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Hey all , do you know if and when Hozer has like discount sales? if any ? ive seen soem cool ones i wnat but dont seem to have enough to get many and at 20 ea or 16 ea its hard to see 1 cart or that at the moment ( maybe thats the unemployed person talking there) but it would be cool if you bought like 4 get the 5th free or 25% off or soemthign. i found out now how hard the real world is on the wallet and noticed i cant afford to 20 or 30 carts a week i used too.

do you have any stores online that saves me a few and i can pick uip some cool carts i have my eyes set on that Video Simon cart (Cx-26200) What games have you bought that you recomend from teh company ? Whats teh best and worst from the list. Also Hozer should have a program where you can order one of everythign on the 2 lists liek all 20 in a package 15 ea for 20 . some set up for that cause ill buy them all hehe. i must have one of the homebrews

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Oh yea, and about discount sales and stuff. I'd be surprised if poor Randy Critchfield (The guy who makes all those carts) would ever have a chance for a sale.

 

I believe Randy makes all the carts himself by hand, and only makes them as they are ordered. I doubt he makes even $1.00 over the price it costs to make them. He just does it as a service to the Atari community.

 

The reason some carts are more expensive are because some authors are paid a royalty on their games. Also larger eproms, like 8K's are more expensive.

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Sale? On homebrew? Why?

 

In my opinion, we as collectors should pay the full price (if not more) to encourage other designers to make new games.

 

Is 3 or $4 (20-25% off) really going to make that much difference if we want the game bad enough? It's a matter of one less trip to the coffee bar or skipping that burger and fries the fast food to make that money back.

 

Considering how many hours the designer spent learning how to program the ancient thing, and manufacturing them by hand (difficult without mass production capacity)...these guys deserve every penny possible--maybe even a little more if you want to encourage further development.

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hey Joel that was anotehr one i looked at since i liked the title. i own the original release of Brian Prescott's Crazy Valet (limited to 99). what other items do you all recomend . .and also for my boxes should i keep them in a cabinet with doors to keep the light off them or on the book cases?

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Although not exactly "homebrewed", I wouldn't mind snagging cart versions of my little hacks of Vector Asteroids and Arcade invaders.. but the thought of putting down cash for my own simple graphic hacks that still reside on my HD has always made me break out in hives or something. (yes, I'm cheap)

 

Still though.. having an actual cart to play always sounds good so if he has any discount sales to "authors" *cough*. That'd be excellent!

 

 

(ok. just kidding Randy.. I'm about to break down and snag me some carts soon anyway)

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quote:

Originally posted by atari70s:

what other items do you all recomend .

 

I apologize to the author of this, but I would NOT recommend "Suicide Adventure" I got it hoping for a new Adventure game, but it ended up being incredibly difficult. I got killed as soon as I hit the reset button..

 

Also, if you liked the original Venture, Tim Snider's new Venture II is going to be available at Hozer sooner or later. I'd recomend it for the fantastic manual alone, not to mention how cool the game is.

 

Also, I store my games on shelves but I always try to make sure no light can get into the room where my carts are. I've got extra thick curtains on all the windows and stuff.

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For what it's worth, Venture II *is* now available at Hozer for $16, which covers cart with label, manual, and shipping. Randy just doesn't have it posted on his website yet.

 

And as for a "bulk discount," I don't think it'd happen as Randy handbuilds each individual one. Wouldn't hurt to ask him directly though.

 

Snider-man

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light and dark was referign to a second question i had. about where to store the boxes i got but i think it would be cool if it was a little less i menat 15 avg * 20 or so is at least 300.00 for 20 carts even if its a little less it would be cool shipping woudl be maybe 6.00 to do . oh well maybe ill talk to randy but i think ill end up getting them 1 ata time

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I think you should keep something in mind with situations like buying carts from Randy at Hozer video games. It's not terribly fair to expect a bulk discount because the purchasing of 20 carts doesn't make for any less work for him.

 

If you're talking about mass manufactured goods, it's reasonable to expect a price break for buying in bulk. They have tons of them sitting around and you're taking a bunch of them off their hands at once, guaranteeing them a certain level of profit and reducing their handling expenses.

