I Found an Unreleased Atari 2600 Game at the Flea Market

[Alex Handy]

Game collectors, the absolute pinnacle of game collecting achievement! I have found an unreleased Atari 2600 game. Behold the majesty of:

Cabbage Patch Kids Adventures in the Park!





I fucking love the flea market in Oakland. I paid $22 for this tray of chips, plus a ton more. More pics on my blog.


http://blog.gism.net/2008/04/20/most...e-flea-market/

I'm so overjoyed. I had to tell SOMEONE who'd appreciate the magnitude of this find. And that meant coming here.

[Bahimiron]

I was honestly expecting this post to end with 'Atari elitists, explain to me why I should not trash your piece of shit console!'

[Nathan]

Great find! I went to the San Jose flea market to kinda look for stuff like that, but the best I saw was a Nomad that may or may not have worked. Oakland's better for that crap?

[Aeon221]

How much would I have to pay for you to mail me that so I could film a video of me breaking it?

Just kidding!

[charmtrap]

So I can get $22 per tray of old chips with stickers on them? Awesome.

[Linoleum]

Awesome.

[AndrewM]

I'm not sure I want to know what a game called "Hustler" is about.

[Coca Cola Zero]

It is probably a shitty billiards game.

[Omniscia]

That's lovely.

[Greedo]

Congrats on a nice find Alex.

For years I've hoped to score something similar at a flea market . . . hasn't happened yet.

[Omniscia]

Yeah. A score like that would be great.

I don't think we even have many flea markets here, and if/when we do, they're mostly chock full of old Danielle Steele novels and NASCAR paraphernalia.

[Alex Handy]

OK, so... I can't sleep. Pouring over the roms, trying to identify them. i could really use help on this. I don't have an Atari 2600 cart just lying around, and I also don't have a Colecovision. I need to see what the pinouts at the bottom of the carts for these systems look like. I can only find ASCII descriptions. I'd like to match the pins up to their counterparts for the cartridges I have.

If you know who or what company had these things, or, more specifically, which guys were tasked with doing these games, I might be able to find the person who got rid of all this stuff and ask him some questions. A lot of stuff shows up at the flea market that comes from someone dying, and their things ending up on the curb or contracted out for removal...


The following are ROM titles that are unknown or indecipherable to me. Help!
As for the ROMS that are stuck into foam, I can only ask if anyone's heard rumors of the following types of games for Colecovision or Atari 2600. The roms have the following dates.


Jigsaw (Someone's simple jigsaw game, i'd imagine. Date says 4/12

Hustler (whoo hoo!) 1984

CBPark 9/13 (Might be cabbage patch mislabeling, Atari)

ACT2010 (I suspect this is 2010 the action game, maybe prototype for atari? The board this one's on is not like the others.)

L12 or maybe V12 or VI2 ? Definitely Colecovision.

Spy. Any game for either system named Spy.

ARD No idea what this stands for.

Dragon 80

Sword A176 (I think A176 is a memory offset. There's a lot of those on these labels.)

Please help me decode this mysterious find!



http://www.flickr.com/photos/vonguar...7604647023310/

[theKevin]

Is one of those chips labeled "Duke Nukem Forever"?

[Sarkus]

Originally Posted by theKevin

Is one of those chips labeled "Duke Nukem Forever"?

I'm still waiting for the proof that they aren't just junk.

[Alex Handy]

Originally Posted by Sarkus

I'm still waiting for the proof that they aren't just junk.

Well, I don't think I am gonna find an EPROM reader and someone who knows how to offload ROMS tonight, but I fully intend to find someone and have this done for verification. If there are any games in here that aren't known or available, I'll make them available.

I agree, it's hard to believe. But I'm looking at them and examining them over and over, and I can't think what else they'd be. I mean, one set says "Cabbage Patch Coleco" on it! And the circuit board is printed 1982, and is just a blank for development... so what else could they be?! Considering there's one of these for the CV, and I've seen reports about Ed Temple and Ed English being the guys tasked with porting it to Atari...

