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VCS/2600 Game Rarity by Number of Known Copies


Blazing Lazers

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It would only make sense it's more rare since you had to own magicard to have the option to buy video life.

 

 

I'm glad you brought this up. In the interest of historical accuracy, this widely circulated claim is not entirely true. I managed to get on CommaVid's mailing list by writing a letter to the company in 1983 hoping to buy the MagiCard after reading about it in Electronic Games magazine. The response was one sentence: "Sold out and no more are being made." Imagine my dismay.

 

A FULL YEAR LATER I received a long-winded form letter from Dr. Bronstein explaining the re-release of the MagiCard. The letter from the company was a complete surprise because I had not had any contact in a year and had bought NOTHING. Included was an order blank that I used to buy MagiCard, Video Life, Cakewalk, and Stronghold directly from them. Imagine my excitement when that package arrived. In fact, I consider it the most exciting day in my 36-year Atari collecting history!

 

The point is, someone at CommaVid had taken the time to put my name on a mailing list despite the fact that I was only a potential customer. Plus there may be others who had equal Good Fortune. I hope this dispels the myth that "only owners of the MagiCard" had opportunity to buy Video Life.

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Great story bfstats!!!

 

So it would seem those who bought magicard, those who tried to buy magicard and possibly all past customers may have had the chance to buy video life. So it may not necessarily have less copies than magicard. But if 20 or less were made I am guessing it still is more rare and fewer copies were made.

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Rare earth games said they bought medium bobs copy of the red sea.

So does that mean there are just 2 original copies then from a few years back?

Those first 2, the one from this summer with no end label and the one that just sold?

If so that makes 4 total and not 5 total.

Edited by stupus
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...if 20 or less were made I am guessing it still is more rare and fewer copies were made.

 

Agreed. Remember, MagiCard was released twice, the first time under the company name "Computer Magic" (blue label). And here is the letter, which states the original release of MagiCard sold "approximately 500". I find that surprising but have no reason to doubt the word of the good doctor. However, this letter was written in 1984. Joe Santulli told me of his meeting with Dr. Bronstein in 2010 (a year after DP had acquired the rights) so, for lack of better data, let's say AT LEAST 500 MagiCards exist (over two releases) and NO MORE THAN 20 Video Lifes exist.

 

post-118-0-77576200-1539966492_thumb.jpg

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Agreed. Remember, MagiCard was released twice, the first time under the company name "Computer Magic" (blue label). And here is the letter, which states the original release of MagiCard sold "approximately 500". I find that surprising but have no reason to doubt the word of the good doctor. However, this letter was written in 1984. Joe Santulli told me of his meeting with Dr. Bronstein in 2010 (a year after DP had acquired the rights) so, for lack of better data, let's say AT LEAST 500 MagiCards exist (over two releases) and NO MORE THAN 20 Video Lifes exist.

 

attachicon.gifmsg-118-0-97184600-1370295809.jpg

You have done a great thing for us all in sharing this- thank you so much!!! :)

 

So now we know that more than 500 copies (first run of 500 sold plus however many were made as part of the second run) of Magicard existed at one point.

 

And, we also know that a hell of a lot more than just 20 copies of Video Life existed at one point. There's bound to still be at least a few out there in the wild, and among collectors who just don't publicize what they have.

 

These are the sorts of back in the day documents I love seeing and which tell the real story- actual solid numbers and data!

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Keep in mind that there were 3 different variations of the Magicard cartridge made available.

 

One cart had a white / blue sticker that was not the proper length to cover the cartridge case.

Another was literally just the bare circuit board without a cartridge case or a label.

And a third cart had a plain white but at least full size and correct cart sticker.

 

Heaven only knows if there were even other variations.

 

And yet despite this half ass & unprofessional production, they still managed to sell 500 of them? Possibly even more if you really take what is written there at face value.

 

But then, Video Life carts, which all came in cartridges with full color, perfectly normal, completely consistent, production cart stickers, only sold 20?

 

Something here doesnt add up. Its never made sense to me.

 

And where the hell is Mission Omega while were at it. How come that never turned up when Sean Kelly & his crew rifled through what was left of CommaVid? I mean we have Rush Hour. And artwork for both.

