Age-of-Atarius
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Posts posted by Age-of-Atarius
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The funny thing is that some of these games have already been copied and produced. While I hadn't see any being actually sold I am fairly certain there are a few hundred copies of Care Bears and Ewoks Adventure out there already. They have even made boxes for it in the PAL market place.
http://www.retrogamesshop.com/product_info.php?info=p3_care-bears--reproduction-box--atari-2600.html
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Yes those sizing problems were fixed. Micky Ds was redone as well as a couple of other minor fixes after this test run. On the Star Wars games I had to redo the Fonts and the change "Revenge" to "Return" Game two is also one I am working on, but I don't think the programing I have in mind would be possible on the Atari as its a bit complex. Your right about the color on LotR being a bit darker brown as that is how it was made originally. I did try enhancing the color hues to get in more like the traditional silver. But the closest I got was a light pink, and those weird fonts got blured so I decided to leave it as they designed it.
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OK folks here is an early edition of the Parker Brothers games that were not released for sale after the crash. I made the prototype labels to sell but hadn't test marketed them yet. Don't think the demand will be too high as there are few whom have the skills to put these on a ROM and insert them into the PB carts. I have them made up to go on the traditional Atari shells as well.
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Still shopping for a printer. Of course the kids labels will be pre cut & done by professionals. The material sample I have is a thin plastic called futura gloss so should be more durable and better then the originals. The test printing of other labels on a gloss adhesive photo paper turned out fairly well and I will likely be ready to sell those next month. It really depends on how much the cost of quality will be for start up to determine how much I would charge for sales. I want to keep it low cost so I can sell them in smaller lots. If I sold them a few at a time it wouldn't cover the S&H & eBay fees.
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Well I am onto the next project which is the overlays for the kids games. Sadly the Star Raider keypad doesn't match up. The pins are compatable but the spacing is different for the full size controls. So I am remaking the Keypads in the original small dimensions for the blue key pads for children. But I can also resizing them & resetting the push buttons for the original black controllers which are more common. I want to get as many new products ready at the same time to get more traffic to my eBay store. These will have to be laser cut as they will likely go on the futura brand plasic which is a bit more durable then what came with these games. I should be able to get all 8 copies on a single sheet so might make a little profit after the initial start up cost. I don't see a high demand with these as the learning games weren't a big seller.
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My best find were both off Craigslist and kind of similar as they were each had three consoles and a bunch of loose games. I paid $30 for the first group of 2600s one of which had the Promotional Use Only burned into the bottom. Guy said one of the Activision cartridge was rare as it was blank but for a Mr. T sticker on the cover. Turned out to be Kaboom, but all the systems worked. Demo model looked like brand new.
Another guy had a 7800, 2600 and a Jr. listed for $50 but I couldn't arrange a meet time due to distance. He reposted it weeks later and I talked him down to $40. I guess no one else wanted the mixed junk. My wife went to meet him near her work which is 30 miles away. I knew a few of titles from the picture were uncommon like Frankenstein, but didn't know anything about the 7800. Turned out that it the consoles came with power packs, joysticks, and everything worked great. Just three of the games I sold paid for the entire lot.
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Tell you what I am going do. I have been on fence about the rare and prototype labels. If you Crazy Climber want a Q*Bert Qubes copy I will simply mail one to you for free. Just PM me your physical address and I can stick a stamp on a letter and send you one. I have a few labels already made as I was testing my new printer and various types of peel and stick paper quality.
Here is the thing folks. How do you walk the thin line between making a small profit and basically giving these away? Perhaps you don't have any idea of how much eBay & PalPal charges and takes the profit margin out of your sales. Then there is the postage costs, time, & supplies involved. Most of items that I sell, the S&H which I charge is less then what USPS cost me. eBay takes 15% off the top off any video game sales. Add in final value, gallery listing, BIN, PayPal fees, S&H and you are basically losing money when selling single items for a buck or two.
The thing that upsets me is those few sellers on eBay who are asking and sometime getting $3-$5 for simple crappy remade labels or end caps. It makes absolutely no sense to me that anyone should pay more for the label, when you can get another complete game for the same price or less. There are always going to be people whom are new to Video Game collecting and shopping the eBay market place for the 1st time. Those folks will pay more then us "professional" Atari & retro gamers as we know from experience what titles are generally worth.
People see crazy prices on Amazon or any online Video gaming stores and think, oh these are worth that much!? Any large retail (physical location) retro gaming store in the USA might have a mint in box Atari 2600 and ask $150-$200. They may eventually get that high price for it especially around Christmas time from an impulsive buyer. So most people think that eBay is generally a bargain after shopping around a little bit for vintage gaming stuff.
