tyranthraxus

Just sold the Joypads. All thats left are is the mostly unexciting: a Boxed Red Label Donkey Kong and a Lost Treasures of Infocom for Mac. Thanks everyone for the bids and helping me clear out a bit more space!

Bump! Some Atari items relisted, most Colecovision items have sold thank you!

Interesting thread. I've been delving back into eBay after a long hiatus and am selling stuff to make room for more stuff! I'm very careful with my packaging. I have a nice stash of small boxes and padding. Part of this is to ensure safety but the other reason is to make sure I'm shipping efficiently as Canada Post is about twice the cost of USPS. Canada has a bigger landmass and a tenth of the population of the U.S. so it makes sense its more expensive. And CP until recently ran for 15 years at a profit, so they aren't scared of hiking the prices. Cheap national mail service is closely linked to e-commerce and the very collecting that brought us to AA. At a certain point as a collector you have to start hunting online. And to get your best price for many items, you have to sell online. And it all relies on cheap mail service. As a Canadian collector, I've found that most common games aren't worth the price of shipping individually, particullary MIB commons. I have to buy or sell in large lots to offset the shipping. I wonder how much eBay, Amazon and e-commerce in general relies on the subsidized USPS? As with highways and other infrastucture that promotes trade, it might be better to let the mail services operate at a loss. If USPS started doing Canada Post style rates, I expect many small e-businesses would cease operation. Could have an effect of a return to brick n morter shops, who knows? I'd love to hear your opinions on the state of USPS.

That Sega controller was my go to joystick waaaay back when I had my Commodore 64. Very solid design, nice quality. Thanks for posting that photo, havn't seen one person in 20+ years! In general if you want a decent 2-button joystick for the 7800 you're going to have to mod a Sega Genesis controller (or try that SMS arcade stick). However, I'm partial to the 7800 gamepads. I agree that there is the usual Tramiel era cheapness to them but thats an inherant issue with all Atari products after 1984. You either accept it or go buy a 5200. But I havn't had any of the Atari pads break on me. I don't use the the mini stick, just use them like a flat gamepad. I've gotten lots of hours on Joust, Food Fight, Ms Pac Man and Galaga, which are about all I ever play on the 7800. Its also nice that they are actual Atari branded and just makes the 7800 seem more complete and modern. I also use them as my controller on the Colecovision, using a stock Coleco controller in port 2 to use the keypad. That setup works with most CV games.

Hello! Shamelessly directing attention to my auctions: http://www.ebay.com/sch/jwoods01/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from= Its mainly Colecovision with some Atari. I've got a bunch of handy accessories like 7800 Joypads, cartridge racks, Colecovision Champ Keypad, a modded Colecovision console with RCA outputs (IIRC Doubledown did the mod) and several different lots of cartridges. Q*Bert Qubes I'm selling seperately but in the lots are quite a few rare games like Illusions, Mr Do's Castle, Frogger II & others. Most games have manuals. Thank you!

Hey you never know what an ad on Craigslist can turn up! But your best bet would be emulation and then building your own mainframe shell around the computer, you could then copy a design from a favorite movie like Tron or those sentient mainframes from the Fallout games, etc. You'd have a lot more freedom as regards to size, and you could even wire up some reel to reel decks and flashing lights as part of the facade.

More like What If? history than any revisionism. Jobs return was due to Apple buying his company and when he eventually was made CEO again it gave them the media splash to launch the iMac. Maybe they could have done it without Jobs (lead iMac/Pod/phone/pad designer Jonathan Ives was already working for Apple prior to Jobs' 2nd coming) but he gave the company a face and a personality that was more high profile than any commercial could have done. Now, on to more serious speculations... now what if Atari had released the 7800 in 1984?

I saw that there was a revision I own the old release, is there any major changes? Well Jobs was always a lot more media friendly and charismatic than any of the other computer moguls, which greatly increased his profile. Also given that Apple is the giant that it is even if he never returned to the company after '85, his death would still have gotten decent press. Sadly Commodore and Atari are largely a trivia question at this point.

