AtariAge Store Last Chance Sale!

[nadir]

On 5/24/2024 at 12:21 AM, ZilchSr said:

Any update? Revised ETA?

A website countdown would be cool...  "1053 of 2300 orders for 10,500 of 28,000 line items shipped" 

[Albert]

1 minute ago, nadir said:

A website countdown would be cool...  "1053 of 2300 orders for 10,500 of 28,000 line items shipped" 

Ugh.

 

It has taken me longer to get this batch out than I expected, as the last several weeks have been extraordinarily busy for me on several fronts.  But I have now nearly completed over 900 games, about half of which are boxed, the other half are just carts with manuals.  I have to finish up a few more games this morning (boxing the 5200 games that need boxes, and have to build a few additional games, one of them uses a brand new 7800 flash board that has integrated RAM and HOKEY), and then it will be Non-Stop-Shipping for probably three days straight to get this large batch orders out, then probably multiple trips to the post office on Tuesday morning (Monday is a postal holiday).

 

 ..Al

[insertclevernamehere]

33 minutes ago, Albert said:

Ugh.

 

It has taken me longer to get this batch out than I expected, as the last several weeks have been extraordinarily busy for me on several fronts.  But I have now nearly completed over 900 games, about half of which are boxed, the other half are just carts with manuals.  I have to finish up a few more games this morning (boxing the 5200 games that need boxes, and have to build a few additional games, one of them uses a brand new 7800 flash board that has integrated RAM and HOKEY), and then it will be Non-Stop-Shipping for probably three days straight to get this large batch orders out, then probably multiple trips to the post office on Tuesday morning (Monday is a postal holiday).

 

 ..Al

I don't know if my order is part of what will be shipped out but I will be on vacation from May 31st for 12 days.  It may not be an issue, especially as shipping from the US to Canada can be slow but I'd hate to have my order end up in the hands of porch pirates.  I will have a neighbour looking out for post but it could still potentially be sitting at my front door for hours.  Albert, do you need my details at all?

[I Need New Hobbies]

My order (5 cartridges) is due here tomorrow. Keep the faith!

[jetset]

Weird, Wednesday I got 2 emails (2 separate orders) from the AA store with a UPS tracking#. Checked, and it showed they would be arriving Friday. I checked Thursday night for the hell of it and both showed "On the way - delay - delivery date will be provided as soon as possible". Still showing that status for both now.

[CPUWIZ]

10 hours ago, jetset said:

Weird, Wednesday I got 2 emails (2 separate orders) from the AA store with a UPS tracking#. Checked, and it showed they would be arriving Friday. I checked Thursday night for the hell of it and both showed "On the way - delay - delivery date will be provided as soon as possible". Still showing that status for both now.

 

Weather is pretty bad between Texas and Florida.

[jetset]

12 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

 

Weather is pretty bad between Texas and Florida.

Yeah I had a thought about that. Of course sure enough, I checked right after your reply, it's now showing an arrival date (tomorrow yay!)

Thanks man!I swear I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas lol. I forgot how old Santa Claus is (j/k Albert 😁 )

[CPUWIZ]

On 6/3/2024 at 7:54 AM, jetset said:

I forgot how old Santa Claus is (j/k Albert 😁 )

😇

 

 

[pumaconcolor]

Almost a year now since my last order of one cartridge on the last chance sale.  I love this site and store and everything I've purchased from it, and I'm grateful for all the work put into it, but I'm not waiting that long ever again.  I won't buy anything more unless there is some assurance that the wait time will be much shorter.  

[Albert]

13 minutes ago, pumaconcolor said:

Almost a year now since my last order of one cartridge on the last chance sale.  I love this site and store and everything I've purchased from it, and I'm grateful for all the work put into it, but I'm not waiting that long ever again.  I won't buy anything more unless there is some assurance that the wait time will be much shorter.  

