NovaXpress

I wonder how many phony orders they recieved for initials like A-S-S and S-U-K and other things I used to enter for my high scores at Battlezone.

I don't want a video game in my cell phone. The big phone manufacturers are desperate because the prices have dropped so low, now they're trying to convince us that we need text messaging and all the extras on it. A PDA is far superior to these cell phones for all the web and business-related features. I trust Nintendo and Sony far more than Nokia as far as support and ability to keep a game system viable for years. Plus, if I break/lose an N-Gage then I dont have a phone OR a game system.

Apollo had a magazine offer in which they would personalize the game by flashing the owner's initials on the screen when the player was destroyed. For only one hundred dollars. Has anyone ever found one of these monogrammed games? Is there proof that anyone ever ordered one? Why didn't they do the same for Skeet Shoot? No, that game is good enough already.

I meant that I would be happy enough if said people allowed just you, the man called Tempest, to play their games so you could at the very least tell us about them. At least then we'd all have a taste of it, and the ROMs still wouldn't be available to the masses. As you continue to develop your site and more people drift over to check it out, I suspect that many people wouldn't mind if you reported on their protos as a journalist. It could even be a great way for proto sellers to boost interest in the months before they finally sell. I'm sure you wouldn't mind this either. I wouldn't even think of distributing protos. Why even risk getting sued when the ROMs are available elsewhere? Not being a ROM distributor also might aid you with gaining the trust of the programers who you want to impress in order to accomplish the above-stated goal.

I want to sincerely thank you for making the site. Not only do you provide good information, you're writing is enjoyable as well. I hope that many of the proto-hoarders and programmers out there would give you a chance to at least play their stashed away games and allow you to give them the historical write-up that they are due. Trust me, AtariProtos is going to become more and more recognized by the classic gaming crowd as time goes on.

Thanks for clearing things up and also telling a much better story!

The site continuies to interest and impress. One of my favorite spots on the web. We seem to have different tastes in games. Space Dungeon has spent more time in my 5200 than any other cart and I'm a Berzerk junkie. I loved the section on Astrochase. Does anyone remember how much hype this game recieved when it was released for the 400/800? The ads were covered with dubious awards and the designer was promoted as the god of programming. Electronic Games soiled themselves with praise for this innovative state-of-the-art shooter. The game SUCKED! Nice intro screen , which no one was accustomed to at the time. Excellent musical score. Notice that many of the ads and the pics shown in magazines were of the intro screen, not the actual game. This was a warning. Then it comes time for the gameplay. What a disaster. Rudimentary float-and-shoot against Acsii-character enemies. When did the Earth become surrounded by miniature Saturn-like barriers anyway? At the higher levels the mines hit the earth within about 20 seconds, not even a chance of winning. I had this on cassette for my 800 and it wasn't worth more than a few loads.

Sears was very good about letting peope try out games before buying. Every store had a Video Arcade running. I remember the first day Missile Command came out and I gave it a test play. My family and four other people watching immediately bought it. Interesting note: Sears only carried the relabeled Atari games until September 1982. That's the first time any Activision games appeared.

Hi there, Eminem. Welcome to Atari Age!

I think they are referring to the 7800 as far as the desk-throwing incident. Just more examples of the mindset at the time.

Hey, I think I may have found something for you from WIRED mag: It's not entirely clear, but this seems to indicate that 2600 support did continue after the crash. See, it's all about finding the truth here.

Check out this bit from Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/hi...history_pr.html Let that one soak in for awhile. Yar's Revenge for the Atari Genesis coulda been sweet. The webpage has a lot of great stuff on the 2600 era and interviews with the players of the time.

Once again, I haven't found a site that says it was produced consecutively until 1991. Atari Age says that 1 million units were sold in 1985. Would this mean that production continued or that retailers were dumping their pre-crash inventory? I don't know. I'd like to find out. After looking over MANY sites, I've yet to see an estimate of over 30 million 2600 units sold in total. Add the clones in and we're still way short. If there's any contradictory information, let's see it.

After checking the "Old Computer" site that the Marks keep referring to, I had a good laugh. Lesson to Godzilla: when you don't know what you're talking about it's generally a good idea not to be obnoxious about it. Let's take a look at your reference material from http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=878 Okay fanboys, see anything wrong with that statement? Think hard. Hmm, anything wrong with that? Check out the Atari Age 2600 page to see how many carts were actually in the initial release. Which two years? 77-79? 80-81? The site clearly has no real data and threw out an ramdom number and time frame. The Atari was sold over MANY years as we have seen, why didn't they give us the final total? Because they don't know. Because the Old Computer is loaded with false information. You guys should have noticed the errors on this site. Not a very good reference to use, is it? That's a lie and all you Atari experts should know it. The 2600 was not produced consecutively for 14 years. Period. So here is the ultimate point of this thread: some of you spit out your knee-jerk system-centric reaction without any attempt to find the truth. All along I've been asking you 2600-boosters to prove that it outsold Gameboy but none of you can come up with a single fact to support your case. You just keep bitching. So come up with some data or go off and start a good "Atart rocks! Intellivision sucks!" thread that you can get off to.

