Stella'sGhost

Interesting topic. I'll tell you what I think about this cause I'm bored. I never even saw a 7800 unit in the stores, even after the 1986? re-release. People were not aware of its existance around where I am, near Toronto, Canada. I'm sure there were consoles but I don't remember seeing any. The 2600 was very popular over here during all the 80's because I remember seeing Atari 2600 games for sale EVERYWHERE over here up until around 1990 or so. So, marketing was lame, however its deeper than that. Nintendo was managed like an empire, the owners had run the company on a philosophy of excellence for 100 years before the NES was released. The amount of time Nintendo put into video games was far greater than Atari did. The whole mentality of Nintendo was different from Atari. I think under Nolans vision and leadership Atari was heading in the right direction, after he left, things just werent the same. Nintendo never had management issues, it had been run brilliantly by the same family for a century, it's in the development and planning that Atari failed, as well as some bad luck I think. All of this is evident in the hardware as well. The NES is simply a better machine to develop on, and Nintendo had the money and drive to do it. Atari, as great as the 7800 could have been had it had a better design, internally, I think due to the way the company was manged, could not have competed with Nintendo's "war-like, take no prisoners" approach.

I still use my 1983 four switch model with fake wood grain. It still works perfectly. Same joysticks as well! I have another VCS as back up but at this rate I'll never need to use it.

I think PCFormat needs to reformat that list with one that makes sense.

I don't keep my games away in a box, I like to see them - so they are all in a really nice shelving unit with glass doors (Keeps out the dust perfectly), originally made to store CD's or any type of media. I got it at IKEA a long time ago ago and its still practcially mint. I'm about to run of space in it so I'm going to have to look for something new because Ikea doesn't make them anymore!

Thanks guys, I removed the lid and the belt had totally fallen out of place, putting it back caused everything to work again..! Doh....

yeah , check out that GLAXION cart, that's a rare one, its a prototype isn't it.

Hello my 1050 drive was working fine, then suddenly its giving me boot errors, i cannot access files from it anymore. Is there a way to check for obvious problems before trying to open it and poking around inside?...thanks. I'm handy but I don't know much about these old disk drives.

Sounds like a good price, I mean you can get lucky like I did, I paid 12 canadian for mine, mint with everything, manuals games, light gun.. but it was a fluke of timing and it was a thrift store, the chances of that happening are scarce. Ive only seen one in the wild in the last 5 years so... 30 bucks is fine. I would have paid 30 bucks.

There's probably some truth to this; if the vendors think you are a collector they may hike up the price, if they think you don't know your Nintendo from your Atari from you microwave, they may not bother hiking up the price. However, who knows in the end, you'll just have to try different things and hope for good luck.

Oh man... sounds familiar. But there's hope, I found a complete absolutely massively mint XEGS with all the stuff it originally came with in a thrift store for 12 dollars, kind of hidden on a bottom shelf in the back, that's 12 Canadian dollars. That's a good deal! I'm telling you its so mint its ridiculous, and it works perfectly.

Thanks guys, very helpfull, unfortunately my 1050 wont boot up, i just get boot error, i cant load anything from it now, it seems to be "broken". any ideas what could be wrong? It was working fine 10 minutes ago....

Thanks, i have those books, but they still don't quite help. OK, I formatted a disk and saved it however how can I list the contents of the disc to see whats on there? Do I have to go to the dos menu? I'm using DOS 2.05. Also, how do I get the dos.sys and dup.sys files on a disc? I formatted one but they don't seem to be on there?....

Hi, I have an XEGS and I just got a 1050 drive, with no documentation. I've looked around but I cant seem to find what I'm looking for, which is quite simply : how do I save a program in Basic to a floppy disc? I totally forgot how to use DOS on my atari, its been so long.....

Brilliant!!! I'm buying one.