 

Anyhow, 500 seems like way too much for Magicard. Far more of them would have surfaced by now.

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Video Jogger & Video Reflex do indeed turn up more often then would seem likely. But the controller itself, let alone the box they all cane in, is an extremely rare site.

 

But this list was never intended to cover every single 2600 ER & UR cartridge. There are far too many of them. And it also was never intended to get into the details of boxes & instructions either.

 

Its really just a quick reference list of what are the least found & rarely seen 2600 carts out there. The holiest of grails, if you will.

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So now we know that more than 500 copies (first run of 500 sold plus however many were made as part of the second run) of Magicard existed at one point.

 

And, we also know that a hell of a lot more than just 20 copies of Video Life existed at one point. There's bound to still be at least a few out there in the wild, and among collectors who just don't publicize what they have.

 

 

A little more clarity here: The 1984 letter stated "approximately 500 MagiCards SOLD". That was before the white-label re-release, so I think it is quite safe to assume AT LEAST 500 MagiCards exist(ed).

 

The letter also states THE INTENTION TO PRODUCE a combined total of 700 MORE MagiCards and Video Lifes. Regardless of the intention, Dr. Bronstein told Joe ONLY 20 Video Lifes were produced, and I am confident in assuming they were made only after they received orders (and therefore money). It was 6 weeks between the day I mailed the order blank and the day I received the order, plenty of time to manufacture the cart and print the box and manual. They may have even waited until a certain number of orders came in to begin production of the Video Life boards in order to justify the expense of the "certain parts" mentioned in the letter.

 

So, despite the wording of the letter, and because we have heard straight from the horse's mouth, NO MORE THAN 20 Video Lifes exist(ed).

 

 

And yet despite this half ass & unprofessional production, they still managed to sell 500 of them? Possibly even more if you really take what is written there at face value.

 

But then, Video Life carts, which all came in cartridges with full color, perfectly normal, completely consistent, production cart stickers, only sold 20?

 

Something here doesnt add up. Its never made sense to me.

 

And where the hell is Mission Omega while were at it. How come that never turned up when Sean Kelly & his crew rifled through what was left of CommaVid? I mean we have Rush Hour. And artwork for both.

 

Anyhow, 500 seems like way too much for Magicard. Far more of them would have surfaced by now.

 

I can't agree MagiCard was an "unprofessional production". The three founders of the company were scientists and, dare I say, hobbyists who reverse-engineered the 2600 in order to produce a legitimate 6502/6507 programming tool. The 132-page MagiCard manual and overlays are proof that these gentlemen were serious about what they were doing, so much so that the quality of production for all their subsequent releases (from Mines of Minos on) were quite professional indeed, in my experienced opinion. Add to that their games were uniquely sophisticated, again, in my opinion. I have the utmost respect for what CommaVid accomplished during the very brief 4 years they were producing games.

 

Regarding Mission Omega, Joe told me there was nothing usable in the materials acquired from Dr. Bronstein that could lead to a release. He and the other Digital Press guys were very excited about their release of Rush Hour which was virtually completed back in the day except for some graphics glitches which can be seen in the original ROM but were cleaned up for the released version.

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I understand what your saying. And I agree that they were not among the worst of the dozens of developers releasing cartridges for the 2600. And indeed they put more programming effort into their games then most other companies.

 

By unprofessional, I was referring more to the packaging of the Magicard game. Specifically, the cartridge labels. I mean dude, none of them came with a box, one of them didnt even come inside a cartridge shell, then the worst of their 2 labels was pure crap, and the best was black & white with standard typing text on it.

 

Anyone who considers that a professional presentation of an Atari 2600 cartridge release is crazy. Mythicon did a better job then that. Even Taiwan pirates did better!

 

Video Life & all the other carts they made with a full size & full color sticker label look professional.

 

But Magicard looks like SHIT!

 

Now, regarding the number of carts they made, you cant pick & choose which parts of what they say is taken at face value & which are not.

 

They say they made 500 of one, and then INTENDED to make another 700 combined of both of them, but then also say that actually less then 20 of one of them were made!

 

Use common sense here. If you take everything they said at face value, then you have to assume they made 1,180 magic cards & 20 video lifes.

 

Does that really make sense?

