Alex

We aren't really sure of the formats of all these games at this time, we are just grouping them together right now. Some seem to have been sold in Europe, some in the US. Some appear to be exclusive to NTSC or PAL, some appear to have been sold in both formats. We need more info on these titles, perhaps dumping them and checking scanlines would help. Here is our description of these games: "We have grouped these games together because of the similar box and cartridge styles. All boxes have a drawing on the front with a "New" logo above the drawing. The back of the box has some simple instructions and a mock screenshot. These games have been found in the US and in Europe, and they were made in Taiwan (according to the back of the box). We don't know who actually made them, or if there were any official distribution channels. We have listed these games as NTSC for the time being, although the games found in Europe play fine on PAL systems. We're not sure if they were actually distributed in both formats, or only one format that happens to work on both TV formats. If you have any further information about who made these or how they were distributed, please contact us." We are open to information/suggestions.

Hi Joel, Thanks! Actually, we just added a bunch of scans from your site yesterday, the post is here. I only looked at the Taiwan stuff though, I'll look through the rest of the site over the next week. Thanks again!

Thanks to David H., we've added Sears Gunslinger picture label to our database. We didn't even have this one listed before, and it's not on the Giant List of Label Variations (hi Matt!). So, how many of you have one of these? What do you think of the rarity?

I would agree, this is one of the areas where the site is lacking. It's been a little difficult until now because of the database management between Albert and myself, but we're building some tools that should make it easer to add this type of content. We may even add some type of "Submit Info" button on each game's home page that would get sent to us for review and easy posting to the site. We're working on it, and we're open to other suggestions.

Here you go, Marco.

By your request, here is a forum dedicated to discussing the craziness that is eBay. A place to talk about all the strange and humorous auctions you run across while browsing the world's most popular auction site.

Great bit of detective work Matt! That game and its title never made sense to me, but it never occurred to me that it might be Planet of the Apes. Brilliant! And nice label Rhindle. I need to get a color laser printer (yeah right).

Yes, titles of the same number are not going to be exactly the same. It just isn't possible. You'd need a scale of 1-1000 to do that, not 1-10. Sure it's not as rare as some 10's, so you bump it down to 9. Suddenly a bunch of 9's are not as rare as MM. So you bump them down. Then you have problems with the 8's. It's all relative, and it's not an exact science. I think anything that only shows up on eBay once per year is a 10. That's pretty rare.

With such a close vote, we are obviously going to disappoint a substantial number of people either way. I also suspect that a higher percentage of those who want "All" actually voted - it's easier to be lazy when things are already as you like them. Personally, I would prefer it set to "All". Among other things, this would cut down on our email from people telling us that we're missing various titles, when they were really only looking in the North American section. But that's just me and I don't want to force my opinion. In the future, you will be able to set preferences for this type of thing, so everyone can have it their own way.

Possibly, I haven't tried it. But you might have the same problem as if you were using a BODY element. If you aren't using tables at all in your pages, that might be fine. But in some browsers, most notably NN4.x, the TD tag will not inherit style. So if you use tables, you would have to arbitrarily set your style in the TD tag (assuming that TD does not inherit from DIV). Setting a TD style element eliminates this need. None of this is an issue in EI 5.x and above (and maybe older versions). But I know that TD will not inherit in NN 4.x and potentially other browsers. I'm not sure if NN 6.x will inherit. I'm not sure what you mean by asking if using DIV would be easier than TD. In both cases, you're just setting style for one element.

Isn't that redundant? Why include the BODY and TABLE elements? Everything ultimately falls under the TD tag (using the method I described).

Hi Dan, The Carousel games are prototypes, that is a mistake on our part, we'll fix that. Space War has an M because we believe they are still manufacturing that. Songbird games may be included in that category, we'll need to ask Carl (I don't know if he just produces on demand or what). As for Telegames, I don't know if they're still producing those or not either, or if they're just selling from their stock. I'll send them an email and see if I can find out. Thanks for the IS2 info, I don't have much data for that one yet. Any other insights are welcome.

The NTSC version of Klax only exists as a prototype. The PAL version was a standard release. The rarity guide only lists North American games by default. In order to see a world-wide listing, you need to select "All" in the search box. [ 03-12-2002: Message edited by: Alex ]

We just updated the Rarity Guide as you noticed. For a little history on why we did this, start with this thread. The problem with Jaguar and Lynx rarity is that almost every game is available online brand new in the box, if you you are willing to pay the price. So there are two ways of looking at Jag rarity - if you take into account what is available online, just about every game can be a 1. We don't really know the production numbers on these games, but we can see that they are all readily available. Now, this may be an accurate guide of availability, but this pretty much makes a rarity guide a useless thing. The other way of looking at it, is what is the rarity on the secondary market. eBay, thrift stores, flea markets, used game stores. So this is the option we haven now taken, while we started with option number one as you noticed. To me, this makes the rarity guide much more useful in the real world - you'll know if that game you found at the flea market was really rare or just the Jag's version of Combat. The problem this creates is that all the "rare" games are also readily available online, as I mentioned above. So it's not a perfect system, but I think this way the guide has a more useful real world application. Thoughts?

http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid...64&bfmtype=bookCollecting Classic Video Games is a new book by Billy Galaxy from Schiffer Books. Here is what the publisher has to say: "Here is a grand review of the home video games that entertained the nation, and much of the world, during the 1970s and 1980s. In over 1000 color photographs, many of the video games for the extremely popular Atari, Colecovision, and Intellivision systems are displayed, ranging from Asteroids and Donkey Kong to Pac-Man and Zaxxon. Games from less familiar systems, such as Bally's Astrocade, GCE's Vectrex, Magnavox's Odyssey, and RCA's Studio II, are featured as well. Also included are examples of each system for which games are displayed, a wide variety of hand-held, table-top, and stand-alone games, video game memorabilia, an engaging text, and current market values both in the captions and listings in the back of the book." You may purchase Collecting Classic Video Games at Barnes and Noble.