I do some user interface design professionally, from time to time so after coming here for 4 years does anyone else realize how well designed and usefull this website is??? It's excellent. I'm impressed. Nice color scheme and the overall interface is top notch. I would rate this one of the better sites of its kind in the world, seriously. Can I get free stuff now

I was to young to really be bothered too much that the 2600 version was not as good as the arcade version but I knew even at 9 years old that the aracde machines had better (computers), or as I thought, better tv's.

When adventure came out there was nothing quite like it, so you can imagine my dismay when I thought I was doing good and suddenly out of nowhere this freaking bat comes and takes away the magnet! I was like, "what the!?" and i realized this wasn't going to be easy. As annoying as Otto was, I think the Bat was worse for making life miserable. Even though my tag reads, "long live Otto the 3rd."

Hello, nice website, great information in an area that is not well represented I think. I myself am from Uruguay, so the same carts and systems were found down there as well. Adios!

Thanks, I figured it was probably a rip-of of some obscure game that noone has ever heard of. Theres a Zellers down the street from me, it's been there for ever, I wonder if in their warehouse there is a lost box of overstock games left from the 80's?? I'm sneaking over right now.

Hello, I just got Time Warp, its pretty good actually, never heard of it but I like it. Is this game a rip off of some other Atari game, cause if it is, I don't have it, and I have 250 games....?? Anyone know? Is it on this site somewhere, if so boy do I feel dumb....

I hope she realizes what you sacrificed. I have yet to meet a woman worthy of giving up Atari, well, ok so I lied. Aneglina Jolie could do it.

I got my VCS 20 years ago, it came with Combat but the first game I got was Asteroids so that would have to be my favorite. Mind you I could easily list 20 games Today it's probably Midnight Magic and HERO.

I'm not an xpert in Atari's history, but I know enough to realize that Atari's biggest misake is hard to pinpoint because they have so many. It all started off good but Atari tried to milk the 2600 for all its worth to maximize profits. By the time the NES came out, Atari had nothing to compete with it, the 7800 would have been direct competition. Having said that there were so many bad games for the system that it discouraged buyers and forced them to look at other systems like Nintendo and later Sega. Atari kept rehashing their old tired titles for every new system, the 5200, the 7800, the 800 XL and XE's... no new really good games, just a few, and those came from 3rd party developers. Alot of money hungry visionless boneheads were managing Atari to the ground while a sleeping giant was looming on the horizon, yes, Nintendo. Nintendo was and is brilliantly run and managed even decades before the Famicom was released, but especially after the NES was released. Everything Atari did wrong, Nintendo did right. It's too bad too, one of the pioneering video game companys is dust in the wind today....even Apple survived bad management decisions and bounced back but Atari never did, it's as if they were always years behind. Case in point: 1987 the XEGS comes out. It's based on technology that was already 10 years old. It comes with Missle Command built in and Bug Hunt. WOO HOO!!! BUG HUNT!! man o man, how exciting!! BUG HUNT???? sure its kind of cool to shoot things at the screen, but by 1987 both Missle Command and Bug Hunt seemed like dinosaurs from a bygone era. Sure we all love Missle Command, but by '87 we wanted something NEW, not an atari 800 in a new case. By '87 the world was already looking ahead to 16 and 32 bit computers.... anyways that's just one story out of many of which Im sure you guys know more of than I do.... And I do have an XEGS, and I love the damned thing!...

I have used a rareity guide in the past but the thing is, I don't care if its rated a 3, if I've never seen one, its rare to me, so I may pay more for it if its in mint shape. I don't collect games for their money value, they are only worth what the collector market is willing to pay for them, I collect them cause its fun and when I was a kid I couldn't afford these games, now I can, also I had never heard or seen hundreds of these games until I discovered the internet. I have mixed feelings about the internet, it's helped me find things I always wanted, as a musician its a good way to get vintage gear, but it also drives the prices up and gives a alot of information to people who don't really know what to do with this information...

True, I've seen the same atari carts sitting in a box there for about 4 years now. Eventually I talked them down to reasonable prices for games I didn't have, we're talking 50% off. I think that if you're a novice, you can get screwed, but I'm not and they know it, so they had to drop their prices or I was walking and they would lose a sale...