Joey Kay

How did you disassemble this? I can't get past the first two screws on the bottom and unscrewing the control stick.

Something that has bothered me about these two print ads ever since I saw them in early 1990, is that they're missing the corporate info on the bottom (c 1990 Atari Corporation, etc...) What's up with that?

Good points. The thunderous sound effect and pterry's disintegration into pixels is pretty satisfying, too.

Is 1,000 points for killing a pterodactyl a little cheap? Seems it ought to have been at least a 2,000 point kill, given that Shadow Lords are worth 1,500. In fact, I can't think of a more disproportionately-valued score in a game, at least on the 7800...

Skill testing question - it's driving me bonkers. At 24 seconds into this ad, just as the Fygar breathes fire on the Dig Dug track playing throughout this ad, there is a sound effect for a video game - it's a horn-like sound- that I do not recognise. Any idea what game that sound comes from?

I have no idea, but even as a 12 year old I was skeptical that anyone would enter.

Yep - a rollback to zero. Cracked it last week. In the back of my mind I was hoping for one of those dumb calculator-type messages when you overload the numbers.

Soooo... I've spent a lotta lotta time playing Dig Dug this summer trying to crack a million. The best I've done so far is 840,000. I need to move on with my life. Yet, I want to know what happens to the display score after 999,990. Anybody know?

Though not proprietary to Atari except in their appearance, I'd like to see... - That god-awful single-eyed 2600 Pac Man - That god-awful 2600 Donkey Kong

Honey, don't you know I'm more than Pac Man with a bow!

Dig Dug was pretty decent. Full title screen with a reasonable facsimile of the ATARI font, and game play to boot! Very arcade-like.

This Pole Position graphic is kinda fun... though really, the graphic is from Pole Position II!

Here's the two-page "Pick a fight after school" - it appeared on the 2-3 spread of GamePro in November 1989.

I've often wondered why the cartridges were not completely updated to match the current system brand if the packaging was being updated. I guess Space Invaders, for example, was updated (minus the interlude with the mis-matched end label) but that seems to be one of the exceptions.

Found the thread where I brought this up in the 7800 forum almost 14 years ago... http://atariage.com/forums/topic/619-robotron-2084-in-1984-atari-cartridge-casing/?hl=joey+kay+7800+1984 Looks like there's a few of the non-locked covers on Tramiel-era 7800 carts. Also looks like original 1984 7800 carts (manufactured for launch in 84) were done without the dust cover, too.

Ah - so they kept using the original mold for the cart top when they abandoned the dust doors on the carts. Wow. That's super-cheap. Thanks for the info. Also, it seems to me that (contrary to my first post about it being a post-1986 thing) the original 1984 run of 7800 carts abandoned the dust doors and had the holes in the cart tops, making it an Atari Inc. cheap-out.

Hey, I'm wondering about the casings of the post-1986 Atari-manufactured 2600 and 7800 carts, with those holes near the top of the labels. Does anybody know why (aside from some cost-cutting gone awry) these carts have these holes? Thanks!

US/North America What gave it away? The fact that every column is entitled either "US Sales" or "US Returns"? Hah! Good call - this was meant in reply to 8th lutz, but perhaps I could have pointed to the more obvious. Now back to my Mensa meeting...

I susp[ect these figures are USA only. Atari Canada is nowhere to be seen in here, neither are the Canadian retailers that carried the 7800 (ie - Toy City).

Not sure where to post this, but as I spend most of my time in the 7800 forum... Anyhow, a search today revealed that Atari's old HQ is subdivided and has much space available for lease! http://www.rofo.com/building/CA/Sunnyvale/...enue-37397.html Still an attractive looking building...

Was never a huge fan of that insert - the colours looked like crap. Anyhow - more interestingly, note how the name Atari is dropped from the grey matter ad and the console itself, only making an appearance in the text. Clearly somebody did some market research and found the Atari name to be a liability.

Brilliant! Thanks. I never realized how starved the 7800 was for titles in 87 and 88. On a somewhat related note, is it possible that PPII was manufactured in preparation for a change in the pack-in with the 7800? Surely it must have been at least considered when the library started to grow.

Still can't open them properly. And I've tried on three different computers between work and home in the past two days. Can some kind person post these into a pdf? I would be eternally grateful.

I cannot for the life of me get these files to open on Excel. Is the download still valid or am I just daft?

No arguments here. Quite frankly, it's a shame Tramiel didn't stay on at Commodore. It may have made the players in both gaming and computing a LOT different today.