Various Atari 2600 carts & other Atari l00t from Retro Gathering VCE 2017

This is part 1 of my Retro Gathering l00t :) I will go through everything bit by bit once I’m done sorting and cleaning stuff ^_^ As you might have seen on my Instagram it was quite a large haul XD So let’s start off with all my Atari related pickups! I found quite a few Atari 2600 games thanks to my friend nesfrk who pointed out to me the big box of Atari carts that was hiding under a table that I had missed! I ended up buying 22 Atari 2600 games in total, and many of them were in different shapes and sizes. I haven’t really read up a lot about these, but it started fascinating me after I found out about the Atari V-carts that I recently bought from a friend, and now I kind of wanna know what the rest of the weird looks of the Atari 2600 carts are about XD

Some of them are a bit more obvious, they were released by a certain company that just made their own style of cartridges and labels, such as Parker Brothers or ActiVision. Parker Brothers’ Atari 2600 carts have a really cool shape in my opinion, and the labels are silver. I don’t know if there were other variants, but all the ones I own which read Parker Brothers on the back all have silver labels. And the ActiVision ones are a bit more dull, just black and white but with the ActiVision logo printed in the plastic on the back, just like the Parker Brothers logo. ActiVision does have other labels as well, more colourful, I own a few of those as well, but I think these black and white ones might be region specific.

These are the common Atari carts that I’m used to seeing. Either with a silver label, a black label with a colourful name on the side or the black with silver frame labels. Also there’s the full color ones, that have one bright background colour and same colour on the end label.

I found some odd carts with 2 games in 1 called 2 Pak Special. I’ve never seen these before. The seller told me they were Australian (if I’m not mistaken). Kind of ugly, but still charming in a way XD

I also got Hero by Imagineering, from 1990 (!!), and I just read that they didn’t discontinue the Atari 2600 until 1992! 25 years later!! this blew my mind XD Then there was a Telegames game called Armor Ambush with a silver label and finally three unidentifiable games. Two of them have the same cartridge case, it has S.S imprinted on the back, but other than that it only reads the game name and no publisher, so I’m thinking they might be bootlegs? They’re German at least I can tell from the names XD Funny names! Super-Cowboy beim Rodeo and Vom Himmel durch die Hölle (From heaven to hell). The last one called Lilly Adventure has a similar cartridge case but it’s a little bit shorter and doesn’t have anything printed on the plastic..

So many variations right! :D That’s probably far from all of them as well XD I also found two joysticks for the Atari 2600. The Driving paddle controller :) It was apparently needed for the Indy 500 game, so I ran and picked them up from the place at the convention where I had seen them earlier that day, by Butik Mackapär ^_^

I also picked up a few Atari 400 games. I bought an Atari 400 not too long ago, haven’t got it up and running yet, but I will make another attempt soon. Meanwhile I found these game cartridges for it :)

And I also got one Atari ST game ^_^ It was cheap, in nice condition and I liked the cover art :)

More posts are coming with the rest of the loot from Retro Gathering soon ^_^

Retro Gathering 2016 was awesome!!!

Last Friday I drove up to Västerås to attend Retro Gathering on Saturday, my favorite Retro Game convention in Sweden ^_^ Retrospelsmässan is also really nice, but as a retro game buyer there’s just more variation at Retro Gathering :) You can find everything from vintage computers, Atari and Commodore to newer PS2 and 3DS games. There have been more newer games lately compared to the first couple of years that I started attending, I hope they don’t take over though, because I love that there’s a place I can go to find these old obscure computers and consoles! I mainly focus on old cartridges and cassettes when I’m at Retro Gathering. Nintendo and Sega I can find at all the other retro game conventions in Sweden anyway.

