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Boxed 2600 game inners/cart holders


MadGear

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I'm a retro collector from the UK and brand new to the forums. I casually collected loose 2600 carts a number of years ago but recently felt the urge to play some Atari again and have begun collecting CIB 2600 games. I'm trying to get games which are as complete as possible, and have a question I'm hoping some of the more experienced collectors could help with as I currently only have a handful of games myself.

 

I've noticed that boxes for games vary quite a bit not only between various revisions/releases of games Atari themselves put out, but also third party titles. For the most part, the games I've bought so far have all had some kind of extra flap or ledge of cardboard inside the box to hold the cart in place. However, I've just picked up two games (both PAL) - Keystone Kapers (Salu distributed version) and Smurf - which have no kind of support or holder for the cart inside the box so it's essentially just loose inside with the manual. Both games are in great condition but I'm trying to establish whethher these are truly "complete" or if there's likely some kind of separate inner tray that's missing which would have originally been in there? There's certainly no damage to the inside of either box which indicates a flap that's torn off or anything like that. Were games ever released with no cart support/holder inside?

 

Apologies for the long-winded question!

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Okay, so nobody got back on this, but I've now answered my own question if anyone else was interested in the answer: I've recently picked up NOS unopened copies of Double Dragon (Activision title of the same vintage as the version of Keystone Kapers I mentioned) and another Smurfs, both of which are completely without any kind of cart holder or flap inside the box.

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I don't know much but the few games I know about that were sold in the US had cardboard pockets glued to the inside box to hold the cart with the exception of Rescue Terra I from Venturevision which didn't have a glued pocket. Instead it had a single loose flat piece of cardboard cut so the cart was held in place. It was much cheaper to produce. I don't know if any other companies used a similar scheme. It would be easy for the loose insert to get lost. Shipping a cart that wasn't secured somehow would have been risky because banging around in there could damage the package. But I sure don't know about the specific games you mentioned.

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Thanks mate. Yeah most of the games I own so far have the cardboard flaps inside. As I mentioned these are PAL titles so not sure if the same rings true for games released in the US, but having picked up these two brand new copies I can confirm at least two companies were releasing games with the cart and manual just loose in the box in Europe.

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Thanks mate. Yeah most of the games I own so far have the cardboard flaps inside. As I mentioned these are PAL titles so not sure if the same rings true for games released in the US, but having picked up these two brand new copies I can confirm at least two companies were releasing games with the cart and manual just loose in the box in Europe.

Yes

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I wonder if that's a good confirmation however. How many Rescue Terra I boxes still have the insert? I assume many people threw out that part of the packaging because it was a pain to put the cart back into the insert. Don't know.

 

Well, in this instance the two I picked up should be the perfect confirmation that *some* games were released with no insert at all as they're new old stock and I was literally the first person ever to open them so there was no chance for any insert to have been lost. Of course what it doesn't prove is that certain titles never have an insert, but it does prove that in Europe at least some Activision and CBS distributed titles at the very least were released without one. Also I'm yet to see an Activision game with a separate tray inside - always seems to be the glued-in flap which would be much more obviously removed if it was missing

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