2600 box styles.artwork mistakes in atari catalogs.check it!

CincYnoTi · February 11, 2003

not sure what is the best forum for this topic, this or rarity guide. but since it really doesn't have anything to do with rarity, i put it here.

i've been trying to figure out among all the different atari 2600 box styles released before the silver boxes, what style came first, second,... i've been looking at the atari catalogs on atariage, trying to get some clues and found some interesting oddities...mostly what look like pictures of boxes that were never released with that box artwork. here is what i found:

http://www.atariage.com/catalog_page.html?...7&currentPage=2

night driver and golf, different artwork. not sure if that was supposed to look like jack nicklaus or not.

http://www.atariage.com/catalog_page.html?...9&currentPage=2

asteroids...64 games...oops, same mistake sears made. all atari boxes i've seen all have 66 games on the front.

check out the warlords artwork...cool. 28 games...too bad we only ended up getting 23 games with the released game.

http://www.atariage.com/catalog_page.html?...0&currentPage=2

atari updated the warlords artwork and games to 23. asteroids still shows 64 game variations.

http://www.atariage.com/catalog_page.html?...1&currentPage=2

finally got 66 games correct on asteroids.

what's up with pele's soccer? they changed the name from championship soccer, but couldn't figure out how many games there were?

maze craze is the box with 256 games on front. i have a box that matches that. they later changed it to 16 games, which is the box style shown in the atariage guide.

http://www.atariage.com/catalog_page.html?...2&currentPage=1

picture of about 40 games. they got 66 asteroids correct. they even got the color for pele's soccer and text right. 16 games for maze craze. it's kind of a blurry picture, so i'm not sure if everything else is right. but look at the very next page in that catalog:

http://www.atariage.com/catalog_page.html?...2&currentPage=2

there's that box with 64 games asteroids again, dog-gone it!

"Atari has games to please every member of your family." Was Atari programming Chase the Chuckwagon to please the canine members of the family, or maybe they were thinking about Snoopy and the Red Baron.

same catalog shows upcoming release dates for future games:

http://www.atariage.com/catalog_page.html?...2&currentPage=5

september star raiders

september baseball (realsports)

september volleyball (realsports)

october football (realsports)

october adventure I (swordquest earthworld)

november adventure II (fireworld)

november frog pond

december combat (combat II?)

looks like star raiders was the last game that was originally released in the black label format, before atari switched to the silver label format with realsports baseball.