So this year I was also asked to host an exhibit of my Castlevania collection, so I was there an hour earlier to set it up. People seemed to like it, but there were also a lot of visitors that asked me where it was. My cabinet had been hidden behind a roll-up behind the scene where they hosted the competitions, which was a shame… but people who looked found it anyway :) For those that missed it, this is what it looked like:

The first thing I spotted was a boxed Colecovision that Japon was selling. I snagged it right away, with a bunch of games and a steering wheel controller ^_^ Pontus and Jan at Japon are really nice and gave me a good deal on it :)

I love visiting Zeela’s table, it’s always filled with obscure and colorful things :) He also had a really fun rarity, Softporn Adventure by On-Line systems! On-Line systems later became Sierra, and on the picture of the “sexy” cover are executives and writers from the company, to the right is Roberta Williams, famous video game designer, writer and co-founder of Sierra On-Line who created for example the King’s Quest series :) This is the game that later became Leisure Suit Larry. Such a cool piece of history! I would have bought it if it wasn’t so expensive XD Also I’m not that into text-based adventures… ;D

Apart from this he showed me the TRS-80, a computer that I had bought from him a while back that I got delivered here ^_^ I needed one to play my Tandy Tetris game! It’s apparently some kind of Tandy computer.. It was in really nice condition though ^_^ Original box, and I got both a boxed joystick and a big box full of games with it! :D

He also had a bunch of other cool stuff ^_^ Like Strip Poker and Centrefold Squares for Atari ST, I bought these for a friend who had been looking all over the place for Atari ST games XD He AND his girlfriend were thrilled and couldn’t wait to play it!! Haha!

There were so many games for sale, and retro game related stuff ^_^ Spel & Sånt had brought some Virtual Boy rarities, they had the three games that I am missing! But they were darn expensive >_< Another seller had setup Zelda on CDi for whoever wanted to try it out XD The creators of Alwa’s Awakening were also there displaying their game which is almost done now, it will be released on Steam :)

My friends Nathalie and Andreas from up north were also there, and they were selling some of their games. Nathalie tried to sell me a weird DS game, and Andreas wanted me to upgrade my version of Tetris 2 to a mint copy XD I did end up buying Paperboy 2 from them though ^_^ Andreas is a pixel-perfectionist and he had some upscaler connected on display with Super Mario Bro 3, I don’t like when the picture is perfect and the scanlines are too obvious ;P I prefer it the original way with an old CRT and a bit of a glitchy pic XD

I finally got around to buying the game Photon that has been under development and on display for years at these conventions ^_^ It’s still not finished, but I bought an early version of it :) I also got to talk a bit to the man behind it who told me a bit about the Sord and the community around it :) Apparently there was a club back in the day that released a magazine here in Sweden called “Sordisen”, he had a few issues for sale. He also showed me a few different versions of the system. I almost went and bought one from Zeela, but then again, I don’t have any games for it yet.. so I think it’ll have to wait.

I competed in the yearly Swedish Championships of Pong this year as well :) I won the first take out but lost to my second opponent.. I haven’t been practicing enough, or rather, I haven’t been practicing at all XD I need to get my husband to start playing it with me!! The champion can be seen in the video below, damn that’s an intense Pong game!

As usual they also had a bunch of games and systems set up so people could try them out :) I saw an Intellivision there which reminded me that a seller had promised me from the previous Retro Gathering to bring me one, when I found him though he had already sold it to someone else :((( Hopefully he can set me up with another one.. I have so many Intellivison games and no Intellivisions to play them on XD

They also had some other exhibitors, one collection of Sonic games and one of Handic for the VIC 20 :)

One of the best things about going to retro game conventions though is all the people! I met so many old and new friends, and people are so friendly :D

After the convention we went out and met up with a bunch of retro gamers, and we found Kralleman and PingeAhlin there who had missed the convention, but had been off on more exciting business! They had scored a bunch of old arcades and other rarities from a connection they had. I was lucky enough to get to go check out their loot :D They had gotten rare prototypes for the Videopac, old minty posters with ads for the Luxor computer, boxed Vectrexes, a Taito Space Invaders arcade cab and a Super Bug arcade with super mint manuals, a really old wooden arcade and an original Break Out arcade. The Break Out arcade had only been played on 64 times, which means it’s hardly been used more than factory testing. That’s pretty rad XD

