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I regularly search for new e-books. I just found this new title, and I wanted to share it with a wider audience: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 http://10print.org/

What bank offers this card?

Electronic Fun with Computers & Games (January 1983) reported that: “Rather than simply giving Atari permission to turn E.T. into a game, Steven Spielberg was directly involved in all aspects of the design work.” He is a fan of video games, and he worked with [HSW] to design the game. “A coin-operated version of the game should be in the arcades shortly”. Does anyone know how much, if any, development was done on the arcade game? I have not previously heard of it.

I only saw a Thayer's Quest once; probably somewhere in New England in the early-1980s. Unfortunately, it was not working at the tiime -- I really wanted to play it. As for saving progress on arcade games, don't some Neo Geo arcade games provide a slot for a personal "memory card"? Gauntlet Legends used a password save system.

Not game-related, but I am an avid book collector and I have seen this same practice at two different used bookstores. There will be multiple copies of the same book (in the same condition), each at a different price! It takes some time to check every copy on the shelf, but the savings are worth the extra effort. In terms of games, I have seen this mant times at thrift shops where multiple (bare, often visibly damanged) consoles will each be priced differently. The price tags indicate that they each arrived on different days (and therefore they were presumably priced by different people).

I had a Coco growing up, and I too liked to run "demo" programs whenever I found a Radio Shack store with a Coco on display. Nothing quite as cool as the siren sound effects, however.

It may be a remote control for a cassette deck; the motor could be switched on and off. TRS-80 computers used this feature to load/save from tape; I don't know how widely this feature was supported by other manufacturers. The "motor control" plug was 1/16" rather than the 1/8" used for the audio connectors. I cannot tell the size of the connector from the photo.

Maybe I'm fortunate, but I have only very rarely seen this. Won't Good-Gone (or a similar product) clean that off? That's almost all of them around here. Is there a huge demand that makes the Jumper Paks worth stealing (or selling seperately)? Or, even better, it is parted-out to different stores across the city. I sometimes see obscure, random controllers (e.g. a Dreamcast keyboard, Mattel Hyperscan controller) with no corresponding console in the same store. Many thrift shops now are "all sales final" on games (and DVDs). I recently found a PS 2 game that I really wanted, but it had some serious scratches. For $6, i was not about to gamble on it working.

It has been many years since I saw/played it, but there was some third-party pool game on a cartridge too. I remember seeing one in a Radio Shack store somewhere in the North-East, around 1983 ot '84. It was the only third-party cartridge that I was ever aware of (not counting hardware devices). I later had a dump of it on cassette tape, but I don't recall the title/publisher. I would hazard a guess that the non-game cartridges are even more rare because of limited sales -- e.g. Audio Spectrum Analyzer, the "business" cartridges like Scripsit(sp?), Color File, and even a spreadsheet cartridge. I think that there was also a presentation-graphics cartridge and even a diagnostics cartridge. Some of the really early cartridges (Dino Wars, Roman Checkers, Wildcatting) were discontinued in favour of more "fun" games. I actually had Robot Battle; it included a mini-programming language and it shipped with a huge manual, similar to Color Logo. Were there ever any store-demo cartridges? I remember watching a really impressive (for the time) demo just before I got my Coco in May or June of 1982 but I think that it was loaded from tape.

When I was in High School (mid-1980s), all of the computers had a similar number engraved in the case. If memory serves, the local police department loaned some tool to do this, and presumably also recorded the numbers, so the hardware could be easily tracked if it was stolen.

This is Nintendo's equivalent of the Atari 2600 Jr, it seems. Notably, the PS 2 and original Xbox never had an end-of-life redesign/relaunch. I would expect that the main competition for this low-end (cheap) segment of the market will be used Wii consoles (with more features). There is an article today in the Toronto Star with a better picture: http://www.thestar.com/living/technology/article/1293635--wii-mini-nintendo-announces-canadian-exclusive-console-for-holidays

At one point in the late-1980s, Kodak sold boxes of disks with this colour assortment -- I may still have some deep in my basement. I never saw any other colours, but I do remember getting a promotional/game disk from General Motors(?) about 1989 or 1990 with some advertising printed on the disk jacket.

I have just check the major library catalogues: Amicus (Canada), WorldCat, and Library of Congress. None have entries (or holdings) for Atari Age before the "relaunch" in May/June of 1982. For what its worth, I once worked for an organization that was supposed to produce two newsletters per year (Spring, Fall). In 10 years, we only managed to do that once! One isue per year was the usual output, and sometimes none at all. Other projects had a higher priority, staff departed, there was insufficient content, etc. I can only guess that something similar happened at Atari.

