jhd

It looks like a knock-off of Pengo.

This is an excellent development! While I have no interest in playing these early WIP "games", I love to see how the titles evolved into their final form. ETA: Is it known how the developer who made these available came to have such a disparate collection of games from different companies? I would be very surprised if professionals shared their unfinished projects with colleagues, especially from other (competing) companies.

I have never ordered from Best (nor do I ever anticipate doing so, for reasons entirely unrelated to the limited customer service), but I do understand the requirement to provide an item description as well as the catalogue number. I once worked for an organization that, among other things, sold photographs. There were more than a million different images in our inventory. The photo numbers were assigned in sequence, so they had no relationship to the image's subject matter. It was not uncommon for someone to mis-type the photo number in their order, and so receive something very different from what they wanted. This wasted both our time and the customer's. Having even a brief description acted as a check -- if there was a mis-match between the catalogue number and the description, we would contact the customer to clarify before processing the order.

I had a Coco from 1983 through 1989. I am trying to recall if there were any games on cassette tape that were "multi-load". I understand that a few such titles exist for e.g. the Atari 8-bit, but I am struggling to think of any for the Coco. I vaguely recall some text adventure games (from Rainbow magazine?) with multiple parts, but I do not remember how variables were passed from Part 1 to Part 2, etc.

Speaking as a long-time Canadian video game collector, it is very common for us to purchase games (and systems) in the US. Even allowing for the exchange rate difference, prices are generally better and the selection is FAR better. I assume that there some drift in the other direction as American consumers take advantage of a favorable exchange rate (and, especially in this case, a deeply discounted clearance price). Thank-you for documenting this rather rare item. I have never seen a Studio II at retail here in Canada. Other RCA products were readily available here in Canada. Circa 1980, my Mother won a ~26" RCA colour TV in some contest. We were still using it when they sold the house in 2001.

It looks like Leisure Time Electronics was active in about 1983... I'm a bit late to this party, but I found: Joseph CASSIOPPI v. Ross John DAMICO (Supreme Court of Alabama, 1988) 536 So.2d 938 Despite the fact that published court decisions are freely available public records (albeit not online), most people are unaware of them. Lots of interesting things can be found.

Is the expansion set even usable by itself without having first installed the original Word of Warcraft?

It is perfectly fine to run Windows XP, as long as one takes reasonable precautions. My desktop PC currently runs Windows XP sp2, but it has not been online since dial-up was still viable. I primarily use it for writing, photo editing, and maintaining my website. All online activities (and game playing) are handled via a much newer platform. File transfer is handled via a flash drive. I have never used Steam (on any platform), so I have no opinion on its support for Windows XP.

This is a good solution; the biggest problem with organizing or classifying systems by year is the longevity of some systems, e.g. the 2600 was first released in 1977 and it received at least minimal support through the early-1990s. Chronologically, it crossed several generations and it was (at least technically) competing in the marketplace with everything from the the Studio II and Channel F through the Genesis and the SNES. I really like the phrase "Transitional" to describe the Playstation (and similar systems); they are not really Retro, but they are certainly not Modern, either.

Is this a new policy? Some years ago, back when original PlayStation games were still available, I found a PAL-format sports game at my local EB Games. The case was very obviously different from the NTSC releases, so it's not like they made a mistake. I remember being surprised that they would be selling something that was not playable by the vast majority of their customers. Slightly O/T, but I have twice found imported games at a thrift shop -- a bootleg(?) Famicom game and some Japanese PS 2 games. Bizarrely, the PS 2 games were in a shop in a small, mostly Francophone community in New Brunswick. The shop clerk had no idea where they had come from.

Those are remarkably fluid graphics for a Coco BASIC program!

Strongly agreed! My main collecting interest is not video games, and I am now finding it hard to acquire new items for my collection as I already have acquired most of what is out there (barring the very expensive and/or extremely hard-to-find items that I will never see).

They are not hard to find, at least around here -- prices have not dropped significantly, and stores still have piles of them on the shelf.

Did it include the network adapter (just not the HD)? Final Fantasy 11 was clearanced cheaply by Radio Shack here in Canada, so some of the systems making their way to thrift shops should have a network adapter/hard drive, but (sadly) I'm not seeing any. By the time that I pay shipping and considering the exchange rate on the Canadian currency, buying online is not an appealing option for me.

