Ballblaɀer

Ooh, Atari Corp cart! Multiple fonts in the copyright line! No controller info on the cart! It's... *sniff* beautiful. /I have problems

I'm interested -- never had a 7800 before. Hopefully I have enough things of interest to you in my trade list to swing a deal.

It's a criminal offense that this game wasn't a light gun game for the 2600. Ah well. Love the cover art on this one -- thanks, nosweargamer!

Thanks! I'll try the toothbrush and dish soap method and report back. It definitely needs something a touch more abrasive than usual.

Okay, rounding out the handheld electronic games from home... Fact: Tiger's Electronic Bowling is loud enough to wake the dead. Or at least this particular one is! Marble Madness was the one game I just could not get working, and that's a big disappointment as I remember having tons of fun with it back in the day. It may not be *totally* dead, as every now and then it makes a sad little crunch of a buzz when I try to turn it on... probably it's just pining for the fjords, though. Don't leave batteries inside your games, kids! This little thing went with me EVERYWHERE, for years. This is another one that must wait for the LR44s to arrive to be tested. Really hoping Epoch Man will live on! Epic, man. Mattel's Auto Race (1976), the ancestor of them all. Gotta figure out a better way to clean it -- the textured plastic surface just seems to have absorbed dirt. I'm also hoping that I'll eventually find the battery compartment door... I'll need to ask my soldering-capable friend to re-attach one of the battery connector wires, but I think it'll be okay once it's fixed. Hoping so, anyway. Finally, the centerpiece of my handheld collection... It's not in perfect shape, but it's full of great memories. The last time I tried to turn this thing on was probably 15+ years ago. 4 C batteries later... Success! It still runs like the day it was manufactured.

Two more handheld games found that still work after all these years: I always loved the design of the Konami handhelds. If I had unlimited collection space (and a lot more money!) I'd look into picking up more of these, among others. In any case, these still work, but the linear polarizing film has degraded a bit, meaning that the LCD graphics appear very light. The only way to fix this is to replace the film/filter with something taken from a new/preserved game, unfortunately. And once again, I inexplicably saved some of the packaging for these. If only I'd done the same for all my Atari stuff back in the day!

Over this past weekend I was at my childhood home, and I knew there were some hidden treasures waiting to be found. It took some poking around the dusty basement, but I found pretty much everything I was looking for. Here are two of the things I was most hoping to find: I've got some LR44 batteries coming in the mail, but until they arrive these Nintendo Game & Watch beauties will have to remain untested. I see no reason why they won't still work -- fingers crossed, anyway. What I *didn't* know was that I saved the boxes and documentation, too! I am typically *not* a box collector, but for whatever reason I hung onto these. Jeez, Nintendo -- want to be a little more descriptively specific about the potential danger to babies? More handheld goodness to come in the next few days!

From RickR -- two manuals I was missing (including the earlier 5200 Soccer manual, with entirely different artwork than the later RealSports Soccer version), plus an Atari Corp. label 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe. I love the picture label carts with no controller information listed. Atari Corp was just like, "welp, we continually screw this up SOMEHOW, so let's just nix it completely!"

Yes to both! Let me know what piques your interest from my trade list at your convenience.

Picked up an Intellivision 10 for a dollar at a flea market. It works, and I'll give it a whirl, but even without knowing a single thing about this thing (and I don't) I feel it's probably junk, given that the Intellivision does not make use of four buttons PLUS TWO SHOULDER BUTTONS WTF. Will happily trade it for something else worth $1!

... BRB, deleting all my posts. Thanks. Totally a lucky break. The auction listing didn't even mention manuals, let alone picture them. I'm trying my hardest not to dwell on what became of the other 2800 boxes that went with the manuals! "Don't look a gift Auction in the mouth," or something!

Rowsdower is a awesome trader! I mean, who trades 49 games for two?! That guy does!

