Different Activision labels???

[lonesome_pa]

Ok, I'm not sure if this was asked already or not, but here goes....

 

 

I noticed looking through my collection that on some of my Activision carts, the copywrite info is different. On some of them. Atari and Activision both have copywrites, and on others, only Activision is mentioned. Is this common??? Is one version any more rare than the other. I tried doing research on here and on the web, but I can't seem to find anything. Hopefully someone here can shed some light on this.

 

Thanks

[MattyXB]

I don't know diffrent copyrights by Activision games. But by Atari they are common I think. Some are a bit Rarer like Raiders of the Lost Ark from 1986, but most they are very common.

 

Maybe the Activision are from diffrent companys? Like Salu, HES or Polyvox? Because they produced too some Activision games when I am not wrong.

[lonesome_pa]

Actually Matty, I don't think they are from different companies. The copyrights clearly state Activision and Atari, but on some, they only state Activision. An example I have is I have 2 copies of Stampede, one clearly states copyright Atari and Activision, while the other only states Activision copyrights. They are both dated 1981 and everything else is exactly the same, just the missing Atari copyright. It's very wierd.

[CincYnoTi]

i have seen only two activision titles with these different copyrights at the bottom: stampede and ice hockey. the earlier titles 1-10, dragster-kaboom, have only the activision copyright at the bottom such as:

 

Label Design and Program Content ©1980 ACTIVISION

 

12 and up (barnstorming through ???) have two copyrights at the bottom:

 

ATARI and Video Computer System are trademarks of ATARI, INC.

Autio Visual concept label and program ©1982 ACTIVISION

 

both versions of labels with these two different copyrights exist for both ice hockey and stampede.

 

another interesting thing about these copyrights is that the same thing appears on the activision boxes. the early games, 1-12, have boxes with the ATARI copyright on the bottom, (i guess with the ATARI copyright on the box, they didn't feel the need to put the ATARI copyright on the game label too). at some point, activision decided to move the ATARI copyright from the box to the game label, but only ice hockey and stampede got new game labels, with the ATARI copyright, while the other early titles only had the ATARI copyright removed from the box.

 

the stampede box & cart on AtariAge correspond to the above description:

 

box with *Atari, Inc. at front bottom: http://www.atariage.com/box_page.html?Soft...89&BoxStyleID=9

 

cart without Atari trademark: http://www.atariage.com/cart_page.html?Sof...wareLabelID=489

 

the ice hockey on AtariAge is mixed but Activision might have just stuffed whatever labels into whatever boxes or another collector could have assembled a "boxed" game by mix/matching whatever box&game he had.

 

Ice Hockey box with *Atari, Inc: http://www.atariage.com/box_page.html?Soft...41&BoxStyleID=9

 

Ice Hockey cart with Atari TM: http://www.atariage.com/cart_page.html?Sof...wareLabelID=241

 

i tried to figure out which was more common once. it seems like the ice hockey cartridge with both copyrights was more common while the one with a single copyright showed up about as often as the blue-label version of ice hockey.

 

when buying a boxed game from ebay, of course, your results may vary.

[lonesome_pa]

Thanks CincYnoTi. That pretty much answers my question. Still seems strange though. And going through my collection again with this new info, almost all of my Activision games only have the Activision copyright on them. Interesting.....

[D.Yancey]

Atari was in court to sue Activision around this time. Atari wanted exclusive rights to produce games for its system. Activision finally won in the end. Maybe the label change was a concession that had to be made. Also, after the law suit ended is when all the 3rd party software companies jumped in on the action and saturated the market with games.