Psionic

Nope, not that I know of. The only other known copy is the one that was given to Leeza Gibbons when she visited Apollo for that PM Magazine segment and that's probably long gone. Ed Salvo claimed in this interview that Apollo sold "less than 10" but I'm not convinced they actually sold any, so I think the chances of another copy surfacing are quite slim. I mean, who would've actually bought that thing?

If you're referring to Anthony Weber, yes he did say that he might have a copy of his version of Gyruss on a floppy somewhere when Scott Stilphen first interviewed him back in 2004. But Scott has since added this update to that interview... So unfortunately the chances of getting anything from him at this point are slim to none.

I just wanted to state for the record that while ICG served as the "producer" for these TI ports, they did not actually program them. ICG was essentially a middleman operation and any game that they were involved with was ultimately developed by someone else. In this case, the Atarisoft TI ports in question were developed by programmers at Rich & Rich (aka Syndein Systems), who did a lot of work under subcontract with ICG (including many of the Atarisoft ports for the VIC-20). I've never tried to open any of their VIC-20 cartridges, but they were also manufactured in Hong Kong and are likely of similar construction.

"Khan" was started initially, at least in the form of a basic game design. It was actually the first title that Sega started working on after they reverse-engineered the 2600 and figured out how to develop games for it. It never really went anywhere because the programmer who was working on it left Sega to join Atari and it doesn't seem that any further work was done by anyone else. Regarding "Spock", I recently contacted a woman who worked for a marketing research agency back in the early 80's after I noticed this cartridge which turned up recently. This woman told me that they had done focus group testing on several titles for Sega, including "Search for Spock", although I tend to think it was probably just Star Trek: SOS under a different title. My guess would be that Sega's marketing department jettisoned plans for two separate movie games and decided to simply release a port of the arcade game instead. It seems that only a few of the many movie-based games they announced were ever started in any capacity and none of them made it very far into development.

I searched around to see if I could find any information about the company on the label and I ended up tracking down a woman who used to work for them. I asked her about this cartridge and this is what she told me... I would assume the "Search for Spock" game she saw essentially became Star Trek: SOS but I can't be sure. Unfortunately, she didn't respond when I asked for clarification. Just thought I'd share.

According to the original owner of the Power Grabber cartridge, it sounds like the game was commissioned by the Canadian government for use during tours or visitations at nuclear power plants. Given that both of the apparent known titles for the game reference power and energy, this would seem to make sense. Whether or not these cartridges were actually distributed as intended is anyone's guess at this point. Nothing new here and I'm not too worried about it. I'm trying to help them out, but if they want to waste their time breaking my balls for whatever reason, that's their prerogative. Someone briefly mentioned Power Grabber a few pages back but no one seems to have picked up on the fact that they're apparently the same game, which is the only reason I said something. Being that I'm in the USA, the degree that someone like me can research this is limited. That'll have to be left to my Canadian friends here. Tracking down some people who worked for Sydney et al and getting info about this thing shouldn't really be all that difficult.

They almost always are.

Nice stuff. Very likely I'll throw a bid at some of these.

Fair enough, thank you. You referring to him only as "Toby" is what threw me off. I could very well be mistaken about y-bot having been the one who sold wberdan his copy. I'll have to see if I can remember who it actually was. I'll ask coleco_master if it was him, but I thought it was one of the Digital Press regulars. Obviously this needs to be explored further. No one is badgering anyone. I'll send him a message myself and ask him. If he doesn't want to tell me that's fine, but I don't see why he wouldn't. It's the complete lack of curiosity about whether or not there's actually two copies of this game and whether one has a completely different title that I find puzzling. That was ultimately my point with my last comment. Of course, maybe you just know something I don't. But you're acting like I'm rude or just plain crazy to be asking these questions, which to me are completely obvious questions one would ask.

Actually, despite the 1981 copyright, Lost Luggage was released in mid-1982 (right around the same time as Racquetball and Space Cavern) so Kaboom! predates it by several months. I actually like the musical jingle at the beginning but perhaps I'm being overly nostalgic. How many games even featured music (or any attempt at it) at that point? Speaking of which, I assume you've heard this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcC_am2I8W8

You see, shit like this is one reason why I've barely been on here the past five years or so. Everyone thinks they're a fucking comedian nowadays. I don't see how asking a legitimate question in the interest of historical accuracy makes anyone a member of "the Gestapo". I'm asking a very simple question with a very simple answer. Either this is the same cartridge that y-bot sold to wberdan back in 2003, or it isn't and it came from another source. End of discussion.