I had quite the eBay score this past week. I was doing my usual Atari searching two weeks ago when a fairly nice looking lot of 2600/5200 games went up for sale. So, a mixed lot of about 50 games. Pretty standard-looking, with some quality stuff mixed in: an Atari Video Cube, the Mario Bros. label variation I was missing, a clean-looking Sorcerer's Apprentice to upgrade the poor one that I had... not bad! Sure, there are a number of games with writing on the labels, but all in all... nice lot. Then, in an instant... I saw it. A heavenly chorus reverberated in my ears... I got tunnel vision.... suddenly, I could see only the boxed 2800 Super Breakout. The reality around me started to break down a bit, I think -- it's hard to remember exactly. [ATARI 2800 BOX DESIRE INTENSIFIES] Then I notice the seller... it's a Salvation Army ARC less than 10 miles from where I live! HOW?! I've never seen a 2800 box on eBay USA in my months and months and months of looking, and now there's one being sold by a seller less than a 20 minute drive away? Turns out they *also* had a separate lot with a 2800 console, so... perhaps someone brought their collection from Japan here? Who knows. Whatever -- I immediately realize that I have a secret weapon; an ace up my sleeve... not having to pay shipping if I win! Anyway, to make a longer story slightly less long, I won the auction for a great deal less than I was prepared to pay. I was (and remain!) super excited about that fact; I might very well make back most (all?) of what I spent by selling the duplicate games and the boxes I don't want. So, Wednesday rolls around and I go to the Salvation Army location to make my pick-up. They'd packed everything up nice and tightly since they assumed they'd be shipping it out to someone. I just needed to make sure the 2800 box was in there before I drove off with my winnings. Once I saw that it was tucked in there, I left on cloud nine. Later on that evening I opened the box back up to have my first look. Okay, nice, nice... lots of upgrades to some games in my collection, a few label variations, good... some good trade bait... Then I get to the beautiful, glorious Super Breakout box. It's a little bit rough, but it's all good where it counts: I wasn't expecting the manual, so that was a nice bonus! The box, I'll probably either flatten or try to re-shape a bit, but it's plenty good enough for me as-is. For some reason the end of the cartridge itself is all chewed up... but it's no big loss since it's not a label unique to Japan. Okay, let's look at these other boxes. Any japanese stickers on the backs? Man, that'd be sweet. Nah, no such luck. Okay, wait, I have three loose copies of Amidar here... what's in the Amidar box, then? Please don't tell me it's a fourth copy of crappy Amidar... I pick the box up -- it's HEAVY. What the? MY GOD... IT'S FULL OF STARS MANUALS! The corner of one catches my eye. HOLY S#!... Suddenly I find myself riffling through a stack of about 50 manuals, and glints of silver keep catching my eye. This is crazy! I didn't even have time to start wondering where the boxes for these might be, because my fingers stop on one of the two pieces of 2800 paraphernalia I was most wanting: THE 2800 CONSOLE OWNER'S MANUAL. The one thing that I didn't get with my 2800 that I'd really, really wished it had come with. And now, here's one that's fallen into my lap totally out of the blue. Serendipity! "Table of Contents" (learning Japanese I think I'm learning Japanese I really think so...) I It even still has the insert sheet explaining how to hook it up with a switchbox. I'd love to see a Sears Video Arcade II manual now, just to compare! Anyway, this lot is where many of my latest additions to my trade list come from. I don't know if I'll ever get so lucky again. One can only hope!

And the 1983 Grammy for best soundtrack in a video game goes to... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw7PJDRs5wM

Try as I might, I cannot seem to get Pete Rose into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He will have to settle for my Atari collection, next to Title Match Pro Wrestling. Thanks, StormSurge! The Mountain King manual rocks as well; it will wait patiently for its companion cartridge, I'm sure.

