Goochman Posted April 2, 2018 Share Posted April 2, 2018 I finally solved the mystery (at least as far as I am concerned). Yes, I got my Atari 2600 On July 1, 1980, along with Space Invaders. The catalog with Space Invaders listed Adventure as "coming soon". I thought it sounded cool, and wanted it. My grandmother went to the store to get it for me a few days later, but was told it wasn't released yet, but they could put her name on a list and call her when they got it in stock. My recollection has always been that she didn't bring me the cart until a couple months later. But the thing is, I still have that Adventure cart, complete-in-box. I just hadn't bothered opening it and looking through the game manual in a LONG time. I did so recently and found a folded up receipt inside it, dated July 19, 1980. So when did Adventure actually become available in stores? I'm going with "mid-July, 1980" That catalog was put into your 2600 box when produced - if you know when the console came off the factory floor that would be a better indicator. Yours couldve been produced in Jan of '80 and sold in July after Adventure had truly been released. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recycled Posted April 2, 2018 Share Posted April 2, 2018 Got our light-sixer xmas of 1980. Adventure looked really cool in those catalogs. Why I bought stuff like Home Run and Bowling instead of it at that time will remain an eternal mystery to me. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yanbu Posted April 2, 2018 Share Posted April 2, 2018 (edited) Am I right in calculating that $49.99 in 1980 would be equal to $152.16 today? Edited April 2, 2018 by yanbu 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eegad Posted April 2, 2018 Share Posted April 2, 2018 That catalog was put into your 2600 box when produced - if you know when the console came off the factory floor that would be a better indicator. Yours couldve been produced in Jan of '80 and sold in July after Adventure had truly been released. No, the catalog I'm talking about was in the space invaders cartridge box, not the 2600 box. In any case, if stores in the area were saying that Adventure wasn't available yet, then regardless of the catalog it wasn't out yet. Also, the letter that a kid wrote to Atari revealing that he'd found the Easter egg was dated August 4, 1980. So assuming Adventure hit stores in July 1980, it sounds about right that a few weeks or a month later some were starting to stumble upon it (I myself stumbled upon it one night a couple months after getting the game). A scan of that letter is here (apparently it was given to Warren, who kept it).... http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/easter_eggs/vcs/adventure_letter.pdf 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted April 3, 2018 Share Posted April 3, 2018 Am I right in calculating that $49.99 in 1980 would be equal to $152.16 today? Well that's what inflation calculators tell us. Of course some people will take issue with the way inflation is calculated in those. But at the end of the day, it's the best we've got. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+GoldLeader Posted April 3, 2018 Share Posted April 3, 2018 I gotta say I remember Adventure being $29.99, Not $50! (And I'm pretty sure we're all in agreement on that one)... Then again, I remember paying $37.95 for Pac-Man because I had to have it and we'd already been to 3 stores which were sold out. This was probably one or two days after its release. Funny how sometimes word traveled fast back in those days, even without the internet. The most ironic part was the store I bought it at was called Pay & Save. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eegad Posted April 4, 2018 Share Posted April 4, 2018 I gotta say I remember Adventure being $29.99, Not $50! (And I'm pretty sure we're all in agreement on that one)... From the receipt I recently came across in my Adventure box, we paid $22.95 plus tax when it was released. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted April 4, 2018 Author Share Posted April 4, 2018 From the receipt I recently came across in my Adventure box, we paid $22.95 plus tax when it was released. Today when you buy something, you're lucky if the ink on the receipt is still there a month later. When did companies switch to disappearing ink? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhd Posted April 4, 2018 Share Posted April 4, 2018 Today when you buy something, you're lucky if the ink on the receipt is still there a month later. When did companies switch to disappearing ink? Around here, most places use thermal printers for receipts -- so no ink is involved. Take a hair dryer (or other heat source) to it, and it will become uniformly black very quickly. Old faxes (and 1970s/80s-era photocopies) suffer the very same fate, albeit more slowly. I have even seen some dot matrix printouts fade into illegibility after just a few years. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted February 6, 2019 Author Share Posted February 6, 2019 I finally solved the mystery (at least as far as I am concerned). Yes, I got my Atari 2600 On July 1, 1980, along with Space Invaders. The catalog with Space Invaders listed Adventure as "coming soon". I thought it sounded cool, and wanted it. My grandmother went to the store to get it for me a few days later, but was told it wasn't released yet, but they could put her name on a list and call her when they got it in stock. My recollection has always been that she didn't bring me the cart until a couple months later. But the thing is, I still have that Adventure cart, complete-in-box. I just hadn't bothered opening it and looking through the game manual in a LONG time. I did so recently and found a folded up receipt inside it, dated July 19, 1980. So when did Adventure actually become available in stores? I'm going with "mid-July, 1980" That's why it's so weird to see a Canadian ad from May, as hunmanik posted: Friday, May 09,1980 - Medicine Hat News (Alberta, Canada) Hunmanik posted some of these already, but I'll put them here in the same post for future reference. This one actually shows a photo of the box in the newspaper ad: Sunday, June 15, 1980 - Chicago Heights Star (Chicago, Illinois) Thursday, July 10, 1980 - Chicago Heights Star (Chicago, Illinois) These two are just for fun: Wednesday, October 22, 1980 - Daily Herald (Chicago, Illinois) Wednesday, December 03, 1980 - Daily Herald (Chicago, Illinois) 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eegad Posted February 7, 2019 Share Posted February 7, 2019 Thanks for posting those ads....I always get a kick out of seeing old stuff like this. But it doesn't really surprise me to see Adventure (or any game) advertised, with box shots, a month or two before it was actually available for sale. I definitely remember a couple of times back in the 80s when something was advertised in a weekly flyer from a store, but when I went there to buy it was told that it wasn't yet available. It definitely happened to me with Atari (2600 and 800) videogames a couple of times, but it also happened with handheld electronic games and other toys, videotapes, whatever. Come to think of it.......I kinda recall Mattel Electronics Football II (I think) was being advertised in a Sears flyer or something and I got my mom to take me to get it......only to find they didn't have it in stock yet. We stopped at Toys R Us or somewhere else and were told the same thing. Kids at school had the same stories. I don't think it actually hit the shelves til a few weeks later. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted February 7, 2019 Share Posted February 7, 2019 Wow, $49.99 Canadian for Adventure! I never paid over about $35 for any 2600 or 5200 game bitd. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted February 7, 2019 Share Posted February 7, 2019 Thanks RT for posting them inline, I was just going to do the same til I saw that you already did so. The PDF attachments, while appreciated, are unnecessarily large for our purposes. When I see the original prices, I have NO PROBLEM AT ALL with my parents' decision (not really a decision, but just reality) to sit out the early days of home video games. Some more old stories, shared here just because I thought they were interesting. I'm sorry I couldn't find ADVENTURE in the Times archives. It seems that old advertisting is the best place to find it. Business news about video games generally doesn't get to that level of detail, and lifestyle sections arrived too late to acknowledge the old blocky game. It's weird how popular the super-primitive sports games seemed to be! New York Times, November 9, 1975 NYT Dec 25, 1975 NYT Jan 12, 1978 NYT Nov 27, 1978 NYT May 8, 1980 NYT Nov 9, 1980 NYT Jul 6, 1981 NYT Aug 9, 1981. Did you know that at least someone "obsessed" over Night Driver? NYT Nov 21, 1981. Where the hell is Adventure? 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scrummy Posted February 7, 2019 Share Posted February 7, 2019 Flomojo, Thanks for posting those newspaper articles. Very enjoyable to read and look. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubersaurus Posted February 7, 2019 Share Posted February 7, 2019 Fun thing - the Plains Dealer ran an ad for Adventure on April 11, 1980 - noting that people can "try the new" game out for themselves. That is, as far as I know, the earliest ad for the game. Related, Space Invaders seems to have come out in March, since ads were hitting that month, including a TV one. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wongojack Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Interesting discussion. While my family made Space Invaders one of its first purchases after acquiring the VCS for Christmas of 1982, I didn't even know Adventure existed until poking around on the internet as an adult. My older brother also has no memory of the game either which is weird since he and his friends had a burner and would pirate chips. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 I didn't get an Atari until Xmas 84, so nope didn't have it at launch. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+GoldLeader Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 I gotta say I remember Adventure being $29.99, Not $50! (And I'm pretty sure we're all in agreement on that one)... Then again, I remember paying $37.95 for Pac-Man because I had to have it and we'd already been to 3 stores which were sold out. This was probably one or two days after its release. Funny how sometimes word traveled fast back in those days, even without the internet. The most ironic part was the store I bought it at was called Pay & Save. I just did some re-reading and noticed that $50 was in Canadian Dollars! I don't know how I missed that the first time around. In hindsight it was plain as day, but maybe I was tired the first go 'round...Yeah, I'm going with that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Mitchell Posted February 17, 2019 Share Posted February 17, 2019 I got my Adventure sometime in 1980. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Banquo Posted February 17, 2019 Share Posted February 17, 2019 I had a Colecovision so no, but my cousin did have a 2600 that I played a lot. He didn't have Adventure though. I finally got it for the first time just a few years ago. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pioneer4x4 Posted February 17, 2019 Share Posted February 17, 2019 1980y_10m_22d_daily-herald-suburban-chicago-Oct-22-1980-Wednesday-Resized.png Nice, even the ad calls them "Tapes" 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted February 17, 2019 Share Posted February 17, 2019 Gosh, "tapes." It's hard to imagine paying $21.95 -- each! -- for those very early games. CPI-based inflation calculator for 1980 to 2019 equivalents: 8.88 = 27.35 (Space War, blackjack) 21.95 = 67.61 (bowling, football, golf, Night Driver) 29.99 = 92.39 (space invaders, adventure, Superman) 39.95 = 123.24 (backgammon, chess) 159.00 = 490.49 (console) The Atari Flashback Portable (with its own screen and ALL THE GAMES) is $40 today, which would have been like $12.97 back then. The secret to a certain kind of happiness is to wait 40 years. #patientgamers 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+GoldLeader Posted February 17, 2019 Share Posted February 17, 2019 Gosh, "tapes." It's hard to imagine paying $21.95 -- each! -- for those very early games. CPI-based inflation calculator for 1980 to 2019 equivalents: 8.88 = 27.35 (Space War, blackjack) 21.95 = 67.61 (bowling, football, golf, Night Driver) 29.99 = 92.39 (space invaders, adventure, Superman) 39.95 = 123.24 (backgammon, chess) 159.00 = 490.49 (console) The Atari Flashback Portable (with its own screen and ALL THE GAMES) is $40 today, which would have been like $12.97 back then. The secret to a certain kind of happiness is to wait 40 years. #patientgamers Either my internet, my Netbook, or AtariAge is acting up because I've tried 4 times to Like this post, but it's not registering... Thoughts from my 12 year old self, crossed with current version: The Atari console was priceless! I worked my ass off to buy mine! ($490.49?!? Yeeeoww!) Space War is a bargain at $27.35, Night Driver is overpriced, though I dug it for about 3 days ...I'd have paid any price for Space Invaders, though in truth I got it and Space War as gifts... I bought Superman with my own money and love it to this day... I didn't own Adventure BITD, but I had borrowed it from a friend for a while. Adventure I bought way later at a garage sale...A friend borrowed it and I had to buy it again since both disappeared... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pioneer4x4 Posted February 17, 2019 Share Posted February 17, 2019 When the Atari came out, They were EXTREMELY expensive to the average family. $200 would by a lot. $200 in 1978 is like $800 now. I didn't get one until maybe 1982, and I got it used from pennysaver I think. I did buy a Jr new for maybe $50 and a 7800 new but forget the price. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+RichG1972 Posted February 17, 2019 Share Posted February 17, 2019 Dad had Adventure but I don't think he got it in the year it was released, he got his Atari in 1981 and Adventure was one of the games he got with it 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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