The Summer of 1992 Atari Draft

[+cvga]

I've had my original Atari from the time I received for Christmas (in either 1980 or 1981) but it didn't see as much action once I moved on to the Commodore 64 and stayed behind with my parents when I went off to college in 1987. I graduated and started working full-time in 1991. In the Summer of 1992 a friend of mine at work showed me a classified ad where someone was trying to sell 220 Atari carts for sale for $200. We each chipped in $100 and purchased the lot. There were tons of doubles (like 13 Combats, 8 Pacman, 7 Asteroids, 6 Space Invaders, etc) and a bunch of carts that one of us already owned so there were only 40 or so unique carts in the lot that neither of us had.

 

We held a draft to split up those remaining carts. We didn't know rarity or prices at the time so the draft is based primarily on what we wanted after playing with the carts for a couple of hours (or what we already knew about the games). I was cleaning some things out this weekend and found the list I made of our draft. I thought you might be interested.

 

My friend chose first and picked GORF. I followed his pick with Phoenix. You can see there rest of the draft (at least the first 20 rounds) in the picture below.

 

 

Funny how memories fade over time. I thought he was upset with me for choosing GORF but now that I see the list, it was really Phoenix that he wanted but he thought it would last longer in the draft because I didn't spend any time playing it (I didn't need to because I had it as a kid and it was one of my favorite games). We both still work at the same place. I'll have to take the draft sheet in and show him. Good times.

[Miss 2600]

That was a cool idea.

[+jeremiahjt]

Atlantis and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back were late round steals. Eggomania and RealSports Football were busts.

[+cvga]

Atlantis and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back were late round steals. Eggomania and RealSports Football were busts.

I agree. Those weren't the best 7th and 8th round picks.

 

It's bugging me that I can't remember what the numbers in parenthesis represented.

[EdwardK]

I'm surprised Venture got picked as late as it did. Always loved that game. Although i will admit, the Colecovision port is better.

[+cvga]

I'm surprised Venture got picked as late as it did. Always loved that game. Although i will admit, the Colecovision port is better.

Agreed. It would be interesting if we redrafted today. I'm sure lots of the picks would be very different. I love Kaboom now but wasn't even interested in it back then!

[EdwardK]

Definitely. Thinking about it, there were several on that list that I like much better now than I did back then. Atlantis being a major one of those, probably because I'm much better with leading targets now. Journey Escape was my favorite game to get friends who had one too many beers to play. Watching them try to figure out what the hell was going on there was priceless, and them sometimes getting Don't Stop Believing stuck in their head later and not realizing why was the icing on the cake.