A good old school shopping question for someone older and wiser than I am

[FatStacks]

I don't really recall our Sears here having any of the games. I remember it having the Atari branded stuff later. I do remember though the Woolco in our mall at the time had the big Atari display set up. That is where the system and games my parents bought for me came from. I didn't see any of the Sears branded games until years later. Sadly, last year our local Sears closed.

[fiddlepaddle]

I think it helped early on, but Atari's first two years were actually a struggle for the 2600. Sears didn't turn fortunes around... a little game called "Space Invaders" did... probably the most important moment for home video gaming of all time - the moment that Space Invaders became the first killer app and turned the 2600 from a glorified and stale pong machine to a VIDEO GAMING CONSOLE .

 

Sears was instrumental in Atari's success. The 2600 had no impact on fortunes at Atari during their first two years. Atari success during that time was mostly from the coin-op games. Also, during the 1975 Christmas season, Pong was Sears most successful product, and those revenues directly led to investment in, and promotion of the VCS.

 

Yes, Space Invaders sold lots of systems, but the Telegames carts were in stores, building a "razorblade" business for Sears and Atari, long before Space Invaders.

[Major_Tom_coming_home]

Just wondering what the previous post has to do with the topic of this thread?

 

I freely admit absolutely nothing. I started the thread and was enjoying the tangent the thread had taken. No disrespect intended.

[Major_Tom_coming_home]

What was really weird about this was that Atari went along with it even when Sears was selling it's version of Intellivision as a 'super' game system a step above their Atari rebrand... I never understood why Atari put up with that.

 

I'm guessing they were 'riding the bear' - making concessions to a much larger and more powerful company to maintain an important business relationship. Microsoft did this for a while with IBM in the early days of the PC by developing OS/2 for IBM at the same time they were developing Windows. Publicly they said OS/2 was the real next generation operating system and was Windows on steroids. Of course, Microsoft soon got to the point where they didn't feel they needed IBM anymore and most people have never heard of OS/2.

[NE146]

Even then in the late 70's/early 80's, as a 10 year old kid in Guam with no Sears around, and had to buy most games through Sears or JCPenny catalogs, it was obvious to me that Target Fun was the same game as Air Sea Battle in the Atari catalogs, but simply renamed.

 

Circus was same as Circus Atari, Baseball was Home Run.. etc. It really wasn't that difficult to figure it out

[Philflound]

Not reading everyone's response, it sort of was that those people I knew who purchased Atari games from Sears always bought their games from Sears, and most who purchased Atari games from other retailers, didn't go to Sears. There are exceptions, so don't jump down my throat. I don't believe any of my 48 original games were purchased at Sears.

 

Phil

[Skylark68]

I dig these Sears threads.

 

Sears was THE store back in the day. Most of my original games came from Sears although funny enough our first VCS was an Atari branded one. Dad saw that Gemco had an awesome sale one weekend and so off we went and he had it hooked up to our Zenith portable (portable in that it sat on a table instead of being a huge console TV) that same day...

 

We usually shopped at Sears. There was one on Southmore in Pasadena, TX that we shopped at all the time. It was a 2 story standalone building built in the late '50s I believe when that part of the Houston area was booming. By the late 1970's/early 1980's it was still a pretty nice part of town economically speaking. The Sears was really nice, the middle of the building had a huge snack bar with popcorn, submarine sandwiches, candy, and soft drinks/ICEE's. There was a small arcade area near one of the entrances that had a few games. The toy section was near the automotive/tool section of the store. My Dad would drop my brother and I off in the toy section while he looked at tools. Mom would usually be upstairs looking at housewares or clothes.

 

At the time they had one of those Sears Telegame cabinets set up so you could play a lot of the games. It was pretty easy to tell which games were clones even though they had different names than their Atari counterparts, so we never double bought any games.

 

I do remember that there was also a Sears Surplus store off of I-45 South. That was a Sears store that sold scratch/dent applicances, last season clothes, and other stock that was just being closed out. When the crash hit, we got a bunch of games there. I think a lot of them were only $.99 sometimes.

 

Remember that during those days, Sears had enough clout to even have their own GI Joe exclusives (like a Cobra version of the Mobat tank). Even camping gear made by Coleman had a Sears logo on it back then.

 

Up until fairly recently, my Dad would only buy Craftsman tools. They were made in USA and had a lifetime warranty. Now they are made in China and there isn't much reason to spend the extra cash when you can buy the same thing just about at Harbor Freight.

[gunpei]

"Target games, tank games, space war games..."

 

I love how back then, companies like Atari or Intellivision would brag about how they had space games, sports games, tank games etc. but wouldn't necessarily mention actual titles. I specifically remember intellivsion doing this in a commercial with 'space games'. It's funny to me how the actual titles being offered wasn't considered important, just the fact that "we have lots of generic space games you can play that may or may not be any good" LOL.

Haha, yeah. There are a hundred different ways to play billiards or cards. I think they came at it that way.

And "15 games in 1" games that are the same thing with minor tweaks. It was new and we didn't have a lot of preconceptions and definitions then.

[Zonie]

 

I'm guessing they were 'riding the bear' - making concessions to a much larger and more powerful company to maintain an important business relationship. Microsoft did this for a while with IBM in the early days of the PC by developing OS/2 for IBM at the same time they were developing Windows. Publicly they said OS/2 was the real next generation operating system and was Windows on steroids. Of course, Microsoft soon got to the point where they didn't feel they needed IBM anymore and most people have never heard of OS/2.

