BigDumer

Wow, that’s great, thanks for sharing! Next we need to find the backstory on these things. Why the plain white box? Why only Carnival? @Kamikazi26 You mentioned that someone told you that they bought Coleco Intellivision games in plain white boxes from a Coleco factory (in Montreal?).

I think I have a spreadsheet for everything in my life. Just yesterday I picked up the Canadian Buzz Bombers and I told my wife that I was going upstairs to "play with my new Intellivision game" and she was all, "Wait, you set up the console upstairs?" Sadly, my answer was "No, I mean I'm going to put it in a sleeve, put it on the shelf and update my spreadsheets. That's even more fun than playing the game!" Seriously though, cmart's comments about building up a true variant database with pictures is something I'd love to see. Though, I'd really like to see something searchable on the web, not just in Atari Age posts. Glad to hear you aren't affected by the fires. Where I live (Vancouver, BC) this is the first year in a few that we haven't had to deal with a month of smoke and haze during the summer.

My first "live" episode! I started with episode 1 back in June and so far I'm through Episode 25. That's 114 hours done with 59 hours to go (yes I have a spreadsheet). Haha, cmart picked a rough time to joke to someone in California about power outages. Looking forward to listening to the rest. Normally I listen during my commute (since the rolling Canadian power outages during the summer meant I couldn't listen at home) but I'll have my kids with me today for a trick-or-treat at my work. Darn. Guess I'll get back to it on the drive in tomorrow.

Treasure of Tarmin for me. I loved it as a kid and just happen to be listening to Treasure of Tarmin episode of the Intellivisionaries podcast (since I started listening to the podcast about a month ago).

No French label sticker on the back. So it’s likely that the original owner of the one I found did that themselves with the “spare” French label sticker.

I recently joined the Facebook group, Intellivision Retro Game buy and sell. After making my first purchase today, I scrolled through the history of posts and came across this post from Feb 2018: It's blurry, but that box at the top is definitely the same white Carnival box that I found. This seller is in Saskatchewan, Canada. So, it appears as though this was some kind of limited, but real release of Carnival in Canada. I didn't have the guts to message the guy and ask if he ever sold this lot from 1.5 years ago....

Ah, I misunderstood. I shall PM you about that II Star Strike! Cheers!

Wow that was fast! ? I've been doing a full audit of my Intellivision collection since I recently learned so much about variants. Just today I discovered that I have a Mattel cart in my Intellivision Inc. box of Star Strike! So I could've used that Intellivision Inc. Star Strike cart. Oh well, I'm sure another one will come up.

I was sorting through my duplicates/trade pile and noticed that the US "Plays like the real arcade game" Donkey Kong has that some hang tab format as my mystery Carnival. So, as Lathe26 suggested, the mystery Carnival box appears to be a regular Coleco box, with no printing. This does make me think that this was made by Coleco and not some flunky at the Bay department store. . Black-Tiger's comment that he had one of these but recently sold it is especially interesting since apparently he is in Vancouver too. I suppose it's possible that they are the same copy, but the guy I bought mine from said that the lot had been sitting in the family garage for 30 years. Hope nobody minds me adding to this thread as I learn more.

I saw your original comment and I will say that the variants do make Intellvision collecting interesting. Originally I was gong for the 125 and when I bought a big lot and discovered the difference between Mattel and Intellivision Inc. games. So they were added to the list. I knew about the Canadian versions so I added those. It's a slippery slope. I do have some of the major box variants (Red Action Network Space Armada and Space Battle, Blue Action Network Space Armada, different Demon Attack cover) but then I see trayless vs. plastic tray, book-style vs. bottom flap, carts from USA vs. Hong Kong, Intellivision Inc. stickers over Mattel labels on carts etc. And that's not even getting to UK or Brazil versions! The other part that is great about Intellivision collecting is that, unless you have a very advanced collection, there is always an opportunity to upgrade a box, a cart, a manual, an overlay. Though knowlege of the variants hurts here. At the start if I had duplicates, I'd just make the best version possible with the assets from each one. Now I'm all, "Well, I can't put a Hong Kong cart in a box that originally had the USA cart so I guess I'll keep both." This is how it starts, isn't it?

I went hard on Wii games after the Wii U came out and there were a ton at every EB Games, usually for quite cheap. That's how I got most of my collection. I'm a sucker for arcade compilations so the Data East collection is one of the very few I ordered online. I don't have many dupes of Wii but if you send me your want list I can be a spare set of eyes out there for you.

Hi Jason I have built lists of games I want to play for ALL consoles and have been chipping away (and adding to!) the list for 20 years. For Wii I had defined about 160 games that I wanted to own and I had 145 of those. There were a few expensive ones left (Shiren the Wanderer!) but about half were pretty common. The thing is, I was bored by Wii collecting because I was down to the final few so the thrill of regularly finding games was gone. So, a few weeks ago, I started watching videos and reading reviews and I added about 60 more games to my list. I was almost done but now it's much more fun hunting and occasionally finding ones I want. As for Intellivision it is the ONLY one that I am going for a complete set. Worse than that, I decided to get the complete 125, plus all the Intellivision Inc. versions plus all of the Canadian releases. All told that's about 229 games and I have 147 of them (111 of the main 125 set, 13 of 49 Intellivision Inc. and 23 of 55 Canadian versions). I am trying to stay away from collecting all the variants even if I do own many already. I guess I have a fondness for the Intellivision because it was my first console. It led to a life-long love of video games and is probably why I have worked in video game development for nearly 20 years.