Yep, and I don't blame you at all for that.  I certainly never expected it would take this long, but I also didn't expect to sell a year's worth of games in one month.  It's a very unique situation in that I gave people the opportunity to buy a large number of games that were being removed in the store.  It would certainly have been a LOT easier for me to not have done that, but even though I knew it would generate an enormous amount of work for me, I only felt it fair to give people one last chance to buy these games.  And boy, did they. 

 

I've posted this elsewhere, but I am working on several things that will reduce the amount of time it takes to build and ship orders.  One of the main things is going to flash-based boards for all the different systems I publish games for, but primarily the 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar and Lynx.  I'm already using some flash boards for the 2600, and we're testing several now for the 7800 and Jaguar.  These three systems are the ones that have the highest sales, and/or require the most time to build.  The goal is to basically have cartridges with these flash boards already assembled into them, so I can easily program them on demand, test and label them.  This is a huge savings in time versus programming EPROMs and PLDs, populating boards, soldering them, and usually doing so in waves since some boards have parts on both sides, and/or it's difficult to populate and solder all the parts in one round for a particular board. 

 

The new Shopify store will have better reporting capabilities, which will save me a lot of time when I have to make a list of the games that need to be built for whatever I need to work on.  I'm having more of the back catalog manuals and labels printed so I have to do less "on-demand" printing myself, which is time consuming (most newer games already have boxes, manuals and labels professionally printed).  I'm going to find bubble wrap bags that perfectly fit the different size game boxes I ship, which will save a LOT of time versus how I am currently wrapping boxes in bubble wrap for shipping.  I'm also developing a new 2600/7800 board that doesn't have compromises that most of the third-party shells I've used over time have had, which doesn't necessarily save me more time, but will further improve the quality of AtariAge releases. 

 

We are also moving soon, which is something we've wanted to do for years now,and part of the move is setting up a more formal AtariAge production facility that will be better organized. The plan ultimately is to hire someone to help with physical production and shipping.  Even before I do that, though, the goal is to ship 95% of orders within a week or less by early next year.  And after I'm able to hire someone, that will help guarantee that orders are shipped promptly.  All this will allow me to spend less time on physical production and more time working with authors on their new projects and publishing them in a more expedited fashion, being able to work on fun projects to help improve AtariAge and bring new features to the site, and being able to work on exciting Atari-related projects. 

 

 ..Al

[+cvga]

Hopefully the end is near (and I'm not at the end)

[+HatNJ]

I ordered and paid on 7/22/2023 and still pending but i understand that the demand was going to be high I ve ordered for years and know this order will come at some point and then will order some of those originals I have been eyeing

[ZilchSr]

I, too, have an order aged almost one year. However, these upates and explanations by Albert provide a type of "reset" that makes the wait much more tolerable. I have found that most people don't mind waiting as long as they don't feel like they're being ghosted.

 

Thank you, Albert, for taking on this Hurculean task, and providing the communication necessary to assuage concerns. Glad to hear circumstances evolving for the business! I'm looking forward to my batch of games, and the waiting is a small price to pay. You have my full support, and I'm certain that I'm not the only one.

[Rogerpoco]

7 hours ago, ZilchSr said:

I, too, have an order aged almost one year. However, these upates and explanations by Albert provide a type of "reset" that makes the wait much more tolerable. I have found that most people don't mind waiting as long as they don't feel like they're being ghosted.

 

Thank you, Albert, for taking on this Hurculean task, and providing the communication necessary to assuage concerns. Glad to hear circumstances evolving for the business! I'm looking forward to my batch of games, and the waiting is a small price to pay. You have my full support, and I'm certain that I'm not the only one.

A year?

This is the best, most useful site on the net.

I'm sure I'll get blasted for this, I'm not "upset". Mebbe  oblivious, but...

A year?

I'm just a dude that knows nothing about the World, not on any "sides". 

That seems unfair, I'd be about to crack for sure.

 

Now, having finished reading Al's explanation above(as you said, a decent reset...)(I guess...), I'd definitely think with this many people ordering games, waiting, etc, that the profits need to be divided up a bit by having more workers-that really helps the consumer more than the production outfit, but this wait time seems to denote the necessity.

