deathtrappomegranate

That's a great price on a boxed Space Age joystick. Good luck with the sales!

Both sold. Thanks for looking.

Protos of Q*Bert and Astrochase for Atari 8-bit computers. Tested and working. $80 shipped per cart or $140 for both, Paypal only. Currently located in Scotland, but no additional charge for shipping anywhere else.

There has been some spamming of the Atarimania votes, but the "by rating" list isn't too bad.

My Editor Assembler cart is exactly the same. It didn't come with a box, though, so I can't say whether there were box variants corresponding to the different cart labels.

Sounds very plausible. A second unknown cart in 24hrs. Very cool!

Haven't seen this one before, but Rybags is almost certainly right about it. It's highly unlikely that there's any ROM in the cart. It's interesting nevertheless.

There's another thread about this in Marketplace, where the seller explains what happened.

There are over 200 cartridge-based titles for this sytem, and that's just the games, and just the cartridges. It's pretty tricky to give you a concise list of what to look out for, but easy enough to say whether a particular title is a $5 game or a $100 game. The "blue box" games that were mentioned are cartridge games that were released (or re-released) specifically for the XEGS. Many of them were already available for (and compatible with) previous generations of Atari 8-bit computers. "Choplifter" (discussed above) was released on cart by Broderbund, but the blue box re-release by Atari is significantly harder to find (and also has slightly improved graphics). Of the blue box games, the four that Rhod mentioned are the hardest to find (although not necessarily in the order that he gave ).

Yep, although they're mostly NTSC and 110v and are all in the US.

I'd say that Karateka was quite a bit harder to find than Choplifter in blue-box format. Of course, Rhod is only talking about XE-specific titles. The XEGS can run a good proportion of the entire A8 library.

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 350563816995 Includes light gun and monitor cable. Shipping is a bit steep, though

I think this is the one: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-5200-spitfire_14919.html

Another one for verification - Fortune Hunter. Dumped from two separate carts, CRC 5CEE3180. fortune_hunter.bin

Yes, it may be slightly off-topic, but the BBC's in-line assembler was a great feature in what was already an excellent version of BASIC.

Interesting information, thanks!

Star Raiders was the "killer app" for the A8 in the early days. I remember seeing the amazement on customers' faces when they walked into shops and saw it running. If the 400/800 prices had been competitive (which they certainly weren't in the UK), they would have flown out of the doors. The closeness of the A8 games to the arcade machines of the time was a big draw, as was the fact that many titles were available on cartridge, a much more reliable format than the magnetic media of the time.

Silica Shop was a fantastic place. If I'd seen those £30 deals on Atari computers, I'd have bought several! I always wanted an Atari 8-bit back then, but could only afford a Spectrum. Managed to clock up quite a few hours programming Ataris in the shops, though, much like you.

Is this one of the books? http://www.flickr.com/photos/paxtonholley/sets/72157627268305495/with/6024978513/ If so, it's not very complicated stuff. The strings would probably be the trickiest part to convert, but there's nothing too daunting otherwise.

The cart looks legit. The cart case is the right colour and type, and the label looks exactly right, although it's unusual to see one sold unboxed. Someone found a bunch of them years back, and pretty much every one I've seen sold has been CIB. The label is a wraparound type, and has quite a bit of text on the flipside, as well as on the end. Rather than post pics of the flipside (which might encourage more repros) can you weigh your cart?

Can you post a scan of your cart, or a link to a pic if you haven't received it yet?

It shouldn't, but annoyingly we are currently have some technical problems with our FTP, which may take a little to sort out. Maybe somebody knows a convenient alternative we could all use in the interim? Perhaps a moderator could consider making a sticky thread here?

Apologies for not pointing that out.

Oops - double post.