How many of you have the "Full Set"

[Silver Back]

The Atari 7800 is the only system I ever considered getting the full set for and I accomplished it late last year. I like small curated collections more so than just grabbing anything and everything.  (Nothing wrong with grabbing everything you can BTW, I used to do that many years ago but after having kids and moving several times, eh no thanks)  That being said I've had a ton of nostalgia for the 7800 most of my adult life and I went for it. I'm glad I did because my interest and love for the console continues to grow.

 

So my question is, how many of you have the complete collection?  Did you go for boxed or loose?  Do you collect full sets for every console you can?  How do you decide which consoles to go complete for?  How did you go about getting your collection?  Was it back in the day when things were being clearanced, or via conventions and game stores?  Or maybe you went all EBay.

 

I guess I'm curious because getting the full boxed retail set of 7800 is not really impressive I suppose, especially compared to NES, 2600 (yikes) or really most other retro consoles.  I imagine there has to be quite a few of us out there.  But then again the 7800 still gets overlooked and ignored by a lot of people. It rarely gets brought up when people talk about the NES and Master System era of games. And that always breaks my heart.  So maybe there are only a select few of us. 

 

Well I say 7800 Super Fans Unite!  Hold your Prolines high!  After all "it's the choice of the pros", and "most games are under $20!"

 

 

 

[Cousin Vinnie]

I have the complete set, all but Tank Command in a box. I have the HES box version of Title Match, so that probably doesnt count either. Most are opened. The Title Match HES is the only HES game I have.

 

I have about 130 different 7800 games. I have the diagnostic Test cart, the Monitor cart, and the High Score Cart. All major released homebrews, and a bunch of weird ones and hacks that never saw a large release. I have the red end ballblazer and the black text Realsports, too.

 

I'm missing:

Several Pac Man games from around 2005

A few of those multicarts from that time

Journey of the Snail 1 & 2

Super Cobra

The new Atari Age Portland homebrews

Probably 8 or 9 from the FrankODragon collection.

 

Eh, whaddyagonnado. I also sold Ken Siders Q*bert that he gave me to review the game... it had Q*bert artwork and a Q*bert title screen. That was incredibly stupid. I have no idea why I sold that thing. Greed I guess.
 

To answer your questions, I only collect for the 7800, open boxes dont bother me, and I got most of my stuff from ebay b/c of a fire. Back in the day I got most of my best stuff from that incredible Big Lots sale people talk about still
 

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Cousin Vinnie

[CommodoreCEO]

I have the full original release PAL set as of last week when I finally got the Salu release of Baseball... That game took me years to find!

 

All of my 7800 PAL games are boxed, with the exception of the 32-in-1 game which was only a pack-in loose cartridge in Australia.

 

I haven't brought myself to go for the last few NTSC only games yet, but it would be easy enough.

[+GoldenWheels]

My loosie collection has everything (most re-labelled with the silver foil labels).

 

I have a boxed collection with almost all the commons and some rarer ones (Water Ski, Super Skateboardin') but is also missing some bigs (Tank Command, Mean 18). Sold off my few Salus as I wanted that dirty PAL garbage out of my house (just kidding, I decided in my mind they didn't "count")

 

I'm at this weird point where I don't know whether to give up on the US collection or re-double my efforts. I can get most of them....but the odds of ever getting a sealed Tank Command....makes me think even going further is kind of pointless.

 

Right now I really concentrate on AA store games, gfx hacks, homebrews, and whatever Bob D. releases.

 

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I don't have a full set collection for any systems and I'm not likely to ever do so. Partly because of the cost needed for the more difficult to find games and because of the lack of space. Now if I were to get rid of parts of my collection and then only focus on a select few systems, then I'm sure I could have a full set on one or more. But it becomes tricky when you include the 'brews' because it seems that most collectors with full sets, don't seem to be that active in purchasing/playing home brew games. Likewise, they don't seem to regard those releases as being true official releases and therefore, don't seem to consider them as part of a complete set. 

 

However, if I were to try and consider/include home brew releases as part of the sets, then I would be hosed from the get go as there are many home brew releases for systems that just didn't interest me at the time to want to play much of that I never purchased. As a result, many of them aren't able to be bought as they originally were released making it even that more difficult for someone to have a full set if you include home brew releases in that mix.

 

And for me personally, I like having CIB sure, but reality is that space is always a factor and so most of my personal collection is loose cart with manuals only. I do have quite a few CIB games, but they come about as I happen to find them for a good price and if I think I can find a place to shoehorn it into the collection somewhere.

 

[Silver Back]

A lot of good points. People have different definitions of complete and what counts towards complete sets. My version of complete was the NTSC retail releases, I never went for any PAL exclusives or variants.

