story place

[soda B]

post your atari stories here

here is mine:

 

I went to a thrift store in salt lake city

that the morman familys had donated to goodwill.

If there was anything left it would be chucked in the trash.

I ran to the place and found a tapper game that had turpentine spilled on the label

and still worked.

I noticed a huge bin like a dumpster and I dug down in lamps'VCR's and TV's and at the bottom was a crate that I opened and found

tooth protecters'donkey kong'texas chainsaw massacre and halloween.

I took it to the guy and he said it would cost me 15$.

on my way home I saw a junk yard with a VCS box sticking out and snatched it and it had combat 2.

I went home and celebrated with...............................................................soda {of course}

[Skatepunk60]

if you still have combatII could your scan the box cart and all that what not for me ive never seen them

[Ze_ro]

This isn't really a brag, and contains nothing rare, but I think it's a good story anyways:

 

About a year ago, I didn't have an Atari. All I had was a Gameboy (2 actually, but that's another story), a broken ColecoVision, and a Jaguar, which I actually played very often, though I had been playing it less and less. About this time, I came to realize that I really liked some of the old classic games such as Asteroids, Pitfall, and especially Berzerk (How can you not love the robot voices?). MAME would suffice for quite some time, but somehow I find playing games at a computer, using a keyboard unsatisfying. But what other way could I enjoy all the classics short of starting an arcade in the basement?

 

The 2600 of course! I had never actually had one as a kid, and I was never actually raised on the classics like most of you probably were. I had my ColecoVision, and enjoyed games like Buck Rogers, Pepper II, Ladybug, Venture, and Gorf... though somehow none of these seem as classic as most of the 2600 games (Venture may be an exception). I knew very little about the Atari back then... all I knew really was what they looked like (vaguely), and that the cartridges were almost the same size as ColecoVision cartridges. However, at this point I had it set in my mind that I would find an Atari somewhere. After all, there must be a lot of them around, right? Everyone used to have one, and now everyone has Playstations (I still don't have one, and don't want one). I had also got it into my mind that I would put it next to my bed so that I could play it in the middle of the night (I was also suffering from insomnia around this time).

 

Thus began my hunt. To my disappointment, the local flea market is apparently the ONLY flea market in town (I eventually found another, though it had almost no trace of electronics). So, I starting sifting through the thrift stores, which are plentiful. I came across almost everything at these stores... A bunch of Sega Master Systems, heaps of controllers for various systems, and of course, hundreds of Nintendos. Yet no Atari. I went a little over a month, and I still hadn't found one (This seems strange to me even now... I find Atari's way more often than this). I was starting to lose hope.

 

Then one day I was walking through the thrift store, as usual, finding absolutely nothing. I walked along the counter that sometimes held Nintendo's, but more often held broken (to various degrees) record players and tape recorders. My head was hung low, and I wan't looking at anything very closely when I saw something that was black with some switches on it. I blinked, and then focused my eyes. It took a few seconds for my brain to register that it was an Atari that I was looking at. I was so happy, I grabbed it right away and almost forgot that I had no way of actually using it. I had joysticks that worked with the ColecoVision, and others for my C-64 which I knew would fit, but I had no power adapter, and no RF switchbox that would work with this (My Jaguar one is an auto switch box, and the Atari's cord is built in)... so I began to look around the store a bit, but to no avail. I did however find the first two Atari games that I was to own: ET and Donkey Kong (It's amusing in retrospect that the first two games I bought are likely the crappiest in my collection, and probably will be for some time to come). When I got home, I managed to find a universal power adapter that fit the Atari, and I then got a hold of a manual switch that worked with the Atari (Which also helped me realize that my ColecoVision wasn't broken after all, but that I was incorrectly trying to use it with an auto switch box).

 

Now, a little under a year later, I have almost a hundred games, and cables running all around my room in a mildly successful attempt to connect my (now) huge collection of systems that I mostly bought because they were there when I was looking for Atari stuff (the SNES, NES, Genesis, and Intellivision fall in this category... the Dreamcast doesn't). As I had always hoped, it's right next to my bed, ready for me any time I want to play a late-night game of Pitfall.

 

As I said, this was never a story about finding anything rare... but it's a story of how I became a collector, and (For whatever reason) I think it's a very appropriate and memorable way for things to start. I still don't look for things because they're rare... I'm much more interested in games that are fun to play, though I've more recently taken an interest in rare games if only because I have most of the common ones.

 

Unfortunately, Atari hasn't cured my insomnia. If anything, it's probably made it worse... but I haven't been complaining.

 

--Zero

[Rhindle The Red]

Just a quick one.

 

There's a local store here that sells all sorts of collectibles (cards, action figures, etc.). They recently started to get video games. The thing is, the owner has very little idea what games are worth, so he bases the price on his personal assumptions. For example, E.T and Raiders are $5.00 (cause they're movies), Donkey Kong is $3.00 (because he's heard of it), and I got River Patrol (with no end label ) from him for $1.00 (because he hadn't heard of it.)

