I FOUND THE NAME OF THE TAIWAN COOPER COMPANY

[PixelPastry]

 

Recently, I picked up a set of 7 Taiwan Cooper cartridges, one of these being Pac-man. When I tested the Taiwan Cooper Pac-Man cartridge, at the bottom of the screen, where it should have said Atari, it instead said CCE, the first image compares two boxes, one being the Pac-Man box and the other being the box to the Taiwan version of Mr. Postman, showing you that the cartridge is indeed a Taiwan Cooper cartridge. The second compares the cartridges, the third compares the text on the cartridges. And the final image shows where the company name is on the game screen.

[nofrills100]

CCE is the company that published the game - that the taiwan cooper company subsequently bootlegged it from

Edited April 5, 2015 by nofrills100

[+nanochess]

Now the guy that made these Taiwan Cooper cartridges, THAT would be a more difficult investigation than where is the warehouse full of Air Raid cartridges

[Rodrigo]

CCE is a brazilian company. They sold an atari clone and cartridges in the 80's and they are still open: http://www.cce.com.br/

[PixelPastry]

I know about the company CCE, I'm proving that CCE made these.

[PixelPastry]

CCE is the company that published the game - that the taiwan cooper company subsequently bootlegged it from

But on all of their other, they removed the name of the company.

[nofrills100]

Nah there's no chance CCE made these.

Some Taiwanese manufacturer released them, there are quite a few variants of these pirate carts, similar box branding, similar spelling errors, - a massive web of random companies and releases.

Pirated carts frequently have the original publisher logo on the screen, not always, but a lot of the time.

[PixelPastry]

Nah there's no chance CCE made these.

Some Taiwanese manufacturer released them, there are quite a few variants of these pirate carts, similar box branding, similar spelling errors, - a massive web of random companies and releases.

Pirated carts frequently have the original publisher logo on the screen, not always, but a lot of the time.

But that does not make much sense, why not just pirate the original Atari version, instead of taking it from an already pirated version.

[Omegamatrix]

But that does not make much sense, why not just pirate the original Atari version, instead of taking it from an already pirated version.

Who knows, but it happened quite a bit. I think a lot of the time pirate companies would just dump and pirate whatever carts they could find, so they didn't care who the original company was.

[Marco]

Here's what we wrote many moons ago for the Digital Press Guide.

 

Foreign Atari 2600 games

By Roloff de Jeu and Marco Kerstens of the great Netherlands.

 

Anyone who dares to leave the beaten track will find a realm of marvel and awe in collecting foreign Atari 2600 games. Where most of the 2600’s history in North America has been uncovered, the other continents continue to spew new discoveries and mysteries at a thrilling rate.

 

In this edition, we have added around 800 titles to the ‘Foreign’ Atari 2600 Games section. It now consists of over 2000 entries – by far the biggest in this guide. We are convinced, however, that we still have another 500-1000 entries to go. So, be aware that what goes for any Atari 2600 collection out there, also goes for this list: it will never be complete.

 

We have tried to distinguish as many games as possible. If no manufacturer is known to us, games are listed by distributor or seller (like Zellers, Quelle and Ariola) or even a description on label or box (like Fantastic Game, Double-Game Package and Video Game Program). We figured that this is the most convenient way for you to share your amazing fleamarket finds with your collector friends.

 

As for value, well, we have lowered most of them considerably. It turns out that the market for non-US Atari 2600 games is pretty small. And, quite frankly, we just don’t get that. What is wrong with you - mostly -American collectors?! The Brazilian TV standard is so close to NTSC that most Brazilian 2600 games will play without a problem on your NTSC system. And besides that, every modern TV or VCR will play any PAL games from anywhere in the world. So, what is stopping you? Collectability? Didn’t you read the previous edition of the Digital Press Guide? If you had, you would have known how cool collecting ‘foreign’ Atari 2600 games is!

