jhd

Thank-you for following up on this. I know almost nothing about music, but I am fascinated by obscure hardware, and I am enjoying this ongoing thread. The comment about Mick Fleetwood being an engineer/designer was very funny.

When I first started collecting PlayStation games, controllers were both plentiful and cheap at thrift shops. I have about four third-party controllers (some rather odd), and a large number of original controllers -- some in different colours. I also have the multi-tap. I have the two PlayStation 2 controllers that came with my system, together with another two(?) that I purchased at clearance still sealed in their original retail packaging. I have no idea how many 2600 controllers I have as they are all packed away in storage. I seem to recall at least two of those unusual Gemini controllers.

A bit off-topic, but what is the purpose of the metal shield? I have never seen a cartridge with one before.

I was a bit late to the party -- I did not get my PS 2 until 2010. I was still happily enjoying the original PlayStation that I had purchased second-hand in 2004. I purchased a slim sliver version at, IIRC, the Sony store. By 2011, they were getting harder to find. The Singstar bundle (with the slim white console and the microphones) was still readily available, but other models somewhat less so. Around 2012, I bought the very last unit from Future Shop or Best Buy; it was new in an opened box. I retain it as a backup system.

I wonder if they may have originally purchased the systems at retail, and so they are just adding their own markup to the retail price. I have seen that practice a few times, especially with stuff that is not "officially" sold in Canada. Someone purchases several units at retail in the US, and then resells it at a markup in Canada.

I have not purchased anything 2600-related in probably 8 years; and that was when I last found some (R6) games at a thrift shop. I am not planning on selling off all or part of my collection anytime soon (it is actually currently in storage in another province, so physical access is an issue), but I am very definitely happy to watch it increase in value. I did not purchase this stuff as an investment, but I am also not opposed to separating fools and their money.

EB Games in Calgary (Alberta, Canada) has them in stock for Cdn$79.99 (US$59.69 at today's exchange rate). Has anyone seen a Canadian source for less?

I do not see why he could not donate these materials to an institution -- even if they could not make them available straight away. I once worked at an archives that held sensitive records that were access restricted for 100+ years. Someday, all of the people whose privacy interests are affected will be dead, and then the records can be made available. Similarly, Activision's copyright will eventually expire; it is just a matter of waiting long enough. People die, but public institutions can last forever, so that is an argument for transferring material to an archives or museum. YOU may not live long enough to gain access to these materials, but future generations will. I am unfamiliar with American tax law, but, in Canada, such a donation to a public institution would be rewarded with an income tax credit for the fair market value of the donation.

Congratulations on finally acquiring one, especially with the accompanying documentation/printed ephemera! That thing is truly massive. How long were these sold for? Were they available past the demise of the ST? It may have been an internal publication. I have found MIDI magazine: informatief tijdschrift voor musici (published in Holland, 1989-1993) and MIDI: written for the mind of the musician (American, 1993- present).

It's now about 12 years old, so I suppose it qualifies a retro -- I bought a copy of Oblivion (GOTY edition) at a thrift shop a few months ago, and it is my new favourite CRPG. It runs very smoothly on my older laptop and I have, so far, gotten about 50 hours of enjoyment out of a $10 purchase!

Sadly, at the time these magazines were most popular (mid-1990s), my PC did not have a CD ROM, and there was no free drive bay for me to add one. A few titles included a floppy disk, but I do not recall any especially memorable games.

Robot Battle is definitely one of the more obscure titles -- it is a self-contained programming language environment, rather than a game. It came with a massive manual, and it is rather useless without it. Since they are not games, I would expect that Color Scripsit and Handyman are the least valuable/desirable cartridges in the lot. Some of those cartridges (e.g. Poltergeist, Space Assault, Pinball) are really early titles that were later discontinued. Presumably they are harder to find than those titles that remained on the market longer. I have no sense of how rarity correlates to value on the Coco market, so I cannot offer any specific prices.

I had a Coco BITD and, like many others, my main source of games was type-in BASIC listings from various books and magazines. Both because I was just learning to type, and because of the lousy "chicklet" keyboard on the Coco, it took a LONG time to enter a program. I remember that it would take me about an hour per page (including breaks, etc.) to enter the program, plus additional time to fix the inevitable typos. Consequently, for really long listings, I had to decide if the enjoyment that I would get from playing the game was worth the time that it would take to type it in. There were even a few really large programs that I started entering but just never finished. Did anyone else "benchmark" their typing speed, and make similar cost-benefit decisions about typing-in long program listings?

Arcades are effectively extinct here in Western Canada -- I am not even aware of any Barcades. I have no interest to travelling to another city specifically to visit an arcade, but if I am aware of an establishment, I will visit it while I am there. Sadly, this has not yet happened.

Wow that system was just filthy! Was it stored outside in a shed or something? I really like the segment where you take a garden hose to wash the metal shield; sometimes that is the only way. I have cleaned a few really grungy Atari 2600 cases, but never anything quite that dirty.

