Matching Carts to Manuals, Is There A Way To Know?

[MeatWithGravy]

There are often, as everybody knows, a number of cartridge label variations for a given VCS title. Likewise, there are a couple (or more?) manual variations for the same title. When adding to my collection, I'm often buying a loose cart from one source and pairing it with a loose manual from another source. Is there a guide somewhere that explains how to properly match one with the other? Or is it simply, if the cartridge says "Adventure" and the manual says "Adventure" it's a match.

 

Is anybody else concerned about this stuff? Or is it just me?

[Rom Hunter]

Is anybody else concerned about this stuff? Or is it just me?

No.

 

Welcome to the jungle, btw.

 

[hizzy]

I've wonder about this myself!

[fiddlepaddle]

At least in the first few years, I don't think Atari was that concerned with "matching sets". I think they just made changes to the manuals and labels when they ran out of the old stuff.

[MeatWithGravy]

I've got a hunch that the smaller black-cover Atari cartridge manuals are earlier than the larger white-cover Atari cartridge manuals, and therefore match with the text label carts which came out--I believe--before the picture label carts. Am I wrong? Can anyone confirm or deny?

 

I'd also venture a guess that the B&W manuals were made in later years when game manufactures were looking to cut costs. So I'd assume that when faced with a game for which one can find both color and B&W manuals, the color are the earlier release. But again, I'm kinda talking outta my a$$ here. Anyone?

[Keatah]

Black cover manuals preceded the larger white manuals. And I think the black ones are more classy.

[jhd]

Here in Canada, at least, we tended to receive the thick, multi-language manuals -- that said, my copy of Maze Craze includes a separate French-language manual.

[edladdin]

There are often, as everybody knows, a number of cartridge label variations for a given VCS title. Likewise, there are a couple (or more?) manual variations for the same title. When adding to my collection, I'm often buying a loose cart from one source and pairing it with a loose manual from another source. Is there a guide somewhere that explains how to properly match one with the other? Or is it simply, if the cartridge says "Adventure" and the manual says "Adventure" it's a match.

 

Is anybody else concerned about this stuff? Or is it just me?

 

 

I love manuals and consider them to be almost as desirable to my collection as the actual carts. The small black manuals definitely came before the white ones, then the silver ones. Berzerk was the first larger white manual that I ever remember seeing. As with the carts themselves, my collecting goal has been to get the earliest version that was available - as if I had bought the game when it first appeared on the market. So that means black manual if that existed, then single language white, then silvers after that.

 

As proof there is no rhyme or reason to these opinions, I don't care at all about boxes!

[lazzeri]

Not only I care about that - I've lately been on a struggle to find the best match in catalogs too.

 

But I am already searching professional help.

[Philflound]

www.atarimania.com is owned by Rom Hunter. I think he tries to put together the correct carts with boxes and manuals as best he can. It's definitely tough to tell unless you purchase sealed items and open them up.

 

I've been working on my site www.videogamevariations.com for about 8 years now I think. I chose to add manuals a few years ago, but haven't worked on it steadily. Though I'm keeping track and trying to acquire scans of everything even if it's not on the site, it's very difficult having to scan all those pages and format them for the website so everything looks nice and neat. It takes a lot of time, so my enthusiasm for doing it isn't high. I was actually doing scans of all the Activision manuals I have and got up to Fishing Derby a couple of months ago. Then I got into other things. I should probably get all the manuals for Activision up on the website that I've done so far.

 

I probably have at least 1000 extra manuals of games, so putting together what manuals exist is a bit easier, but like I said, doing all the scans is a bit tedious. I probably should work on all those small 3rd party games. For some reason I did complete Konami through Panda, along with Absolute and Apollo. Everything else is a bit in disarray.

 

Anyway, good luck with trying to figure out what came with what. If you want to learn about release order for carts and boxes, here's the link. Maybe one day I'll try and add something for the manuals.

http://www.videogamevariations.com/AtariCompanies/AtariGames/GeneralAtari.htm

 

Phil