 

Whereas if you take it more casually, such as they had high hopes & INTENDED to make lots of carts, but did not, it makes much more sense that they did not.

 

Again, in their own words they admit that less then 20 of one of their specialty games was made. High intentions did not by coincidence result in only 20 video lifes but yet amazingly 680 magicards. Surely not.

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The Magicard was aimed to computer and electronic hobbyists who also happened to own an Atari 2600, it wasn't a product for the general video game console market.
In fact it was advertised in magazines like "Popular Electronics" or "Byte"

 

post-10599-0-80228900-1540111372.jpgpost-10599-0-72628800-1540111380.jpg

 

post-10599-0-77272600-1540111390.jpg

 

People buying this were interested in its functionality and in the included manual, not the packaging. They were building electronics projects published in magazines and buying kits (The MagiCard requires to build an additional circuit for the cassette interface to load and save programs and provides schematics and theory of operation for such interface in the manual).

The presence of a case and label was totally irrelevant, and a fancy artwork wouldn't have had the effect of making it look more "professional", but exactly the opposite. It wasn't a toy, and shouldn't have looked like one.




The Magicard allowed to inexpensively turn a 2600 console into an hobby computer similar to some of the single-board computers like the KIM-1, at least in their basic configurations (BTW, a professional product. No case or label, just a bare board and docs).

 

Moreover, its manual was an invaluable source of information for everyone who wanted to write commercial 2600 games.
Check this post by Dan Oliver, for example

[...]
At that time I know companies were willing to buy stolen 2600 programming manuals for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But then Magicard comes out for $50 with what turned out to be a complete 2600 programming manual. I think every company that started making 2600 games at the time bought one copy of Magicard.
[...]

 

 

And this unclassified Ad from "Byte" magazine 04-1983:

post-10599-0-38625700-1540111398.jpg



Video Life is a much more niche product than MagiCard (which already is a niche product!). It is something that would mostly interests mathematicians, and it was more interesting to program it on a computer (A reduced version could be coded on the Magicard, and it was in fact one of the example programs on the manual) than having it on a cartridge without the ability to modify the code.
I find reasonable and expected that its sales were just a (very) small fraction compared to Magicard.
MagiCard and VideoLife used the exact same pcb and parts. Just the code programmed in the eprom differs between the two. I see Video Life was a way to help selling the existing MagiCard parts, and it made sense producing it only because it didn't required investments for new hardware.


 

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People buying this were interested in its functionality and in the included manual, not the packaging. They were building electronics projects published in magazines and buying kits (The MagiCard requires to build an additional circuit for the cassette interface to load and save programs and provides schematics and theory of operation for such interface in the manual).

The presence of a case and label was totally irrelevant, and a fancy artwork wouldn't have had the effect of making it look more "professional", but exactly the opposite. It wasn't a toy, and shouldn't have looked like one.

 

Video Life is a much more niche product than MagiCard (which already is a niche product!). It is something that would mostly interests mathematicians, and it was more interesting to program it on a computer (A reduced version could be coded on the Magicard, and it was in fact one of the example programs on the manual) than having it on a cartridge without the ability to modify the code.

I find reasonable and expected that its sales were just a (very) small fraction compared to Magicard.

MagiCard and VideoLife used the exact same pcb and parts. Just the code programmed in the eprom differs between the two. I see Video Life was a way to help selling the existing MagiCard parts, and it made sense producing it only because it didn't required investments for new hardware.

 

 

Excellent insights! Thank you for your significant and well-expressed contribution to this discussion.

 

A very professional-looking box was made for the MagiCard by an AA member. It can be seen here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/270857-atari-2600-magicard-complete/?hl=%2Bmagicard+%2Bbox

 

 

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Well, if many and/or most of the Magicards were purchased by software developers, that might explain how/why less of them found their way back into collectors hands.

 

In addition, if many and/or most of them were exposed & unprotected circuit boards, that might explain how/why less of them survived as well.

 

But even taking both of these population dwindling contributions into account, I still find it hard to believe that if so many of them were made, why so few of them have managed to surface.