 

I'm not sure how you would ever attempt to obtain all the homebrews and hacks.  I got everything from the AtariAge store that's currently available minus Serpentine. I've got most stuff from other websites and a few hacks but I continue to find limited run stuff from ages ago that I'll never find.  I think that's why most people don't count homebrew and hacks. 

 

I was one of those collectors who refused to acknowledge homebrew for a long time. I was ignorant to it up until a few years ago.  I wish I had seen the light sooner but what can you do. I accept the fact that I'll never have everything that was put into cart but I still keep an eye out. 

 

Oh I also started counting red box and late release 2600 stuff (from the Tramiel era essentially) as things I wanted to include in my collection. They were games that you found and we're available in the same time frame.  I'm avoiding games that were also on the 7800 so again, my definition of complete is skewed and could be considered wrong. But collecting is a personal thing and we all do it to satisfy our own wants and that's all that matters. 

[+slx]

The closest I am to complete is for the Lynx with the Jaguar as runner-up but most of it unboxed. I don‘t aspire to achieve a complete collection, what I have is based on what is reportedly nice to play plus games with interesting reviews plus a few cheap finds. For the 7800 it‘s a mere 23 carts including some AA homebrews and a Concerto. For further games I am probably going to use the Concerto unless I find them accidentally. 
 

I plan to trade „hunting time“ for more playtime. 
 

 

[Silver Back]

39 minutes ago, slx said:

The closest I am to complete is for the Lynx with the Jaguar as runner-up but most of it unboxed. I don‘t aspire to achieve a complete collection, what I have is based on what is reportedly nice to play plus games with interesting reviews plus a few cheap finds. For the 7800 it‘s a mere 23 carts including some AA homebrews and a Concerto. For further games I am probably going to use the Concerto unless I find them accidentally. 
 

I plan to trade „hunting time“ for more playtime. 
 

 

Do you feel that as you get closer to completing the Lynx library the more you want to complete it or am I the only one who would get that type OCD going?

 

So far there's 3 of us anybody else?

Edited November 6, 2022 by Silver Back
Grammar

[+slx]

4 hours ago, Silver Back said:

Do you feel that as you get closer to completing the Lynx library the more you want to complete it or am I the only one who would get that type OCD going?

Not really. If there was just 1-2 games left I‘d be tempted but I guess I‘m much too far away for that. Maybe I lack true collector genes. I have a collection of Atari 8-bit computers that I consider complete (at least one of every main hardware type, excluding different badges and PAL/NTSC variants) but having it is less joy than it felt it might be while gathering it. I can‘t display it at home for lack of space and it would be quite an effort to display it somewhere else, even more so with PSUs, peripherals, etc. I am torn between chiding myself for not passing/selling it on to people who might actually get some hands-on enjoyment and not wanting to give it away without ever having set it up as a collection… (I have an incomplete HP calculator collection as well with similar feelings - except them needing less space.) 

 

Take the course that maximizes your enjoyment. No need to tick boxes defined by other people. With many other collectibles there‘s no „complete“ either, just increasing levels of rare/hard to find. There‘s always a homebrew/hack/printing error/etc. between your OCD and „completeness“

[Silver Back]

2 hours ago, slx said:

Take the course that maximizes your enjoyment. No need to tick boxes defined by other people. With many other collectibles there‘s no „complete“ either, just increasing levels of rare/hard to find. There‘s always a homebrew/hack/printing error/etc. between your OCD and „completeness“

Beautifully said

[sirlynxalot]

I don't have a full set and never will. There's always a price versus enjoyment factor for me, and since I only started to rebuy things for the second time now in 2022, prices are much too high for me to buy games as cib, or to feel like the prices for some of the rare games are worth it.  

 

For me, 7800 and 2600 games are games that I tend to only play for 5 or 10 minutes before flipping to the next one. This isn't really because I'm old and jaded, that's how I played this stuff when I was a kid, it's just down to the fact that many of the games are very simple and will not keep me interested for an hour or more at a time. As a result it's really hard for me to justify spending greater than 20 or 30 dollars for a single cartridge. And that is why my 7800 set is mostly common games and probably won't grow much larger now that I've bought the cheaper ones in the set.

[Mayhem]

Before the sell off last year I had the following (all CIB):

- Full silver box Atari PAL set

- All the NTSC exclusives including the standalone Asteroids

- All the third party releases in NTSC (some sealed)

- All the HES PAL releases

- All the Salu PAL releases bar F18 Hornet

- The 32-in-1 cart with 7800 label

- Pretty much every single homebrew release up to when Ricki & Vicki came out.

 

I've mostly kept the homebrews, all the 80s originals are now gone, still got my CC2 in case I want to play those.