... Then there was OS/2 Warp... for windows! LOL

[maibock]

Dad was a Sear's man, thus we were a Sears family, so we usually just bought Sears products. Going through the Sear's Wishbook as a kid, it was all I knew. We had just moved to another neighbor around the time we got one, so we were pretty cocooned in the Sears way of life, until we branched out with the neighborhood kids and learned of the differing names.

 

Oddly we always called the "Tele-Games" an "Atari", despite Tele-games being clearly on the box(which I still have).

[Major_Tom_coming_home]

A bit off topic, but I also miss the old Sears. Pretty much every power tool and gas powered lawn equipment my grandpappy bought came from Sears, and much is still being used after his death 20 years ago. My first socket set was Sears Craftsman made in the good old USA. I'm not sure if Craftsman hand tools were considered 'top of the line' when I got them but they were undeniably great value for the money. I bought my Craftsman cordless drill because the consumer reports rated it very highly and it was 1/2 the price of the other highly rated drills. The sad part is K-Mart bought them not to operate them but with the intention to slowly milk them dry, let them go out of buisness, screw the employees, and then make the real profit from the land. Their former culture and the way they used to operate is sadly now obsolete, but had advantages for the consumer. Sears was a place you could go to get everything for a household in one place. You knew that anything with a Sears brand would be good quality. They carried parts for everything they sold and they gave great post sale support. Their employees cared because they were commissioned and knew a lot about the products they sold. Great customer service. Basically, they were the opposite of Wal-Mart in every way and it's too bad we don't have that option any more.

I dig these Sears threads.

 

Sears was THE store back in the day. Most of my original games came from Sears although funny enough our first VCS was an Atari branded one. Dad saw that Gemco had an awesome sale one weekend and so off we went and he had it hooked up to our Zenith portable (portable in that it sat on a table instead of being a huge console TV) that same day...

 

We usually shopped at Sears. There was one on Southmore in Pasadena, TX that we shopped at all the time. It was a 2 story standalone building built in the late '50s I believe when that part of the Houston area was booming. By the late 1970's/early 1980's it was still a pretty nice part of town economically speaking. The Sears was really nice, the middle of the building had a huge snack bar with popcorn, submarine sandwiches, candy, and soft drinks/ICEE's. There was a small arcade area near one of the entrances that had a few games. The toy section was near the automotive/tool section of the store. My Dad would drop my brother and I off in the toy section while he looked at tools. Mom would usually be upstairs looking at housewares or clothes.

 

At the time they had one of those Sears Telegame cabinets set up so you could play a lot of the games. It was pretty easy to tell which games were clones even though they had different names than their Atari counterparts, so we never double bought any games.

 

I do remember that there was also a Sears Surplus store off of I-45 South. That was a Sears store that sold scratch/dent applicances, last season clothes, and other stock that was just being closed out. When the crash hit, we got a bunch of games there. I think a lot of them were only $.99 sometimes.

 

Remember that during those days, Sears had enough clout to even have their own GI Joe exclusives (like a Cobra version of the Mobat tank). Even camping gear made by Coleman had a Sears logo on it back then.

 

Up until fairly recently, my Dad would only buy Craftsman tools. They were made in USA and had a lifetime warranty. Now they are made in China and there isn't much reason to spend the extra cash when you can buy the same thing just about at Harbor Freight.

[Major_Tom_coming_home]

... Then there was OS/2 Warp... for windows! LOL

 

Methinks IBM was quite delusional in thinking they could wrest control of the PC market back out of the hands of the PC clone manufacturers and Microsoft DOS / Windows. They did get some sales for their PS/2 systems based on the IBM name alone, but not enough people were ever going to spend 2x the price of a PC clone to get a system with hardware / software that could only be supported by IBM at exorbitant cost.

[Kenjunior]

My wife still doesn't get that Colecovision, Tele-Games, Atari are not the same. We go thru a thrift store, antique shop, retro game store, etc she's always pointing out.... 'here's a game....' God I love her, not many wives put up with a terrible habit of collecting Atari stuff let alone be an enabler to the addiction.

[+sramirez2008]

My wife still doesn't get that Colecovision, Tele-Games, Atari are not the same. We go thru a thrift store, antique shop, retro game store, etc she's always pointing out.... 'here's a game....' God I love her, not many wives put up with a terrible habit of collecting Atari stuff let alone be an enabler to the addiction.

 

Speaking of enablers...my wife paid for Chetiry and Space Rocks (Fathers Day presents). I can always count on her for several rounds of Super Breakout too.

[Keatah]

Once mine saw the elegance and clutter-free arrangement emulation enables she was all for it. Just this past week she gave me some links to technical material on Apple II and Atari 400/800 that she thought might be missing.

 

I think the real turning point was when I was playing with the debugger, demonstrating my hobby was more than just mindless collecting and gameplaying.

[sprazzi]

Going to an actual store to buy a cardboard box with a videogame in it. how bad I miss that!!!

[AtariTexas]

Going to Sears back in the day was a real treat to see all the video games displayed. I remember as a kid I could just stare at the boxes all day, and get to checkout the gameplay.

 

Nowadays, whatever Sears are left at half empty malls I usually avoid like the plaque