 

You see, besides the gargantuan number of variations, collecting foreign Atari 2600 games also stands out because of the incredible nature of facts and fiction surrounding games and manufacturers. Last time we first hinted at a One-Big-Company conspiracy theory, that would clear up the mist around the many clones with similar labels, artwork and cases to be found all over the world. Now, it is time to initiate you into some of the secrets of ‘foreign’ Atari 2600 collecting. We know you too will feel the enchantment, and share our fascination for these intriguing games.

 

 

“Ripping the rippers, cloning the clones”

Mr Chin was a in a very good mood. Not only did his son’s baseball team beat archrivals Tainan yesterday, the confirmations of two new orders he found on his desk this morning suddenly brought this year’s targets within reach again. “20,000 pieces of Pac Kong, 10,000 pieces of Galactic, 10,000 pieces of Time Race, 10,000 pieces of Condor Attack… hmm, I need to order some more of those pull-bar cases” Mr Chin mumbled. He looked at the map. US sales were still plummeting. Europe and Australia were still going strong, however. And Brazil... well Brazil! Mr Chin smiled, while he phoned the head of production to prepare for new CCE and Goliath runs. He wondered how his succesful efforts to keep sales up would be honoured this time…

 

A scene from a production plant somewhere in Taiwan, august 1983. Fictional, but not improbable.

 

If you are a collector of ‘foreign’ Atari 2600 games, you have probably wondered at some point in time why certain titles pop up all over Atari land. The same games, released by different companies in different parts of the world, often with the same title, sometimes with slightly altered graphics. Sometimes a company name appears on screen. Some even come in more or less the same cases and boxes. Without the internet, we probably never would have found out about this global market. But as it is, we can but wonder about how this practice came to be: how come games from different companies on different continents are so similar or even identical?

 

One theory that tries to explain the possible connection between all of the pirate manufacturers might be that one bought out the other. That could explain the similarities between games from companies like Funvision, Ultravision, and K-Tel Vision. It does not explain the similarities between these and companies like Goliath and Rainbowvision, that were operating on other continents. Also, if these companies were constantly buying and selling one another, that would roughly mean one takeover and name change every year. And every time there was a name change, the same old games were re-released. Not impossible, but highly improbable.

 

That brings us to the second theory that states that pirate companies were ripping off one another. Picture a world market, filled with little, independent companies all jumping on the Atari 2600 bandwagon trying to make a fast buck or two. These firms did not want to waste any money on programming so they just copied games from other companies. Sounds plausible, right? Well, if these firms did not do any programming, how did their names get on-screen? Also, this theory does not account for the striking similarities in boxes, cases and labels. Why would Funvision go through all the trouble of finding the same cases to make their Challenge look exactly like its Hi-Score Australian counterpart? Why would K-Tel Vision stick its Vulture Attack in a T-type case to resemble Goliath’s Condor Attack?

 

The only theory so far that can answer these questions is one that features our imaginary salesmanager, and the company he works for. It was a company, somewhere in the Far East, probably Hong Kong or Taiwan. It is the mother of all pirate companies, which are, in a way, one and the same. This company produced the games for many brands, all around the world: Puzzy, Dimax, Funvision, Goliath, Rainbow Vision, Funvision, CCE and probably many more. Its name? Bit Corporation.

 

Cartridge cases, boards, part numbers, and on-screen names link Bit Corp to many pirate games and brands. The most interesting one probably is its connection to CCE, one of the bigger Brazilian companies. Coincidence or not: the first nine games of the CCE library are the exact same nine games that Bit Corp released under their own label. More coincidence: the Zimag library consists only of Bit Corp titles, albeit with different game names. Since the game Open Sesamy has a sampled voice at the beginning in the PAL version, while its NTSC counterpart "I want my mommy" does not, it appears that the Bit Corp games are the originals, and that Zimag was just another distributor for Bit Corp. It seems very unlikely that enough space could be found in a 4K game to add voice for the PAL conversion, if the NTSC was the original. Therefore, it looks like the Zimag/Emag/Vidco prototypes of Pizza Chef, Mysterious Thief and Fire Spinner are actually Bit Corp games that never got released under the Bit Corp label. Instead, they later released them under the CCE label in Brazil. How’s that for a ‘pirate’ company?!