[Silver Back]

5 hours ago, sirlynxalot said:

I don't have a full set and never will. There's always a price versus enjoyment factor for me, and since I only started to rebuy things for the second time now in 2022, prices are much too high for me to buy games as cib, or to feel like the prices for some of the rare games are worth it.  

 

For me, 7800 and 2600 games are games that I tend to only play for 5 or 10 minutes before flipping to the next one. This isn't really because I'm old and jaded, that's how I played this stuff when I was a kid, it's just down to the fact that many of the games are very simple and will not keep me interested for an hour or more at a time. As a result it's really hard for me to justify spending greater than 20 or 30 dollars for a single cartridge. And that is why my 7800 set is mostly common games and probably won't grow much larger now that I've bought the cheaper ones in the set.

I've heard several people state that these games are simple and can't hold their attention for more than a few minutes. While it's given that most are simple, I've never had a problem playing Asteroids, keystone Kapers, pitfall, Ms Pac man and the like for long periods. There's a thrill in getting further than you ever have or topping a high score, etc. 

 

But I get it. Not everybody is interested in that sort of thing.  And friends who play games can't understand why I don't have the newest consoles and don't play all the new stuff. The always online, constant updates and long drawn out stories don't really interest me.  I guess that's why everything older than the Wii remains in my kids room for them to enjoy. 

 

To each their own and there's nothing wrong with that. 

[gambler172]

Mitch should have also a complete collection.

The hardest game to find was Baseball in the plastic shell. 

[Cousin Vinnie]

On 11/7/2022 at 1:40 PM, gambler172 said:

Mitch should have also a complete collection.

The hardest game to find was Baseball in the plastic shell. 

Baseball is a plastic shell? Im not familiar with that

[Shawn]

10 minutes ago, Cousin Vinnie said:

Baseball is a plastic shell? Im not familiar with that

 

PAL HES version in a plastic clamshell box, IIRC.

[Jinks]

I have a shit ton of 7800 games.

 

I have one that no one has and I will never tell.

 

Video game snobbery activated. 

 

 

[Cousin Vinnie]

12 minutes ago, Jinks said:

I have a shit ton of 7800 games.

 

I have one that no one has and I will never tell.

 

Video game snobbery activated. 

 

 

YOUUUUUUUUUUU MUSSSSSSST TELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL USSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[gambler172]

11 minutes ago, Jinks said:

I have a shit ton of 7800 games.

 

I have one that no one has and I will never tell.

 

Video game snobbery activated. 

 

 

He asked, who has a full set...not, who has a one of a kind. Mitch has also a one of a kind and some other guys too....😁

[Jinks]

12 minutes ago, gambler172 said:

He asked, who has a full set...not, who has a one of a kind. Mitch has also a one of a kind and some other guys too....😁

If you do not have them all you do not have them ALL. 

 

I do not think anyone really has everything. 

 

We all know you have lots of 7800 stuff very rare and one of a kinds too. 

 

I will never tell.  Never ask again or the video game lords will frown upon you. 

You do not want them to 🙁

 

 

[gambler172]

Hi Jinks

I never asked....it does not interest me. If someone keeps his games secret.....There are sooo many unknown games. And yes, no one has all 7800 items, but to get all released games, is not impossible 😉

Edited November 9, 2022 by gambler172

[Silver Back]

Full Set would be the retail releases. Once you get into homebrew and hacks, along with Protos and all that sort of stuff it gets too murky.  If you do have something one of a kind, the sort of thing the community has been desiring since it was first teased or something the community doesn't know about, it's best to keep it to yourself.

 

By nature this thread was about boasting but even so anybody who really wants it could get a full retail set within a year's time of casual collecting.  Dangling something in front of people will only create jealousy and in fighting. If I had something one of a kind I would work to release it out to the community but that's just me. If I didn't intend to I wouldn't bring it up. 

[gambler172]

3 hours ago, Shawn said:

 

PAL HES version in a plastic clamshell box, IIRC.

And the Salu version comes in a paper box.

[gambler172]

7 minutes ago, Silver Back said:

Full Set would be the retail releases. Once you get into homebrew and hacks, along with Protos and all that sort of stuff it gets too murky.  If you do have something one of a kind, the sort of thing the community has been desiring since it was first teased or something the community doesn't know about, it's best to keep it to yourself.

 

By nature this thread was about boasting but even so anybody who really wants it could get a full retail set within a year's time of casual collecting.  Dangling something in front of people will only create jealousy and in fighting. If I had something one of a kind I would work to release it out to the community but that's just me. If I didn't intend to I wouldn't bring it up. 

👍 that is what I do too 😉

[GrizzLee]

Full set years ago.

I also have a test cart and a dev cart/board (it's a big board) with the ST floppies and the cable connector. Never used it. It came with the dev manuals as well. interesting historical item.