Vulture Attack / Space Monster Double Label

[Deemar]

What did I buy here? Online sources show me these as being 2 separate games but the shop owner wasn't sure if it was a relabelled PAL version. What exactly did I buy and why is there a second label? Do I need to actually play the game to figure out which one it is?

 

 

Edited October 25, 2020 by Deemar

[Rom Hunter]

18 hours ago, Deemar said:

What did I buy here? Online sources show me these as being 2 separate games but the shop owner wasn't sure if it was a relabelled PAL version. What exactly did I buy and why is there a second label? Do I need to actually play the game to figure out which one it is?

 

 

You bought a relabeled PAL Funvision T-handle.

 

[Deemar]

4 hours ago, Rom Hunter said:

You bought a relabeled PAL Funvision T-handle.

 

Thanks but how do you know? I'm really lost here so I'm wondering:

1. Is it Space Monster?
2. Is it Vulture Attack?
3. Is it K-Tel or is it Funvision?
4. Is it PAL or NTSC?
5. Why are there 2 separate game labels? Were each of these their own game at some point?
6. Is it just old stock or old labels?

I also have a Condor Attack (Ultravision) and a Spider Maze (K-Tel), how do I find out if those are something other than what's on the label?

[Rom Hunter]

16 hours ago, Deemar said:

Thanks but how do you know? I'm really lost here so I'm wondering:

1. Is it Space Monster?
2. Is it Vulture Attack?
3. Is it K-Tel or is it Funvision?
4. Is it PAL or NTSC?
5. Why are there 2 separate game labels? Were each of these their own game at some point?
6. Is it just old stock or old labels?

I also have a Condor Attack (Ultravision) and a Spider Maze (K-Tel), how do I find out if those are something other than what's on the label?

Most of your questions I already answered. It was released by Funvision in PAL format as Space Monster and then relabeled by K-tel Vision (which was most probably the same Taiwanese company) as Vulture Attack. The game is the same.

 

Check out the titles on Atarimania or Atariboxed to see more cases like this.

 

[Deemar]

4 hours ago, Rom Hunter said:

Most of your questions I already answered. It was released by Funvision in PAL format as Space Monster and then relabeled by K-tel Vision (which was most probably the same Taiwanese company) as Vulture Attack. The game is the same.

 

Check out the titles on Atarimania or Atariboxed to see more cases like this.

 

I'm more curious if this is how all Vulture Attacks came. Is there a NTSC version? Are they all relabelled from Space Monster? Did K-Tel release games that weren't rebranded from Funvision?

[Rom Hunter]

21 hours ago, Deemar said:

I'm more curious if this is how all Vulture Attacks came. Is there a NTSC version? Are they all relabelled from Space Monster? Did K-Tel release games that weren't rebranded from Funvision?

The NTSC version of Vulture Attack sometimes had a Condor Attack label from Utravision underneath:
http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-vulture-attack_12099.html

AFAIK K-Tel Vision did not release any non Funvision games, but distributed them overseas.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Rom Hunter

[Deemar]

10 hours ago, Rom Hunter said:

The NTSC version of Vulture Attack sometimes had a Condor Attack label from Utravision underneath:
http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-vulture-attack_12099.html

AFAIK K-Tel Vision did not release any non Funvision games, but distributed them overseas.

Interesting.I got this cartridge packaged like this and I also got a Condor Attack from the seller at the same time. Is it possible this second label came off the Condor Attack and not actually the Space Monster? How would I find that out? If I play both, will it determine which games I have here? Do I have Space Monkey and Vulture Attack or do I have Condor Attack and Vulture Attack?

 

[Rom Hunter]

8 hours ago, Deemar said:

Interesting.I got this cartridge packaged like this and I also got a Condor Attack from the seller at the same time. Is it possible this second label came off the Condor Attack and not actually the Space Monster? How would I find that out? If I play both, will it determine which games I have here? Do I have Space Monkey and Vulture Attack or do I have Condor Attack and Vulture Attack?

 

You could look at the glue residue to see where to top label belonged.

I notice the damaged sides on the Ultravision label, so perhaps the top label belonged there.

Both cases are possible.

I'm pretty sure both games play and look the same, except for their format (in most cases NTSC games play a bit faster).

Do you have a way to test them?

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by Rom Hunter

[Deemar]

9 hours ago, Rom Hunter said:

You could look at the glue residue to see where to top label belonged.

I notice the damaged sides on the Ultravision label, so perhaps the top label belonged there.

