What are the odds of finding a prototype in the wild?

[AtariRx]

I'll find out what they are. Why don't you release the ROMs? Do you at least have them backed up?

 

I had them dumped several years back and they are certainly floating around somewhere. I have the files saved on a zip disk somewhere, but that was only because someone e-mailed them to me after the fact. If I can dig them up I'll share them again.

[AtariRx]

I have the ROM dumps for the two ColecoVision KidVid game prototypes in my collection. I have never posted ROMS before on the forum, is there a "correct" way to do it? Just don't want someone telling me I am doing something illegal or anything. I would prefer that an AA moderator chimes in here for the official answer. Thx.

[+Psionic]

I have never posted ROMS before on the forum, is there a "correct" way to do it? Just don't want someone telling me I am doing something illegal or anything.

Nobody cares...if you're willling to post them, just post them. If not, send them to myself or Tempest. Thanks for sharing.

[CPUWIZ]

I have the ROM dumps for the two ColecoVision KidVid game prototypes in my collection. I have never posted ROMS before on the forum, is there a "correct" way to do it? Just don't want someone telling me I am doing something illegal or anything. I would prefer that an AA moderator chimes in here for the official answer. Thx.

 

Send them to Tempest.

[+Mitch]

I have the ROM dumps for the two ColecoVision KidVid game prototypes in my collection. I have never posted ROMS before on the forum, is there a "correct" way to do it? Just don't want someone telling me I am doing something illegal or anything. I would prefer that an AA moderator chimes in here for the official answer. Thx.

 

You're welcome to put them in a zip file and post them. I doubt there will be any problems with Colecovision stuff.

 

Mitch

[AtariRx]

Okay, I'll start a new thread in this forum and send the ROMS to tempest to post. Not sure how to zip them so they are accessable here. Why bother learning how when someone can do it for me...

[Joystick Jolter]

It depends on where you are. If you're in California where many game companies were located, then the odds are actually not too bad. However if you're in a place that was far away from any game companies (like myself here in Michigan) then the odds are very low. I've never found one in the wild.

 

Tempest

 

Hey Tempest,

Remember me. Still alive and kicking. I'm about to divest of a few more things I have laying around. I've got a Parker Brothers 5200 Monty cartridge I'll probably be

selling off soon. Do you have it?

[+Wonder007]

It depends on where you are. If you're in California where many game companies were located, then the odds are actually not too bad. However if you're in a place that was far away from any game companies (like myself here in Michigan) then the odds are very low. I've never found one in the wild.

 

Tempest

 

Hey Tempest,

Remember me. Still alive and kicking. I'm about to divest of a few more things I have laying around. I've got a Parker Brothers 5200 Monty cartridge I'll probably be

selling off soon. Do you have it?

 

Are any of the items you are planning on selling include Atari 2600 items. If so, I would be VERY interested in those!!!! PM me or answer on the forum.

[FND]

It depends on where you are. If you're in California where many game companies were located, then the odds are actually not too bad. However if you're in a place that was far away from any game companies (like myself here in Michigan) then the odds are very low. I've never found one in the wild.

 

Tempest

 

Hey Tempest,

Remember me. Still alive and kicking. I'm about to divest of a few more things I have laying around. I've got a Parker Brothers 5200 Monty cartridge I'll probably be

selling off soon. Do you have it?

 

Cool a Montezuma's Revenge PB Proto Does it have a case ? How about the label Is it a full fullsize or just the little eprom size window sticker type ? what does the label say any date ?

Edited March 4, 2008 by FND

[+Wonder007]

It depends on where you are. If you're in California where many game companies were located, then the odds are actually not too bad. However if you're in a place that was far away from any game companies (like myself here in Michigan) then the odds are very low. I've never found one in the wild.

 

Tempest

 

Hey Tempest,

Remember me. Still alive and kicking. I'm about to divest of a few more things I have laying around. I've got a Parker Brothers 5200 Monty cartridge I'll probably be

selling off soon. Do you have it?

 

PM sent..

[27ace27]

It's true about California. I moved out here about 11 years ago from Michigan. In the last few years, I've gone with my wife to a monthly Antique Faire, which will have the occasional Atari system or Odyssey. I never expect much going in - I mostly find cool classic toys. But a couple months ago I was browsing a table and a small box caught my eye. It was full of Atari games. Unlike the typical run of games, it looked like a few of them had all of their labels removed and replcaed by hand written or typed stickers. Turns out, they were protos! I got a handful of Activision (Plaque Attack, Crackpot, Private Eye) and Atari protos (Donald Duck, Pigs in Space, Dukes of Hazzard). All for 8 bucks! I left some games there for the guy who obviously noticed them after me and was desperate for me to leave him something. I left him Ram It Gray label, River Patrol, Stargunner, Crazy Climber, and a handful of randoms. I knew he wanted the protos pretty bad but he seemed to really appreciate me leaving him a gold mine of production games (Trust me, I already had those otherwise I would not have been so nice!). I have some regret, because I think he got all those games for the same price I paid by haggling. Come on! Give the lady her asking price!

 

I've also stumbled on a lot of Atari proto hardware and software at local bay area electronic flea markets and salvage shops. Before it closed a couple years ago, I found a car load of Atari Home Computer stuff at Mike Quinn's. For $100 bucks I got about a dozen Atari 800s, six 400s, 2 600s, 8 floppy drives, 12 ram expanders, about a hundred floppies of games, monitors, etc. My wife wasn;t very happy to see me drive up with my find. However, after digging in, it became obvious this equipment belonged to an ex-atari employee. I had xerox manuals of programming guides, floppies full of source code, etc. (Nothing of great revelation). Even better, the computers themselves were hacked up with all kinds of extras and goodies. All of this stuff was in Mike Quin's back room, and the only way I found out about it was that I walked in wearing an Atari T-Shirt and the guy at the counter asked,"Are you looking for Atari stuff?" Someone had dropped it all off earlier that day.