I need to take some good photos of my first complete* set (as of this past week) -- Atari 2600 text labels! While this is undoubtedly the "easiest" of all the various VCS labels to collect, there are still a few difficult ones to snag at reasonable prices. And, like all Atari cartridges, there are some fun things to point out on the common ones. Until I have time to set them all up for one big group photo, here's a smaller group of what I feel are the hardest to find: AtariAge's rarity guide is super helpful, but it is not without need of some revising. When it comes to the plain text labels, its biggest flaw is that it rates Flag Capture as a '4', and as the toughest text label cart to find. Perhaps this was true when the guide was published, but right now the two scarcest are, without question, (A Game of) Concentration and Fun With Numbers. As of the time of this post, there is not a single (AGO) Concentration to be found on eBay, and there are only four Fun With Numbers carts, two of which are PAL format and one of which is missing its end label. Everything else, including Flag Capture, can often be found for a few bucks. I have no interest in ranking their rarity beyond pointing out that the two toughest to find are... the two toughest to find. Those two titles have some similarities: both started off being sold under different titles (respectively: Hunt and Score, Basic Math), both were not very popular, and both still ended up getting (very rare) picture label re-releases late in the VCS game (1986, in the monochrome gray boxes). Here's another interesting cart... check out this version of Superman. What does the label reveal? Copies of Superman with their copyright information on one line only contain a version of the ROM with a game-breaking glitch wherein one can avoid becoming Clark Kent by using x-ray vision for a few seconds when the game immediately starts. The bridge still explodes and scatters pieces throughout the game world, but a second bridge remains in place, meaning you can win the game simply by rounding up Lex and his henchmen before going to the Daily Planet. Wonder how they learned about this bug... *Finishing up with a comment about what constitutes "complete" -- with Atari, I feel you sorta have to decide to draw the line somewhere. Some titles were released with text in different colors (I believe Brain Games has the most color variants, but I'm not sure). Some titles have labels with slightly different size text. Some use slightly different fonts. Here's an example of the font variation from my collection: The Video Olympics cart is a later release, and uses a new styling of the original font -- some letters have gaps (check out the lowercase 'd' in Video Olympics compared to the one in Sky Diver), while some letters are totally different (check out the lowercase 'r' in "game program" , the angled stroke in the lowercase 'e', and the shape of the lowercase 'y' compared to the other cartridges). Only a few cartridges were released in this second font style as far as I know. The text labels for Championship Soccer, Dodge 'Em, Maze Craze, and Video Checkers were *only* released with this font style. What I'm driving at here with all this is that my collection would balloon in size if I were to truly go for EVERY possible variation. And really, I have no business judging anyone's collecting tendencies given my own fascination with minutiae, but I do question just how much joy a person can derive from having both the blue text Bowling *AND* the red text Bowling, you know? But... to each their own!

I've got a loose copy of Solaris for trade... or were you thinking of Stargate (i.e. same game as Defender II)? If you need/want Solaris that'll work fine.

Sure -- I'll take a photo of it and re-test it tonight -- it's in VG/EX condition. Anything else? I think you should pick one or two others to even the trade up...

Wow, that's a coincidence. I was just looking (squinting) at a copy of that game on eBay, trying to figure out why it was all red. Methinks someone went to town with a red marker on it, but it's hard to tell with that potato-quality photo. Anyway, yes please to Pete Rose Baseball! May or may not take the manual -- what on my trade list are you interested in?

