G.Whiz

Seems to me that you could use regular paddles, but once you hit the limit, your car just ended up crashing 'cuz you couldn't make the turn. I think we played it this way once because we forgot to switch over the paddles to the racing ones. I could be wrong though...? ~G

Not sure about that, but you could always cut and paste into a new post. Otherwise, you could try contacting Admin -- they might be able to access posts and fix any editing problems... Something to do with the recent reno, perhaps? ~G

As a matter of fact, it is an odd number. It's also a prime number... (someone had to say it...) ~G

I think what is missing is the tech product that was the first computer most people owned -- the calculator. Sure, their a dime a dozen now (almost literally) but back in the day it was quite new. And of course, Douglas Adams would have been sad to find that digital watches are no longer a neat enough idea to get onto this list... ~G

I think it would be easier to fake a cartridge than to fake a price tag from the 70's/80's, especially since it would be quite obvious if the sticker had been added sometime afterwards...! ~G

Anyone see this? http://www.retroblast.com/newsitem.php?cid=3765

I think so. We never had the 5200 in Canada, so CV was really the only "next step" until the Nintendo arrived. We always wished that the Atari had better graphics, and here was a machine that had it -- nice, slick, great colour... I still think the graphics are pretty amazing, especially considering the time. When the CV came out, I thought that Atari would come back with something, but they never did. I got into computers and away from consoles, and sort of gave up caring at that point (I guess like so many others...) ~G

Although I agree that he would have cared about Atari as a company, not just a cash cow, there are no guarantees that he would have had any success if he had gone it alone. As has been mentioned in other threads, this was a brand new industry he was creating, and that in itself would have been a challenge. Distribution would be the most crucial aspect of the business once the system was created, and who better than Warner in the 70s? Perhaps rather than selling to Warner, it would have been a better move to bring them on as his distribution partner. That being said, it is rare that a technical genius is also a marketing/business genius. Even the quintessential example of this -- Steve Jobs -- is likely not a "technical" genius. Sometimes people forget that without Wozniak, Apple would be nowhere today. Even today you hear Jobs referred to as the concept man, the guy who knows what is technically possible and marries that with what people want. He is not the guy who delivers the final working product. In the end, I find it unlikely that Bushnell would have done a better distribution job than Warner, and that would have had a huge impact on the success of Atari. On the other side of the coin, once the ball was rolling I do think he could have led the company on to greater things rather than suck the main concept dry. 'Course all of this is water under the bridge. I think the thing I'm most surprised at is that he didn't buy the name back when it was available in the late 90s(?). But maybe he's happy enough with his restaurants and the general public's unwavering belief that he could have done better. Why test the theory if it means risking not being the hero any more? ~G

Last time I was in London (years ago now) Camden Locks had some retro shops and stalls -- mostly records and clothes, but if you have time to kill it might be worth a look... ~G

Heavy-Sixer box (original -- one owner), Canadian edition (French on one side, and says "Distributed in Canada by Paragon Entertainment") in fair to good condition with the original Eaton's price tag. I believe there is a warranty card inside, the original bubblewrap, and most (if not all) of the cardboard packing. But the system itself has been well-loved, the orginal joysticks are long-gone, though I believe the paddles are original... ~G

I never really got into the 2600/VCS thing. To me, it was always just "Atari". I didn't even realize there was a difference between "Heavy Sixers" and "Light Sixers" until finding this board years ago. But I do remember the 4-switches coming in, and thinking that the people who bought those were getting ripped off. So "2600" translates to "Atari" to "six-switch with the genuine imitation wood grain panelling" in my mind, and everything else a shadow of what went before. ~G

I'm semi-surprised that nobody said Combat. That was the first game I saw, and it just blew me away that you could play a game like that on the TV. We had an Odyssey (the original) but it didn't even come close to what the Atari could do. I was entranced... As far as making an impression, Combat by far made the biggest impact on me. After that I'd have to say Space Shuttle. It was amazing how it used all the extra switches, but what was most amazing is that most of the story was happening "off-screen". The limited graphics in Atari really helped here because you could imagine that you really were in the shuttle with a limited view of the outside world. You felt more in space with this game than any other I've played. ~G

Not sure about distribution, but this looks like the second-generation model, the Yoko Duo. First-generation Yoko Ono is much rarer... ~G

There's the Star Raider's controller too, though not really rare -- depending on what you mean by "flight controller" I would guess you mean this or Spitfire Attack... ~G

Can't say for sure back then about Atari specifically, but Sears in general has always charged a premium. Where I live, Sears was one of the few places to buy Atari games so that was the only place I could get them when I was a kid. Eventually though more places started stocking them, and they were less than Sears. Again, in Canada, there was no "Sears Atari", just straight Atari. So I believe that any price difference between Sears carts and regulars was simply because it was Sears... There are many, many people (especially older) who buy exclusively at Sears -- it's a brand name in itself. In Canada anyway, they are known for their customer service and the fact that they have one of the easiest return policies on big ticket items like electronics, appliances, etc. The Department Store is slowly going the way of the Dodo, as evidenced by some of the US big names (JCPennies? One of them went down...) and Eaton's in Canada. But somehow Sears manages to keep going... ~G

