freewheel

I'll try to remember this. Gotta get home first. I'm at 81/125 overall and I know I have a bunch of boxes there, so at this point I'm venturing into the less common stuff. Although I do need a bunch of not-so-rares, like He-Man and Koolaid Man - and supposedly common stuff like Mouse Trap and Happy Trails that I've just never seen in the wild. I'm mostly aiming at 120 or so loose first, then I'll probably spend the rest of my life fluking into boxed copies of the more rare stuff. I just don't have it in me to spend $50+ on a game cart at this point. The collector's market is rather insane given the quantities produced and the small number of fanatics out there. Fortunately pre-crash stuff is NOTHING like the current insanity that is NES. I do wonder exactly how many copies of Spiker were produced, given its crazy value. Strikes me that it should be in the low 100s to justify $1000+, but maybe I underestimate people's disposable incomes these days.

Given how indestructible carts are, I personally couldn't give a damn if it's factory wrapped. You can tell all you need to know about condition based on physical appearance for the most part. I think collecting NIB is fast becoming a sucker's game due to how easy it is to fake it (and the insane premiums some people will pay for that extra 0.25% condition grade or whatever). I dunno, maybe it's just me. These aren't Action Comics #1 where there are only a handful of copies left and a miniscule fraction in decent shape. I just don't see the large premium people pay for graded or NIB stuff. Not when there are thousands if not millions of them floating around. I'm especially worried with the ever-increasing trade in repro boxes and such. It wouldn't be all that hard to make a box that looks identical to the original (hopefully people making repro boxes aren't doing this).

Huh. Seems like I've got a bunch in this box, and probably more at home. I'll have to take a look. I notice the later INTV releases are... well they're not exactly "common" in Canada but I seem to see a lot more than rarity and price guides would indicate. I guess Canada got a lot of the later released stuff compared to the US. I'll have to see about making some trades with y'all. Variants are interesting but don't do much for me - I'd rather work on completing a basic set first

You guys got a bit interested in this - I also snagged this exact same boxed version (incredible condition too). What makes this so unusual? The fact that it came from INTV corp? (And yeah, found in Canada)

I already posted this elsewhere, but just discovered this thread. A recent pickup: - 4 INTV 1s (one CIB) - 1 INTV III - 1 Super Pro System (CIB) About 60 games, almost all boxed in pretty good condition. Highlights: Chip Shot Golf, Motocross, Slap Shot Hockey, World Champ Baseball, Bump & Jump, Pinball, and a half dozen Imagic games in fantastic box condition (including Dracula). $150 for it all. I've never bothered collecting boxed (although I have tons of loose boxes kicking around) but now I think I have to start

Wow. In all my years of collecting INTV, I have never even SEEN Sears versions in Canada. Not in the wild, not in stores, not on kijiji. I was beginning to think they didn't exist up here.

If you can do it in a way that doesn't compromise anyone, or expose anything personal or whatever - I'd be curious what you learned behind the scenes. I won't lie, I was with you in a teeny, tiny way. Limited releases of things just piss me off because it deprives the rabid fanbase of something, all so that Ebay resellers can gouge people. I wasn't as strongly opinioned as you because I know full well that a ROM will be available damn quick if the community so decides, in this situation. I find that homebrew ROMs aren't as easily obtained if a product is available for anyone to purchase (almost like we have scruples in this scene, eh?). I've never been a fan of piracy when a product is still being sold by the owner of the IP, but abandonware doesn't bother me in the slightest. Of course I'm a communist who thinks IP protection should actually expire (and measured in years, not the decades and centuries we have now or will soon have). I'd also be a lot less pissed off if Blix was a FB exclusive for now. Not on a console that MAY be released a year or 3 from now, but the current FB. THAT I'd be all in favour of. Limited release to drive sales of the FB, then sell carts to the enthusiast/collector community after say a year.

Woos-ter-shur.

Damn, that stinks. I guess I'm a bit spoiled in some ways. Canada doesn't have quite the same selection and decent prices on games/consoles that you guys enjoy, but we certainly have a ton of cheap old consumer electronics, even in smaller cities.

True. Although we didn't see a proliferation of replacements for the INTV 2 (did we?). I was more thinking of how folks bought a lot of the 2600 FB consoles simply to have brand new joysticks. I'm in love with the INTV FB controllers - nothing from the 80s is in this good of shape, not even MISB. Plastic just doesn't last when it comes to flexibility.

I'd only be surprised if someone claimed they were made in any large quantities, compared to the previous 2 decades. I'd be shocked if it even approached 1%. Yeah there were a lot made (hell my parents own one) but it was a pretty small market compared to when EVERYONE owned a VCR. There are probably close to 3-400 million VHS decks in storage and landfills in North America right now. I guess I'd be more surprised that anyone would even bother shopping new for one of these, if you're just looking for an RF demod. Given that you can buy used ones for pretty much nothing. And I bet you could get broken (tape-wise) decks for actually nothing, by the dozens, if you look around a little.

