65 replies to this topic

[high voltage]

Cool, I work in a Museum (Ludwig Museum Koblenz, one of 12 famous Ludwig Museums all over the world), and I deal with art everyday and I meet famous artists too (Last year alone within one exhibition I met David Nash, Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy, three famous artists from UK). Just five years ago I had an interesting discussion with the woman of the Keith Haring Foundation about Keith's art of a person doing a dog 'doggy style', and 'where's the art in that'?
I learned a lot, for example that a tomato soup tin can can be art too. And that Kylie's dresses can also be art and displayed in museums all over the world.
I call video games art but then we only deal with modern art (Jasper Johns, Warhol, Janosch) and I am a modern kind of guy.
Check us out here
http://ludwigmuseum....ons/current.htm
and visitors from all over the world are very welcome, plug, plug...

So, if you're a good artist feel free to contact us, we always encourage and exhibit new talent.

Edited by high voltage, Wed Feb 15, 2012 2:53 PM.

[Dino]

high voltage, on Wed Feb 15, 2012 2:52 AM, said:

Dino, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 4:46 PM, said:

high voltage, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 11:33 AM, said:

nofrills100, on Fri Feb 10, 2012 4:47 AM, said:

$50+1

I've got Mangia and CTCW CIB... you won lotto recently?

But hold on...cartridge dumping devalues a game...as you keep insisting on.

I have your Mangia' and your Chase the Chuckwagon for AUS 50 each, thank you.

.

You dont get the point. These would be worth $5k a pop if they had suddently been discovered and the rom had not been released. Now you can get them for 1/10th of that CIB no less. so you ARE getting them for a bargain....

If Sydric did not dump Extra terrestials and sold the cart instead, I bet he would have netted much more than any loose dumped cart in the rarity guide. You cannot dispute that!!

No I doubt that very much.

Really? Name one from this list (other than Birthday Mania that hasnt been dumped also) that would? Wonder007 has a running offer of $6k for a loose copy of Birthday Mania. How many of the loose carts in the list below would get that kind of coin?

http://atariage.com/...l?SystemID=2600

All these comparisons to artwork and art etc are rubbish. At the end of the day its the facts that matter. And its a fact that carts with unreleased roms are of far more value than carts with roms that have been released.

[high voltage]

I'm glad the PictureMate I receive is a released (cart) cassette, otherwise I never hear the last of it from Dino.

[Schizophretard]

nofrills100, on Wed Feb 15, 2012 2:02 PM, said:

That was a very moving speech Schizophretard!



I personally agree with most of what you are saying.
But I do think the core of what was inititially being debated in this thread is about the loss of monetary value from dumping an unreleased bin. especially. when a lot of money has been paid for it. For some the loss maybe irrelevant. Like you, I'd like to say I'd get a lot more out of it by releasing the bin. to others who love atari, but I don't have stacks of cash to throw around and if i'd saved that amount of cash to buy it to begin with, I'd like to know that the economic value is retained. Because what if the engine blows in my car next year, and I rely on it to get to work, and I am strapped for cash? If I had to, I could sell that cartridge and recoup my money.
I would think that all of us that have participated in this argument value atari games well beyond their monetary value - otherwise we wouldn't be here debating so passionately about it. Most of us have at some stage spent $$ on cartridges that we know may be worth less, but we are more concerned with getting hold of them to fill that void, in our almost complete Spectravideo collection for example.
I often browse over my v-case collection and just admire them, inspect them, and appreciate them as objects also. Would I call them 'art'.... i don't know... I am a artist - a painter - and I work full time in an art gallery dealing with art everyday. I don't feel that they are the same thing. I see the art in them, but I wouldn't call them Art.

LOL! I wasn't trying to give a big speech. It's just when I can tell I'm being misunderstood I explain things different ways and give more details until they get it.

I can relate to the engine blowing scenario. I would have emergency money put away for emergency situations so I wouldn't have to sell things I worked hard to buy in the first place. But I'll give you that as a good reason to worry about economic value. I'm curious about how many people that can afford to spend thousands of dollars on a cart get into strapped for cash emergency situations though.

Another good reason that I just thought of is when you sold your Time Warp T-handle to me to donate the money to help Japan after the Tsunami. I hope that gave you enough good karma to keep your engine going.

