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Early revision catalog w/Pac-Man & other differences


Ballblaɀer

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I've come across what appears to be an early revision of the CO16725 Rev. D Atari catalog (a revision of a revision, it seems!) that's different in some interesting ways from the catalog that everyone's familiar with. One obvious difference is the front cover design -- I bought it sight otherwise unseen, having recognized it as, well, odd-looking.

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Beside the unique cover layout, it's made with slightly thicker paper, and is about 1mm shorter than what I'll call the standard catalog. The next difference is apparent upon opening to the inside: the print quality is better in the early revision. IMO the overall contrast and image detail is improved throughout the catalog; I'd guess this is largely due to the higher quality paper used. The colors also appear different in some places, but it may just be due to different ink/paper/printers. Here's a page comparison that shows the difference in printing (early catalog on the left):

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Moving on to the introductory page, there's a small difference in the text. The standard catalog says:

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The early catalog instead says:

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Turning to the next page, the wizard artwork is not obscured by the left-hand border, and also extends over to the adjacent page. Looks cool! Otherwise no changes, and also no changes on the following pages.

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Then we come to the Super Breakout product pages. The artwork is shifted so that the ball is visible bouncing above the bricks. I think this looks better -- I never noticed that there's no visible ball in the artwork depicted in the standard catalog, but I strongly prefer the early catalog when comparing the two. There are four other changes: Super Breakout has a registered trademark symbol, its release month was named (January), the product number that shows up in the usual catalog is not shown, and the mock-up screenshot has a blue background instead of a black one. All minor differences, sure, but interesting. Product numbers are not used throughout the catalog.

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Next up is the most notable of all of the differences in the catalog: the Pac-Man pages. The most obvious difference is the artwork used; the early catalog used the more exciting, anthropomorphic looking Pac-Man, while the static 2D Pac-Man ended up used in the standard catalog. It's stated that the game will be available in March. The early catalog also uses a different mock-up screenshot, one that depicts the Pac-Man maze with a black background and tilted monsters (the same screenshot also appears in the not-so-common 1982 Atari poster/catalog). Finally, it's noted that the Pac-Man trademark is owned by Midway; the Namco-America license is not mentioned. In the Rev. E catalog, both companies are referenced. Anyway, I'd guess that Atari decided that it would be a mistake to use a Pac-Man screenshot that looks more like the arcade version of the game, but I do wonder what led to them using the (IMO) less-exciting artwork.

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The remainder of the catalog is largely identical. Game artwork is framed slightly differently sometimes. For example:

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There are other very minor printing differences, like thin black borders around the artwork and some of the text.

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The only other content differences that I could find:


1) Estimated availability dates are given for Defender (June 1982), Yars' Revenge (May 1982), and Haunted House (February 1982).

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2) The early catalog revision has the title of Yars' Revenge spelled correctly. The standard catalog has it wrong (Yar's Revenge). How'd they go from right to wrong, here?

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3) The "Cartridges and Controllers" back page mistakenly says that Canyon Bomber uses the Keyboard Controllers, that Outlaw uses Paddles, and that Warlords uses Joysticks. Oops. Fixed in the standard catalog.

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Anyway, yeah, I think this is pretty cool. Nothing all that surprising in here, but still an interesting find, I feel. Anyone else ever see one of these?

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Interesting stuff, thanks for posting! The Pac-Man differences are definitely neat! I know it's just a mock-up, but I wish they would have kept the backgrounds black in the actual game.

 

I never saw this variation of the catalog, but I grew up with the standard version (well, the 49 game variant), albeit well after the 2600's heyday - probably about 1994. It came to me via some games from my uncle, and MAN did I pour over that thing! It, along with old comic book ads, were pretty much my only resources for new-to-me 2600 game information in those pre-internet days. (Well, not technically pre-internet, but anything approaching an AA level of info probably didn't exist, and even if it did, I was too young to access it.)