Retrogamer81081's thread about 2600 launch titles inspired me to assemble the fine nine together: If I were to rank their scarcity, I'd say Basic Math is hardest to find, with Star Ship and Street Racer taking 2nd and 3rd place. Blackjack and Surround were the only two I had in this style growing up. Air-Sea Battle was the last one I added to my collection, mostly because I refused to pay more than a couple dollars for it. I don't know why someone "P'd" on my Video Olympics -- my TV doesn't seem to think it's a PAL cart, so probably it just once belonged to Paul, or Pete, or Plaxico, and they wanted to make sure Joey Bagadonuts from around the block didn't take it and try to claim it was his. The camera flash ended up highlighting a common text label fading pattern on Indy 500 -- it's fairly invisible to the naked eye in regular light. I find what Atari decided to mark with a "TM" mark a bit weird. They're unregistered trademarks, so they're not ultimately protected much by law, but... did Atari really think that TAG and ANTI-AIRCRAFT and STAR SHIP were distinct/important things/concepts worth trademarking? I mean, I totally see wanting to protect/strengthen usage of brand-specific names like FOOZPONG and QUADRAPONG. QUADRAPONG was even registered with the USPTO, though that was due to Atari releasing an arcade game with that name in 1974 (a re-brand of Kee Games' "Elimination"). But seriously, Atari -- nobody's gonna associate "TORPEDO" with you, don't pretend they will! And nobody else even *wants* to use "SCOOP BALL", come on. Sometimes it feels to me like Atari had like five label designers working in five different offices, with only the briefest collaboration allowed. Why is Star Ship the only one of the nine not to have the game title left-justified with its number? Why the extra little space between "11" and "Indy 500" compared to the others? Why is Street Racer's number 12 not flush with the left border, like all the rest? Why does the TM symbol sit above the title text on Air-Sea Battle and Video Olympics? Having the TM on the very far right end of the label didn't seem to bother them when it came to Street Racer... Yet another question - why was the decision made to switch from the color borders (01, 03, 11, 12 are the only releases in this style) to the non-color ones? To save money? So that future releases would be more uniform-looking? Because it was Thursday and Thursday was "try something new" day at Atari? No idea. In case you were wondering (and even if you weren't), the product numbers were originally genre-specific. Atari seems to have abandoned this idea early on, but their first released games were grouped by game type: Action/battle games -- 01 Combat, 02 Air-Sea Battle, 03 Star Ship, 04 Space War, 05 Outlaw Racing/driving games -- 11 Indy 500, 12 Street Racer Sports/athletic games -- 21 Video Olympics, 22 Breakout (I guess they figured it was close to tennis?), 23 Baseball, 24 Basketball, 25 Football, 26 Miniature Golf, 27 Human Cannonball (ehhh, sure), 28 Bowling, 29 Sky Diver Strategy games -- 41 Surround, 42 Hunt & Score, 43 Codebreaker, 44 Flag Capture, 45 Video Chess. Card/gambling games -- 51 Blackjack, 52 Casino, 53 Slot Machine As far as I know, only three other cartridges with numbered end labels have surfaced over the years, and only one copy of each: - "03 Space Mission" showed up on eBay in July 2005. Space Mission was the original title for Star Ship. See a very low-res photo from the eBay auction on AtariMania here, along with two photos from early advertising -- one which shows 03 on the end label, one which doesn't. - "04 Space Combat" came to light on AtariAge a few months later, in Nov. 2005. This (photo from 2600connection.com) was very unexpected as "Space Combat" was known as a Sears-only title (the Atari-branded version is titled "Space War"), so it's undetermined whether this cart is a marketing mock-up or prototype of some kind, or something else. - "23 Baseball" popped up at AtariAge in June 2006. Baseball was the working title for Home Run. Like the others, it's unclear as to what this actually is as it does not look like a retail release.

Pre-ordered -- Christmas for me comes two months early this year!

Let's take a look at two more oddball 2600 cartridges! Breakout made a brief cameo appearance in the post that started this thread off, but there it is in all its shiny golden-orange glory, next to another truly unusual and extra-hard-to-find late Atari Corp re-release. Buckle up for weirdness and mistakes! Let's start with Hangman: this is the only cartridge to be released in this silver/picture hybrid style. Right out of the gate, we have a glaring typo -- All Rights Reseved -- in the copyright text. Starting with some of their silver label games, Atari started printing VIDEO GAME CARTRIDGE right *on* the cartridge label -- you know, in case there was ever confusion. It's like getting a tattoo of your own name, no? Finally, to round things out, here we are in 1986 and... apparently we're calling the console the VCS again! Well, okay, fine -- the "2600VCS". Who needs spaces between words, anyway? Or maybe the keming is just a little bit off. Now, on to Breakout: again we have a unique Atari Corp. release -- no other title features this distinctive color label. A PAL version of Defender features a blue label, but that one *may* be the result of a simple printing error -- apart from the funky colors it looks otherwise identical to the standard picture label release. I've never seen or heard anything definitive about any of these variants, so, who knows? In any case, the Breakout label was clearly intentionally designed to *some* degree. If only they bothered to get the content right! Here we have yet another Atari Corp. cartridge with incorrect controller information printed on it. I wish I knew how they continually screwed up this most basic piece of information, but there you have it. There was a corrected release of this variant that had a strip of black tape, as well as a follow-up with no controller information listed at all. You'll also notice the copyright text is a little misaligned. Again, not an uncommon problem with Atari Corp era releases: The font used for the game titles (HammerFat) dates all the way back to the original text label cartridges: It's also the same font used in the Atari "Fuji" logo. Personally, I like the all-caps styling a lot, and I especially love the size of the text on the end labels. There's one additional cartridge that has text of this size/style on the end label, as far as I know -- hope to be able to share that one in a future post!

Time to get your jackets out of storage! (image: atarimania.com)

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