There are good reasons to be concerned about the economic value but I don't think to be able to say,"My collection is worth more than yours!" is one of them. Sure we can have fun and bragging rights when we get something cool but not dumping a ROM so that one can take a treasure bath is too far. The only thing that could be worse is if someone bought doubles of their rare carts just to destroy them to increase their rarity and economic value. I hope no one does that.

When former Atari programmers left and formed Activision they started treating their programmers like artists by giving them credit just like movie directors or authors. Making cool looking carts is art. The pictures on the labels, boxes, and manuals are art. What appears on the screen is art. Video games are art. They might not be the same thing you would see in an art gallery but they are art.

[Amstari]

Trinity, on Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:26 AM, said:

So WTF does this 'game' do? What's the point of this thread?

The "pictureMate" cassette has some pictures and animations that you can load using a CompuMate. There is another cassette "SongMate" that loads music. These cassettes are rare and had not been dumped before so there is concern that dumping them will reduce their resale value.

I don't want to get involved in the economic arguments about this because I don't own the cassettes. However from a preservation point of view I think it is important to dump these cassettes because the life span of a cassette isn't infinite. If the owners want to share them that is up to them.

I've got lots of tapes for an 80s home computer and many of them have read errors, this may because of the storage condition before I got them or just from degrading over time. Whereas I have had very few 2600 cartridges that don't work and most of them just needed a clean to work.

[Dino]

high voltage, on Wed Feb 15, 2012 4:38 PM, said:

I'm glad the PictureMate I receive is a released (cart) cassette, otherwise I never hear the last of it from Dino.

[Dino]

Amstari, on Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:36 PM, said:

Trinity, on Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:26 AM, said:

So WTF does this 'game' do? What's the point of this thread?

The "pictureMate" cassette has some pictures and animations that you can load using a CompuMate. There is another cassette "SongMate" that loads music. These cassettes are rare and had not been dumped before so there is concern that dumping them will reduce their resale value.

I don't want to get involved in the economic arguments about this because I don't own the cassettes. However from a preservation point of view I think it is important to dump these cassettes because the life span of a cassette isn't infinite. If the owners want to share them that is up to them.

I've got lots of tapes for an 80s home computer and many of them have read errors, this may because of the storage condition before I got them or just from degrading over time. Whereas I have had very few 2600 cartridges that don't work and most of them just needed a clean to work.

These will be worth $10 in a few months regardless of whether they are dumped or not.

The issue discussed was whether dumping rare games and releasing the rom devalues the cart that exists.

[high voltage]

Video games in a museum? Video games being art? Well, I never:

Edited by high voltage, Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:02 AM.

[high voltage]

And another for the doubters:

http://www.americana...ive/2012/games/

[Rom Hunter]

Now that all Extra-Terrestrial carts have been shipped, can someone donate the .bin?

Would be valuable to add to our database.

[nofrills100]

Sure, I could find you another dozen or so exhibitions about video game art.
There is undoubtedly an art in the programming and creation of video games. (even still it is not one I personally equate to the fine arts - but that is my personal opinion, and obviously there are many that don't share that.)
There are tens of thousands of Museums all over the world, and you could probably cite an exhibion focussing on just about any subject imaginable.
But if you can call a cartridge an object of art - Surely then you could call a bottle of evian water an obect of art... I mean a graphic designer spent many hours on a computer designing a label for that bottle, and an Industrial designer likewise designing the shape of that bottle... perhaps it too ought to be sitting on a plinth at MoMA?

[Dino]

high voltage, on Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:53 AM, said:

And another for the doubters:

http://www.americana...ive/2012/games/

This is almost irrelevant. Collectors who pay big bucks are buying GAMES, not artwork. The prices they are paying are for games, not due to the artwork on the game. Again, i stress that whether games are artwork or not almost irrelevant to what determines PRICE.  As you can see from my response in the 'holy grail" topic, the physical appeal of the game is but one factor in determining the overall price of a game. What is more determinitive is how many copies exist and whether the rom has been released.

[Miss 2600]

Art is also in the graphics of the game play itself, so a rare game played on a Harmony cart can be considered art.

A rom of a rare game being released doesn't make the original cart worthless, but it eliminates the appeal of being able to play a game that few people in the world have (the sudden appearance of the Air Raid box being an exception--but it was the only known box, not the cartridge, that fetched the $$$).

[Dino]

Miss 2600, on Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:13 PM, said:

Art is also in the graphics of the game play itself, so a rare game played on a Harmony cart can be considered art.