Both cases are possible.

I'm pretty sure both games play and look the same, except for their format (in most cases NTSC games play a bit faster).

Do you have a way to test them?

 

I looked at the glue side of Vulture Attack and it's an even glue pattern, there isn't anything telling me where it came off. I expected to see parts of the Condor Attack label there but no, it's totally an even pattern of dried glue.

I have multiple Ataris, I play regularly. I can test anything if I know what I'm looking for. I'm really curious what I have here because I'm a variant collector so I want to know which other variants I need to get and which I already have.

[vintagegamecrazy]

Time to resurrect this thread with more questions. I do own a copy of condor attack. Really amazing how this was once considered and almost obtainable holy Grail 20 years ago and is now considerably more common. What is the origin of these t-handle cartridges? Was ultravision the developer of condor attack? This style of cartridge is turning up all over the place now k tel vision in Canada funvision wherever and also with Taiwanese labels as well as pal labels. Was ultravision just a pirate company in the US and did they create karate? Any idea and can anybody make any sense out of all of this? Really starting to get more confusing the further I go down the rabbit hole.

[Ballblaɀer]

On 2/11/2022 at 2:39 PM, vintagegamecrazy said:

Time to resurrect this thread with more questions. I do own a copy of condor attack. Really amazing how this was once considered and almost obtainable holy Grail 20 years ago and is now considerably more common. What is the origin of these t-handle cartridges? Was ultravision the developer of condor attack? This style of cartridge is turning up all over the place now k tel vision in Canada funvision wherever and also with Taiwanese labels as well as pal labels. Was ultravision just a pirate company in the US and did they create karate? Any idea and can anybody make any sense out of all of this? Really starting to get more confusing the further I go down the rabbit hole.

You are very right to call it a rabbit hole.

 

The T-handle cartridges made in this form factor were all manufactured for Funvision, the brand name of 徽和企業股份有限公司 (Huihe Enterprise Co., Ltd.) based in Taipei. This is the same company referred to in some other places as "Fund International Co., Ltd.". Headquartered in Taiwan, they seem to have contracted with factories in Hong Kong and mainland China to manufacture the cartridges for international sale. They produced games for both NTSC and PAL territories.

 

Ultravision, Inc. was an importer based in the Miami Free Zone (an FTZ) that, based on evidence I've gathered, seems to have been working directly with Funvision, if not actually acting as their USA sales arm. Ultravision-branded cartridges have also turned up in Taiwan, leading me to believe that Huihe Enterprise was calling the shots for the Ultravision company/brand.

 

K-Tel International, Inc. registered the K-Tel Vision trademark in Canada, and similarly imported games from Funvision. Here's a link to images of the June 25, 1983 Financial Post (Canada) that features an article which states that there was a test-marketing in Winnipeg (where K-Tel was headquartered) the prior Christmas of "a small lot" of video games from Hong Kong. This was almost certainly Funvision's Condor Attack and Inca Gold, renamed Vulture Attack and Spider Maze, respectively.

 

Condor Attack's original name seems to have been 太空大戰 (Space War), which you may have seen printed on one of the labels. Possibly the title was changed to Condor Attack when it was realized that using Space War as the title could cause problems/conflicts given the existing, well-known IPs of Space Wars (Cinematronics) and Space War (Atari). This bit is conjecture; I don't know for certain why the name was changed.

 

The development/programming of the Funvision/Ultravision/K-Tel Vision branded games is, for the moment, still a mystery. Karate's ROM has a partial Bit Corporation (also Taiwan-based) logo inside it; this is currently our best clue that the programming was not done by Huihe Enterprise themselves. My personal take on this is that the Funvision games may have been early Bit Corporation efforts that were unwanted/unused due to their, well, generally poor quality. So perhaps there was some type of partnership or licensing deal between the companies in Taiwan, but this is nothing more than a theory, at least for now.

 

There's some more that I need to write up about this, but until I get around to it, this should at least answer the questions posed here!

[vintagegamecrazy]

Thank you for the awesome response. It clears up a lot of questions, you are really awesome for writing that and I look forward to hearing anything else you can share.

[coleconut]

I got a  T-handle with no label in a lot of games I just bought and in doing some research as to what this game was, I found this thread which has a lot of good info.

One thing I didnt see mentioned in this thread but was obvious to me was that one difference between NTSC K-Tel Vulture Attack and PAL Funvision Space Monster is that the latter will have "Funvision" on the screen on the bottom/left whereas the NTSC version doesn't.