recorderdude

Got a lot in recently that very luckily contained a snoopy vs the red baron, which ive wanted to own for awhile. However, when i got it, half of the label and the endlabel were bizzarely darkened - although the label itself is fairly smooth and it boots perfectly. Has anyone come across an atari cart like this before and any chance it can be cleaned/restored without damaging the label? It almost looks like fire or water damage to me but its still smooth and solidly on the cartridge. I will not that it looks a LOT darker irl than on camera.

Lots of great answers already, and special thanks to keithbk for the insight on its authenticism! Yeah, I figured it's probably not worth much since it's personalized, just wanted to try and confirm it was legitimate before I put it on the shelf-of-interesting-things-to-entertain-guests-with-stories-about. It also has WAY less activision plaque than my normal copy, and it works fine, so maybe I'll try and get a bucket-brigade qualifying score on it to pay tribute to larry and rita alike. XD

Got a 2600 lot with a copy of HERO and Private Eye in it today and figured those would be the most exciting things about it. Boy was I surprised when I pulled out the Kaboom! I'd only seen the toplabel of and saw this on the front! Seems to be inscribed "To Rita" and "Larry Kaplan" - awfully odd to just be sitting in a lot. Can anyone confirm that this is actually his signature? On a lesser note, are there any influential "Ritas" in 2600 history? It's probably a random Kaboom fan, but still crazy to find. I saw a ton of David crane signed titles on ebay when I looked but no Larry Kaplan to compare this to. Thanks in advance to any help you can offer! EDIT: Just remembered Activision employees always signed the last page of the manual. Here's Kaboom's page 5 scan from AtariAge itself. I see some similarities? But still uncertain.

Well, this was a surprise. Found this bugger in a lot of 10 games for 20 bucks. You can still see where the proto label was before it fell off. Amusingly, the previous owner, "TIM", had a piece of scotch tape with his name written on the front (as many other games in the lot did) but it was easy enough to remove without damaging that shiny red label. 999% likely a review copy/final rom but still crazy to bump into. Figured I'd post here as well in case there's anything I'm missing about this that I should check for differences, and just to show that it exists!

Allrighty! Since there is interest in dumping, I'd be happy to facilitate that. I checked my funds and I might actually be able to afford to get some kind of dumper, depending on how pricey it is. I was gonna go for a retrode, but it seems it doesn't have Native Atari support and I'd have to build a plug-in to dump this, so are there any other options that I'd be able to dump Cops 'N' Robbers with out of the box? Bonus points if it can do genesis games, too, so I can get Hulk dumped with the same machine. Thanks!

Heyo! Some great information to take in here! Completely different names are a normal thing for Atari, eh? Neat to know. Most of my knowledge about protos is in the later 8-bit and 16-bit eras where a different name could legitimately mean a different game build, like virus/super-early dr. mario. I checked up and saw that Tempest appears to be someone quite prominent in the Atari prototype community. It'd be fantastic to get him involved here. Would it be best for me to send him a PM about this discovery or would that be out of order? As for selling it, I make it a personal choice not to sell any prototype I've found until it's definitely known to be a final build ROM with nothing left to discover, and dumped if there's any doubt. My Berlin Wall proto was easy to identify as that 'cos it has the final checksum written on it, but Hulk and this one are still unknown, so I'd like to get them dumped above all else, and even then selling them is low on my priority list. Sadly the SEGA-16 members who wanted to help went kinda quiet so if I ever wanna see Hulk dumped I may just have to wait til I can afford to splurge on a retrode. I don't want to preserve these to gain cred or be respected, but just because I personally feel stuff like this is a part of history not everyone really gets to see if someone doesn't. My story and my own personal attachment begins and ends with how I found the game, but the important story is that of the proto itself. Maybe it's not massively important in the grand scheme of things, hell, it's DEFINITELY not important in the grand scheme of things, but I know it's a cool find to some people, and I know one of them is definitely me. That's why I care. Let me know where I should go from here with this thing and I'll be glad to push it along.

Before I start talking about this one, hi there! I'm recorderdude and it's a pleasure to join AtariAge. The reason I got on here has been because of a recent acquisition of mine. I've been collecting Atari for a little under a year now, and prototypes for a little under 2 years. I tend to only go for the stuff that slips below the radar, because I figure high-dollar prototype listings are gonna go to a collector no matter what, but when people who don't know they have a proto sell them, there's a good chance someone else who doesn't know what a proto is will buy them, and it might get lost to time. I've found two protos before this one, one of "Berlin Wall" for the Game Gear for $30 with a junk GG: http://www.smspower.org/forums/15084-BerlinWallPossibleDevelopmentCopyFoundUSReleaseConsiderationTies and an "Incredible Hulk" proto for the Genesis for $11 with an amusing story of its own: http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?30328-SEGA-Genesis-Hulk-Prototype-Found Both seem to be final or near-final ROM. I purchased this game in a lot of 2600 games - mostly doubles, but with a few other good games I didn't have like Jawbreaker and DK Jr. The seller stated this one may have been from a trade show his father went to. This proto also seems to be final or near-final ROM (though I'm certainly no expert on the subject, and only played it for a few minutes to check for anything obvious), but this one has something distinctly interesting about it: a completely different game name! "Cops 'N' Robbers" - I don't know why it was changed later, maybe they were worried they might infringe on Atari's tagline for "Maze Craze"? I have reason to believe it is indeed a proto as the cart top label is similar in type to the one on my Berlin Wall proto, and I literally cannot find ANYTHING when I search "Cops N Robbers Atari 2600" besides Maze Craze info. Warning: big images incoming! here's a video of the game playing. I had my difficulty switches on expert, but Bank Heist behaves the same way. If the people here feel there's reason to dump the ROM, I'd be happy to see it preserved, but I don't have a dumper, so while I won't ask for some kinda huge sum of cash, I'd at least like some help getting it dumped (either borrowing a dumper or sending it to somebody reputable) if there's interest. At the very least, the name difference can be noted with just pictures, as like most atari games, it doesn't appear in the actual game. Thanks for checking out my topic! Here's to these odd relics of the past being preserved!