Jake67

When I was a kid, my mom and I used the manuals to record high scores. I lost them somewhere along the way and it never fails to make me a bit sad that a part of our gaming history is gone forever. For us, the manual was a record of our game-playing time together... in addition to helping keep track of games that had tons of game options. When I went on an eBay game-buying spree earlier this year in anticipation of the 2600+, an included manual was a must.

I truly loved that! Thank you, Ben. I imagine there are meetings, or at least a flurry of e-mails, about the smallest things that most consumers wouldn’t think about, yet fully play into how people will respond when they interact with the product. When my pre-order arrived yesterday, I immediately wrapped up the main box. As mentioned earlier, my mom (who arranged for us to get a 2600 when I was a kid) doesn’t know this yet but this is her gift to me for Christmas. She’s at that age where she just gives the kids and grandkids money so they can buy what they want. So I'm anxious to see her reaction when I unwrap it in front of her in a few weeks. That box, from the cover artwork to what it looks like when it’s opened, will be nice when she sees it for the first time. Dodge ‘Em was one of the main games we played, so it’s nice that one is on the included cart. (And it’s the reason it’s my avatar here.)

Sorry to go off-topic and talk about preorders, but mine arrived today after a delay from Atari. I found it slightly amusing that the Paddle box and extra Joystick box had tape on the top to keep it securely shut, but no tape on the bottom. Hardly a big deal in the general scheme of things, but something I wonder about when there’s a discussion on packaging and how certain decisions are made. As much as the centerpiece is the 2600+, my biggest joy came from the sealed game boxes for Berzerk and Mr. Run and Jump. As a kid, I remember going to department stores and seeing either on the wall behind a counter, or a glass display case on the floor, dozens and dozens of 2600 games. I’ve tried to create that somewhat in the house and it always provides some joy and good memories from those days. (Although back then it was usually 5 or so copies of each game in the stores.)

Many of them actually related to the topic of the thread, too! (This thread has gone a bit off the rails at times. Such is forum life.)

Interesting. As someone who pre-ordered from Atari and still waiting for anything to ship, I certainly wish you the best of luck with your plan.

This was a slightly disappointing e-mail to get from Atari about my pre-order: Thank you for purchasing an Atari 2600+. We are eager to get your order to you and will do so as soon as possible. Our fulfillment partner is shipping orders in waves as product arrives at their distribution center. Your order is planned to ship in the first week of December. I suppose I wish their “fulfillment partner” was Amazon. 😁

That remains to be seen for those of us still waiting for word about our orders from Atari.

I started buying 7800 games on eBay in September after going through reviews of every original title and deciding which I wanted. In the end, I bought 13. Where possible (and financially realistic) I tried to buy sealed versions. At the very least an opened box with the manual. Dark Chambers is the only one where I thought I might need an intervention of some kind.

So I should probably strike something like this from my wishlist, right? 😉 I think this is the one I saw as a kid. I wanted it so bad. I was in a computer store asking about it and the salesman was kind of in shock asking, “Why don’t you just buy a real computer?!?!” I didn’t have the courage to honestly say, “Because in the ad it seems cool!” Somehow in my young teen-age mind, I was overly confident in the power I might wield with an Atari 2600 and a keyboard.

For me, the Game Select Matrix was the best part of the manual. Seeing over 100 variations for Space Invaders, for example, made it feel like I was getting a ton of content when the ability of buy multiple carts at once didn’t exist in our house. No shipping e-mail from Atari yet. Not planning to open it until Christmas, but it would still be nice to have in my hands as soon as possible.

I also bought Berzerk. Always a favorite on the 2600, and when I fire up OpenEmu it’s one of my go-to games. It was must-by for the 2600+. So simple in concept, yet always a fun challenge when you get up there a bit in levels.

Yeah, that’s nice packaging. I can’t imagine wanting to have the cost of various packaging based on different things someone might have ordered, though. I ordered all that plus and extra joystick, so would that mean there’s a box to accommodate that configuration? As a customer, I’d love to get a box like that. As a company, I would probably be the one saying, “Hey, let’s think this through a bit more.” I’ll be curious to hear what Ben says.

Typo to fix: Can be used with orginal Atari carts (Sorry, I work as a writer/editor.) That aside, it looks great!

(Sorry... duplicate post.)

Yeah, I can relate. Hard to watch that without the eyes moistening a bit. Thanks for sharing it.

