and helped me to complete another 2600 set: 44 Activision NTSC games.
 

 
This set was a god deal more difficult to compile than the Atari text label carts, but fortunately none of the titles are MEGA-rare.  A handful of them can command $20+ each, but I'm glad to be able to say that I traded for a couple of them (Double Dragon, Beamrider) and got excellent deals on a few others (including River Raid II, Rampage, and H.E.R.O.)
 

 
Honestly, the tough task is finding some of these titles in "collector" condition.  A number of them seem near impossible to find without ugly, mottled Actiplaque staining.  Robot Tank is probably the worst offender -- I'm not sure I've *ever* seen a completely clean one!  I'm generally happy with this set's condition, although it's fairly obvious for which of these I'd still like to find upgrades. 
 
This is a set I put together almost completely from scratch -- the only carts I had in my collection from back-in-the-day were Ice Hockey, Space Shuttle, and Pitfall.
 
A few notes about my Activision library:
 
- Boxing has the original foam dust protector still inside.  Activision quit including them with their cartridges relatively quickly -- they're not "rare" per se, but you'd have to think that 99.9% of the time they were just discarded.
- Carts I was pleasantly surprised to find "in the wild" (at yard sales, flea markets, through Craigslist, or bought from game shops): Cosmic Commuter, Kung Fu Master, Private Eye, River Raid II.
- Pressure Cooker is the International version, and has retained the "N" sticker (i.e. NTSC, as opposed to PAL and SECAM).  The font used for the game title on the main and end labels is also thicker/bolder than the "normal" version.
- You can't really see it in the photo, but my version of Stampede is one of the earlier release carts that mentions the "Atari Video Game System" instead of "Atari Video Computer System™" that got used later -- not entirely sure what brought about that change.
 
I made up my mind early on not to collect the blue label re-release Activision carts, but I'm hanging onto one for posterity (Enduro, my favorite Activision title).  Keeping it company is the one known NTSC white-label Activision cartridge, Space Shuttle:
 

 
One minor label variation I have is seen on the international version of Pitfall II.  It features the copyright notice in both English and French along with a different catalog number, but most notably it doesn't have "LOST CAVERNS" printed on the end label like its standard counterpart:
 


 
Last but not least, the aforementioned, legit rare French-Canadian labels for Boxing, Ice Hockey, Skiing, and Tennis:
 

 
These pretty much *never* turn up for sale.  A copy of "Le Tennis" is currently on eBay, though, and if the seller were asking a reasonable price I'd consider upgrading the one I've got considering that I think these are some of the coolest 2600 labels out there!
 
Activision carts remaining to collect:

- Ghostbusters II -- PAL format only
- Fighter Pilot -- PAL format only, but it's the same game as Absolute's "Tomcat: The F-14 Fighter Simulator" (and therefore a low priority)

And a bit more from me....I just want to state that no matter what I say about Pac Man on 2600, I hope to goodness no one feels offended in any way.  For example, AtariBrian loves the game, and I totally respect that.  It's a fun topic to talk about, but it's just a game.  Like all pieces of art, opinions may vary and it's totally acceptable. 

Here is the June 1982 review of Pac Man from Electronic Games magazine.  I like to pull this out for those that think a bad opinion of the game only came much later. 
 
 
Pac Man Review - EG June 1982.pdf

PS - Kamakazi has a great blog post about this very topic.
 
http://forums.atari.io/index.php/blog/8/entry-27-pac-man-atari-2600/

And more from me (of course)....I always found it fascinating that the versions of Pac Man Atari created for other systems were all really, really good.  TI-99/4A, VIC-20, Intellivision, C64, Atari 800, 5200....those were all great. 

Agree with all these sentiments.  It's a fun game, it did get a lot of playtime from me when it was new.  But the game was NOT Pac Man, and it ended up eroding confidence in the 2600 and Atari.  At the time, you could see a superior version on the computers of the day, and even the lowly O2 had a better munching game.  Atari was more interested in suing other companies than making great games, it seemed.  Pac Man made me think twice before buying any other game from Atari.  Was a VIC-20 version available instead?  If yes, I'd probably just go with that -- that was my thinking after Pac Man.  So yes, it was a good game...but ended up creating a lot of baggage for Atari IMO.   

Ebay find! $0.66 for the pair

I vaguely remember something about Sony paying $11 million dollars or somewhere around there to have it released on the Playstation first. It was kind of funny because they pushed for such a fast release that it was bugged with the final character. Not sure what they did to resolve that fiasco. Atari was a small fish and you had sharks like Sony and Nintendo out pushing and swooping up things like Phear and MK3.

Scan provided by Lost Dragon - Enjoy!
 
Still think this would have been an incredible addition to the Jaguar's library of games.
 

Ep 254: Lost Luggage

Hi there, I recently did a special episode about my top 10 go-to games when I turn on the 2600. You can thank Mr. Storm Surge for that!  I will be doing more top 10s in the future, I have a lot of topics I can do for that.
 
In the episode I also explain the summer episode schedule, which is basically no schedule at all. I have quite a few projects around the house that I want to complete, and I will also be taking a couple of weeks of vacation instead of nickel and diming it. That means the shows will come out when they come out, basically. You may hear more top 10 episodes this summer, especially if there's a long stretch where I don't have a regular episode done. I didn't want to take the whole summer off, because it would be hard or impossible to pick back up in the fall. I know how I operate.
 
As always, thank you so much for listening and for your support.
 
http://traffic.libsyn.com/2600gamebygamepodcast/My_Top_10_Single_Player_Games_and_a_Special_Announcement.mp3

Another great trade with the No Swear Gamer!


Just check out the awesome artwork featuring Lyssa, Corwyn, and the mighty glaive!

Here is the June 1982 review of Pac Man from Electronic Games magazine.  I like to pull this out for those that think a bad opinion of the game only came much later. 
 
 
Pac Man Review - EG June 1982.pdf

4 more Atari carts for trade: