Alex

Fair enough. Never hurts to CYA.

Heh, well to me it's obvious but I guess new visitors to the site might not understand that rarity is not a direct indicator of value. The introduction to the guide states this: "The rarity scale is a general indicator of easy or difficult it is to come across a game." It says nothing of value. I have no problem adding a line that says rarity is not necessarily an indicator of value, and that a cart is only worth what someone is will to pay. I don't know if that will really make a difference, but it won't hurt anything. For people that overpay without knowing what they're buying, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy. There is only so far we can hold someone's hand. If anyone reads just a small bit of information regarding BB carts, they will see exactly what we know about them and they will be able to make an informed purchase.

Let's assume it was a real cartridge for the sake of the debate. How does seeing a 10 give a false impression of value? Where has the "value" been determined? If a game consistently sells for $100+, isn't that the "value" of the game, not what some people think it should be? I don't think I've seen a real Beagle Bros cart sell, so I have no idea what the "value" is. I think Thomas Kincade paintins are ugly and sophomoric, and I wouldn't hang one on my wall for free. But people pay thousands of dollars for them on a regular basis. What is their "value"?

I understand what you're saying, but I don't think that we should be making judgements about what is valuable and what isn't. The game is worth what people are willing to pay, and we are very clear about what the games are. Just because they're worthless to some people, doesn't make them worthless to all. Who gets to decide which games have "value" and therefore a rarity? You are suggesting we hide the rarity so that someone doesn't buy the game and regret it later? Why would they regret it? They changed their mind about what it's worth? That can happen with anything. At what point to we hide the rarity? 10's only? 9? 8? 5? Do we hide only the pirate companies? What about games like Lochjaw, which is essentially a label variation? Do we hide that? It's rare, but who's to say it has any value? Nobody complains about that. What's the difference?

As long as your meat and potatoes is the new stuff, you could certainly have a classics section that gets better treatment than the chains. But I doubt it could be the focus of your store from a financial standpoint. Not enough volume. But I'd love to see more "classics friendly" stores.

...and here is the afformentioned "Unknown" company entry: http://www.atariage.com/company_page.html?...0&CompanyID=196 You will now find the Beagle Brothers carts here, and there is no more Beagle Brothers company entry. This will also house other carts, such as Taiwan 1, whose company we do not know. You will still be able to sort them by label style to see what carts probably belong together.

I hope you guys get your soon as well, but let me also say it's worth the wait. A very well programmed game and some lovely packaging. I hope Andrew does another game!

I just talked to ex-Beagle Bros employee Warren Ernst, and here is what he had to say: You can check out his web site here: http://www.warrenernst.com. Also, Albert and I have decided to list it as an Unknown company, with Beagle Bros in the cartridge description.

I posted over at DP as well, but here agian are my thoughts on the matter. We have never indicated the value of a Beagle Brothers cart, so to say that we have misrepresented the value it is not possible. We have only stated that they exist, we are unsure of their origin, and they are very rare. To blame us if someone makes a fake is unfair. Why should we not give it a rarity rating? Because it's unlicensed? So all unlicensed games should be left without a rarity? Unlicensed games have been given a rarity for years yet we have never heard of this until now. I believe there are two questions here: 1) Are the Beagle Brothers games really from Beagle Brothers, or are they pirate games from the black market? The answer to this will determine under what "company" they are listed - either Beagle Brothers or "Unkown". Now, it has never been proven either way whether they are legitimate or not, so we are taking a guess by placing them in either category. Now, I can understand putting them in an "Unkown' category, but does that mean that all unlicensed games should go into an "Unknown" category? Traditionally this has not been the case, and I have never even heard this suggested before. 2) Should all unlicensed games be unnassigned a rarity? Again, this has never been the case and I have never heard anyone suggest it. Do you only want the Beagle Brothers games unnassigned rarity for some reason? Because they are easy to fake? I don't think that's a good reason. I'd like to hear anyone's thoughts on this.

We do our best to make sure nobody is pleased.

I have to admit, I never thought the ranks would cause so much discussion. It's just meant to be fun, but I can understand if people don't like it. One change is to bring back custom status. We have already decided to do it, it's just a matter of getting to it (every little thing takes time!). Another option would be for users to enable/disable rank status in their profile. So those who like ranks can display them and those who don't can just use their avatar and a custom title. I think this is a good solution, and we should be able to do this as well although again we have some other issues to get to first. We could also do away with rank names and just use joysticks.

This isn't entirely true though, and was the source of some of the complaints. There are some lurkers/low posters that are veteran collectors that have been in the 'scene' for a long time. Another thought is using some of the Activision patch names: Flying Ace Beamrider Chopper Commando Crackpot Decathlete Roadbuster Save the Chicken Foundation Grand Prix Driving Team Order of the H.E.R.O. All-Star Hockey Team World Class Dragster Club Secret Society of the Dolphins Friends of the Dolphin Frostbite Bailey's Arctic Architect Activision Bucket Brigade Billy Club Federation of Laser Blasters Megamaniac Oinker No Plaque Pack Explorer's Club Cliff Hangers Short Order Squad Super Sleuth Sub Club Activision Ski Team Sky Stars Space Shuttle Pilot Space Shuttle Commander Spider Fighter Trail Drive Starmaster

So far I like this idea above the best. The names can be unique and fun, and don't make it seem so personal like "Novice" or "Pro" or whatever. Even if it's hard to make a logical heirarchy, the joysticks will tell the tale. Any other comments abou this?

It's something we've discussed before. However, I doubt we could successfully charge commissions to any meaningfull degree. If we did something like that, it would probably be a free service, as there is no way we could compete with eBay in terms of exposure.

That would be cool, but there is not way to relate post count, join date, and ranks.

Yes, they are bootlegs. Whether or not they have any value is up to you. If it's silly to you, then just ignore them and buy one from Hozer later on if you just want the gameplay. Lots of people like the packaging. It takes a lot more effort to actually program a new game though, than to produce packaging for an unreleased prototype. And they come from different groups of people so I don't think we're missing new games because of it.

Okay, a number of people have complained about the new ranks. I'd like to point out that these were not meant to be permanent, and we did not mean to offend anyone by labeling them "newbie". The ranks are meant to be fun, and we didn't intend for anyone to take them personally. Why did we change them? We wanted something different than Atari Pro I, II, III for example, which is rather boring. We wanted each rank to have a unique name. So we quickly came up with something (bad idea). Anyway, we're brainstorming for a real ranking system, so if anyone has any clever suggestions, please post them here. We currently have 7 levels (could be 8 if we start people on 0 joysticks). Here are some suggestions so far: Atari Visitor Atari Fan Atari Enthusiast Atari Worshipper Atari Maniac Atari Visitor Atari Fan Atari Enthusiast Atari Maniac Atari God Atari Newcomer Atari Fan Atari Enthusiast Atari Devotee Atari Freak Atari Maniac Comments and suggestions are welcome. Perhaps we should say "AtariAge Newcomer" for example, instead of "Atari Newcomer". Maybe that would be more accurate for people?

We will address this also. The PHPBB templating and CSS methods are not entirely clear to me right now, so we'll have to play around with it but we'll get it eventually.

We did reset some of the ranking levels as you all have noticed. We're not terribly thrilled by our rather uninspired rank titles, so we may hold a contest for people to submit rank names. Nick, we'll be taking all your comments into consideration. Please keep in mind this is day one of the new software, and we expect to be modifying things based on feedback (and things we just forgot). This option is not installed right now. It does exist, and we had set it up initially but it was very slow. So we'll be looking into how to speed that up and bring it back.

Jagfest 2K2 takes place July 12th and 13th, 2002 in St. Louis Missouri. There will be vendors, workshops, contests, and more. For more info, visit the Jagfest web site.

Hahah, you never know. The movie should be interesting at any rate.

Fixed.

I have no idea how that happened. I was doing some maintenance but I didn't think I was touching the news at all. Anyway, I rebuilt the database and it looks okay. Scared me though.

Yes, that's a part number. But just because they assigned a part number doesn't mean work was ever begun. They may have just reserved a number for each title across platforms in case they ported it. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if work was started at some point. Same with Lady Bug. Cosmic Avenger would be tougher I would think.

Here is a catalog entry that says it's coming out for the VCS: Catalog Rumors have swirled, but I don't recall hearing anything definitive.