Atari 800/XL/XE Catalogs

Back in the heyday of the Atari 2600, most reasonably-sized game companies produced catalogs to promote their games. It seems this is a lost art, as companies rarely package in catalogs with console games these days. But back in the early 80s it was always a blast looking through the latest Atari catalog to see what new games you could convince (beg) your parents to buy for you. As the largest producer of games for their systems, Atari also produced the greatest number of catalogs. And, in our opinion, the greatest catalogs. Atari's catalogs were filled with wonderful art that made them a joy to leaf through. And their catalogs could take a while to browse since some of them were quite large. Activision also produced a good number of catalogs, from their early days as the first third-party publisher with only six titles, to their later times when they were also publishing Imagic titles. Most other third-party companies only produced a single catalog, such as Parker Brothers. It's interesting to note that several third-party catalogs depict games that were never released, whereas Atari and Activision were much better about not picturing vaporware.

We're someday hoping to build a complete library of catalogs. If you have any catalogs that we're missing and wouldn't mind scanning them in, please contact us as we'd love to hear from you!

Spectravision

Description

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Model Number: CA-021
Year: 1984
Titles: 50

This is a fairly simple single sheet catalog that Spectravideo released in 1984. It features games for the Atari 2600, Atari 400/800, Commodore Vic-20, Colecovision, and the Spectravideo Personal Computer System. Not surprisingly the system with the most titles listed is Spectravideo's Personal Computer System. All of Spectravideo's 2600 games are represented here, with one exception: Chase the Chuckwagon, which was only available through a special offer with Ralston-Purina. The reverse side of this catalog features Spectravideo's QuickShot controllers.