williamc Posted May 16, 2022 Share Posted May 16, 2022 I saw this on eBay for just a few bucks and had to buy it: This cart must have meant a lot to someone in their childhood. We can guess the label got damaged or fell off a long time ago (since it's a Parker Bros. cart I'm guessing it fell off), so the owner drew their own and affixed it with a heck of a lot of scotch tape. The artwork is all in colored pencil, and it looks like a kid's effort, but not bad -- better than I would have done as a kid. The colors don't exactly match the game, but they seem appropriate, and the appearance of Spider-Man and the guys in the windows is pretty accurate. The artist even included the lives indicator (the brown spider) and web fluid bar at the bottom of the screen! The artist embellished the end label a bit with yellow crisscrosses that I assume are meant to be webs. Impressively he even got Spider-Man's name fully correct by including the hyphen. I especially like how he misjudged the space available and had to cram the letters in "man" to get them to fit. I remember that happening every time I tried to draw stuff as a kid. On the back we have a name I assume to be the artist's. The silver ink bled and has faded a bit, but I make it as "Property of Carlito S." (or possibly "Carlton", but I think I see a faded letter i). I'll just call the artist Carl. Carl must have loved Atari 2600 Spider-Man enough to want to draw an accurate label. He either looked at the game screen while drawing it or had played it enough to draw from memory. He fitted it to the cart really well and protected it with a layer of tape. There's no way to know how long ago Carl did this, but if it was during the "Atari era," his little love letter to this game has survived three decades or more now. It's a great addition to my collection. I haven't been able to test the cart yet but assuming it still works, I plan to use it to try for a high score. I think Carl would appreciate that. 11 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fiddlepaddle Posted May 16, 2022 Share Posted May 16, 2022 So I finally found a way to sell all those Combat carts with no label... 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jgkspsx Posted May 16, 2022 Share Posted May 16, 2022 That is so beautiful. It reminds me of the A#1 Fancy Lable [sic] Club on rec.games.video.classic back in the day. I still have my set in my main 2600 stand! My two games were much bigger on enthusiasm than on design skills: Wow, and it turns out there were two more runs! https://atariage.com/forums/topic/141272-a3-fancy-label-club/?tab=comments 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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