 

So, Bit Corp turns out to be a real spider-in-the-web. Funvision, Goliath, Zellers, CCE, Rainbow Vision, Zimag/Emag, Suntek, Puzzy, and lots of brandless games appear to be accounted for now. However, the question remains as to how they operated. Were they in it alone, did they program and hack all their games themselves, or were they part of a joint-venture?

 

Obviously, the mist is only partially gone. It still leaves room for yet unknown accomplices to hide…

 

 

The OZ connection

Because of its weird variations of Atari 2600 games, Australia has been dubbed the Atari Goldmine by some collectors. But get this: the Atari Goldmine may also turn out to be the Atari Exposure! Atari involved in piracy! A sad, desperate move by a struggling company, trying to squeeze some more money out of an (almost) dead market?

 

Not so long ago, an interesting Atari 2600 console appeared on Ebay. Nothing special, at first sight, but upon closer inspection, this console gives us a first clue of Atari’s involvement in piracy. This console, with both Atari's name on the box and the chips inside, contains 128 built-in games. Among them, there are many well-known pirate titles, like Boom Bang, Farmyard Fun and Pyramid War. The games that are on the official Atari 32-in-1 cart, are exactly the same as the first 32 games listed on the instruction sheet that comes with the 128-in-1 Atari Jr console.

 

So, there you have it: PROOF! Atari was indeed involved in piracy!

 

That immediately raises the question as to the nature of Atari’s involvement. Where did they get the pirates included in the 128-in-1 console? Or was Atari behind some of the pirate games itself? Was it trying to penetrate different parts of the market with several brands? Were the pirate games in fact secondary brands, commonly used by big electronics firms? Was it Post-Crash management, trying to deal with the loss of the US market by releasing cheaper games to the still hungry gamers in Europe and Australia?

 

The similarity between some of the weird graphics on the Atari 32-in-1 box and the artwork found on Zellers and John Sands boxes, could point to Atari being a multi-market, multi-faced company, controlling more parts of the market than we thought they were. Not really convincing evidence, we agree. The recent discovery of a SuperVision cartridge in Australia however could support the thesis. This SuperVision game - Mario Bros. - turned out to contain an official Atari PCB! Now the question of course is: did Atari allow its Taiwanese PCB manufacturer to sell their products to other companies (with some sort of fee for Atari for every sold PCB, of course) or was the PCB company moonlighting without Atari knowing it? And who exactly was it that was producing those PCBs? Is there, perhaps, a link to the infamous S.S. cases too? Was Atari connected to Bit Corp, and did Activision still play a role? More on this and other conspiracy theories next time!

 

Ah… so many questions, and still so little answers! The puzzle is still far from complete. We need more carts opened, PCBs and chips inspected, code analyzed, artwork compared, salespeople interviewed. So, in stead of “Game On!” we would like to end with “Conspire On!” - and share your thoughts with us on this forum.

 

 

Many thanks go out to Ken Dolan for his original work on the one-company theory. Eckhard Stolberg gets full credit for exposing Bit Corp. Thanks also goes out to Ian Baronofsky, Luiz Bonaccorsi, Sebastien “Jah Fish” Clave, Chris Hind, Sandy Huner, Jens Klöpfel, Marc Oberhäuser, Steve Rich, and Rick Weis.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Marco

[nofrills100]

A great read Marco.

 

And nice to see Ken Dolan's name mentioned in a different light to the usual references.

[up2knowgood]

My biggest question is on the back of the boxes. The controller pictured is clearly not a standard CX-40 joystick, but a later 7800 style. Was that a common controller in 1984? If not, so does that mean these games were released post-crash?

[Rom Hunter]

My biggest question is on the back of the boxes. The controller pictured is clearly not a standard CX-40 joystick, but a later 7800 style. Was that a common controller in 1984? If not, so does that mean these games were released post-crash?

 

Yep.