That was Activision's doing. They were the first company to put the creator's names on the package. EA one upped them with their packaging and put the creators photo on the box. It was a great technique to attract talent and didn't cost them much more than a photo shoot and some text on the box and in the game. Seemed a lot of companies did that in the mid-80s but that seemed to go away by the the early 90s unless you were one of a handful of powerful creators like Sid Meier.

Well looks like this is going to happen in a big way: 2.3 million raised and counting! Fargo seems to be saying all the right things and has gotten many of the key talent of the original game back. I've changed my mind on this idea and put my money down for this. With this and the other crowd sourcing games happening (like the adventure game one) it will be interesting to see how the industry reacts to this.

Wow, one of the most polarizing figures in computers is dead. I had hoped he would have lived a few more years and open up more on his experiences. It seemed like the bitterness was starting to go away these past few years as he made some public appearances and seemed to appreciate his position in home computer history. Tonight, I'll raise a glass to Jack. Too bad he never did an autobiography: Holocaust survivor, immigrant, pioneer businessman, quite the life he ran. I guess we'll never really know what was said between him and Irving Gould on that fateful day. That is quite an interesting book and while I recommend it and found it to be rather frustrating in how uneven its coverage was. The author focused mainly on Commodore's glory years (fair enough thats what sells) but given that an author usually only ever gets one shot at publishing a book on any given topic its rather disappointing. The book skips the companies early history in the calculator wars and covers the collapse of the company in a rather rushed fashion. Many of the fascinating personalities of Commodore are given scant details, which would have been okay but after the author seems to gush for many chapters over Chuck Peddle, its bad journalism. Now Peddle deserves a lot of credit but where was the similar coverage of Gould and Mehdi Ali?

No longer available. Games moved to eBay. Hi, I've got a small assortment of common black box NES games that I would like to sell as one lot. Three are boxed games and they do have the styrofoam slip and come with dust covers and an assortment of Nintendo Power posters/advertising plus a manual for Superspike Volleyball that I have no use for. All the cartridges are the three screw variant. The games are: Super Mario Bros. (Canadian bilingual box) Hogan's Alley Golf (no manual, box is a little faded probably due to sun exposure in the past & cartridge has a video rental label on it) Metroid (loose, no manual, sharpie mark on the cartridge) I'd like $30 + shipping. If interested please PM with your shipping address and I'll give you the grand total.

Well of course the many bedroom programmers of that era like Garriot just programmed on the computer available to them. But professional companies like Infocom would not program on the actual home computers of the time. Infocom had custom software to write the games on then created an interpreter that would work on the various computers and that allowed them to quickly get their software onto as many computers as possible. In reflection, it was a pretty good system for that company and was a lot like how silent movies could easily be sold to foreign markets by a simple change of the inter-titles.

Books are sold to n.sevrette, thx!

I've got as fond a memory as anyone playing the original game but considering how Fargo's recent Bard's Tale re-make went I think its better to just let this one rest and allow Wasteland 2 to maintain its vaporware status. What I'd love to see is if they use the release of a new game to also release some stuff out of the archives on the original game. Designer notes, concept artwork, that sort of thing. However it is interesting that they are using Kickstarter to raise funds, so I will remain cautiously optimistic.

Finds like these are exciting and a little sad. A hoard like this shows that there were small retailers out there making a living when the big corps drove their companies into the ground. I miss the feel of going into those independent software stores, the Best Buys of the world don't have the same experience. They were all a little unique and always had the potential of some buried treasure that was an old hit years ago that you'd been looking for.

Books are still available, PM sent!

Triumph of the Nerds is pretty much focused on the Apple vs IBM vs Microsoft story. Which is and continues to be a pretty interesting story and the one with widest interest around it. Since the business machine developed into the home machine, they pretty much ignored the 8 and 16 bit wars of the home machine to make a more focused story which might not have been fair to Atari, Commodore and the rest but was a smart move as far as making a focused film. The Triumph sequel is focused on the internet and is quite as good. Would be nice to see them do a 3rd movie, on the dot com crash and the 2nd (or is it 3rd?) coming of Apple.