As you can probably figure, Retro Gathering has outdone themselves again and it was an awesome convention! I’ll go through my loot in a later post when I’ve gone through it all ;D

Traded me some Atari ST games :D

A guy named Fredrik approached me on instagram and asked if I was interested in two complete Atari ST games. I don’t really have a lot of games for the system yet (only 5 or 6) so I thought why not ^_^ We made a good deal where he got a double I had on Sega Master System, a game called Rastan, and some cash in between and he sent me this amazing package that made me really happy :D

Atari ST trade

Not only did I get an extra game, but I also got a beautiful joystick and the FirST BASIC program for the Atari ST :D I’m not really that into sports games, but this is a great way to get my fiancée to play some Atari ST with me ;D Hockey is basically the only game I can get him to play… XD

All the games were complete and in really pretty condition :) It’s gonna be interesting to try them out :D

Fredrik suggested in his letter that if I didn’t like these games I could always learn to program my own games XD I really wish I knew how to do that! Maybe I should give Basic a go ^__^

Atari ST Joystick and First Basic

Thanks a bunch for the trade Fredrik! :D I hope you’re happy too ^_^

You Should Seriously Play: Welltris (Atari ST)

I’ve been collecting Tetris games for a while now, and I recently stumbled upon this game called Welltris on Atari ST. Since I was quite new to the Atari ST and only had around 4 or 5 games for it I thought why not! So I picked it up from eBay :) I wasn’t quite sure whether or not to include it in my Tetris Collection since it’s not called “Tetris”, and it’s not the typical 2D-type falling blocks that Tetris is all about. Because I don’t want to have to include games like Block Out that is completely 3D and not called Tetris or Panel de Pon which have different shapes and functions than Tetris, you just switch places of blocks of the same color to try and match them and it builds up from below. If I would add these then I could basically add ANY puzzle game out there, like Tsuyoshi Shikari Shinasai which is one of my favorites, that works kind of like Puyo Puyo, but these games are NOT Tetris. They are puzzle games, and they are perhaps INSPIRED by Tetris, but it’s not Tetris.

Welltris however got to have a place in the Tetris Collection for two reasons.
1.  It’s not like Block Out, you just build on one layer, the only difference from regular Tetris is that you can build from 4 different directions of the board instead of just from above.
2. It is actually kind of like a sequel to Tetris, made by the same creator! Alexey Pajitnov! :D Therefore it does deserve a place in the Tetris Collection ^_^

I was pleasantly surprised when I finally got the game playing, it was the first game I’ve tried out on my Atari 1040ST :) I first had issues using the original Atari screen, because it was monochrome and apparently not able to display the games I attempted to load, once I switched to a regular CRT it worked perfectly though ^_^ I was sure Welltris would be like Block Out though so I was happy to see that it wasn’t. Here when a block falls down you can rotate around the four walls, kind of like in Tempest. Wherever it touches the ground floor it will then start falling continuously in that direction until it hits another block or the opposite wall. So you can build from all four directions and try to fit the blocks into place.

If you place a shape that doesn’t quite make it onto the board, where a piece of it is still hanging onto the wall it came from, then that wall turns red and you won’t be able to move shapes over that wall anymore. You die when all 4 walls are red. Basically it’s like hitting the top of the tower in regular Tetris, but here you have 4 chances. The main board is much smaller though so it’s easy to accidentally misplace a shape. Also when a wall is blocked it increases the difficulty since you can’t place anything from that direction anymore. The red walls do go away after a while though, I don’t know if it’s after a certain amount of blocks have been placed or if you have to delete a few rows first.

There’s also an increase in speed the higher the level you reach. There’s a total of 5 difficulty stages, each stage has a different environment picture to the right and an increase in speed. The last one on stage five is quite funny! It’s a programmer with a beard, with a computer screen containing the same image in the same image in the same image and so forth XD
I wonder if it’s meant to be Alexey??

