RSS Bot Posted February 4, 2019 Share Posted February 4, 2019 I’ve been trying to rationalize to myself where the rabbit hole that is Atari collecting begins and ends. Of course it begins with Atari themselves, along with the bigger publishers like Activision, Parker Brothers, and Imagic. Here let’s try something… I won’t be able to include all the publishers, but I can try to paint a vague picture of what I mean. Level One: Everybody knows ‘em. These companies were the most likely to be stocked in all the major electronics retailers. Atari Activision Parker Brothers Imagic Coleco Level Two: Coulda missed ‘em. These were from slightly smaller publishers, and taking into account geographical differences I’m sure people might not have seen these in even small quantities. U.S. Games/Vidtec 20th Century Fox Apollo M-Network Data Age CBS Level Three: Small publisher. These guys usually had a small library of games that never gained any real notoriety; they were usually affected strongly by geography, now we’re getting into the realm of rarity. Mystique Sega Spectravision Konami Tigervision Xonox Mythicon Telesys Level Four: Did they even exist? These companies had very limited distribution of their games, making them on the pricier side. Playaround Commavid Avalon Hill Zimag Starpath/Arcadia(?) Amiga Milton Bradley Level Five: After the fact. These guys came along after the 2600’s heyday and decided to spice the already sizeable library up, and while they may be well known today it is still rather odd that these games even exist at all. Froggo Absolute Epyx Telegames Level Six: Mail order only and one-offs. These guys account for most of the extremely rare games seen on the system, usually releasing one or two games before vanishing entirely. Men-A-Vision Simage Answer Software American Videogame Universal Gamex Bomb (Special exception) DSD/Camelot Exus K-Tel Vision Selchow & Righter Sparrow Sunrise Software TNT Games Ultravision Venturevision Wizard Video Level Seven: The American bootleggers. These were usually companies that would release pirated games under different names, they had very limited distribution but in some cases were the only way to play certain titles on American systems. Panda Zellers Puzzy Level Eight: Hardware. These guys made utilities for the 2600, not games. Videosoft Vidco Romox Personal Games Xante Level Nine: Europe and Australia. Despite there being very little interest in the greater European market for home videogame consoles, due to the booming micro computer industry, there were still companies shelling games out for the 2600, usually they were bootlegs but many were original games. Ariola Bit Corporation Carrere Video Datatech Dimax Dynamics Funvision Gakken Gameworld Goliath HES Homevision Hotshot Hi-Score John Sands ITT Family Games Puzzy (Again) Quelle Rainbow Vision Salu Sancho Suntek Supervision Technovision Video Gems Level Ten: South America. This place was an absolute free-for-all of publishers releasing everything they could get their hands on, it didn’t matter where it came from or if somebody else had already published it they’d release it. Despite all the odd publishers though, it seems South America has the most complete, and exotic, library of 2600 games since they have several games that were never released in North America in the NTSC format. SA also has the largest amount of publishers. Action Games Apple Vision Argevision Arte Vision Atari Mania Auto Game Canal 3 CCE Conector Cosmovision Cromax Dactar Datasoft Datavision Digimax Digitel Digivision Dinamivision Dismac Dynacom Dynatronic Engesoft Eram Fotomania Future Galaxi Game Action Genus Gran Match Imagic International Games Intellivision J.F. Jo Joystick JVP Maxgames Mega Games Microsoft (HAH!) Momo Play Time Play Video Polygram Polyvox Pop Prom Rentacom Robby Shock Vision Star Game Super 2600 Super Game Supervision Tiger Vision Tron Uloc VGS Video Game Video Grow Video Jeugo Videomagia Videomania Videospot Vidgame Vortex Games Wide Vision Zgames Zirok There are probably still a bunch more that we haven’t found yet. Level Eleven: Rock Bottom. We have no idea who made these games, where they come from, or where they were ever actually sold. These games are an enigma, and were likely never sold through actual retailers and are more likely the remnants of an Atari 'Black Market'. The most well known of these are the Taiwan Cooper games which are usually pirated games from American publishers but are sometimes NTSC ports of the elusive Bit Corporation’s games, they even did Colecovision games. Taiwan Cooper Beagle Brothers V Case games Pet Boat The Unknown Universal Prototype (It needs to be included) Videogame SP The ‘2600 Compatible’ Series (Different from the Zellers games) I don’t really know what the point of this is… I guess I really just needed to try and sort everything out. If you feel that a publisher should be moved to a different level, or if I missed a publisher (as I probably have) tell me in the comments. I have purposefully excluded homebrews and self published titles since that's a whole different box of rocks to dig into. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/729/entry-15479-down-the-2600-rabbit-hole/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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