Here's how to deal with high flea market prices: Offer them a two for one trade. Let's say they have a Montezuma's Revenge that you need. Trade them 2-3 commons from your extras and they'll probably be happy. Unless they know which games are rare, it won't make a difference what the titles are. You'll get rid of some commons, get something you need, and they'll have more to sell.

Yes, we are not done with the 2600. I've been very busy at work lately, but I'll have some free time again in about two weeks. I have a small backlog of scans that people have sent me recently that will be going online, and then we will probably make another sweep of PAL titles that need to be added. And with the Lynx launch out of the way, I can work on the 2600 guilt-free.

Here are my thoughts on this book: The majority of the book (140 pages) is taken up by photographs and small captions. For the most part, each caption just says what the item is and what the "current market value" is. Each major system has a paragraph or two introduction, but that's about it - the main feature here is the photographs. The 2600 gets the largest section at about 60 pages. It is nice to see so many photographs in one place. Unfortunately many of them seem a bit washed out, but it's still fun to flip through. There are many rare items shown, as well as the more common popular items. The photo section of the book is not comprehensive by any means - it feels more like a photo archive of somebone's amazing collection. As for the prices, they seem to range from reasonable to very high. As anyone who has attempted a price guide can tell you, it's no easy task. However, the fact that this price guide was created by a dealer (Billy Galaxy owns a collectible toy/game store in Portland Oregon) makes me question the objectivity. In any event, I would say the prices should be taken with a large grain of salt. In the back of the book is a more traditional price guide that covers the major systems. It lists the game title, company, and separate prices for loose, with instructions, complete in box, and new condition items. This section is more comprehensive than the photo section, but still omits some of the more esoteric cartridges. The production values of the book are very nice. Slick glossy pages, color throughout, and a nice cardstock softcover. I'm not sure who the target audience is though. Hardcore collectors may find it somewhat lacking in depth. Casual collectors may find the $30 price tag intimidating. The main appeal here is the photos, so if that's what interests you, this book may be a good purchase for you. [ 03-10-2002: Message edited by: Alex ]

I'm not sure what the situation with RSBB was. When it was initially discovered/released I assumed it was NTSC. And as far as I know, there was/is only one dump of it. Apparently a cartridge version would only work on PAL systems, hence the hack by Thomas. So guess it was PAL all along?

quote: Originally posted by The Night Phantom: This is a pretty good tip, but I'm not sure why you want to bring table and td elements into it. It seems you should be able to achieve the same thing using a body or universal ( *) selector. Then again, a lot of things that should work don't, at least across all current browsers. I should clarify - I almost always use at least one table in every page. Setting style with body won't work across all browsers if you are using tables that contain text. The td tag won't inherit the body style setting in some cases. That's why I use a td element, because all my text falls inside a td tag somewhere. As for using a (*) selector, I haven't tried that. Will td inherit style in older browsers using that method? As well as all other tags? As for CSS positioning, I have rarely used that either. I've used in DHTML flyout menus, and in some other navigational elements, but that's it. Tables seem much safer to me.

There is a new skatepunk60 inspired poll on the front page. I only included characters developed by Atari for this poll, so no Pitfall Harry or Pac-man. And for those of you who don't like mascots, remember it's just for fun!

Not sure where you can find the best tutorial, but I'd suggest you read through the official specifications at W3C. I do have one tip for you - put each page in a big table, and make a stylesheet with a "td" element, for example: td { font-family : Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: #000000; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal; } Then, everything on the page will be automatically marked up because of the < td > tag. And of course you can override that by arbitrarily setting a new element or class. This keeps your HTML very clean from extraneous markup.

Sorry we didn't make it clear before, but as far as we know, Beagle Brothers games are only rebadged games from other companies. There are no "original" Beagle Brothers titles. If you don't like them, I'm sure you'd have no problem trading them for some other super-rare original games. Even though the difference may only be cosmetic, they're still very very rare.

Mitch is a moderator in the 7800 forum and is a co-editor on the 7800 FAQ. Tempest is a moderator in the 5200 forum. And there is no member #2, that was originally me (#1 was a setup account that we deleted). I moved myself to #1 partly to see how it's done (quite a hassle), and we decided not to move Albert to #2, which is now somewhat moot since the new software will not have member numbers.

Yes, that is what we have had to do with any game that has flicker. Take two screenshots and merge them using Photoshop or a similar tool. It's time consuming (especially if you have 4-5 final screenshots), and we haven't done it for every flickering title yet, but eventually I'd like to do that.