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2600 Joust Prototype on eBay w/Original Press Release!!!


Joystick Jolter

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Hey Gang,

I put up a Joust Prototype and I am

including with it the original press release from Atari on the games release. Not many of them around with this backup.

I'm also putting up a retail version of the very hard to find MALAGAI on eBay today.

Keep checking as I have lots of protos and press info that I will be selling on eBay. Good Luck to all and thank you for your time.

 

Anthony

Joystick Jolter(no funny remarks please. I've heard them all many times over)

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Let me start off by saying that I am not trying to pick a fight

 

I think you will find that the general consensus is that those Loaner carts, while cool, are not really prototypes. I think that if you received a copy for review then it is most likely the final version and not a work-in-progress.

 

However, there are many others here at AtariAge that are MUCH more knowledgeable about such matters.

 

A Loaner cart with the original press release is still really cool though

 

I would encourage you to offer scans of the press release to the Als here at AtariAge. At the very least, the press release should contain the exact date of release for the game.

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quote:

Originally posted by CosmicJoke:

I think you will find that the general consensus is that those Loaner carts, while cool, are not really prototypes. I think that if you received a copy for review then it is most likely the final version and not a work-in-progress.


 

I've always wondered about the difference between the two. I mean it does say "Loaner" on it which does make it sound like "here, we finished the game, wanna try it?" As opposed to "we're still working on this." I would think they would wait until something was finished before handing out copies to people.

 

I would be interested in hearing more from our other board memebers who are more knowledgeable on the subject.

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I still consider these lab loaners "prototypes", even if they are in many cases the finished game. Just because these lab loaners were sent to magazines for review does not necessarily mean they are representative of the final game. Most magazines have a pretty long lead time measured in months, and game developers want reviews to appear in a magazine about the same time as the game appears on store shelves. This means that magazines would often get games before they were done.

 

These days many magazines have a policy of only reviewing finished games, but that certainly wasn't the case in the Atari 2600's heyday. So the only real way to be sure about a lab loaner is to dump it and then compare it to the released game.

 

As far as the term "Lab Loaner" goes, this just appears to be a phrase Atari used to refer to their prototypes. They're one of the few companies that went through the trouble of printing out prototype labels, probably due to the sheer number of Lab Loaner carts they produced. Other companies also released prototypes for review, but they often didn't come in an official-looking "Lab Loaner" cart like Atari used.

 

..Al

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Atari and others actually tried to control

these "prototype, loaners, eproms or any other name they decided to call them" by having you send them back. Sometimes it was a tougher control than others. Depending on how you got along with the people in the marketing department. And yes Atari probably was one of the only with printed labels made especially for their carts. I remember CBS had Xerox copied labels from the Public Relations firm that handled their games. Some of the companies handled it themselves, but most of the other Large companies, other than Atari, used PR firms.

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  • 19 years later...
4 hours ago, RGDiRocco said:

I know this is a very old thread......So I just found this hidden in my collection. How can I tell if it’s unique and needs to be shared/sold?

C5960C51-D07F-440C-85D6-5393C916E569.jpeg

C13CCAB3-1849-478E-AABF-D29E3F479364.jpeg

1D8F0160-4E44-41BB-933E-E07687EA7697.jpeg


If you spot any differences between your lab loaner and the final release, it's worth the effort to dump the ROM.

Here are the other known to exist Joust lab loaners:
http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/prototypes/vcs/joust.html
 

Some of them have been reviewed here:
http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/joust/joust.htm


8)

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