Excellent! Backyard Fun, especially. That sounds exactly like Sears! Vanguard: Rainbow Land Pac-Man: Haunted Hallways Defender: Space Games Asteroids: Rock Dodger Dig Dug: Shovel Man Adventure: Fun with Dragons RealSports Football: Gridiron Fun Warlords: Castle Combat Space Shuttle: Space Docker Yar's Revenge: Superfly (edges out Space Gunslinger in final head office vote) ~G

exactly, and buy them all over again but nefarious reason aside, I think Sears wanted to associate their version of the VCS with their own brand, not Atari, and so renaming titles of some games, especially early on, was an easy way to do it of course, with other games, the names were already great and/or well known, like Space Invaders or Berzerk...although I suppose Sears could have come up with some funky names on their own (but additional licensing agreements probably also made this prohibitive) First, I think that it is important to point out that this was Sears in the US only. Sears Canada (Simpson-Sears back then) sold the original Atari games. Secondly, branding is not a new concept, especially for Sears. Even in Canada, Sears does not make the products with the Sears name on it. For example, Sears garage door openers are made by Chamberlain, Craftsman rider mowers by various companies including Murray, and Sears VCRs by Samsung (and maybe others). Atari is the same thing -- Sears being as big as it was wanted to brand the Ataris they sold as their own, and Warner was probably happy to do it since a large portion of their sales would go through this department store. Remember, there were no computer stores, video game stores, even Best Buy and electronic stores etc. back then, so selling them in the TV section of the department stores would just make sense. ~G

I'm not a collector, so perhaps I'm the wrong one to comment, but it seems to me that a scale of 1-10 is too wide a margin. What's the difference between a 7 and an 8? For coins, they use a system of Brilliant - Uncirulated, Mint, Very Fine, Fine, Very Good, Good, etc. (It's been a while, but this is the gist of it). Not only is this more descriptive and would lend to more accurate results for collectors, but there are less than 10 categories and it seems to have served the coin collecting community well for quite a while. ~G

The opposite can be true as well. Games like River Raid (or for me Cosmic Ark) have become classics by doing the same. IMO it increases replay value, if you have to play harder and harder to discover what is coming next. With continue or too much practice a game quickly looses its mystery. But that's probably just a matter of personal preferences. River Raid is certainly a classic and one of my favourites, though I must admit that I stopped playing it was for this very reason. You spend half an hour going through the same maze again and again -- and 30 seconds getting destroyed at the same spot. It's a combination of boredom and frustration. Would it be that hard to program River Raid so you could start somewhere down the river? I know it has that whole "random" thing for generating the river, but I would think there must be some way... ~G

I know that the original came in a bigger box with the controllers and a gatefold box containing the cartridge. The gatefold box was the same size as all the other cart boxes. I would assume (and others can confirm) that when Atari moved away from the gatefold box, this was true for Indy 500 as well. Sorry, this is the only answer I know! ~G

Take a picture of it rather than a scan would be a good start. You could also watermark the pic with COPY or something. ...and keep the file size as small as possible. Save as a small GIF (just barely large enough to read it) and it will not be possible to blow up to full high-res size without looking blocky. If you have the resources, you could then bring it into Word and save it as a locked PDF. This will add a level of security (people will have to hack the security to save the image) plus the PDF inherently does not keep good picture information. 'Course there is no way to prevent some graphic artist from creating a duplicate once they see the original, but perhaps that's driving too far down Paranoid Road... ~G

What?! Combat is COMMON? You lie, sir! This bloke and this bloke on eBay say it's rare! And I believe them. Seriously. Actually, the second guy says "very rare". Perhaps he means very rarely does *he* personally sell one... ~G

According to WR, Atari wanted to do a Superman game based upon the engine he was working on, but he had no interest in the project. He handed off the engine he had at that point and continued work on Adventure. Superman predated Adventure in the Sears catalog; I don't know how the developments of the two games related chronologically. Yes, the full text of that interview is here: WR Interview Although it doesn't say so specifically, considering the timeline of Adventure I would think that Superman was probably completed first. Also, I don't think that Superman was based on the Adventure engine. Sounds like Adventure was WR's "pet project" before he was asked to develop Superman. So he started that, and then handed it off to another programmer. That being said, given the similarity in approach to both games (multiple screens, find and move objects, etc.) it's almost certain that WR used some of the things he learned developing Adventure in Superman before he handed it off. In other words, to me it sounds like Superman didn't use the Adventure engine, but as a "sibling" engine it likely had a number of similarities. ~G

Indeed so. Once a person has cleared Pitfall II, what's the point of playing anymore? It's even less of a test of skill than Pitfall I. One bit of 'controlled randomness' that would have greatly improved the game would have been randomizing the vertical phasing of birds and, within limits, the horizontal positioning, when the player moves from screen to screen. Some combinations of phasing would require that a player who ran on the screen would have to run off again, but that's already the case now. The difference would be that by randomizing the combination of phasing and position players would have to quickly make a decision based upon two variables on the new screen instead of simply waiting for the bird on one screen to reach a particular height before moving to the next. I loved Pitfall II -- until I finished it. Yes, replayability certainly lacked! I think that with a playing field this big, you could have made an Adventure-type game that was meant to be explored in a non-linear fashion. But of course, this was a Pitfall sequel, not an Adventure sequel, so I suppose they wanted to keep some of the essential elements there... ~G

A friend of mine got this soon after the big Easter Egg hunt in Adventure. I thought that Riddle was the best game ever made -- a game that actually had a secret to solve as part of regular play. We solved it in about two days though. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as much fun to play when you know where the (staff?) is. I always thought it would have been good to do a "random" game as well for those who solved the initial cart. ~G