For me, the cables are handy and worth it when I don't have to open anything up (ie: on an INTV2). If I'm gonna open one up anyway and start messing around with plugs and such, I'd just re-wire the pins myself while I'm in there. Not sure how many people would be able to open it up, yank the controllers out, but not swap a few wires. Are you thinking of an adapter that would plug straight into the controller plugs inside the console? Or modding FB controllers to hardwire in? THAT would be pretty cool and probably what I'd be doing if the FBs ever end up on clearance. I've got several consoles that need complete controller replacement, methinks. I picked up a modded console with 9-pin ports a lot of years ago. Pretty handy to be able to swap 1 and 2 controllers just for fun. I highly recommend this to anyone who's thinking about the above "offer".

I *think* it's automated? I noticed that too - the dropdown was populated and I couldn't make it blank. It may have been because I was just refreshing the same page that I did my Flashback yesterday... Nothing I have came from there Edit: tried with a new page, nothing cached. It auto-fills BJs. Unless I'm doing something VERY wrong. Don't forget to add CGE when you fix that to default to blank

Just added the half dozen consoles I have here. I'll try to remember to keep at this when I finally get home, as I have 5 or 6 1s and 2s sitting around there. At least until I sell some of these off that is. Some of these controllers are acting up so I may have to part out a few of them.

Trying to get to 75% of all unique games (ignoring clones and the like) owned, without breaking the bank. Been stalled at just under 60% for a while now. There are an awful lot of pretty rare 2600 games.

Worth it for the extension cable alone. I haven't kept up - these are just pin re-wirings, yeah? Amazing that so much work goes into re-creating a classic console, but they couldn't retain the original pinouts. Has to be intentional, but for the life of me I can't guess as to why. If the INTV 1 had removable controllers, I'd be buying a bunch just to replace them on otherwise working consoles.

I think people underestimate the impact of the Crash. Pre-Crash, game systems were coming out constantly. Slight graphics upgrades, slight ROM size improvements, etc, happened every few months it seemed. Can you imagine the market being anything like that today? For 20-25 years now, the big companies specifically line up their systems to target their current competition. And by pseudo-mutual agreement, a new generation happens almost simultaneously. Back in the early 80s, it was nothing like this. Just check the release dates from 1976-1983 - it's complete chaos. The concept of "generation" could have been measured in months sometimes, as opposed to today where we're talking 5-6 years. Post-Crash, we saw a much more structured "generation" system. Companies, and more importantly consumers, knew exactly what competed against what. Generations lasted long enough that it was obvious what fits where. This is why you'll see everyone (for the most part) agreeing on the SMS/NES generation vs the Genesis/SNES/TG16 generation. And consoles started to have much longer lifespans. The 2600 was an anomaly for its time in that it lasted for more than a handful of years. It's the only pre-Crash console that really stuck around at all - partly due to being the earliest success, and partly due to critical mass. Otherwise most consoles lasted a handful of years at most, and in many cases 2-3 years or less. This is why I lump everything PONG-ish as gen1, and Fairchild/2600/O2/INTV/5200/Coleco as gen 2. And the only reason there is a difference there is that it was a HUGE change in how game systems were designed (integrated vs cart games). Gen 3 really is all the immediate post-crash stuff (SMS/NES) and from then on it's obvious for the most part. I'll give that the Colecovision was a bit of an oddball due to its capabilities, but it still was positioned squarely in the early 80s trifecta of 2600/INTV/Coleco. In terms of market presence, consumer awareness/desire, type of games on it, it was basically a 2600 with really, really good graphics. But it was still a system designed and utilized to play mostly arcade ports and clones - basically the games you play for a few minutes, in order to achieve a high score. Nothing about Coleco games are really all that different than 2600 games, just higher resolution. Yes, the same argument could be used to describe the early Famicom, but I think we need to look at a console's entire lifespan here. Let's face it, the NES and its generation brought about an entirely different style of gameplay. Save games. Checkpoints. Long games with goals beyond a high score. These were the hallmarks of that generation, and while some attempts at this existed on the INTV and Coleco, the vast majority of their games were not like this. Gen2, as I describe it, is certainly the "messiest" - but to me I don't understand why Coleco would be separate from INTV. To me, the INTV is as much of an improvement over the 2600 as the Coleco is over the INTV, so unless you're going for 3 generations there.. which everyone would describe as silly... But it's just better graphics. Still the same arcade ports, still the same "get a high score" mentality, and it was still the Golden Age - the Wild West of video gaming in many ways. It just logically fit into a single generation back then and my memory still views it this way.

I only got 11 on mine, but the number I picked out is great - 83. I had to explain the significance to my younger friend. After spending the previous evening explaining to her how to use a) joysticks, b) number pads, c) 80s games in general, d) the concept of short games played for points with no real goal, e) why there are no checkpoints (she's at least old enough to remember games before game saves), and f) using your imagination a LOT. Anyone over 35 is probably laughing their ass off with me right now. Plus Keith (IIRC) drew one hell of a big signature/slogan/picture on a lot of them. I'm not much of an autograph hound but this was pretty cool. There just wasn't as much to buy as I expected (filled out the Fairchild collection a bit more which is always a rare opportunity) but this totally made up for it. The controllers are astoundingly good, for INTV fans.

