pinball22

Here's a new one I just found today... sounds like it might be more exciting than the real game: Swordfish Fireworld

You'd need a good plastic paint or dye. But now you've made me wonder what it would come out looking like if you threw a cart shell into a bucket of bleach... *considers sacrificing a Combat to find out*.

That's really interesting... I've never actually played the pic version, but I played the text-label one tons back in the day (and watched my Mom play it even more... one of a handful of 2600 games she went through a period of being really obsessed with). I always thought the AI, while not that hard to beat, was reasonable on level 3 for something on the 2600. It's really fun to play against it on level 1... fairly often it will let you get it into a position where early in the game you can completely eliminate it.

I have no idea... maybe Zircon was having trouble selling them and approached Imagic about it as a way to get rid of them?

Yep, the Video Command ones are meant as 2600 controllers, and were available by mail-in offer if you bought No Escape -- the back page of the manual is an order form.

I have a NEX with the wireless controllers too... and while they're nice, the d-pad thing is definitely not the most accurate thing I've ever used.

That. Can you take a pic of the outside of the case before you deliver it to the buyer so we can admire it? (In much smaller news, I finally have a Mr. Do!'s Castle cart myself... got it for less than $14 shipped from an auction ending in the middle of the night.)

The end labels look really nice on the carts... I was afraid they wouldn't look good on, but I was definitely wrong!

Hey, your Space Dungeon auction has the Galaxian pic in it when you scroll down... just wanted to let you know.

Yeah, NES controllers are extremely simple to take apart and thoroughly clean. Take it all apart, let all the plastic bits soak in some soapy water, brush off with a toothbrush. Wipe off the rubber contact bits with alcohol and a q-tip if they've gotten icky. The only possible problem is that sometimes they're so worn they fall apart when you take the controller apart, and I've yet to find a source to buy just those. (If any one knows of one, let me know... I could really use some.) But standard controllers are really easy to find cheap, so it's generally no problem to piece a good one together.

After a minute I realized you meant isopropyl alcohol, but at first I pictured you pouring India pale ale all over labels.

I don't own a scanner but if a picture would be acceptable I could do that. Just let me know. A pic would be fine -- just close-up enough that I can read the part number/date/etc. Those two are missing from my long list of manuals. Thanks!

Congrats on that one... one of my favorite games ever!

Hey, would it be possible for you to scan the back page of the black & white Casino manual and the color international Home Run manuals you have?

Wait. You say you're playing it with MAME... do you mean you're playing the arcade game?

Apollo offered pricey customized copies of Spacechase that would show your initials on the screen -- here's some more info at Atarimania.

A quick counting in my head says there's easily $1500 worth of stuff in there, and I didn't bother to consider anything that isn't worth at least $5. That's amazing!

Macs and PCs were always expensive, yes. But the big gaming computers of the mid 80s, the C64s and Atari 400/800/etc, weren't.

Wow... you weren't messing around!

A C64 and a 1541 drive cost $400 when my parents got me one in 1985. They may not have been quite as successful vs. consoles here in the US as they were in Europe, but they were still extremely popular -- more of my friends in the mid-80s owned a C64 than an NES.

For the high-dollar NES sealed market, I can totally see the point. These games weren't in any danger of being opened anyway, since they're all available CIB-but-open for a tiny fraction of the sealed price, so they're not being taken away from potential players. Grading/slabbing physically protects them and protects buyers in online transactions from reseals, both of which are important for such pricey items. Now, I don't necessarily see the point for the whole sealed craze -- if you think about it, it's basically a 90% markup for some plastic -- but since it's something that has happened, and isn't really taking away anyone's opportunity to get to play the games, grading is probably a positive thing in that market. And I'm pretty OK with it spreading to other systems under the same conditions (as is happening with SNES and moving on to N64). I'm not sure I'd be OK with it becoming widespread for loose games, though, as that could begin to actually have a significant effect on prices for people who want games to play them.

I don't think I've ever seen the generic overlay... anybody got a pic of one?

If there's one coming that includes the DLC, wait for it, because you definitely want at least one of the DLC packs -- the one that says "includes party cache". Makes life much easier.

I really like the Zelda one!

Yes, you can have externally-hosted pics on eBay so you can have as many as you need. You just have to use the selling form that lets you put in HTML directly.