What is the CX that is associated on most Atari game cartridges?

[marioshroomed]

Example, Pac-man is CX2646, Star Raiders is CX2660, and Video Olympics is CX2621.

 

Yet other games not made by Atari don't have the CX followed by #'s. Like silver labeled games, sears tele-games, and games with red labels.

[tschak909]

Those are SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) numbers, intended for keeping track of inventory by Atari and the stores. Initially these numbers had a definite pattern to them:

 

CX260X - Action (Combat, Air-Sea Battle, Star Ship)

CX261X - Racing (Street Racer, Indy 500)

CX262X - Sports (Video Olympics)

CX264X - Strategy/Maze (Surround)

CX265X - Card/Board Games (Blackjack)

CX266X - Educational titles (Basic Math)

 

Note the single digit. They really didn't think they were going to make that many games (the engineers had originally thought it could do no more than 10 games). Once it became clear that the hardware was ridiculously open-ended, and there were a lot more possibilities, this rigid numbering scheme was abandoned for a more sequential scheme.

 

-Thom

Edited December 19, 2018 by tschak909

[chewy]

just like with vinyl, real big dawgs just go by catalog number, like im a big fan of CX26136 and CX26176

[InactiveX]

And of course, there's CX-2600, the lovely Atari VCS console.

[+save2600]

Forget Stella. Didn't you know... ? 'Console X' was the 2600's code name before they decided on VCS.

[BassGuitari]

Yet other games not made by Atari don't have the CX followed by #'s. Like silver labeled games, sears tele-games, and games with red labels.

 

Yes, they do.

 

Sears obviously has its own series of model numbers, but every game published by Atari or Atari Corp. has a CX number.

[edladdin]

And the numbering scheme continued with the 5200 and 7800, where all those accessories and games had CX52 and CX78 part numbers.

[fiddlepaddle]

So, Atari invented all the original X boxes.