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I prefer the Gemini simply because it is so much smaller. I have actually never used the combo controllers as my system did not include them (though I have since acquired a set). It works just fine with the standard 2600 joysticks. I don't recall encountering any compatibility issues with any of the cartridges in my (modest) collection.

The American magazine Business Week for January 24, 1983, p. 81 has an article on video game publishers moving into the then growing market for educational games. The companies profiled included Atari. The only Atari game discussed in any detail is the unreleased Grover's Music Maker. http://www.atariprot...over/grover.htm Oddly, the article states that “The game teaches the child colors and elementary music notation”. It is not clear where the author of the article got that idea as the game does not seem to use either colours or music notation.

Electronic Gaming Monthly, May 1995, p. 28 has a brief article on the soon to be launched Jaguar CD. Interestingly, there is a mention of the "Jaguar III" console. It apparently included an integrated CD drive and other, undisclosed, features. It was slated for a Fall release. There is a quote from a J. Patton, director of third-party licensing and contracts, saying that "we're confident that it will rival any of our competitior's next generation systems" -- i.e. presumably the forthcoming PlayStation and Saturn. The article also makes a brief mention of the (unrelased) Jaguar Voice data Communications Modem. I'm no expert on Atari history, but was the company not suffering from a serious lack of cash by this point? Were there the resources (financial, human) even available to develop, much less launch, a completely new console?

The PlayStation 2 includes support for online play with some titles, but it does not have any provision for DLC (primarily because it does not normally include a hard drive). Was that the very last console released that did not have provision for the now ubiquitious DLC? Technically, later releases of the Japanese version of the PS 2 included the Broadband Navigator, which provided for some downloadable games, etc., but this product was never released elsewhere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Broadband_Navigator

Not quite the Smithsonian, but the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, B.C. has an original NES and a few games on display as part of their (small, permanent) exhibit on the popular culture of the 1980s. I cannot recall having ever personally seen a 2600 (or any other video games, for that matter) in a museum exhibit anywhere.

I think that overall rarity may be a factor too -- I have seen far fewer N64 games in total as compared with, say PlayStation or Xbox games. This includes both specialized retailers as well as thrift shops and flea markets.

What about cross border shopping? People go on holidays, buy games, and later they (or their families) donate them to charity. My family makes at least three or four trips across the border every year, primarily for the purposes of shopping in US stores; this is very common among the people whom I know. I have purchased games in the US ranging from the 2600 through the PlayStation 2, some of which were not available at retail in Canada.

Have many people encountered "foreign" or import games in wild at flea markets, thrift shops, etc? I am not counting game shops that specifically import titles for resale. By "foreign" I am referring specifically to the situation in North America where Canadian-only titles (e.g. Zellers games, Obelix, bilingual or French-language labels) turn up in the US, and American releases (e.g. Sears VCS titles) that appear for sale in Canada. (Similar things may happen across Europe, but I am utterly unfamilar with that market). Personally, I have once seen a Sears-brand VCS at a thrift shop here in Canada, and another time I found a pirate Famicom cart at another thrift shop. Not gaming-related, but I once also found a pile of VCD(?) movies from Asia at a thrift shop.

One really easy way to keep the size of a collection manageable is to simply not purchase any games online -- no E-bay, no Buy & Sell Forums, etc. In all my years of collecting, I can count on one hand the number of titles that I have purchased online (and all of them came from commercial businesses rather than individuals or E-Bay sellers). Obviously that means that I will never have a charge to purchase System X (or Game Y) because it is either scarce or it was never originally sold in Canada, but this constraint also prevents my collection from ever growing out of control.

The Sears store near where I grew up briefly had an original Space Invaders machine around 1979. All of the signage/instructions was in Japanese! I think that there was one or two other games, but I cannot remember clearly. They did not last very long; perhaps a few months at most. A bit later, the nearby Eatons store had two arcade machines in their front entrace -- Ms. Pac Man and Space Duel. These lasted for a few years. The same store also had a Colecovision and (much later) a Genesis store demo kiosk. The bowling alley located in the same mall had what was probably the largest arcade in the city; though there was a much larger arcade in a neighbouring municipality. (For the non-Canadians here, Eatons was a major Canadian department store chain until it went out of business around 2000. It was a bit higher-end than Sears.)