 

So if for nothing else, the move to California has been amazing for proto finds.

 

 

 

WHERE DO YOU POEPLE FIND THESE THRIFT STORES!!!! IN NEBRASKA IT'S LIKE A BARREN DESERT IN TERMS OF FINDING ANYTHING ATARI FOR CHEAP!!! GAMERS IS ALL WE HAVE AND THEY WANT $40.00 FOR AND ATARI 400 AND EVEN MORE FOR PERIPHERALS! AND THEY DON'T EVEN COME WITH CORDS OR ADAPTERS! THE BOZOS THERE COMPLETELY MESS EVERYTHING UP! THEY GAVE ME AN ATARI 5200 AC ADAPTER WITH MY 400! AND DIDN'T EVEN INCLUDE THE TV ADAPTER WHEN THEY SAID THEY HAD IT!!!!..... sorry I just had a moment, some people are really lucky... the rarest game I've found is towering inferno... P.S. send me some luck... pleeeeease

[MikeMika]

Luck Sent.

 

Trust me, the amount of luck finding cool Atari stuff doesn't quite balance out the cost of living in the Bay Area. It's a hefty price for the luck! But those Gamers guys do sound like chumps. When I lived in Michigan, the best luck I had finding the fun stuff was at Gibraltor Trade Center, a big indoor flea market, garage sales, and computer trade shows. I'd say Towering Inferno was also my best find in those days!

 

One of the sad things about living out here, though, especially since I work in games now, is running across people from the old days who think they still have their old unfinished games and get you all excited. The numbers of times I've gone to someone's house to find out they threw out their old stuff, or it was lost in a fire, or their children sold their old games. A popular arcade distributor passed away about five years ago, and he had one of the only two player computer space games in existence, as well as a healthy number of original Pong arcade machines, serial numbers 13-19. He also had a Death Race, and a room full of vintage pinball and arcade glass, floor to ceiling. When he died, his kids decided to move their flavored ice business into the warehouse, and took every game on one side to ther other with a forklift, and just dropped them on top of the other games. When I got their with one of his old business partners, we wanted to cry. All these beautiful games that this guy had kept and restored were crushed, smashed, destroyed. The computer space was unrecoverable. The death race survived, but the glass room - All shattered, completely destroyed. There were custom shelves built to hold over the one thousand pieces of glass, all crushed. I did salvage serial#19 of Pong, though! Also, the kids did manage to sell a lot of his better games before the destruction, so I hope they went to good homes. Sad stuff. Someone also called me with "RealSports Golf." I argued that the game never was in production, but the guy swore up and down that it was. I got pretty excited - it didn't make sense, but I am in Atari country, afterall. When I got there, it was an unlabelled cart - good so far, I brought an Atari and we fired it up. It wasn't RealSports golf at all, but a copy of My Golf. What a let down.

 

Mike

Edited June 28, 2008 by MikeMika

[ianoid]

People make alot of promises that almost never come through. With arcades the stakes are even higher. It's sort of depressing to see what people do with old stuff. One thing you can be sure of is that people's kids are idiots. No respect for the past. BTW, I burned my dad's baseball card collection for warmth. Kidding, he never had any collections for me to burn, but I would have.

 

I have lived in various places, and I'm a big hunter, as many know. I've found more than 30 protos/cart betas in the wild, probably a little more outside of California, only because I've spent more time outside of CA in the past decade. My best recent score was 7 or so cart betas of released games for SNES, Gen and GB at a thrift in Chicago. Classic stuff is overall much harder to find everywhere, so you can just expect fewer classic beta/proto finds all around. You never know though. I like to hunt, but you just can't expect to find great Atari stuff every time you go out. Actually, I often will just buy some mediocre cart (like MASH or Space Jockey) just to feel like I had a classic score. These days, I'm happy to find a boxed Gen cart I need, which are suddenly light on the ground.

 

With the availability of stuff on the internets, it's almost senseless to go out hunting when I consider time vs. money. Between gas, tougher scores, and higher prices, there is only one good reason for me to go out hunting. Enjoyment. Because it's not like the scores are so thick that I'm saving myself so much money or finding so many things for my collection. These days I may relish in a $1 CD I wanted to hear or a cheap star wars figure for my son to play with.

 

CA is definitely better for finding proto stuff, but MM's comment about cost of living is true. Most of you in way out places couldn't afford a pot to play games in, find a job, etc... in the Bay Area, and if you did, you'd be surprised to find how little you'd get for your supposedly better paying job (that wasn't the case for me, I'd get paid less to live there). It was a sacrifice I didn't want to make, even though the video game hunting was pretty darn good. Plus there's just too much funny money floating around there, it's feeling more like LA than the hippy dippy bay area of days of yore.

[STICH666]

A lot of prototype Colecovision stuff ends up out here on Long Island. Attias Flea Market used to have a rare and obscure game stand full of protos but they are long gone since sadly the only game people care about nowadays is Madden....... YO!!!! (flashes gang sign)...

 

Anyway I did happen to get lucky and come across a prototype Madcatz racing wheel for the PS1. It's complete shit but still a prototype.

[AtariLeaf]

I'd say the odds of finding a proto in the wild is 50/50

 

You either find one or you don't. Simple.