Crossfire Different Cart Shells

[Jason_Atari]

I picked up another copy of Crossfire and noticed the cart shell was totally different to the one i already had. The 2 piece labels are the same but as you can see in the pictures they are different in a few ways. One of them is taller, has ridges below the label, grips on the side, has left and an arrow as part of the cart on the top and has right angled edges instead of rounded edges. Just thought i would post this as i thought it was weird ?

 

 

[+MrFish]

There's this Crossfire too.

 

 

[Jason_Atari]

48 minutes ago, MrFish said:

There's this Crossfire too.

 

 

More professional label, must have been a later release as your one is dated 1982, mine are 1981.

 

[+MrFish]

8 hours ago, Jason_Atari said:

More professional label, must have been a later release as your one is dated 1982, mine are 1981.

Yeah, similar to this Jawbreaker (II) cart.

 

 

[+Psionic]

The market for Atari and Commodore computer cartridges was much smaller than the VCS and they were produced in much smaller runs, often at different facilities (sometimes in different countries).  Several manufacturers had different cartridge variations, both in terms of the cases and labels that were used.  Sierra had at least three different generations of labels - tan with brown text, foil in various colors, and white with blue text.

 

My copy of Crossfire for the Atari is the original release with the two-piece tan label on the ridged case, as shown above on the right.  The one shown above on the left is just a second generation cartridge shell with a first generation label.  Obviously they had leftovers and just wanted to use them up.  They did anything they could to minimize costs...and rightly so.  Like many others, Sierra got soaked when the market for cartridges imploded in 1983-84.