So. I decided I should put it into a protective sleeve since I live in a house with two kids and a cat. When I did that I noticed another price sticker on the top flap. Why would they put a price sticker on the part that tucks into the box? Then I realized that it wasn't designed to be tucked-in, but folded out as a hang-tab! Still a strange and awkward place to put a price sticker: Unfortunately the (original?) price sticker is nearly impossible to read. It has a different product code. PARTS of the price are visible at the bottom: >>$______ I need those CSI people to ENHANCE! I checked out my (beaten-up) Canadian Carnival to compare the top flaps and they are different. Has anyone seen an intellivision box with this kind of hang-tab? Otherwise, the two boxes are the same size (based on a quick check, not a measurement).

Thanks cmart. Everyone in the community has been great and once I sort through this latest lot I'll compile my wanted list and post it in the appropriate thread.

Excellent point. The Mattel sleeves were part of a rush to retail when they were full price. If it was the same situation here, it would have been a full price and highly unlikely to have been in inventory when the prices came down during the crash. The only other evidence is that 34 of the 35 games in this lot are Mattel. Only one is Intellivision Inc. So they appear to have bought all of their games before the Intellivision Inc games started hitting the shelves (1984?). Like cmart says, we might need to wait for more people to sell their Dad's collection and another example surfaces. Ha, I guess I COULD reach out to the seller and see if his Dad remembers how this particular game came into his possession. I mean, I guess he'd say "We bought it at The Bay" - but he might know when he bought it.

Hi cmart604! Although we have never met, your legend has preceded you. At one of my first VRGE I was talking to someone about Intellivision and they mentioned that they "know a guy" in the area who has the most crazy collection ever. And I might have just now re-joined AtariAge, I have lurked and seen many of your posts over the years. Also, 2 years ago I bought a lot off Craigslist from Bradd in Ladner, and I believe he obtained many of them from you. These make up many of my "hard-to-find" inty games (like Congo Bongo, Diner) and I suspect they were your doubles/triples etc. Of course, I could be totally wrong on that too. :-) We can definitely talk at some point about some of the holes in my collection. There are more holes than fills in my Intellivision Inc and Canada subsets! I'm surprised that nobody seems to have seen this type of box before. It seems a little too good to be some one-off by some Bay employee but you'd think that anything made in significant quantities would have been seen before now. On the other hand I can imagine that this type of box might be much more likely to be thrown away since it's so plain.

Hi Lathe26. I have gone to VRGE every year...until this year. The week before (Father's Day) my wife bought me a Nintendo Switch with Zelda and then I bought Mario Maker 2. That used up the money that I would normally set aside to blow at the expo so I stayed home this time. Haha, and then I spent $200 today on this Intellivision lot. To be fair, last year there wasn't much Intellivision at VRGE so I guess it worked out in the end.

Hi All - I just bought a lot of 35 Intellivision games. The lot had 8 Canadian versions I needed, but I was intrigued by a blurry image of a Carnival game in a white box. I spent yesterday scouring the internet (browsing the amazing collections of the 125/124 collectors) to find something similar, but I did not. Here are some pics of the box: Before I got the lot, I assumed that someone had just found a box lying around. But upon closer inspection the box is definitely made to hold a video game cartridge and a manual. The seller says it is his Dad's collection that the family played long ago. While I am not an expert, I have every reason to believe this is the case and the box is from the early 1980's. The box has accurate price stickers from The Bay (Canadian department store where you could pick up lots of cheap games after The Crash). The white Carnival sticker is smoothly pasted on the box; it's not like a photocopy and some school glue. The sticker on the other side is obviously the French cartridge label sticker. I know some games back in the day shipped a separate French cartridge sticker that you could put over the English one if you wanted, but not sure if they did that for Carnival. To me, this looks like this box was made this way, either by Coleco or by The Bay. So, I guess I am just interested to learn more about this item. I know that when the Mattel games first went to Canada they made the sleeves with the French text (I have a Horse Racing one) as a quick solution before they had French boxes manufactured. This feels the same to me. They don't have the fully printed French box so they slap a couple stickers on a plain box, put the English cart and French manual in there and sell it. The only thing even remotely close that I found was some Atari 2600 boxes that were from a box set ("Pak") where the outer box had the art and the inner boxes were mostly plain white. Me: This is my first post on AA (well...I had an account like 15 years ago but I forgot the user name, let alone the password). I collect all kinds of video games, but I mostly focus on Intellivision and Wii. The Intellivision was my first console when I found it under the Christmas tree (1982?). I have 115 of the 125 original Intellivision games and made the poor decision to try and complete not only the 125 with Mattel boxes but also the Intellivision Inc. games AND all of the Canadian releases (I'm in Vancouver). Thanks for any insight!