I've had one Gameboy and one Advance. I don't know anyone who's gone through 6 per person. Your friends apparently can't take care of their toys and not many people bought 4 Gameboys just for Faceball. Your experiences are beyond atypical. And the 118 million is for the ORIGINAL Gameboy, so take all the other editions out of it. Your theory fails, my friend. If this is true, then you're a moron for ignoring today's great games. Ask mommy and daddy to bring you into at least the 90s. And I flat out don't believe your story. Even if true, what's higher: the percentage of minors who've played Gameboy or the percentage who've played the 2600? Hmmm? Read the damn posts, Nintendo DOES NOT roll the many Gameboy edititions into the same figures. The 118 million is the original black and white Gameboy standing alone. Deal with it, Atari Marks.

This is all kinda weird. All of my Parker Bros games remain in great condition while Activision and M Network are slowly rotting away. Are we going to need climate-controlled "Cart Humidors" for proper storage?

It seems like we're all united in our hatred for post-AJFA Metallica. I guess their cynical "hey, we stopped wearing makeup-we're hardcore again!" and "Look, we're playing in a prison-we're hardcore again!" tactics aren't wroking. They're even trying to use an Neuro Linguistic Programming phrase as thei album title to brainwash a few more kids. I'm gonna rip their new album just for the fun of it then delete it off my drive immediately. I really really hate them. They're metal for people who don't have the balls to listen to real metal.

The very first Atari-labeled game was Raiders of the Lost Ark. The last Sears labeled game was Star Raiders.

What a blatant, ignorant lie. Talk about a half-assed response. We have a factual total of Gameboy sales taken from Nintendo's public records. Not one of you so-called Atari experts can even suggest where we can find such data on the 2600. Has anyone ever heard an estimate of over 100 million sales for the 2600 before this thread started? Or are the Atari marks just upset cause someone isn't shouting "Atari rules all!"

That weird squishy meat sucks and so do the Sears exclusives. I kinda dig Stellar Track actually.

I was going through my box of loose carts and noticed that my Enduro is looking pretty ugly. I started bitching about the Activision curse, then decided to look around and see which companies games held up the best. Atari seems to take the prize. Many carts still looking mint. Spectravideo is looking good as well. Many Imagic hold up nicely but some labels are peeling. I was surprised to see the Actiplaque effect on many of my M Network carts. I never really looked at them before, but there it is under those dark blue letters. Not all of them are showing it, but many of the ones that are came from the very first M Network release. I remember buyin em. How are your carts holding up?

I can't find any totals on the 2600. Apparently you can't either. So does anyone have an idea how to find out? How many out there really that the total is over 100 million. I'd think not, but I don't know and no one else here does either at this point.

For one thing, the 2600 wasn't the first programmable console. The Gameboy wasn't the first programmable handheld either, but both systems made the first big impact. I'm sure you knew this. So which one of these above qualities does the Gameboy lack, other than a different time frame? They have quantity, quality, process, acceptance, endurance, millions sold. So how does it fall short of the 2600 then? That's a good point. Although an important system such as these two can drive sales of the entire market and make it hard to evaluate. Did the Gameboy help sell more Nintendo consoles than the 2600 sell other Atari products? Hard to say. Gameboy certainly controls a larger percentage of the handheld market than the 2600 controlled the console market. As far as percentage of total systems on the market, the Atari would likely win.

How can we measure success other than sales? Sales means profit, it means widespread acceptance, it means survival of the company and longevity for the system. For a video game system sales=success. What is the goal of the game maker? Money. No one ever asked about most influential, most historical, or most beloved. Those points are arguable. I often say that sales doesn't mean QUALITY but it does mean SUCCESS for all those who produce the work. Being successful doesn't mean being good. Thriller is a more successful ALBUM than anything Elvis released. Sales=the mumber of people who liked the music well enough to buy it. The entire CAREER of Elvis is far more profitable than than Michael the Molester. By the way, the #1 selling album of all time is The Eagle's Greatest Hits. Since all the songs were already paid for, this album was pure profit

Learn how to do a simple Google search, my friend. The info is everywhere. Here's some figures from magicbox: GameBoy (Japan) 430,000 32,430,000 GameBoy (Foreign) 2,000,000 85,990,000 Total:118,420,000 GameBoy Advance (Japan) 2,160,000 5,980,000 GameBoy Advance (Foreign) 6,420,000 12,180,000 Total:18,160,000 Nintendo 64 (Japan) 30,000 5,540,000 Nintendo 64 (Foreign) 180,000 27,380,000 Total:32,920,000 GameCube (Japan) 1,570,000 1,570,000 GameCube (Foreign) 2,230,000 2,230,000 Total:3,800,000 These are the figures through just March 2002. There are other sales charts for late 2002 and 2003 which add several million more.