 

But when someone has to assemble every cart one at a time, just because someone buys 20 carts doesn't make it much easier for one to assembly the batch of 20 - it's still the same amount of work per cart.

 

Randy has set a profit level that is enough to make him willing to continue to provide his service, and it's not terribly high. Let's pretend that he makes $3.00 profit per cart (I'm just making numbers up). That $3.00 is the level that makes him feel its worth his time (say 15 minutes) to disassemble and desolder an old cart and put a new ROM on there. Now you come to him and say, "Hey, I want 20 carts, I think I should get $2.00 off." Now you're asking him to spend 20*15 minutes = 5 hours for $20.00. Strangely (not really) this offer doesn't appeal to him.

 

Now, to reiterate, I have no idea what Randy's per cart profit actually is, or how long it takes him to do it. But I've been faced with similar situations on the occasional wholesale contemplation of my products. If someone were to order say 1000 Cuttle Carts (no, nothing close to his has ever happened) from me, I couldn't give them the same price break they would get ordering 1000 items from a mass manufacturer. It's not like I can say, "Oh yeah, 1000 carts sold! I'll do it for $5.00 profit per cart and make $5000.00 - no sweat." Sure, I would make $5000.00, but it would take all of my free time for months to put that order together, and in the end would not be worth it to me - my time is more valuable.

 

So if you want a discount from Randy, do something that will actually make it worth his while. Ask to buy just the parts and the programmed eproms and you'll take care of assembling the carts yourself. This way you cut down on his labor, and I bet he's much more willing to offer a discount.

 

Just thought I'd add a different perspective,

Chad

Edit: Fixed some horrible grammar errors. (Still more left I'm sure.)

 

[ 09-10-2001: Message edited by: C. Schell ]

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If demand gets that big, then you have to modify your manufacturing methods, no doubt about it.

 

There are certainly economical ways to make 2600 cartridges. There was recently a thread on Stellalist regarding getting new cart shells made or ordered from surplus stock in Brazil. This would eliminate the need to disassemble old carts (saves time) and saves old carts from destruction (a good thing).

 

And making custom cart boards is relatively inexpensive once you get the design done. Chris Wilkson and others have boards designed that can go into production for homebrewers.

 

The 4-color printing is where you get murdered with up-front costs.

 

Chad, what did you do on the Cuttle Cart label sticker? Looks really nice. You must have a LOT of labels leftover

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quote:

Originally posted by utamav91:

Considering how many hours the designer spent learning how to program the ancient thing, and manufacturing them by hand (difficult without mass production capacity)...these guys deserve every penny possible--maybe even a little more if you want to encourage further development.

 

Well put! I think we're all just spoiled by the fact that we can usually get Atari games for a mere pittance from flea markets and such... we get the idea "old = cheap" lodged in our brain so tight that even when it isn't actually old (just for an old system), we immediately assume it should be cheap.

 

I have to admit, I thought like this the first time I visited Hozer's site... "$16 for an Atari game???" But the more I think about it, the more I'm actually considering buying a bunch of games from him. It'll feel a little strange buying Atari games for more than I pay for Dreamcast games... but hey, it's a specialized field.

 

The three I'm most interested in are "This Planet Sucks", "Venture II", and "Vault Assault"... As soon as I played the rom image, I though Vault Assault was an awesome game, and I'll totally be wanting to buy this one as soon as I scrounge up some money (university is bleedin' me dry). Does anyone know if Vault Assault will be sold by Hozer? I haven't seen any mention of it yet...

 

--Zero

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quote:

Originally posted by Glenn Saunders:

Chad, what did you do on the Cuttle Cart label sticker? Looks really nice. You must have a LOT of labels leftover

 

It was drawn in a vector drawing package, and then printed by a professional printer on a very high quality laser printer. They were then block cut to size. (The end label still required a lot of trimming though.) It was more expensive than Kinko's (whose output was horrible), but wasn't too bad and did not have nearly the upfront costs of 4-color printing / die cutting. (Which I did look into.)

 

I actually don't have too many remaining labels, and the recall is using up a good deal of that supply.

 

Thanks for noticing the label though. Lee and I spent a lot of time on it, and I definitely hunted around to find a good quality printing option.

 

Chad

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