Skylark68

Hard to tell what it is without a mirror close by. Interesting reverse image.

Nice collection. Show France the glory of Sears!

Hatta: I attempted to clean the drive since it had been in storage for so long, but it didn't help. The drive tries to boot but then does nothing (red light on drive comes on and then goes off). I tried several disks in the drive.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to check that site out.

I have an Apple II GS that my Dad bought new sometime in the late '80s. It endured quite a few years in a hot gulf coast Texas attic without any diminshing effects (outside of the case yellowing). I pulled it down from their attic and plugged it in about a year or so ago and it worked fine. The 3.5" disk drive recently failed on me though and outside of ebay (where costs are anywhere between $50 to $100 for an untested unit) I was wondering if anyone had a spare lying around or knew where I could find a good operating one at a reasonable price? The Last Ninja and Silpheed are screaming to be played.

I prefer the Sears versions. Maybe just because most of my original games came from there. Strangely enough though, my original VCS was bought at Gemco. They must have been running a sale at the time. My parents almost exclusively bought from Sears.

That's really cool. Thanks for sharing. The games I bought or my parents bought I chunked everything except the instruction manuals (and the games of course). What kid cares about keeping receipts or how much things cost? It's cool that some people kept that stuff. I don't have anything like it for my Atari, but the Odyssey 2 that I bought on ebay years ago was originally owned by a very detail oriented airman. Every game came with all of the documentation such as receipts, etc. A few of the games were even bought on the base (Florida somewhere - I don't have it in front of me). Most everything else was bought at the local Magnavox store outside of 1 or 2 games that were bought at Sears. Some of those O2 games were expensive such as Quest for the Rings and Conquest of the World. I think they were listed somewhere in the $60 to $70 range back in 1982.

I like the Sears style font though. Very neat.

Best: Yars Revenge, Adventure, Missile Command, Asteroids Worst: Skeet Shoot, Swordquest Fireworld

I wish that Sears still sold VCS games. I would be in retro heaven.

That's seriously awesome. I like just about everything that has to do with Sears in their glory days. Those Sears carts are just awesome. The Night Driver one is just too cool.

Lynx for sure. I had one when they first came out and it impressed a boat load of friends. The problem was third party support (lack thereof) and lack of promotion from Atari.

I actually liked ET and Pac-Man when I was a kid and didn't know any better. Heck I still like them both now that I do know better! I'm sure there are worse games out there, but regarding the ones that I've played, Swordquest Fireworld takes the cake. Apollo gets a lot of hate, but Space Cavern was always pretty fun.

The Spectravision/video games had nice end labels. Planet Patrol was cool.

I picked Asteroids just because of the cool background music and the title screen.

Was this the pack in game with the Sears system as well?

I had a VCS pretty early on, and my neighbor had a Odyssey 2 so I had access to both of those. The one that I really wanted was the Intellivision. I couldn't persuade my Dad (even right after the crash when he could have picked up one for cheap) to get me one. I remember seeing the ads in the Toys R Us catalog for hte INTV a little later on and still couldn't get one. Well, one day in the late '80s my Dad came home with one that he bought from a friend at work with several games. It was awesome even in those NES days when all of my friends played Contra and Super Mario Bros. Interestingly enough I never really cared about having my own NES that much since shortly after that my Dad bought an Apple IIGS.

I had forgotten about the Warlords backstory. That is a good one. Great game too.

The wonderful instructions for Atari 2600 games usually contained some interesting backstories to help get your imagination cooking when you played the game. These stories, although brief, really brought the game to life for me as a young kid. I was disappointed when I would buy a game and the instructions just started with a how to play section (like many of the early Atari titles). My favorite backstory was Adventure, with Space Cavern coming in a close 2nd. The Adventure story really brought your quest to life and naming the dragons was a nice touch. I always wished that you could find the evil magician though. Space Cavern's story was interesting since you were in charge of a Mark XIV intergalactic star cruiser. It was kind of funny to me that the story didn't really mention why you were hanging out on a planet with so many hostiles if you had such an impressive ship. I don't think you were marooned or anything. Maybe there was some kind of rare element on the planet that you wanted... So, what were some of your favorite back stories?

I don't remember the specific publishers, but there were some totally unplayable games made for the NES. Just absolute trash.

I'd say hardware wise the Colecovision, but in my opinion, the Intellivision had much better games overall. The Colecovision relied too heavily on arcade translations (although that was part of its appeal back in the '80s).

Yep. Thankfully the Intellivision market is far too big for him to do the same here so he has these crazy auctions that just sit there on ebay forever, until a tragedy like this happens. : When I was working on my Odyssey collection this guy was a nightmare. It took me forever to find any related materials that either, 1-He wasn't selling, or, 2-He wasn't buying immediately to sell them back. You hit the nail on the head with that statement for a lot of us. He's essentially monopolized the Odyssey market (as much as that is possible) It is very difficult to buy anything Odyssey without paying his inflated prices. It's for that reason alone that I've already accepted that I won't own one. I'd rather never own one than give him a dime. You could buy the Odyssey 2 system and then just buy an Odyssey 2 multicart. I actually an Odyssey 2 system a long time ago with some good games, but the multicart is the way to go (outside of playing the master strategy titles).

That Kramer vs. Kramer is keeping with the spirit of the other page. It might not have been that great of a game though. The artwork looked pretty period correct.

Okay, nothing really convinced me not to get one, and outside of having a significant other and a baby, I'll be pulling the trigger soon.