Have any of my fellow Canadians yet bought one? Most of the local retailers are listed as being sold-out, so somebody is buying them. Sadly, it is priced at Cdn$130 (about US$97). I can certainly afford it, but that's expensive enough to make me question how very badly I want it. Like many others, I will wait to see if it is placed on clearance after the holidays. Otherwise, I can easily wait for them to hit the thrift shops (It took me ~10 years to find a Flashback 2 at a thrift shop!). For the record, I have an original PlayStation console and a PSOne still in its original packaging.

Do the disks include all of the graphics assets, etc.? I can recall once receiving the source code to a game that failed to include some key support files. I could therefore modify the code as I saw fit, but not actually compile it. Of course the source for Leisure Suit Larry, etc. is of primarily historic interest. I cannot anyone wanting to release their own version of the game.

The mention of the MS Entertainment Pack brings back some very fond memories. I purchased the late release "Best of" compilation, and I eventually acquired all of the other games too. Chip's Challenge and some Polish block puzzle game (the name started with a K) especially stand-out.

It is not computer-related, but I am amused by the inclusion of Pan-Am Airlines on the list. Indeed, a parallel can be drawn with the current incarnation of Atari: the corporate name (and logo) are still in use, albeit by a completely new, different and unrelated company. http://www.panamrailways.com/

Computronics magazine was mostly about TRS-80 computers, but it included a brief section about industry news more generally. The June 1983 issue includes some interesting news about Atari's relationship with its retailers:

No, sadly those prices are clearly in American currency. They played Minestorm on it for a few minutes, so it does work. The first two episodes included some video games; not so much after that. They have defined "technology" as broadly as possible -- one episode included a vintage electric razor!

A few weeks, ago, the Discovery Channel (in Canada) launched the show Vintage Tech Hunters. The premise is these two "collectors" visit flea markets, garage sales, antique shops, etc. in search of old "technology" that they can then (presumably) resell at a profit. This includes everything from musical instruments and portable stereos to a 1950s gas pump and even exercise equipment. There were some classic video games featured in the first two episodes, but not very much since. The show is "Canadian", even though it is mostly set in Illinois and Wisconsin; my impression is that the principles are based somewhere in Chicago. It does not appear that the episodes are available online, just some promotional material: https://www.bellmedia.ca/pr/press/discoverys-newest-original-canadian-series-vintage-tech-hunters-unearths-retro-technology-and-rare-pop-culture-treasures-premiering-nov-5/ This show is mildly entertaining -- especially the well-produced background segments about the "tech", usually featuring contemporary commercials or other period TV/film footage. On the other hand, I am concerned that (like other shows before it) it will give the public the impression that vintage hardware is worth (at least) its weight in gold. The following vintage gaming items have been featured so far: Original Odyessy 2 + 6 cartridges (complete with overlays, etc.) Picked: $325 Valued: $625-$675 JVC X'eye (bare?) Picked: $150 Valued: $200-$300 Vectrex (1 controller, no games) Picked: $115 Valued: $175-$300 Gorgar pinball Picked: $500 (+ $1,000 for repairs) Valued: $3,500 Berzerk arcade game (fair condition) Picked: $1,250 Valued: $1,500-$1,800 Other than perhaps Berzerk, these resale prices strike me as somewhere between high and utterly unrealistic, but I welcome other opinions.

This has already been done; BITD there was a letter to a Coco magazine from the developer of a heavily copied game. Since only a very small number of copies had been sold originally, the purchaser's name was encoded into the software itself. I have also seen (non-gaming) PC software with the purchaser's name prominently displayed on the title screen: for several years in the 1990s, I used a second-hand copy of Lotus 1-2-3 that I had legitimately purchased at the bankruptcy sale of a local business. Since that copy was initially registered to the (now defunct) company, its name always appeared on the main title screen.

If money is no object, purchase proper acid-free archival storage boxes and buffered tissue with which to carefully wrap the the game boxes. Keep them in a climate and humidity controlled facility, and your treasures will last significantly longer than you will ever live. Of course you will have to make a decision about keeping or removing original price stickers, etc. as the adhesive will eventually leach out and stain the underlying material. If money is really no object, you can have the boxes deacidified -- a process generally reserved for rare books and archival materials. (I worked as a professional archivist for 7.5 years; my institution held items made of cardboard but, sadly, nothing video game related.) My own game boxes are stored flat inside of a much larger box. It is currently in indoor, but not climate controlled, storage. Most were in less than pristine condition when acquired, so the imperfect storage conditions will not make a huge difference.

I bought a Coco in about June 1983. For my birthday in November, I received a cassette deck so that I could finally store programs. About a year later, I had it upgraded to 64K RAM (at a local shop). The first computer upgrade that I did by myself was adding a 4 Meg. SIM to my '486. I later added a sound card (a second-hand original AdLib) and then a joystick interface card. This would have been in about 1996 or 1997. I badly wanted to add a CD drive, but there was no room in the case. I replaced a faulty power supply fan in a later PC.