 

Just look at the percentages involved with the other top ten holy grails. As an example, only about 100 Extra Terrestrials were sold, and door to door mind you, yet we have had about half a dozen surface. (and in only a few years since its existence was known)

 

And Magicard, as was pointed out, had multiple advertisements, not to mention high visibility through the companies sales of their other games, and opportunities to call or write the company to purchase it, and it sells about 1,200 copies, but only about 10 or 20 have surfaced. (and this over the course of over 36 years)

 

But I digress. At the end of the day, the manner in which Magicard was presented above, made me realize that, in reality, the argument may be moot, because technically, it maybe shouldnt even qualify as a game in the first place.

Edited by Supergun
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...technically, it maybe shouldn't even qualify as a game in the first place.

 

I think that's fair. Perhaps we should refer to it as a "utility" rather than a game, like the various diagnostic carts or hobbyist carts like Synthcart and Testcart.

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I think that's fair. Perhaps we should refer to it as a "utility" rather than a game, like the various diagnostic carts or hobbyist carts like Synthcart and Testcart.

But there is a HUGE difference here. Those carts you mentioned, and similar carts like Color Bar Generator, Copy Cart, Compumate, Super Charger, etc. have NEVER been counted as part of the official list; whereas Magicard HAS been since the mid 90s when the newsgroups & mailing lists came together & forged the list in the first place. It shoehorned its way through the door by disguising itself as another companies version of a Basic Programming cartridge, and was grandfathered in as the years passed by because later versions had a cartridge case, and, the (optional) umbilical chord which could be wired up and connected to a tape recorder didnt come permanently attached to it.

 

Look. I dont care to strip Magicard of its status just because of a disagreement regarding how many of them were made. That discussion is unrelated. And I certainly dont want to open Pandoras Box here. Lets leave it where it is.

 

But lets just document this here for the purposes of exposing just how (unusual) it looks on paper:

 

Magicard - 1,180 sold - 36 years later - 23 found.

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Updated the list in light of this new, 4th RSC turning up:

 

1x copy: Birthday Mania / Gamma Attack

(*) 2x copies: Cat Trax (if it wasn't just a commercial sample)

2x copies: monogrammed Space Chase

3x copies: Ultravision Karate

4x copies: Red Sea Crossing

5x copies: Extra Terrestrials

6x copies: Gauntlet

 

15x copies: Eli's Ladder

20x copies: Air Raid

23x copies: Magicard

28x copies: Pepsi Invaders

Which of these games above didn't come in a box/instr.?

 

Should it be divided into 'boxed'/ 'not boxed' games? There's only one complete boxed/inner box/tray/instr. Air Raid out there, for example.

A complete (box, instr., cassette tape, colouring book) Red Sea Crossing hasn't been found yet, if this game had a box in the first place.

Maybe all 125 Pepsi Invaders went to Coca Cola way back in 83? Did they all come in this generic white box?

And then, there's this game: Pitfall II Lost Caverns: Treasure Hunt Edition....

Edited by high voltage
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  • 1 month later...

In regards to Magicard, does the registry include the copy Sean Kelly has for sale at his store, Video Games, Then & Now? If not then there's another one to document. How many copies of a game must be accounted for for a game to considered not a holy grail and become a 9/10 rarity instead of the legendary 10/10? Digital Press used to say no more than a dozen but that may be antiquated now. Also what about Cubicolor or BMX Airmaster by Atari? Can we finally add Confrontation to the list since it's technically released and at least one complete cartridge is in a collector's hands? I have looked into this game and as far as I'm concerned it should count as a release. I also agree that the amount of copies of Karate is like 6 or 7 and should be noted on the list.

Edited by vintagegamecrazy
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Is there even more than 1 confrontation cart known?

A game that was shown at 83 ces and then a few people who saw it in person and then asked to buy copies later and then a couple of those people got them.

 

To me that doesn't sound like a release but a couple people having the rate chance to buy a couple prototypes.

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How many copies of a game must be accounted for for a game to considered not a holy grail and become a 9/10 rarity instead of the legendary 10/10? Digital Press used to say no more than a dozen but that may be antiquated now.

 

I think atarimania says 3 copies. So at this point then for ntsc releases that would only leave gamma attack, birthday mania and maybe monogram space chase? And I guess cat trax if you choose to count it (not sure we will ever have evidence to firmly define it one way or the other.)

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