Mail Order Games

[+Psionic]

Columbia House exclusive games:

- Bumper Bash - Random Terrain (awesome site btw) asked here for information regarding Bumper Bash and if it was ever even offered by Columbia House
- Cakewalk
- Gas Hog
- Mangia'
- Master Builder
- Stronghold

As far as I can tell, the Spectravideo games released through Columbia House did hit shelves in Canada but were only available through Columbia House in the US.

 

While there's no doubt that Columbia House advertised those games in their flyers, it's questionable whether any of them were actually in hand and available for purchase.  I can't think of anyone off the top of my head who claims to have gotten them there, and Columbia is known to have advertised games that were not actually available (such as Kick-Man by CBS, which was never released).

 

Regarding the two CommaVid titles, it should be noted that most people who purchased those games obtained them directly from CommaVid, but they were shipped to at least a couple of distributors in the Midwest in limited quantities and were available in stores.  As an example, this guy was an original owner of Stronghold who purchased his copy for a few dollars at a closeout store in Louisville, KY.  There was another person who popped up here years ago with a boxed copy that had an original price sticker on it.  And so on.
 

Questions:
Ultravision
- Condor Attack (Ultravision)
- Karate (Ultravision)

According to user Crazy Climber here K-Tel mostly did mail order only. Crazy Climber also said Ultravision was a division of K-Tel, so Karate was also most likely mail order only. Does anyone have more information on that?

 

Ultravision may have had some loose connection to K-tel with regard to their North American distribution, but saying that they were a division of that company is inaccurate.  If anything, Ultravision had a strong connection to Funvision and other companies in Asia.

 

[Atari_Bill]

I have one of the monthly club order forms and I’m pretty sure the CommaVid titles were shown in stock for the month. I’m not able to get to it right now, but I’ll pull it out when I get back home. 

[+Psionic]

I'm just not convinced that they actually had all those titles.  It doesn't really matter either way.  My ultimate point with regard to the CommaVid games was that they weren't mail order exclusives and were sold at retail, albeit on a limited basis.