You can also choose three various difficulty levels. The first one has regular Tetris blocks, and a few that only consists of two squares that are easy to place. The third one has really difficult pieces like stairs and plus-shapes. See examples of the pieces in the Stage 1 picture..

There’s also two various movement modes. One makes the movement of the block go all around 360° with just holding the left or right buttons on the keyboard, the other mode forces you to switch between up and down buttons on the left and right wall and left and right buttons on the upper and lower walls.. this is difficult, I prefer having it go all the way around with the push of just one button..

Anyway, here’s a video to give you an idea of what the gameplay looks like ^_^ I’m not sure if this game has been ported on other systems or if any similar games have been made. Please do let me know if you know of something that is like this one (and not BlockOut! ;)).

You should seriously play Welltris if you’re into puzzle games :D

Retro Gathering VCE – The Loot!

It has taken some time to sort, clean and photograph all of the 138 games I bought at Retro Gathering Vintage Computer Edition last weekend, but finally, here they are! :D I will go through them system by system ^_^

Retro Gathering VCE 2016 loot

Atari ST

The first thing I bought at the convention was an Atari 1040 ST, I already had one game for it back home, and it was in nice condition, and cheap, so I couldn’t refuse ^_^ I also picked up a few games for it. I have never played on an Atari ST before, so I’m looking forward to trying it out! :D If anyone has any suggestions of exclusive games for the system that are a must have, then please let me know :) So far I only have 5 games for it, the ones I found this weekend were Deathbringer, Gauntlet III, Future Dreams and Captive.

Atari Lynx

To continue on the Atari trail, I also found a few additions to my Atari Lynx collection from Spel & Sånt :D Not particularly exciting titles, but they were in pretty nice condition :) I do however enjoy the game of Shanghai, and it’s gonna be interesting to see what the Slime World port on Lynx looks like! :D

Atari 2600

I’m always on the lookout for Atari 2600 games as well, but this year there were hardly any :/ I found one guy who had like 5 cartridges, crappy games in shitty condition, but he still wanted a lot for them! I bargained a bit and bought one, just to come home with at least one 2600 game >_> I got Super-Ferrari…

Atari 2600 Super-Ferrari

Commodore 64 – 5 1/4 Floppy disk games

Moving on to Commodore, I’ve had a 5 1/4 floppy disk game for the C64 for a while, and nothing to play it on :( But this weekend I found a new in box Ocean floppy disk drive for the C64! :D It was a bit pricey.. but I really needed one since I also bought even more floppy disk games this weekend ^__^ I got the classic text-based adventures of Zork 1-3, and at the very end of the day I got a good deal on a pretty cool adventure game called Infidel. The cool thing about it is the packaging and contents! Inside are handwritten letters and maps and stuff, it’s really well made ^_^ I have a friend that I think will really enjoy trying this game out ;D Apart from that I had bought a whole moving box full of old Amiga and Commodore games from my friend Likilato beforehand and I picked it up on this weekend since he was going to Retro Gathering too :) In this package were quite a lot of C64 floppy disk games as well ^_^ Some games that I’m quite happy with are T2 Terminator Judgement Day, Robocop, Space Harrier II and Weird Dreams, they all look pretty cool ^_^ Then there were also a few less fun games, I’m not quite sure what Operation Market Garden is, but it doesn’t sound fun, and the last three: Europe Ablaze, Russia The Great War in the East and Halls of Montezuma I’m pretty sure are some kind of edutainment games for learning history >_<

Commodore 64 – Cassette games

I found a few cassette games for the C64 as well. I got Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker from Japon, and Slap Fight for the ZX Spectrum. Pontus from Japon also tried to sell Last Ninja 2 to me, fortunately I didn’t buy it!! Because inside the big cardboard box of things I had bought from Likilato earlier contained not one but TWO copies of that exact game XD I had bought the package weeks before and didn’t remember everything that was in it.. but I’m just happy I’m not possessing three copies right now at least ;D The other C64 cassette games from Likilato were Last Ninja 3, Superman the Game, Ghostbusters II, Mr. Heli, Platoon, Speedball, Silent Service, Starglider and The Hunt for Red October.