Possible? Either it is or it isn't. Toby who? Toby Wickwire (y-bot)? If so, I'm fairly certain he was the one who had the copy that Willie Berdan purchased. You said you acquired this from the person who Toby sold it to. So who did he sell it to and who did you acquire it from?

That was my first thought as well.

Most likely because the game was not widely distributed and it probably flew under their radar, and also because companies weren't nearly as litigious in general back then as they are today. Nowadays, corporations have teams of lawyers protecting their intellectual properties just looking to sue people, and because of the internet and mass communication things get discovered and squashed relatively quickly. But it wasn't always like that and word traveled a lot slower back then, to say the least.

Comparative screenshots of all versions here... https://www.mobygames.com/game/river-raid/screenshots The other ports (which Carol Shaw had nothing to do with) don't look all that bad but none of them play as well as the Atari originals.

Well, that takes care of that then. I guess Coleco just put the cart before the horse. It's worth noting that a similar situation occurred with Tac-Scan. That game was never released for the CV because Coleco had Nuvatec start working on a port before they negotiated the publishing rights but they were never able to reach an agreement with Sega, so the game was scrapped. Sega ultimately never got around to making the game themselves, or they simply weren't interested. They did have other versions in development but only the 2600 one was released.

Where and when did Coleco announce this? Where did that picture of the mock-up cartridge come from? Vanguard was published by Atari for the 2600 and 5200, and it's on the Atarisoft master list... https://www.digitpress.com/faq/atarisoft.htm According to Matt Householder, he started working on the game at Atari before switching to Moon Patrol... https://atariage.com/forums/topic/223166-atariage-welcomes-atarisoft-programmer-matt-householder/?do=findComment&comment=2957063

Zaxxon cartridges were mentioned, so I was addressing Sega titles specifically. The Sega and CBS labels in question were actually applied to the cartridges upside down, resulting in what should have been the end of the label appearing on the face instead. While many Parker Brothers labels such as that 5200 Gyruss one should have been printed with the text the other way, they were not glued on the cartridges improperly at the factory. PB did eventually address this and printed the labels for the later titles (Frogger II, Star Wars: TAG & Mr. Do!'s Castle) with the correct orientation.

Bondwell was a major shareholder in Spectravideo and eventually bought out the company. They produced all of the Spectravideo games and by extension undoubtedly manufactured both X-Man and Chase the Chuck Wagon, since those games use the same boards and shells as the Spectravideo titles. They also appear to have been involved in the Bomb games, which was discussed here... https://atariage.com/forums/topic/220577-possible-link-between-bomb-and-bondwellspectravideo/

Sega had cartridges produced in several countries during this period but it seems to be the ones from Taiwan that often suffer from this problem, so it was probably one specific facility that was the culprit. For example, many (but not all) copies of Star Trek for the VIC-20 that were assembled in Taiwan also have upside down labels.

Energy Quiz looks and sounds exactly like a game by Sydney that was supposedly called Power Grabber. The only known copy was auctioned on the Digital Press forums and purchased by Will Berdan years ago. These seem to be the exact same game, but is this in fact the same cartridge? Or did this copy come from another source?

I bought a Vectrex system from him. I met with him locally and he allowed me to test the unit before purchasing. I paid cash and took the system as-is. There were some minor issues with it which he agreed we would address if they became a bigger problem. No complaints.

I bought a fairly rare and expensive game from him. It was shipped fast and packed extremely well to prevent damage while in transit. No complaints.

Yeah, Paul told me he finished the game but that it had been started by someone else, possibly outside Roklan. This made sense, given the fact that it had been claimed that Mike Brodie worked on it at Parker Brothers before the left the company. I haven't shown Paul the screenshots of this version yet, but I would expect that it's exactly what he was handed to work on.

Roklan did several of the Popeye conversions including the VCS one. Joe Gaucher was the programmer. Who did you think developed it? There may have been someone at Western Technologies or elsewhere who claims to have done it, and perhaps they did work on a version of it, but if so it wasn't the one that ended up being published and isn't related to the WIP version found here. The screen mock-ups in the Parker Brothers catalogs more closely resemble the color schemes used in the WIP versions as opposed to the final versions (at least in my eyes), if that's what you're asking. Regarding Mr. Do!'s Castle, we really don't know how Parker Brothers ended up with this game. Coleco seems to have been the original intended publisher as evidenced by the fact that they showed a mock-up of a game box in at least one press kit. But licensing can also be a complicated issue, so it's possible that they never actually had the rights to the game in the first place but just thought that they did since they had the rights to the original Mr. Do!. I really don't know. The subcontractor(s) who did the ports of the game would probably know, but unfortunately, we don't know exactly who that was.