Sadly, I have yet to find a fat PS 2 with the hard drive installed; I check every one that I see for sale, but I have yet to find a hard drive.

I have amassed a fairly large collection of PS 2 games, especially classic game compilations and RPGs. Unfortunately, I am having difficulty with the hardware. The PS 2 slim console that I bought new in 2008 is no longer reading disks (despite a cleaning). I recently purchased another slim at a local thrift shop (first I've seen in a very long time) and that too does not read disks. I can continue to purchase used consoles until I find one that works, but I fear that it is only a matter of time before I run out of affordable hardware. So, are there any PS 2 emulators that can read the original disks?

I would be very surprised if anyone is holding a large collection purely as an "investment". Among other reasons, unlike other, more typical investments, the market infrastructure is not there. If I wish to invest in art, for example, I can deal with reputable galleries and learn from knowledgeable experts about what artists to collect. There is no equivalent information available in the gaming sector (at least not in the same, systematic and organized fashion). Likewise, there are established dealers for art (or securities or classic cars), whereas for video games, most are sold online by random people or the occasional find at thrift shops and specialist stores. Buying games in the hope that they will rise in value is rather more speculative since the market is so much more volatile. As there are no publicly available auction or catalogue sales records (eBay does not count) as there are for art, there is no way to really assess value. There is no information on long-term market trends (e.g. x game has risen in price 15% per year over the past decade; y game has remained flat or even declined over the same time). I suppose that someone could buy random pieces of "art" from unknown artists at a thrift shop and hope that they will rise in value, but that would be a very poor investment "strategy". I am aware of one very modest academic library collection of video games and a few museums with representative pieces of gaming hardware, but, for the most part, museums and libraries do not have either the budget or the mandate to purchase large collections of anything. They may accept a donation, but not pay cash outright. Building a major collection with the hope of ultimately selling it to a public institution is also not a great investment "strategy".

Back in the 1980s, I purchased many video games in the United States (both for the Atari 2600 and, later, the Coco). The selection was significantly better than could be found in Canadian retail stores. Either your family purchased games at Sears in the US, or you bought them at a garage sale or flea market from someone who bought them there. Despite both having similar names, Simpson's-Sears (Canada) and Sears-Roebuck (United States) were different companies that served different markets and had similar (but different) product lines. For a recent example, look at how Target Canada differed from its American parent.

I discovered r.g.v.c on Usenet in the early-1990s. A few years later, I purchased a 2600 and a handful of cartridges at a local church rummage sale. I steadily acquired a decent collection of titles between local sales, a few online purchases, and clearance NIB stock at local retailers. I have not seen anything Atari 2600-related at a thrift shop in about five years, so my collecting has naturally come to a conclusion. I do not own any homebrew games -- though I would consider buying one if it came up for sale in a local shop at a reasonable price. Unlike many (most?) others, I never went through a phase of collecting everything gaming-related. Part of that was lack of interest (the Intellivision has no nostalgia value for me) and part was due to unavailability (I have never seen a Colecovision or an Arcadia for sale locally). I do have two Pong systems, a few Famiclones, and some other odds-and-ends, but I am not actively collecting anything.

I assume that you are located in the United States. As Sears titles were never "officially" sold here in Canada, they are significantly harder to find around here. (There were personal and grey-market imports, of course, so stuff does turn-up, but not very often.)

If memory serves, this was tried in the past in the United States -- some state lottery organization (possibly in the Midwest) tried a test-market of online gambling using a game console. There was widespread public opposition. And here is the link: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/27/business/nintendo-and-minnesota-set-a-living-room-lottery-test.html and https://kotaku.com/when-nintendo-wanted-to-bring-gambling-into-american-ho-5838193 If Nintendo failed to make this work, does anyone really expect that the ghost of Atari can do better?

I love this game! I only ever saw this game once in the 1980s -- if memory serves, it was on Prince Edward Island, probably not too longer after it was released (i.e. June or July 1982). It was not in an arcade, but in a ferry terminal or an airport. I endevoured to program my own version for the Coco a few years later. I managed to get a character who could "dig" through the layers, but I did not get to the stage of adding enemies (or any other elements).

I wonder if the tape may just be too deteriorated to recover after 30+ years in storage in an unknown environment.