Neogeoman Posted June 24, 2021 Share Posted June 24, 2021 On 6/19/2021 at 3:18 PM, Albert said: I plan on starting to ship these orders late next week, and it'll take about a week (at least) to get them all shipped. ..Al Thanks for getting back to me Al I just got your email. I know you're super busy thanks for taking the time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted June 25, 2021 Author Share Posted June 25, 2021 Another update! Here are the Jaguar games I was talking about yesterday.. First, testing the boards as I was soldering them. Then the boards were assembled into the cartridge shells. And finally after the carts were labeled (this isn't all of them, I just took one game of each color cartridge I had built, made it easier to take a photo). Assembling the other extra games into shells now, will have those labeled tomorrow. Still need to build some AtariVoxes, as well as continuing to box games. I'll post some photos of the boxed games once they are all done and ready to ship! Then you're not going to hear from me for a while as I will be focused on shipping all these orders. It will be one or two big runs to the post office every day for at least a week! ..Al 7 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted June 25, 2021 Share Posted June 25, 2021 On 6/23/2021 at 2:48 PM, Albert said: A quick post... Have the 23 additional Atari 8-bit games finished.. Wow.. does this mean only ten people pre-ordered Adventure II? And only THREE went for Scramble?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted June 25, 2021 Share Posted June 25, 2021 2 minutes ago, adam242 said: Wow.. does this mean only ten people pre-ordered Adventure II? And only THREE went for Scramble?? I ordered Adventure II XE, so there is at least me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted June 25, 2021 Share Posted June 25, 2021 5 minutes ago, adam242 said: Wow.. does this mean only ten people pre-ordered Adventure II? And only THREE went for Scramble?? Of course not! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted June 25, 2021 Author Share Posted June 25, 2021 1 hour ago, adam242 said: Wow.. does this mean only ten people pre-ordered Adventure II? And only THREE went for Scramble?? No, I made a large batch of both games months ago. The ones you see in the above photo are additional copies of both games that were ordered beyond that initial batch I made. ..Al 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted June 25, 2021 Share Posted June 25, 2021 I hope you don’t wear out that soldering iron, Albert. My birthday is coming up in less than 3 weeks and I was going to order a few games. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted June 28, 2021 Author Share Posted June 28, 2021 Time for a big Sunday evening update before I have some dinner!! I now have nearly all the games boxed and ready to ship. Here are some photos I just took: The above are all NTSC games. You can see a some of the PAL60 games on the very left of the following photo.. The only games I still need to box are the two Atari 8-bit titles (Adventure II XE and Scramble) and the extra games for orders. I'll get the 8-bit ones done in a bit, but I can't close up the Adventure II XE boxes until I print the parchment envelopes, which I'll be doing in the morning (as well as some stickers I need to seal those envelopes!) Here are the extra 5200, 7800 and ColecoVision titles I finished up a few days ago: You'll have to guess what the 5200 games are. Here are the bins that were previously full of games, now nearly empty! You can see the two bins full of Adventure II XE and Scramble cartridges. Here's one of my cats helping with Magical Fairy Force: And here's a batch of 2600 carts I cleaned yesterday morning. These will have 2600 games assembled into them tomorrow, the only games I need to finish building in order to ship everything. I will Goo Gone another similar batch of carts in the morning, which will allow me to finish up the 2600 games. That's all for now! Very close now to shipping everything! I am excited! ..Al 22 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sramirez2008 Posted June 28, 2021 Share Posted June 28, 2021 This is very exciting, thanks Al! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickmuze Posted June 28, 2021 Share Posted June 28, 2021 Very exciting! And cute cat thanks for the update! This was a good one :) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted June 28, 2021 Share Posted June 28, 2021 2 minutes ago, mickmuze said: Very exciting! And cute cat thanks for the update! This was a good one We're lucky our feline overlords are fond of Atari's. Mine used to like to hop up onto the 800xl and type things. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickmuze Posted June 28, 2021 Share Posted June 28, 2021 1 minute ago, leech said: We're lucky our feline overlords are fond of Atari's. Mine used to like to hop up onto the 800xl and type things. One of mine is quite fond of Adventure 1 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrZarniwoop Posted June 28, 2021 Share Posted June 28, 2021 I love this thread, particularly seeing the pictures of your manufacturing run. We are lucky to have you do this! May it be your last one to feature Goo Gone before switching to your own molded cartridge shells! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insertclevernamehere Posted June 28, 2021 Share Posted June 28, 2021 (edited) I like to see the piles to get an idea of how popular each title is. Of course Zoo Keeper is number one. No surprise there. Deepstone Catacomb at 2 and without exact numbers, it looks like Ninjish Guy, Venture Reloaded and Tower of Rubble share 3rd. I bought Zoo Keeper and The End myself and a bunch of older games but eventually I'll order most of the new batch. It's been a long wait but I've remained patient seeing the gargantuan undertaking Albert puts himself through. It's easier for me though, because I'm still busy collecting original run games. Must be tougher for those who have had every original Atari game they want for years and years now. Edited June 28, 2021 by insertclevernamehere Missed a 3rd place game! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dire 51 Posted June 28, 2021 Share Posted June 28, 2021 19 hours ago, Albert said: Time for a big Sunday evening update before I have some dinner!! I now have nearly all the games boxed and ready to ship. Now that's a sight to see. Looking forward to playing Zoo Keeper and Space Invaders when they arrive! I hope this has helped my daughter in her dealings with small businesses. She's only 18, and she preordered Zoo Keeper for me as a Christmas present (paid with money from her first real job), then got upset when it didn't show up upon the original arrival date. She was ready to fire off an angry email to Al, but I told her to just politely ask what was going on, because at the time, I had no idea what was going on either - but I figured there had to have been some major snafu. I've kept her posted on the situation. She calmed down over time, just saying as long as I get it, she'll be happy. I told her I've ordered from Al many times, and he has yet to let me down, which also made her feel better about the whole thing. She'll be happy to hear the latest update here. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted June 29, 2021 Author Share Posted June 29, 2021 I have another update! I spent yesterday and today working on getting the remaining games completed, along with some other tasks. I now have all the Jaguar games completed and all the new Atari 8-bit games (Scramble and Adventure II XE) completed. Also built a small number of additional games that I needed, such as one more copy of Magical Fairy Force. I cut down a package of backing boards to 5" x 7" (use these when shipping loose manuals), printed some more 5" x 7" forum flyers to include with the orders, and printed more of the small AtariAge stickers used to seal the thick plastic bags used for cartridges, boxes, and manuals. Here are some photos of the additional games that are now ready for shipment. First are the copies of Scramble and some PAL 2600 games (these boxes are sitting two deep). Not a ton of PAL orders with all these games, and I suspect part of that is due to the currently high shipping rates from the US. When I get the new store online, I will be able to offer substantially reduced shipping rates. I'll also work on getting registered for VAT in the UK so I can open up shipping there again (and I need to research what's going on in Europe as well on that front). Here are the Jaguar games.. And Adventure II XE. The white stickers you see on these boxes (for Scramble and Adventure II XE) designate games in gray shells, versus the dark, translucent shells. The translucent shells have been selling about 2:1 over the gray shells. The white stickers on the Jaguar games above are for clear shells, and the red stickers are for red shells. There's a green sticker on one of the Fantasy World Dizzy games, which is in a green shell. These are removable stickers and I pull them off before shipping. Here's the additional copy of Magical Fairy Force. I tested and labeled this batch of 2600 games this morning. Some of these will be going into boxes tomorrow: One of the fun things I had to do was print 100 parchment envelopes for Adventure II XE. After that, I printed the "wax seal" stickers for the back of the envelopes. Then had to go through and stuff all the envelopes and apply the stickers. Here are the envelopes waiting to be inserted in the boxes with everything else: The back side! That's all I have for now. Basically all I have to do at this point is build another batch of 2600 games similar to the batch above (in terms of numbers). To do this I need to first Goo Gone one more batch of carts (tonight) and then program, assemble, test, and label the games in the morning. These will all be Melody and Aria-based game, so I thankfully I don't need to solder anything. When I finish those games, I then need to assemble some of these "extra' games into boxes. There is ONE more thing I want to do after that, which will take me a few hours, but I don't want to mention what that is in case I bail on it (or it ends up being too difficult or potentially time consuming to do). I will relax a bit tomorrow evening and begin the shipping frenzy Thursday morning. The entire holiday weekend (Friday through Monday) will be spent shipping these orders, and I suspect I can get the majority of them shipped during this time. Then Tuesday when the post office opens again (they are closed Monday), it will be MANY trips to the post office to drop these packages off! It will be quite time consuming to ship these orders, as they all contain boxed games, and quite a few in some cases. The boxed games more handling in terms of packaging them, as well as larger shipping boxes that take longer to properly pack. And these larger boxes also take considerably more room in the car (compact SUV, with the seats down I can get quite a bit into it, but still will require trips back and forth to the post office.) Fortunately the post office is only two miles away, so trips there don't take long. I will try and post another update late tomorrow. Updates after that will be of me shipping games! ..Al 15 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted June 30, 2021 Share Posted June 30, 2021 Holy cow! About the post office trips... can you not schedule a time for *them* to simply pick up large batches at a time? When shipping via USPS Priority, pretty sure that's an option for postal customers with an account. Yes, here's a link: https://tools.usps.com/schedule-pickup-steps.htm ...I've seen people/small businesses