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Ship of Theseus: was, Activision Cartridge New Labels


AlwaysOnPlanetPatrol

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Got my last three carts from eBay vendors.  Robot Tank, Starmaster and Megamania.  Don't have natural light to take a picture of Megamania, so I'll provide it some other time.

 

Opening the Robot Tank cartridge, I found a surprise.  It uses a new blob-type ROM chip with all epoxy.  Of all the cartridges I opened in this project, this is the only one.  So most likely this was a latter run of Activision cartridges.  All the other ones had the larger chip. 

 

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Here is the new one on the left, and my original cart on the right.  I ended up deciding that my original cart was going to be relabeled.  The folding looked worse and the end label was ripped.

 

 

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Here is Starmaster and Robot Tank with the new labels.

 

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Here is the comparison with the original labels.

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Starmaster looks "off" with the new label.  The blue is a lot brighter and some of the stars in the screenshot are missing.  I noticed that there are a couple more cartridges were things were a tad off.  I will make a more detailed comparison in the near future.

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Finally, here's a screenshot of the carts that I will most likely not relabel (except for Commando which I used my original cart to be relabeled, pictured here is the new one I got last week).  My Double Dragon cartridge is in really poor shape; I'll make it my next task to find a better cartridge considering it's one of my favourite games. I only wish I had my original collection from the early 90s!!!

 

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A few more lessons learned:

- Some cartridges are absolutely filthy.  Over the 25 or so cartridges I opened to clean, I found dead bugs, substances I don't want to know about, rusty springs in the plastic prongs, and many times strong tobacco smell.

- If you place the new labels incorrectly, then there's not way to adjust it.  I put my Megamania one slightly off and tried to re-apply it.  It started to rip.  No do-overs with these labels

- Many of the cartridges on eBay claimed to be "tested" didn't work without a proper clean or scrub.  Megamania, River Raid, Kaboom, and Dolphin took ages to get working

- Surprisingly, my 7800 can play Robot Tank and Decathlon with no problems!  

 

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