Commodore VIC 20

Going back in time a bit we have the Commodore VIC 20, I got one of these last year and I’m still trying to expand my library of games for the system. I found a few VIC 20 cassettes on Retro Gathering this time on Mikael Holm’s table (he always has the coolest stuff!) ^_^ I know there’s two copies of Panic for VIC 20, but I couldn’t choose which one to go for, since they are DIFFERENT! It’s weird, since they are released by the same company, but one has a black spine, and the cassettes inside are different colors as well! O_o These were all dirt cheap though so I just picked them all up :) Except the two games called Vicolumn and Blue Star, these two were new releases for the system and cost a bit more, but it’s always interesting to see what people develop now for these old systems! Doodle Bug, Space Scramble, Cosmiads and Alpha Blaster all sound cool!

Sinclair ZX Spectrum, ZX81

Before moving on to consoles we have pickups from yet another old computer ^_^ I bought a few games for the ZX Spectrum, Pssst, Jet Pac and Cookie had such cool matching covers! Had to get them :) Then I also got Jet Pac with a different cover and 3D Starstrike, Split personalities, Pedro, Ghosts n’ Goblins and a program that came with the system called Horizons. I also found a Sinzlair ZX Interface 2 so I can play cartridge games on my 48k :D Now I just need to find some cartridge games >_> I also bought a ZX81 :D I’ve only known about this one for a little while, when I was looking for 3D Monster Maze and found out that it only came out on the ZX81. Now I have one! So now I just need to find 3D Monster Maze again >_< I missed out on the one eBay auction I’ve ever seen… >_<

Nintendo NES (+ Game & Watch and FDS)

I bought some NTSC NES games from Gaminggrannar and from some other sellers. I also got a Game & Watch Lifeboat from Söders Spel & Skivhandel and a random Famicom Disk System game with cats from Sven666 and another FDS game from my friend MXS :)

Sega Mega Drive

From my friend Karl I got a good deal and bought the sought after Japanese Sega Mega Drive shmup V-V (V five), I also got to buy most of his other Japanese Mega Drive titles since he wanted to get rid of them, it was mostly RPGs or strategy games, but I got such a good price that I couldn’t pass them up ^_^ I also found some PAL Mega Drive titles from other sellers, mainly sports games XD which I don’t particularly enjoy, but they were cheap! And some day me and Becki will have to have another Golf tournament ;D

Sega Master System

I also got a lot of Sega Master System games from various sellers. Mainly sports here as well, but I didn’t have them, and they were cheap ^_^

Sega Saturn & Playstation 2

Japon also managed to convince to bring home these two huge boxed Sega Saturn Arcade Racer controllers XD One PAL and one Japanese.. they told me that the controller was region free, so I sure hope they will both work with one console ;D In that case I might have another game to use in the next Retro Rumble competition for the finals ;D I also got two PS2 games with Megaman at a fair price from Anders :) They’re sealed.. but I might open them so I can play them!! ^_^

Amiga 500 / 1200

Now onto the biggest category of the day… Amiga! The big lot of games I had bought from Likilato contained A LOT of Amiga games :) I was happy to find Banshee in there, since MXS had recently told me it was a good game, it’s for the 1200 though so I have to find a place to plug that system in as well.. They’re so big and space-consuming! Loom has a beautiful cover, and I’ve seen it before, not quite sure what kind of game it is though, but I will find out :) There were a lot of other games that looked cool like Harlequin, Codename Hellfire, Wonderland, Super Stardust, Galdregons Domain etc. It’s gonna be fun to try them all out :D I wonder what kind of game Leather Goddesses of Phobos will turn out to be XD

That was all the loot for this time, now I have some gaming to do ^____^