Atari Date Stamps 2: Electric Boogaloo

[NovaXpress]

Okay, as a sidenote to C-Sly's Sears date label venture, let me toss this dilemma at ya.

 

If you have an Atari Pac-Man with an end label date, please check it. I'm looking to see if Sears indeed was allowed to jump the gun and release Pac-Man well before other stores had a chance. The earliest version sold at Sears was dated 092. What is the earliest date stamp on an Atari version?

[A.J. Franzman]

I have a 162.

[NovaXpress]

So far 142 is the earliest Atari Pac-Man on record, a full five weeks after the Sears carts were made.

[Cassidy Nolen]

Don't underestimate the power of a warehouse though. They may have been printed first but I would think the distribution dates would be a better indicator of who had it "first" in the stores.

 

C

[NovaXpress]

Do you have distribution dates available? That'd be sweet.

 

From matching dates with memory so far, it seems that games spent a very very short time in the warehouse before hitting Sears shelves.

[Christophero Sly]

The earliest Atari Pac-man I have is an 112.

 

Also, some carts don't have date stamps on their end labels, making it impossible to tell when they were produced and throwing a bit of uncertainty into this investigation. They could be from very early batches, from very late batches, or from the same batches as date-stamped carts.

[Cassidy Nolen]

I bet Curt would be the best bet on some dates. I don't know if that info would be exclusive to Sears or part of his massive-Atari-pimped brain

 

I would imagine that was WAY too early in the year to be a Christmas exclusive or something. I also don't know what the turnaround time on shipment was back then.

 

C

[Zonie]

I no longer have my original sears pac man cart, but I remember being shocked to find it in sears in Phoenix AZ about a month before it was supposed to be available at the usual place I bought my carts. Atari used to have an 800 number that we used to call about every day for update, and they were still saying something like six weeks. My Dad and I went to sears one evening for something else, and I happened to notice it in the case. When I brought that game to school the next day, the rest of the geek patrol's jaws dropped. It was kinda like the panty scene in 16-candles. LOL