Back when I first started collecting (mid-1990s), I made the decision to limit myself to the Atari 2600. The main reason for my decision was that I would never find games and/or hardware for these systems. For example, in 20+ years of hitting thrift shops, garage sales, and flea markets, I have seen exactly two Odyessy 2 lots for sale -- and neither lot included any decent games. I have seen exactly one Vectrex (with a damaged controller), etc. I cannot imagine collecting consoles for which i have no games, much less collecting games with no way to play them. In recent years, I have expanded my collection to include a PlayStation and then a PS 2, but even now I have a narrow focus to my collection -- basically just arcade game compilations and RPGs. I have no interest in sports games, platformers, shumps, etc. and so I have no desire to collect them. I have no desire to spend money on games that I will never play just for the sake of completeness. I'd rather spend my money on things that bring me more enjoyment.

Has anyone else created a homebrew version of their favourite arcade game? In the early 1980s, my very favourite arcade game was Centipede. I ultimately created a game called Multipede that was largely inspired by (and looked vaguely like) the original arcade version. It was mostly written in BASIC, but it did include two assembly-language routines (both cribbed from other programs and adapted). It eventually saw some local distribution (to my friends). Alas, I no longer have a copy of the game. I had previously attempted a version of Space Invaders, but the invaders neither moved nor shot back, and I had reached the then limits of my programming skills.

Could you say something more about this? I have never heard of a modem being used as a co-processor (on any system) and the idea is very intriguing. I had a Coco BITD and the hardware was, frankly, underwhelming compared to what else was out there.

Give them to your favourite local thrift shop to sell for an inflated price. (For the record, I've only ever had 1 dead 2600 cart and 1 dead Coco cart.)

I have a handful of boxes -- I was fortunate to be able to find a handful of new titles still available inretail stores when I began collecting ca. 1990. Other boxes were acquired with bulk lots of used games -- so the condition varies widely. My Atari 2600 collection has been in storage for more than ten years, and it probably will remain there for another few years. Since space is obviously an issue, all of my boxes have been gently flattened so that they all fit into a standard-size file box. If I someday have the desire/ability to display them, they can be "reconstituted" back into shape.

Many years ago I purchased a big lot of games for the 2600. I was really excited about playing Dragonfire and that was the one game in the lot that would not work, even after a thorough cleaning. I still don't have a replacement copy.

This makes sense -- how is one person supposed to be able to ascertain market prices for everything from tools to antique china to furniture to video games?

Are these things still being sold new? I would have thought that the market for Famiclones has been completely saturated several times over by now. Unfortunately, the only type that I've ever seen around here is the PowerJoy -- shaped like an N64 controller -- and even those are surprisingly rare.

This sidecar approach to expansion seems to have been popular for a while. It was used a few years later by the PC Jr. There were sidecar memory expansions, a hard disk, and possibly some others. http://oldcomputers.net/pics/ibm-pcjr-sidecar.jpg I've also seen similar sidecar perpiherals on the Intellivision -- with the ECS, speech synthesizer, and/or the Atari 2600 adaptor. http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/3653/image011.jpg Was the TI Video Controller, referenced above, for use with an external monitor?

Thanks for sharing this; there is some really obscure stuff there!

If I had to offer a guess, I would say that the main reason is cost. Once the hardware is developed, no further effort (or time or money) is required to create software for it. There is also the nostalgia factor that undobutedly drives sales; more people would want to play SMB than some unknown rip-off. There is at least one system that did as you suggest. I have managed to forget the name (despite owning one ); it is based on Famiclone hardware, but it runs its own games. It includes about 30 or so bulit-in titles, all of them roughly comparable to early NES titles. There are platformers, shooters, puzzles, and racing games, but no RPGs or anything else complex. Obviously there are no licensed titles or arcade ports.

A recent episode showed one of the regulars finding an SNES, complete in box (or, at least, the box). He casually announced that it was easily worth $200, before he moved on to other stuff in the locker. It makes me question the value that gets assigned to all of the other stuff (e.g. tools, jewlery, furniture); does any of this stuff ever get re-sold for what they think it's worth?

I am currently playing Final Fantasy Anthology (which includes FF V and VI) for the original PlayStation. I was wondering what other titles have been re-released on newer generations of hardware. Other examples that come to mind are the ubiquitious versions of Atari/Williams arcade games, released on virtually every platform from the Genesis and SNES onwards and, less obviously, the inclusion of the original Pitfall! game in Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure,

My copy is packed away ATM so I cannot check, but the number of disks should be listed in the lower left-hand corner of the case-back (together with the supported controler(s)).

There is only one disc. My case only has space for one disc, and the case back indicates that there is only one. This is not a spectacular collection, unless you are partial to sports games. My brief review: http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ab443/reviews.html#EMU