 

So I go in there and he has a pile of 2600 manuals for $0.25 each. I snag a few that I need when suddenly I see something I've never seen before: and Atari 2800 manual (for Super Breakout). The best part was telling the guy what it was I was buying for $0.25 and seeing him get annoyed for not knowing it was so rare.

 

In case you're wondering, I wouldn't tell him about River Patrol. I want the next copy that comes in for $1.00 too.

[DaisySatan]

Atari 2600 is jus great and nostalgic system ever made for me and my days. i grew up in early 80's era and that was the main system i owned and played. til Nintendo came along then my mom made me throw out my Atari 2600 and at least 25 games. but see, i was a youngen then and that system wasn't as stunning or streaming with action as Nintendo was. cuz when your young and when new and better things come along, you're like, wicked, i like this better. and kick aside what was there before longer.

so, not til 3 years ago i became nostalgic about Atari 2600 and how i wish i could find one and play it like i did back in the old days. when 2-4 bits of gaming technology was what it was all about. couple moves up and down, left, right; a button press here. remembering all those classic games i used to play on a Saturday morning almos all afternoon. it was so very entertaining back then. so, i searched high and low in my area for an original, STILL WORKING, Atari 2600 system. but so as it seems, i found some but without controllers, without cables, without all those adapters needed and so on. good cheap prices for the system. some for 5-10 dollars. so, i managed to save up 60 dollars and was told i should check out E-bay for Atari systems. and of course they had a wide array of what i wanted. so after a 3 long year wait for a perfect working order system, i managed to win a classic system with 12 games. also i am bidding on some rare games that i want to own for their nostalgic purposes of owning them. titles such as Gremlins, Master of the Universe, Ghostbusters, and all those other things of the 80's i dug so much.

but anyway, thankx to E-bay and some honest and good ppl that still own the system and keepin hope alive all across this country and further for those who want to reinvent the nostalgia. so that's a bit of my story. how i was was wicked glad that i finally came across and got an Atari back in my hands once and for all.

[DaisySatan]

Atari 2600 is jus great and nostalgic system ever made for me and my days. i grew up in early 80's era and that was the main system i owned and played. til Nintendo came along then my mom made me throw out my Atari 2600 and at least 25 games. but see, i was a youngen then and that system wasn't as stunning or streaming with action as Nintendo was. cuz when your young and when new and better things come along, you're like, wicked, i like this better. and kick aside what was there before longer.

so, not til 3 years ago i became nostalgic about Atari 2600 and how i wish i could find one and play it like i did back in the old days. when 2-4 bits of gaming technology was what it was all about. couple moves up and down, left, right; a button press here. remembering all those classic games i used to play on a Saturday morning almos all afternoon. it was so very entertaining back then. so, i searched high and low in my area for an original, STILL WORKING, Atari 2600 system. but so as it seems, i found some but without controllers, without cables, without all those adapters needed and so on. good cheap prices for the system. some for 5-10 dollars. so, i managed to save up 60 dollars and was told i should check out E-bay for Atari systems. and of course they had a wide array of what i wanted. so after a 3 long year wait for a perfect working order system, i managed to win a classic system with 12 games. also i am bidding on some rare games that i want to own for their nostalgic purposes of owning them. titles such as Gremlins, Master of the Universe, Ghostbusters, and all those other things of the 80's i dug so much.

but anyway, thankx to E-bay and some honest and good ppl that still own the system and keepin hope alive all across this country and further for those who want to reinvent the nostalgia. so that's a bit of my story. how i was was wicked glad that i finally came across and got an Atari back in my hands once and for all.

[Gr4ph0n]

At the local Flea, an old man had a PILE of trash in the corner of the building that he sold from. I guess he was like a white Sanford (Sanford & Son). Anyways he thought anything electronic was valuable. For Instance, he'd want $5 for an Atari cart (common or no), and he had a TON of old systems and carts that I wanted back when I got my second Atari wind. So instead of paying cash I would find stuff to trade him for the carts. Once I got a huge cardboard tube from work (2' diameter x 6' tall) and traded him for a clean VCS and 5 carts. Another time I traded a box full of vinyl records (45s) for a ColecoVision and 4 carts. The best thing about this guy was the farther I dug into his trash pile, the better the finds. One day while digging I found a Super Pong console, Mogul Maniac, Squeeze Box, Picnic, and an Odyssey II complete system in the box w/manuals. It was good while it lasted, I didn't go for a month or so and when I did the place was cleared out for craft booths. I heard that the old man never really payed rent there and there were people willing to pay for his spot, so they forced him to leave. He wouldn't arrange to get his stuff out, so they hauled it off to the dump. I feel sorry for the guy, but I wish I would've been there when they removed the stuff.