Hm, I believe all of mine were made in Hong Kong. Except for my Super Pro System, which claims to have been made in the USA. Odd to see manufacturing "return home" like that but I guess given the times, anything was possible. The only labelled difference between the 2609 and 2609a that I can see is power draw - 15W vs 18W. I gotta think that means something changed internally - and something substantial - unless it was an early labelling mistake (my INTV III and Super Pro also are labelled 18W). The smooth vs matte finish is weird. Typically the really smooth (glossy really) plastic shows up on later dated units - mine are 1981 - which also just feel a bit "cheaper". And I'm talking the entire bottom casing. It's possible they used this on parts of the early units as well, switched to the matte finish, then switched back? Hard to say with the controllers and buttons though, as those have frequently been replaced. I've seen various combos of plastics on them over the years, on the same unit. Hell I think someone swapped a controller on my III and Super Pro, as they *each* have a flat and bubble controller. Hoping someone points my stupid head to a FAQ about hardware variants or something. I just can't seem to find much.

Added the 2nd Flashback. Picked it up at CGE. Shh... they weren't officially supposed to be selling them - I've already which of the programmers said it, but he joked(?) that they were selling the sleeves for $60 and giving away free Flashback units. Came in a special BSR sleeved signed by about a dozen of the guys and gals who were in attendance. Only 200 made. Higher batch code already - 08/2014. I suspect we'll see even more depending on sales.

OK, fair enough. In fact I'd believe that most manufactured in the past 10 are likely as not to be missing it. Mostly due to how few have been made in the past decade compared to 1985-2004 or so. I guess it didn't occur to me that anyone was actually purchasing post-2009 VCRs in quantity, especially not to use with coaxial inputs, at a time when DVD players have dropped cheaper than a cup of coffee and discs are basically being handed out free with a Happy Meal. I do a fair bit of format remastering for people and I even haven't seen a VCR manufactured in the past decade. I can't conceive of why someone beyond an extreme enthusiast would be looking at these (I suppose to help grandma keep playing her 600 tape collection or something). Now, a new BETA machine I'd be all over, because it's getting damned hard to find those in the wild these days and an awful lot of good quality home video is recorded on L-500s and such. But VHS decks? They're like Combat cartridges. You can build home foundations with them cheaper than concrete. But yeah, for the 0.1% of VCRs out there where this may a problem, be careful to check the inputs. Otherwise just buy any $2 thrift store special and enjoy your INTV

Damn near every VCR built in the past 25 years has RF input and composite output. There are literally millions of these things sitting around in thrift and second hand shops for under $10 a piece. Often we're talking $1-2. I can't even begin to imagine why someone would entertain the thought of a new VCR, or an expensive demodulator. If you live in or near a city of any size, you can pick up a dozen VCRs for the same price without even trying. If you really wanna be lazy and spend a bit more, hit up pawn shops. Used VCRs are like CRT monitors - they're basically landfill at this point and unless you live in the Antarctic, I guarantee you there are a few (and dirt cheap!) within a few miles of your house.

Stupid question perhaps, but how do you determine model years on an INTV? I've always found the RF to be pretty damned good so modding INTVs has never occurred to me. Perhaps I've been lucky and my main playing unit is an original? Curious now as I've come into a whackload of consoles and I'm going to sell a bunch off - but I'd rather keep as many 70s units as I can. Because I'm the same way - I find the RF is more than good enough on the really old stuff so long as you avoid switchboxes. These days I only mod my 2600s if the RF circuit is broken, or they're juniors (and sometimes Vaders as they produce a helluva nice composite signal with a fairly simple mod). (I should add that I'm aware of the 2609/2609a variation, known about that since the 80s. And yet even today I can't actually figure out what the difference is, if any. Google isn't perfect? WTH??)

Appreciate the head's up. It would be nice if we could see links to the various Ebay auctions as they come up, too. Knowing me I'll probably miss them otherwise. Mind you I'm sure people will overbid these to hell and back, thinking there is some massive resale market potential.

Really impressed with the INTV Flashback buttons - HUGE improvement from the original. Even more impressed being able to play with one pre-release (Colecovision too) at CGE, and to get a ton of BSR autographs on mine. It only comes with overlays for 10 or so games, but I'm told the rest will be available via website in the near future. New overlays! Nothing against the homebrew/repro community, but there's something pretty cool about "official" overlays coming out again. And they seem damn well made. Time will tell if they're flexible enough (they seem a tiny bit stiffer) but given how poorly original overlays held up over the years, I'm pleased as punch about this. Here's hoping we see more of these in the future. Given that I'm still skeptical that they'll make it north of the border to Canada, at least I've got one of the 2.