A rom of a rare game being released doesn't make the original cart worthless, but it eliminates the appeal of being able to play a game that few people in the world have (the sudden appearance of the Air Raid box being an exception--but it was the only known box, not the cartridge, that fetched the $$$).

Its the rarity of the box itself, not the artwork on the box that determined the final price. The artwork itself was actually crap and the game wouldn't have sold for more even if the artwork was better. Again, the artwork aspect of the carts and box are MINOR compared to other factors, such as rarity. Imagic boxes are all masterpieces in comparison when it comes to artwork, but they can be picked up for a couple of dollars, since they are not rare.

[Miss 2600]

Dino, on Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:28 PM, said:

Miss 2600, on Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:13 PM, said:

Art is also in the graphics of the game play itself, so a rare game played on a Harmony cart can be considered art.

A rom of a rare game being released doesn't make the original cart worthless, but it eliminates the appeal of being able to play a game that few people in the world have (the sudden appearance of the Air Raid box being an exception--but it was the only known box, not the cartridge, that fetched the $$$).

Its the rarity of the box itself, not the artwork on the box that determined the final price. The artwork itself was actually crap and the game wouldn't have sold for more even if the artwork was better. Again, the artwork aspect of the carts and box are MINOR compared to other factors, such as rarity. Imagic boxes are all masterpieces in comparison when it comes to artwork, but they can be picked up for a couple of dollars, since they are not rare.

I think there was some aesthetic value to that Air Raid box.  I think it looked cool, actually,  If it was a plain box with no text like Tanner remembered it being (i.e. just the insert box), it probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the money it got.  It was purchased for a future video game museum, and it has display value with its colorful graphics.  The main value of a cartridge, though, is the game play.  A prototype with no label save for a piece of tape with the game's title scribbled on it would be worth a lot of money if it was a game that was never released in any form.  Your point about supply and demand is true for anything.  Once a rom of a previously unreleased game is made available, the demand for the actually physical cartridge drops because its main value (playability) is suddenly in great supply.

[Dino]

Miss 2600, on Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:47 PM, said:

Dino, on Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:28 PM, said:

Miss 2600, on Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:13 PM, said:

Art is also in the graphics of the game play itself, so a rare game played on a Harmony cart can be considered art.

A rom of a rare game being released doesn't make the original cart worthless, but it eliminates the appeal of being able to play a game that few people in the world have (the sudden appearance of the Air Raid box being an exception--but it was the only known box, not the cartridge, that fetched the $$$).

Its the rarity of the box itself, not the artwork on the box that determined the final price. The artwork itself was actually crap and the game wouldn't have sold for more even if the artwork was better. Again, the artwork aspect of the carts and box are MINOR compared to other factors, such as rarity. Imagic boxes are all masterpieces in comparison when it comes to artwork, but they can be picked up for a couple of dollars, since they are not rare.

I think there was some aesthetic value to that Air Raid box.  I think it looked cool, actually,  If it was a plain box with no text like Tanner remembered it being (i.e. just the insert box), it probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the money it got.  It was purchased for a future video game museum, and it has display value with its colorful graphics.  The main value of a cartridge, though, is the game play.  A prototype with no label save for a piece of tape with the game's title scribbled on it would be worth a lot of money if it was a game that was never released in any form.  Your point about supply and demand is true for anything.  Once a rom of a previously unreleased game is made available, the demand for the actually physical cartridge drops because its main value (playability) is suddenly in great supply.

It sold for so much because it was the only one available and because of all the hype over the years about the existence of the box and whether the title "air raid" was on the box and the fact that the box confirmed it to be a Nth American release. The point is it could have had artwork that rivalled the Mona Lisa or the crappy artwork it actually has and it wouldnt make much difference to the final price.  If the box proved it to be a Sth American release it wouldnt have made even 10% of the $32k

A boxed Atlantis II sold for $6k. What's the difference between the artwork from a regular box? A boxed Pepsi Invaders can command $5k-$6k and that box is just a plain cardboard box with a little sticker on it.

The artwork aspect is almost irrelevant when discussing the value of Atari games. Its demand/supply, official Nth American release, and the availability of the rom which are the three most important factors in setting titles apart from each other.

Sure, the Air raid cart is cool and the label is funky, but this game wouldn't be worth more than $10 if 1,000 of them were discovered in Venezuela.