Packri Monster was the subject of a lawsuit between Midway (who held the NA rights to Pac Man) and Bandai (who imported the game) in 1982. Consequently, it was only on the market for about six months. http://www.retrogamingtimes.com/magazine/?issue=100&page=205&theme=purple&g=invaders

As suggested above, have you tried hitting reset? My Coco would alternate between red-green and orange-blue artifact colours. I recall that one game, Buzzard Bait?, started with a solid coloured screen. The instructions were to keep resetting the system until it displayed the correct colour, and gthen start the game. I believe that it has to do with the video synching to the leading or traling edge of the clock signal. There was some technical discussion/explanation in this very forum before, but I cannot quickly find the reference.

Does anyone else think that Zellers (Canada) and Quelle (Germany) sourced their "store brand" games from the same distributor, probably some Taiwanese company? They are (were?) both discount department stores and the games are very similar. The packaging and names are different, of course, but that is due to the different languages involved.

The information will not be searchable online, but most every major city had a "City Directory". This is like a telephone directory, but it is also searchable by municipal address. It would list the various tenants in the building. The LA Public Library has digitized a few directories, but nothing between 1973 and 1987. http://rescarta.lapl...RcWebBrowse.jsp Someone local to LA will have to make a treck to the library to check the 1982 edition. Since the address is known, it will be a 15-minute task to discover who the tenants were in that building. In 1987, the space was occupied by the Million Dollar Drug Co. http://rescarta.lapl...doc=1702 Sunset ETA: A polite request to whichever department of the library holds these directories may get positive results; asking for a specific address for a particular year is a reasonable reference question.

Were these sold at retail, or just mail order? I remember seeing the advertisements in places like Byte magazine, but I have never actually seen one in person. I never had any reason to shop there as I am not a musician, but I expect that these were sold in the same stores that handled Yahama keyboards and related hardware.

I bought a late-model PlayStaton console used in 2004. I used it regularly until 2008 when I bought a new, slim PS 2 -- which I still use today. I have not had any problems with either console; though I did buy a PSOne and another slim PS 2 as "backup" systems when they went on clearance sales.

The name plaque on the top of the computer would show Color Computer 2 or Color Computer 3. I can see the plaque in the photo, but the image is not quite clear enough. Coco disk drives are both large and external; the controller (which you have) plugs into the cartridge/expansion port and then connects to the drive(s) via a ribbon cable.

Poltergeist is a multi-screen platformer (at least three levels, maybe more). It has been almost 30 years since I law saw/played it, but I recall that the graphics were quite impressive for the Coco.

Is that Coco 2 or 3? It looks like a 3, but the manual shown is for a 2. A bare Coco 2 is not worth very much these days; I'd say less than $20. A 3 is worth rather more. Did you get the Coco disk drive(s), or just the controller? The Poltergeist cartridge was a really early release (and one of the few officially licensed titles on the Coco); I don't want to hazard a guess on price. Galactic Attack is a decent Galaxian-clone. Neither are playable without joysticks.

If Inmagic has generated no revenue since the 1980s, there would be no state income tax owing. Presumably most commercial debtors would have long ago written off their claims as uncollectable. I'm not familiar with California law, but in most jurisdictions, a corporation has to file annual returns (and pay a fee) to remain in good standing. Normally, after several years of inactivity, the company would be automatically struck from the registry and so it ceases to exist. Without reviewing the specific legislation, I do not know why an inactive corporation would remain on the registry for almost 30 years. ETA: "Orphan works" are a really big issue among those who wish to preserve materials, such as librarians. Copyright (and trademarks) is still owned by a defunct corporation (or a deceased person's estate), but there is no way to contact the rights holder. http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/unlocatable-introuvables/brochure2-e.html

Stella is much older than I realised. I heard that the Action Packs can be made to play other games, but as it won't run on my current hardware, I have no way to verify this. (It may be limited to 4K ROMs if bank switching is not supported.)

What was the very first Atari 2600 emulator? I'm going with Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack, released in 1995. If memory serves, there were some earlier projects underway before that, but nothing had reached the playable stage. The consensus, at the time, on whatever Usenet group discussed such things (alt.emulation?) was that PC hardware was not yet up to the task.