sometimes wheel those large baskets filled with pre/labeled boxes into the post office before, but that was in the past. Seems easier all around to just have them pick up the goods. A lot less hassle for you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted June 30, 2021 Author Share Posted June 30, 2021 Just now, save2600 said: About the post office trips... can you not schedule a time for *them* to simply pick up large batches at a time? When shipping via USPS Priority, pretty sure that's an option for postal customers with an account. Possibly, but I don't really need to wait when I bring large numbers of packages to the post office, so it's not that big of a deal. And there is some satisfaction in dropping them off. For this, I'd just go to the loading docks around back and they'll wheel out large bins for me to dump everything into. ..Al 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted June 30, 2021 Share Posted June 30, 2021 7 minutes ago, Albert said: Possibly, but I don't really need to wait when I bring large numbers of packages to the post office, so it's not that big of a deal. And there is some satisfaction in dropping them off. For this, I'd just go to the loading docks around back and they'll wheel out large bins for me to dump everything into. ..Al Gotcha. Kinda figured you might have had a "system" you're used to, or didn't mind making the trips. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted June 30, 2021 Author Share Posted June 30, 2021 9 minutes ago, save2600 said: Gotcha. Kinda figured you might have had a "system" you're used to, or didn't mind making the trips. If it wasn't so close I'd certainly be all about them coming to pick up the packages. ..A 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted June 30, 2021 Share Posted June 30, 2021 On 6/27/2021 at 6:29 PM, Albert said: I will Goo Gone another similar batch of carts in the morning, which will allow me to finish up the 2600 games. That's all for now! Very close now to shipping everything! I am excited! ..Al PC as a paperweight, I have done that so many times. ? Fan to dry carts or also paperweight? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted June 30, 2021 Author Share Posted June 30, 2021 2 hours ago, CPUWIZ said: PC as a paperweight, I have done that so many times. ? Fan to dry carts or also paperweight? The fan is to help the carts dry out faster. The PC in the photo is a 20+ year old PC I dug out of storage when I was working on setting up some parallel port-based device programmers. I couldn't even get that machine to even boot, so I ended up buying an older Dell with a parallel port that I could run Windows 7 on and then VMs for XP and Windows 2000. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted June 30, 2021 Share Posted June 30, 2021 15 minutes ago, Albert said: The fan is to help the carts dry out faster. The PC in the photo is a 20+ year old PC I dug out of storage when I was working on setting up some parallel port-based device programmers. I couldn't even get that machine to even boot, so I ended up buying an older Dell with a parallel port that I could run Windows 7 on and then VMs for XP and Windows 2000. ..Al I do find it amusing that new PCs have dropped legacy connectors like parallel ports, floppy drive controllers, IDE and ISA and PCI... yet the last few I have bought have had COM port headers on the motherboard for serial, which were definitely gone for a while... Sometimes you just need one of the old ports for something! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted June 30, 2021 Share Posted June 30, 2021 58 minutes ago, Albert said: I was working on setting up some parallel port-based device programmers. I hate it , but every time I need my old EMP-10 or something and I get one of the grandmas ticking, I am like... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hydro Thunder Posted July 1, 2021 Share Posted July 1, 2021 On 6/27/2021 at 8:29 PM, Albert said: Time for a big Sunday evening update before I have some dinner!! I now have nearly all the games boxed and ready to ship. Here are some photos I just took: The above are all NTSC games. You can see a some of the PAL60 games on the very left of the following photo.. The only games I still need to box are the two Atari 8-bit titles (Adventure II XE and Scramble) and the extra games for orders. I'll get the 8-bit ones done in a bit, but I can't close up the Adventure II XE boxes until I print the parchment envelopes, which I'll be doing in the morning (as well as some stickers I need to seal those envelopes!) Here are the extra 5200, 7800 and ColecoVision titles I finished up a few days ago: You'll have to guess what the 5200 games are. Here are the bins that were previously full of games, now nearly empty! You can see the two bins full of Adventure II XE and Scramble cartridges. Here's one of my cats helping with Magical Fairy Force: And here's a batch of 2600 carts I cleaned yesterday morning. These will have 2600 games assembled into them tomorrow, the only games I need to finish building in order to ship everything. I will Goo Gone another similar batch of carts in the morning, which will allow me to finish up the 2600 games. That's all for now! Very close now to shipping everything! I am excited! ..Al Is it weird or wrong that my heart literally skips a beat when I take in all of these pictures of these amazing games, boxes, envelopes, wax seals (??!!!!!?? ) and such? Just amazing. I believe I spied my copy of KC Munchkin in there! Had an Odyssey2 when all the other kids had an Atari for a long while, then finally got an Atari later. KC, UFO, Pick Axe Pete were the bob-omb. Al, you're amazing. I don't think you can know how much the community appreciates all you do!! 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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