fiddlepaddle

I was the rare weirdo still collecting Atari games when everyone said video games were dead...some time before Nintendo took over the market and shortly after Coleco swerved into the computer lane and flipped over the median. I may have seen Froggo games on store shelves at Best Products, Service Merchandise, and/or Gemco department stores. Perhaps a few months later, once I saw them in the $5 (or maybe even $1, not sure) bargain bin, I bought whatever unique titles I could find for my collection. I also remember once I opened them up and played them, I merely confirmed to myself that they seemed to be on sale for good reason.

If the console works, I wouldn't worry too much about it. You can mechanically remove the rust, and then make sure you keep it dry. I don't think rust really "spreads" like mold does; it's more a function of excess moisture (perhaps in the air) promoting faster oxidation (which IS occurring slowly anyway whenever iron in the metal is exposed to oxygen in the air). You could apply to the metal a THIN coat of oil, petroleum jelly, dielectric grease, or even something specifically designed for computer parts to retard oxidation...just be careful not to create shorts.

I wouldn't mind running away with Sean Young, whether Atari is around or not.

Sunnyvale only has one 'l'.

So far, I'm happier getting older, with everything that has come with it, than no longer having the opportunity to get older any longer.

Rip Off (coin op and/or Vectrex) and Omega Race (coin op) are great two player cooperative games. Also, I think you can play Mattel Astroblast on the VCS cooperatively, or at least simultaneously. And, though it is not cooperative, I love, and recommend playing both Space War and Atari track ball Foot Ball (both coin ops) with a big stack of quarters and a frig full of beers.

It used to be "my collection is better than your collection". Now, it's "my list is better than your list".

Those are all good games; if you paid as little as possible and you're happy with what you have, then it's a good enough deal. I stopped game stopping about 10 years ago.

You get dirty looks if you shuffle a deck of punched cards.

This is interesting if it's consistent. Does this joystick maybe have big metal parts that somehow acts as an antenna?

Sure, plenty of bandwidth on vinyl records for that.

Unfortunately, it makes more sense one way or the other sometimes depending on the title, so I've found myself doing both occasionally. Now when I go back through my list looking for something, I might have to look in more than one place ("Ariel, The Little Mermaid", "Disney's The Little Mermaid", "The Little Mermaid", "Little Mermaid, The"). Otherwise, I end up with duplicates and label variations. Turns out its not really too bad if that happens since it's almost always the super-common games it happens with.

Hello, my name is Fiddlepaddle. I am a console owner, and I am odd.

Emulate the coin op for best experience. Colecovision is pretty good, though. Haven't played 5200 version in a long time.

I really like the idea of handhelds, and have bought quite a few over the years, and I do play them; lately, mostly the SD card Atari and Genesis while waiting for food to cook. But the real catch is that as I've gotten older, I really find it's a lot of WORK watching those tiny 2-to-4 inch screens these days. I'm much more comfortable, vision-wise, using a bigger screen. I think the biggest phones are FINALLY beginning to be the correct size for good viewing, and sooner or later the bargain-priced handhelds will start to use those types of screens and I might be satisfiable. We'll see...

So, Atari invented all the original X boxes.

"run out of nostalgia": nostalgic for nostalgia.

You can't use a Genesis converter box, if you are trying to. Also, if you have a manual tune feature on your TV, you can try channel 2, 3, 4 by hand. Some VCRs also have a manual tuning control. Might help to see a picture of the actual cable end of your atari and what you are plugging it into. By the way, if it does turn out to be a paperweight, at least it's a good one.

You can try a couple drops of goo-gone and let it sit overnight. Sometimes, that discolors the original label, though (sorry, but I don't remember how Activision labels specifically reacted 20 years ago, when I was doing this all the time). Worst case, you might end up printing a reproduction label.

I don't care what the "market" value is, really, since that fluctuates so much over time, and is really quite subjective for old stuff anyway. I just decide what I'm willing to pay for it, and if I think the seller might be emotional about it, I just explain it's only worth that much TO ME, even though it could very well be worth more to someone else, if they want to wait for that person. But I will buy it right now for my price, if they want to sell it. They can say yes, or no, or make a counter offer. This is the essence of supply and demand.

So, adding all those up, maybe somewhere on the order of 600,000 or so...?

I like the idea you have. Price target sounds reasonable. Disclaimer: I am probably not in the market for one. Mine has these approx dimensions in inches: 7-7/8th width (left to right) 3 deep (front to back) 1-1/8th height (table to top surface) at the front 1-1/2 height (table to top surface) at the rear As you can see, the controller is higher in back than in front, which I like. The center of the joystick is about 1-7/8th from the left side. The center of Button 1 is a little less than 1-3/4th from the center of the joystick. The center of Button 2 is about 15/16th to the right of the center of Button 1. Buttons 3 and 4 are similarly spaced. The center of the buttons and joystick are about 1-1/2 from the front of the joystick. If I were going to design one, I would not try to make it the same size as the original. I would prefer something bigger and more stable on the table, with space under my right palm to hold it in place while pushing the buttons. Usually when playing, I find the controller tends to move around too easily. Of course, this could also be fixed by some provision for attaching the controller to the table, or a board. Also, I would make the controllers height as low/close to the table as possible. In an perfect world, the controls would be IN the table.

The phone number is just an extension, so possibly an employee owned it and took it to the counter for repairs. Can't read the name of the "bill to" person, but that might be interesting.

If 1%, that's one out of every hundred. Based purely on probability, if you bought 50 random consoles, you have about a 50/50 chance of having at least one VA0 (and even some chance of having more than one). But also realize that when it comes to used video game consoles in the real world, once you find ONE of the rare variations, it might actually be LIKELY you would find two or more because that particular model may have sold many units at retail in the same general geographic location. These things are not usually randomly distributed. By the way, you probably want hardier hardware, not heartier hardware. I could be wrong of course; you may, in fact, be planning to chow down on those plastic shells...

You might not be impressed with my solution to this problem, but after many years of configuring setups and moving from place to place, and adding new game systems as I got them (and yes, even removing some as I retired from those games), plus plugging in new cables and switchboxes as technology has improved, etc... Irritatingly also, sometimes connectors and cables just seem to go bad or self-de-crystal-clear themselves (probably oxidation over time). I have found that when you attempt this level of complexity, there ALWAYS seems to be some new problem to debug, unless you are able to set it all up once and NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING. Now, if you actually enjoy configuring cables and switchboxes, maybe that's OK, but I prefer spending my time playing games. So I've finally settled on making it easy to plug and unplug cables to my TV (or, actually I do have one simple switch for composite and RF inputs). I've ultimately reverted to ALMOST just going directly to plugging in the appropriate cable from each console to the TV each time I sit down to play a game session. It just saves time and aggravation that way.