PM sent Jibbajaba! I need a shipping address to give a fair quote as I fear the shipping might nix any deal.

Sadly Canada Post does not have an equivalent service to USPS' media mail.

I've got that doc, took me a while to watch it after I bought it because of the huge length and the low production values, however, once you dig in its pretty terrific and I plowed throught all the discs over a weekend. Even though my BBS experience was very limited it was very interesting and really gives you a great look at the history and development of the scene and that important word: community. Makes ya want to go back in time to experience that. Worth getting to support the filmmaker and his future docs, plus there will likely never be such a thorough look of such a small sub-culture of computing. That could be a fun topic for a website, just crack'd title screen grabs. They did grab your imagination as a kid and as you learn the BBS Documentary, it was all about bragging rights between the hackers, which is also a topic covered in the Commodork book (which I bought bundled with the BBS Documentary).

I've got both Digital Press Collector Guides for sale. The out of print 7th edition, and the still available Advanced guide. Both are in terrific shape, no damage to the spine, just a bit of normal shelf wear around the edges. I'd prefer to sell them both together but would consider splitting them up as I realize the 7th edition is the more desirable of the two. I'll consider trades for other computer/video game history related books. These books are heavy and shipping would be via Canada $$ Post. PM an offer and your address to get an estimate on shipping. Thanks for looking!

All the stories behind those computer companies are great. Lots of treachery, backstabbing and all out cutthroat competition! It really was a wild west of technology in those days and the companies all have pretty lurid stories in their background. As its the only company that I read a book on (On the Edge) I think the Commodore story is the most interesting. Although that book is disappointingly scant on details of Commodore's early days as calculator company (and lean on the Amiga years) you do get an interesting look at Jack Tramiel's business practice and the feats of engineering pulled of by Chuck Peddle. Jack is a controversial character on this board but he is quite an interesting character. This is a guy who'd make a huge order for computer parts from a company, then refuse to pay, and then once that company started to flounder he'd then buy it cheaply. Another thing that interests me with the Commodore story is the roll of their chief financier & owner Irving Gould. Very little photos or information is available on him on the internet and he lived a life where he'd jet between countries to avoid paying taxes. And after forcing Jack out he'd treat the company like a personal bank. I've also found it odd that for a man with such financial resources and a pivotal roll in computer history that there is so little written about him.

You guys might want to search out the book "Commodork" which is a memoir of the BBS scenes from the 80s-90s. My parents wouldn't get me a modem for my 64, I knew there was some good stuff out there! Although being modemless it was fun getting copies of cracked games with those mysterious crack splash pages and references to BBSs in far off corners of the U.S. I was able to get a modem for my PC around 1994/95, seemed the whole scene collapsed en mass around 1996 and moved into the internet. I feel lucky to have briefly experienced the local BBS scene.

I didn't seen any mention of the IBM PS/1. The PS/1 has a good look and was possibly the last major attempt to market at an all-in-wonder computer for the mass market, other than Apple. (And I would argue that Apple was declining into a niche market, not a mass market, in the 1990s). In addition to the design, I think having the IBM name on it makes it interesting as a collectors item, which also makes the Aptiva interesting. The Aptiva was IBMs follow up to the PS/1. Its just a generic ugly tower, but I think the 90s tower need a bit of branding or history behind them to make it collector worthy and the Aptiva has both. Its the last IBM series of home computers before they left the market and as IBM was having a feud with Microsoft at the time they had difficulty getting Windows 95 with the machine. Interesting branding oddities might also make some other towers collectible. There are few Commodore branded pc towers out there and the Tandy name lasted into the 486 era. I suppose another question is whether or not 90s software is becoming collectible or is it still being viewed as mass market trash. Last I looked seemed anything that was off the CD-ROM era (mid 90s) that didn't have the name Ultima (or other long running RPG) didn't attract much attention.