If I can find pinout pictures of a colecovision cart on the web, I can compare to at least make sure of that much.....

Rest assured, I will get these things plugged in and tested when I find someone with the know how... Uhmm...

Anyone know how?

[Alex Handy]

Damn. I'd say that's a definite match. That''s a Colecovision cart. On the right.

WTF is the left one? That's the 2010 game.

[theKevin]

I'd guess it would be the Emerson Arcadia. It's the only system I could find from the era with a considerably longer cart than the Colecovision. Wikipedia.

[Gordon Cameron]

That's pretty awesome, Alex.

[Sparky]

Originally Posted by Alex Handy

Rest assured, I will get these things plugged in and tested when I find someone with the know how... Uhmm...

Anyone know how?

You use an EPROM reader, which will read the data off the chips (unless they're protected, which they probably aren't). Once you have a ROM image, you have a) a backup, in case something happens to the chip and b) something you can run through an emulator like Stella http://stella.sourceforge.net/ for the 2600, Virtual Colecovision http://vcoleco.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ for the Coleco.

Keep in mind as development chips, they may have bugs and stuff, and may not be all that playable.

We have an EPROM reader and all that stuff if you want some help with it.

[ZekeDMS]

As a man with 6 working atari 2600s and somewhere around 300 games, I'd just like to say "DUDE, AWESOME!"

I remember hearing rumors as a kid about a cabbage patch game, and yet, never to fruition did it come. Perhaps this will be a chance to sample the unknown!

[Moore]

careful!

[Kirian]

Digit Press says that there were two (well, one really) Cabbage Patch games for the Atari 2600. One rumoured, The Adventures of the Cabbage Patch Kids, and one prototype/unique cartridge, Cabbage Patch Kids Day in the Park.

Only the designer owns a copy of the latter, so if you've got the actual ROM then that's one of the rarest cartridges around.

Hustler might be the Colecovision game based on a 1981 Konami billiards game. Also a prototype, unreleased.

[Brad Wardell]

Originally Posted by bahimiron

I was honestly expecting this post to end with 'Atari elitists, explain to me why I should not trash your piece of shit console!'

The Atari 2600 is hopelessly obsolete.

That's why I have an Atari 5200.

[John Many Jars]

Originally Posted by Alex Handy

Spy. Any game for either system named Spy.

Could be Spy vs. Spy.

According to Wikipedia versions were released for "the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64 and Apple II computers...later ported to a much wider range of platforms including the ZX Spectrum, Acorn Electron, Atari ST, BBC Micro, MSX, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Master System, Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Nintendo Entertainment System."

Atari 8-bit computers used cartridges, too, closer in size to Colecovision carts than to 2600 carts.

[edit]Apparently Hustler was the European version of a c64 game called Minnesota Fats' Pool Challenger.

[edit]There was a c64 game called Magic Jigsaw.

[edit]If [some of] these are c64 roms, Dragon could be Double Dragon or Super Dragon Slayer. Spy could be Spy Hunter as easily as Spy vs. Spy.

[edit]ARD could probably be a lot of things, like Ardy the Aardvark and Artillery Duel.

[Alex Handy]

Originally Posted by John Many Jars

Could be Spy vs. Spy. [/url].

Thanks John. I'll add them to the possibility list.

[Rimbo]

This thread justifies qt3's existence.

Keep us updated as you go!

[Saxman_72]

Oh man, this brings back sweet memories. I didn't actually own an Atari, or Colecovision back in the day, but I did at least have THE BEST damned port of Donkey Kong that was ever available at the time.

[Alex Handy]

I took some more close up shots of the ROMS and posted them on Flickr. Take a gander and see if you can figure out what some of them are...

Someone at the Atari Age forums suggested that I find someone to do a full print run of the game. Hmmm...

Still need to dump these puppies first, though.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vonguar...7604647023310/

[Alex Handy]

I found someone local to dump them! This weekend should reveal all.

[Dave Long]

It's definitely a major find. Did the guy you bought them from have any idea what he had there?