My Christmas will be joyous but in a slightly different way. My parents were divorced and my mom didn’t have a lot of money for extras. One Christmas she asked her parents (my grandparents) for an Atari 2600 for us... and that’s what we got! We had our favorites and wrote our high scores on the manuals, long since lost, sadly. All these years later, my mom recently moved closer to where I am following the death of her second husband. She finds it easiest to give everyone money for Christmas, so I “pre-spent” mine on the 2600+ pre-order. When I get it, I’ll wrap it and put it under the tree for Christmas. When I open it that day, she’ll see what she got me for Christmas. Judging by my own reflexes playing Atari in emulation recently, I will suck at these games after all this time and will have to count on her being even older so I have a chance to win some games. I don’t know how I ever managed to play Activision Boxing as a kid without my thumb falling off. I’m constantly blowing out the engine in Dragster. And the skill I had with Dodge Em is long lost.

“Damn kids! Get off my lawn Atari 2600+!!" I’d be terrible as a host at an event like this. I’d be hovering over kids and ready to swipe the controller/paddle from their hands at the slightest hint of mistreatment... totally forgetting how I used to abuse them when I was a kid.

Feeling my body cringe when he pulled out the cartridge without turning it off first. Among the fond memories I have Atari game playing with my mom when I was kid, the other strong memory was to always turn off the Atari before swapping cartridges. The jittery controller was a bit disappointing, although hopefully explained with a bad paddle. If nothing else, I’d simply like the 2600+ to be able to play paddle games without a problem.

Thanks for this. For me, paddle functionality is always going to be what I look at most in these packages. As a lefty, these controllers don’t do it for me. I think I’ll put my hope in the upcoming Atari 2600+ paddles working the way I’m used to. Still, if I were to walk into a Costco and see it for a good price, I’d be tempted to throw it in the cart.

For me, the Atari mascot is a square as I bonded with that square while controlling it in Adventure and Surround. I shot square bullets in Outlaw and Combat, and fired a square into bricks in Breakout. But I get that a square is potentially too boring to attract a new generation of gamers used to something flashier. So I suggest rounding one corner of the square... two if Atari is feeling brave and wants to be edgy.

@TrogdarRobusto OK... as a 2600 child, I went all in on the 2600+... the unit, extra controller, paddle bundle and two games. My question is whether Atari is also going to produce a two-button controller for the 7800 games, or do I need to search out my own solution? (And if I’m on my own, what do others here recommend?) And before I go down an eBay rabbit hole, would it be safe to assume other 10-in-1 carts are coming? Oh... to keep this on topic... uh... if Atari fails what happens with AtariAge, blah, blah, blah...

Some Atari love for the Mac and AppleTV wouldn’t go un-appreciated.

I always assumed a scanner that was big enough to do a 2-page magazine spread would be really expensive. That would be much easier than scanning single pages. The gal who scanned the early issues of Computer Gaming World had taken out the staples, scanned the pages individually on a flatbed, then reassembled the magazines. (If I recall correctly.) I'm not so concerned with having the issues of EG in original shape when I'm done. In a sense, I'd like to see the magazines out of circulation so people don't have to pay such high prices for them. I'd just like them to be available free of charge. (Although the collector part of me does appreciate that many folks would like to have the magazines for themselves with no thought of reselling later.)

Hi, This is a topic of interest to me because I loved the original Electronic Games Magazine. A couple of years ago, I was inspired by a project someone did to scan the first 100 issues of an equally stellar magazine from that time, Computer Gaming World. Reading those old issues brought back great memories. And I appreciated the effort that a single person went through to scan them and make them available. To that end, I started searching eBay for all the back issues of EGM from the early 80s. It took some time (and money) but I finally got all the issues including the very first one. The goal was to scan them and make them available to all. As some have indicated in this thread, the scanning is a chore. I did one as a test. It was the April 1985 issue with Douglas Adams on the cover. (After that issue, they renamed the magazine to Computer Entertainment and shortly after that ceased publication.) I tried a ton of scanning qualities and the range of file sizes went from 17 megs to 54 megs. Obviously, the smaller sizes have a lower quality and the graphics look a bit "pixel-y". I'm using a sheet-fed scanner, but it is a chore because you almost have to feed the sheets through one at a time. (And tearing up magazines that you paid a decent chunk of change for is a bit painful.) I haven't really decided how to proceed. I want to do this and freely make them available to others like me who have that magazine embedded in our DNA at this point. It's amazing to read some of these issues over 20 years later and still remember certain unique phrases that were used in various articles. But it is time consuming and you want to scan these right the first time so you don't have to redo it. And I also want to be respectful of whatever copyright may exist on these magazines.