Getting back to my rare label and the prototypes. If I made them high definition & rewrote the copyright by hand to look as good as the original, there is nothing to stop others from buying and redoing them. Anyone with CAD or MS Painting skills could remove my Retro Prototype markings & copyrights and then make the label look nearly exactly like new. Then an unscrupulous seller could remove a crappy title label on say a R9 Mr. Do's Castle, put on their title redone sticker on it, then they could resell the game. Lots of people already do this on games saying in excellent shape, and then get worth double or more of what the game is really worth. That is my biggest problem with this project and the rare titles. I think every one of us has seen this happen on eBay many times, as we post on Facebook outragous prices buyers sometimes are asking for "RARE" reproduction games cartridges.
And yet the really good tricky sellers can still maintain a very high even 100% perfect feedback rating or even a top rated seller status. They usually sell to new folks who don't know any better. If an educated (like us) video game customer complains they can always:
1. Pretend they didn't know it was a copy.
2. Have a disclaimer on their sale about the description of the item in question.
3. Their policy states as is sale no returns.
4. Allow the customer to return the product for refund. But usually the customer must pay for additional shipping and tracking to do so.
5. They can go through a product dispute process through eBay or PayPal
6. Or they can simply work things out by giving a partial or full refund to the customer.
I prefer the last choice as I would rather give the unhappy customer a full or partial refund then to get a low detail rating or negative feedback. The problem is that in this rough economy so many people are trying to get something for nothing. Many times it is a spoiled kid using their parents credit cards and eBay & PayPal really doesn't care at all so long as they get their nice portion of the sales.
What I would prefer to do is learn HTML programming so I can open my own online store and charge what I think is "fair market" prices. When I do have a very rare or one of kind item there is no guide to pricing that. It's simply you try and get the most money you can out of someone else that is willing to pay for it. The other factor is how long it takes to sell an item. You can simply let sit on a "shelf" for months and even years. Or you can slowly lower the price to an acceptable amount that you and a buyer are happy with.
I have had my eBay store for nearly 15 years, been buying, selling, and trading Video Games for about 30 years now. I think that everyone wants to buy the best and most games they can for the cheapest price. Unless your rich and then you brag about how much you overpaid for your new car, those Versace clothes & Gucci products. ::smiles::: Sometimes I get frustrated with non paying sellers or scammers and may close my store for months. Or when making good money at my other jobs, I will only be buying on eBay and off Craig's list to resell or enjoy later. The wife and I love Thrift Store shopping where we occasionally find treasures which might turn a nice profit after fixing and cleaning.
When my labels & posters are up to the standards I am comfortable with, I will be posting some on eBay hoping to draw attention to my remade and new products. I plan on offering the Atari 2600 text end labels and Parker Brothers reprints to any and all of my Facebook groups at 1/2 price of the online sales. Anyone who has a PayPal account could send me their want list, and I could then send Y'all an invoice so there would be buyer and seller protection both ways.
We would be skipping eBay altogether as they and PayPal are now separate businesses again. This will save everyone time money and effort. Instead of my having to using USPS 1st class or Priority Mail with tracking, I could simply use letters and stamps on these small items. It's really not worth my time and effort to sell things at less then $5, so that is why I generally sell the cheaper video games in small lots. Could you imagine the trouble I would be in if everyone in my groups over 5K people just wanted to order a single label? LMSAO
OK folks that's the plan. It will likely be month or so before I am ready to ramp up my production. Just depends on the hours at my main job. Currently we are staffed up so I am working less then 30 hours a week, which gives me more time to work on eBay & my gaming projects. Heck, I used to spend 50-75% of my free time playing video games. Now I am lucky to turn on a console to play games 10% of the time, maybe a few hours a week. The vast majority of my time is spent cleaning and testing items I have recently acquired. It also takes a good period of a day to describe everything your selling accurately & take multiple pictures of the better items.
Oh and turning a simple picture of a fake unreleased boxed game into nice usable label, that I would say that takes about 5-10 hours of "reproduction" work. If anyone thinks its easy blending a mottled background into a solid color, you should give it a whirl. Try going around the edges of a already known, mock up box that has a cartoon picture on it, and digitally "removing" the plastic covering. Anyone can please be my guest and show me how to do it better.