Edited by King Atari
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Thanks for sharing. Ive never seen that variation before either. But from what your describing, especially with regards to the higher quality paper, it feels to me like a preliminary or sample catalog. I dont think this catalog was officially produced and distributed. It looks like it was a publishers sample or early test run of some kind, intended only for evaluation purposes. And some of them inevitably found there way into the publics hands over time.

 

Regarding the Pac-Man art, that always bothered me as well. The beautifully drawn & juicy 3-D cartoonish Pac-Man character as seen on the cart sticker was awesome. But the plain boring kindergarten level 2-D crappy pie shaped Pac-Man character art used on the game box was pure garbage. What idiot in the art or marketing department went with using that as the first thing a person sees?

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It certainly could be a pre-production or sample catalog -- that's at least as good as any other theory I can come up with. I bought it from a seller in California -- and while that doesn't necessarily mean anything, I suppose it does at least slightly up the odds of it being something meant to stay in-house or at least be not meant for retail sale.

 

As for the different Pac-Man artwork... yeah, I'd love to know more details about how decisions like these were made. The 2D character was used for the Rev. D catalogs and most (all?) of the Pac-Man boxes in NTSC land, while the 3D-lookin' one was used on all manuals and cartridge labels. Yes, PAL territories got the international-style boxes with the cool stylized Pac-Man, but it eventually made its way over to NTSC land on re-release boxes. Tim Lapetino's Art of Atari has a quote from James Kelly (art director at Atari) who said that the decision to go with the 2D Pac-Man was an "upper management" one; that they felt that Hiro Kimura was essentially doing too much with his stylized art and that they should instead go with something more basic. But supposedly time and expense considerations kept them from changing everything to the new 2D design. Perhaps this decision came relatively late in the production process? Sounds like a typical upper management move... icon_smile.gif

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How the heck did you notice all those small changes? Maybe I would have caught those when I was twelve and spent hours poring over these things, but now? The art is SO familiar my eyes skip over familiar stuff -- even the obvious Pac-Man swap would probably get by me. Now I'm questioning everything, like which Pac-Man was on the carton vs in the manual.

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How the heck did you notice all those small changes? Maybe I would have caught those when I was twelve and spent hours poring over these things, but now? The art is SO familiar my eyes skip over familiar stuff -- even the obvious Pac-Man swap would probably get by me. Now I'm questioning everything, like which Pac-Man was on the carton vs in the manual.

 

The only thing I had to notice at the outset was the different cover. Then it was just a matter of paging through the two catalogs side by side. No big feat. :)

Edited by Ballblaɀer
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  • 5 weeks later...

Another one of these has turned up in Wisconsin of all places.

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It came in with a small lot of boxed games, oddly enough the only Atari brand game is a sealed Pole Position, the rest were either CBS or Parker bros. These things found their way into circulation somehow. A mystery indeed.

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I have recently acquired the catalog and will get some high quality scans on here somewhere, maybe in a gallery or for download somewhere. I have also found another difference between the two, the picture they use for the original Breakout is reversed in the standard manual while in the other version it is not.

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Alright I have a gallery up with scans of all the pages. Check it out HERE

 

Also I was very confused when you mentioned the misspelling of Yars' Revenge since the catalog I was using to compare the two actually had it spelled correctly, I checked the # and it was CO16725-Rev. D just like the other two. Could this be another variation?

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The top is the new version that is the subject of this topic the middle is the one I used to compare and the third is the one you used to compare. It seems we've got these things coming out of our ears around here.

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  • 9 months later...

I was just glancing through an issue of the 2600 Connection newsletter from 2001.  In it, Scott Stilphen described the different Atari Inc./Corp. game catalogs.  One of these was the catalog that's the subject of this thread.  Scott indicated that the catalog was only released in Atari press kits.  I hope this information is helpful.

Edited by JayAre
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Interesting information. Thanks for sharing.

And I don’t find it odd that there were so many catalog variations. Because it actually makes logical sense if you really think about it. Every game they sold had a catalog put inside. So imagine how many they had to have printed. When you move something that often, your constantly running out & making new batches. So making minor corrections & additions or changes as you go is much more cost efficient then usual.

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