Rant over and out. I am more then happy to help people with their nice requests, but like designing a game it takes time and effort. Has anyone ever seen the process involved in restoring a rare artwork? LOL its not quite that hard but it certainly isn't the simple process many of you seem to think that it is. Remember folks, you can catch more flies with honey which is better then the vinegar that a few have spouted out. I welcome even encourage honest discussion and advice. If you just want to bash my efforts find another person or thread to pick on. Peace out all. David.
Hey Supergun, good advice on the Hulk. I already had that one and Octopussy downloaded and am about 1/2 through with the redesign on the Increadible Hulk. What do you think would be a fair price to ask for each of those prototypes labels should I sell them on eBay? Send me a PM and I can talk to you about those items & your other request.
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Well if the guy seriously had this expensive stuff and wanted to sell it, why hadn't he responded to the request for serial numbers. Sure the ones in the big picture look like the real deal even if quite blurry. Might have jacked it from someone on eBay or Craigslist. I also think the angle of picture seems a bit strange. Would like to check out the corners and punch holes. Those would also help identify it as being authentic. I never got those last three tapes though I love the system, I have a serach for eBay set up and hope to pick up a few units or cartridges when the price is right. Eventually I may find a Stella for less then $100 as I never heard they had a CD until I join the AA club.
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Nice try but pretty certain that one is a fake. I checked my own Super Charger tapes for authenticity. Then I looked closely at the pictures of the rare SoS and SI that I took at the convention. The color and font on the numbers is different. Upper left side of the label usually has the company Logo is strangely faded, while the cassette appears new. And the most obvious mistake from this poor attempt at deception is the missing screws. All of the Supercharger tapes that I have ever seen, have five tiny screws holding it together. There are four at the corners and one in the middle bottom. The backside which conveniently doesn't have a label is lacking those screws. It also shows no residue where the title sticker would have been attached had it been for real. I rest my case.
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OK guys then it was 1982 then. Sheese ruin the magic. Perhaps you can tell me what year it was when I came in 3rd in the Solar Fox contest? I won a Sony Walkman, the game, and a few other Atari things that year. I do remember when I got the second Frogger on the Starpath Super Charger which was even better. Slightly after the crash I bought 10 Atari games and got the supercharger for free. Pretty sure the games were only $5 each then.
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Loved playing this game at the Classic Gaming Fest in Austin. There were many more complicated games but none held my attention more then this simple beauty. Probably should have tried it on a higher level as I hogged that station for 20 minutes. Other then those game tournament titles Fall Down and Space Rocks, this was the only game I came back to try again.
The new cartridges got mixed around a bit as kids would grab and try whatever was laying about. But the Atari Age people were nearby to keep the people in line and helped with game play. A few games were tough to figure out as some controls were tricky. Sadly I saw a lot of clones that were just remakes of old standards with some new twists.
Great to hear this is a charity cartridge as I have been attempting to get one started myself but don't have the skills or resources for such a big project. Put me on the mailing list for when it is available for sale. Good job!
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I bought my first 2600 in 1980 when they dropped the price down to under $100, and got myself frogger. My large 25 color TV console had just blown a tube so I was playing it on a tiny 14" black & white in the bedroom. Even with the limited picture and basic sounds I thought it was just fantastic. I was in heaven ever since that monent with the simple ease and enjoyment of playing your own Atari favorites at home. I became an avid collector and eventually started my own buying/selling/trading video gaming business.
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Dear ProperRogue, obviously you didn't even read the auction. And let me quote directly from the auction site.
This is the only page I made with the rare uncommon tittles. I won't be remaking Mr. Do's Castle or Q*bert's Qubes again. I want those rarer titles to retain their original condition. Those very hard to find games should show some age and patina to keep the value high so this is a one shot auction.
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OK, thanks to some suggestions from helpful people I was able to make some changes and improve the quality of most of those which really weren't that great. But I could use a little bit of help from the AA group here with two labels which I cannot find decent pictures of anywhere on the web. Gyruss and Montezuma's Revenge have just terrible pictures and the copyrights I found are completely unidentifiable. I would appreciate the help, if anyone has a decent copy of those games and could post the pictures here. With your assistance we can replace those missing and crappy labels for people whom really need them and love the Parker Brothers games.
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Thanks for the Kudos guys. As far the the silver edges or metalic colors go they aren't actually metal tints at all. I reseached the microsoft paint hues to find the closest aproximation to the original shades. The silver is more of a gray, red metal is kind of hot pink, and the closest to gold is a brightish orange. I had lightened the black on these to give them an aged look, but after seeing results will darken the shade a touch. That should give them a more realistic solid back ground. I also just ordered a small size guillotine paper cutter as that would be cheaper then getting these precut to size. Going to try and keep these as low cost as possible and will sell them in small lots. That way you could pick and choose which labels and colors you need to match the missing ones on your original Atari 2600 cartidges. It's very easy to peel and stick them on. The newer adhesive backings today are much better then they used to use before.
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Well I have to admit the guy/gal looks much better then when he had his first facelift. But putting her back on a box a wheaties.... Nah I think I would rather watch him sing YMCA while modeling on the runway.
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Gheese even an "Dude those are totally stupid" would have been better then being ignored. Just cause Al scolded a few folks before for not saying anything helpful doesn't mean that you need say nothing at all. Cause I worked my binary fingers to the bone yard on some of dem der producks. If Ya'all wanna keep quite then I will have no choice but to try making paradoy fake game boxes. Let's see.... an Alfred E Newman or Cracked Magazine game box? How about a burn the confederate flag, or change Bruce into Caitlyn Jenner game? Surely I can raise some controversy with those titles. Don't make me do it. I really am a drama queen at heart. LMAO. Speak now or forever withhold your peace and insanity will ensue. No sleepy much Davey gets silly, over and out.
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Yes, the Space Rock Tournament Edition was crazy, fast, hard, and fun. You started out with most asteriods coming at you quickly from every direction. If you were lucky enough to last a single round, you had these bigger rocks of triangular ships. Blasting those puppies apart only made them chase you individually. Not certain how long I lasted, but I doubt if it was much more then a minute. My score was around 8500 and not bad as I think I made it to 5th place. It was a decent beginners score as I hadn't even tested the game before the contest. Standard original asteriods is pretty tame after playing this amazing energenic game.
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Gads some of those colors look terrible when blown up! Believe me they look much better in person with stardard dimensions and not oversized. The computer close up seems like 300% larger then normal, it mottles the black background on some of those.
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OK, let's try this once again. What do you folks think of the end cap labels that I remade from scratch. Did I miss any variations? Spell check appreciated too. Printed these on standard paper so not finished yet. Be kind, remember I am an amateur. Thanks!
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Rats, I must have missed out on liking by a couple days. As to the topic of best picks both Bank Heist and Aliens are great choices. Alien is a pacman type game where you eat up the eggs before they grow into full size monsters you must run from in the mazes. Bank Heist is one of my favorites as you can toss out dynamite out of your car to slow the cops whom are chasing you. Its a bit easy though, running through the city streets. You can continue play by robbing banks for quite a whilte. Cop cars are stupid and easy to disable.
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Thanks Albert, Obviously this is my first attempt at touching up and reproducing the original labels. I saw some of the horrid stuff that others on eBay were doing. Some are selling them and they don't even have the copyright ends atached at all. A ruler and an exacto... duhhhh, slapping self in head. Yeah, that's obviously a better idea then sizzors. For the moment will shall see what kind of sales I can generate with them as they are. It's almost impossible to get good quality cartridges to take high resolution pictures. Many of the results you see were pieced together by as many as three of the same lables. The hardest part to even get an image of was the copyrights on the ends. So many are worn out or were folded over the curves which ruined the printing. I don't even own some of the rarer cartridges myself. My best accomplishment which none seemed to notice is that I eliminated the worn crease and curved end marks on every label. That took some time, as I also had match the colors carefully. Different angles of the same pictures show up to be lighter or darker then other ones. Again thanks for the advice as this is a work in progress. I already ran out of the high quality peal & stick photo paper. Not to mention the amount of ink that I have used. Went ahead and bought those in bulk which was actually cheaper on eBay, then a single replacement at Wal-Mart would have cost me.
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Your right they were cut with sizzors. Nobody makes a laser cut design that would fit those dimensions. They are simple replacements not meant to be expensive or of a high caliber resolution. I made these up to stick on, so you could identify your blank cartridges. They aren't made to museum quality standards. Thank you for pointing out what you didn't like without resorting to just bashing them up.
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Yeah these are really bad too when you use a magnifying glass. So sorry that I have such bad eyesight and am color blind as well. If anyone else wants to try and redo these please be my guest. I thought there was a need for all those which have fallen off.
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Unreleased Game Titles Mock Up Label Cartridges
in Atari 2600
Posted
Curious as to how you were able to do the backside of them. Were you able to obtain the originals? I had never seen the full design on those before. I was also thinking of making those but obviously its not worth the effort of contacting Parker Brothers to ask permission and see if they have pictures of them. I have only seen one post where someone made a rule booklet too.