 

The activity on this site is just too important and valuable to so many for it not to have an efficient "Store" process.

 

Shoot. I got the short end in a Secret Santa here once, and felt bad about it for the longest.

A year waiting on a game...?

Dang...

 

I'm sure it's me. It has to be, because I'm about to get blasted.

 

[ZilchSr]

That's a fair take, Poco. There's additional context, though. I'm almost 100% certain that Atari SA acquiring AtariAge had something to do with the AtariAge store having a permanent cut-off date on the ability to produce/sell non-Atari IP titled games. This, as the post's subject indicates, was literally a "last chance" opportunity to purchase a few dozen different "homebrews" of some pretty well-known, high quality, professionally developed ports of games by some pretty big names in the business through AtariAge. I think I bought mine the very last day of the cut off. As a result, it would not surprise me if the store sold 20x-30x more games or more within a 2 week span that they typically do in an entire year. To complicate the matter further, as far as I am aware, Albert is and has always been a one-man operation with no employees (which it looks like he has a plan to remedy the issue soon). The dude has to live, and I can't imagine the profit margins on these things is so high that he could easily hire someone without suffering a substantial and PERSONAL financial hit. Perhaps that's changed since the acquisition (I wouldn't know for sure, and I would DEFINITELY NOT want Albert to share that private info.) Factoring in inflation, most of the NIB games he is selling are going for at MOST half of what they cost in the early 80s, with many of the boxless ones selling at about one-third or less of the original early 80s prices. At this point, I believe a couple of things: 1. Most of the orders placed during that time have been fulfilled, and; 2. The fulfillment process was on a first-come, first serve basis (makes sense), and since I was likely one of the last people to order, my order would likely take the longest to fulfill. I have no problem with this whatsoever, provided I don't feel ghosted in the process, which thankfully, is not the case.

Edited June 15 by ZilchSr

[Rogerpoco]

31 minutes ago, ZilchSr said:

That's a fair take, Poco. There's additional context, though. I'm almost 100% certain that Atari SA acquiring AtariAge had something to do with the AtariAge store having a permanent cut-off date on the ability to produce/sell non-Atari IP titled games. This, as the post's subject indicates, was literally a "last chance" opportunity to purchase a few dozen different "homebrews" of some pretty well-known, high quality, professionally developed ports of games by some pretty big names in the business through AtariAge. I think I bought mine the very last day of the cut off. As a result, it would not surprise me if the store sold 20x-30x more games or more within a 2 week span that they typically do in an entire year. To complicate the matter further, as far as I am aware, Albert is and has always been a one-man operation with no employees (which it looks like he has a plan to remedy the issue soon). The dude has to live, and I can't imagine the profit margins on these things is so high that he could easily hire someone without suffering a substantial and PERSONAL financial hit. Perhaps that's changed since the acquisition (I wouldn't know for sure, and I would DEFINITELY NOT want Albert to share that private info.) Factoring in inflation, most of the NIB games he is selling are going for at MOST half of what they cost in the early 80s, with many of the boxless ones selling at about one-third or less of the original early 80s prices. At this point, I believe a couple of things: 1. Most of the orders placed during that time have been fulfilled, and; 2. The fulfillment process was on a first-come, first serve basis (makes sense), and since I was likely one of the last people to order, my order would likely take the longest to fulfill. I have no problem with this whatsoever, provided I don't feel ghosted in the process, which thankfully, is not the case.

You explain stuff very well, and as I kinda stated above, I do plead a tad bit of ignorance.

Thanks for clearing up some of those details-it's hard for me to wrap my ears around someone taking "reownership" of something, because it turned out to stand the test of time, but I guess that's another can of worms.

I didn't realize the weight of the games in question, to be sure, I had assumed(making an ass out of me), that people were waiting this long for homebrews that could be easily downloaded, or whatever.

Def. pleading ignorance, and def. appreciate all Albert has done for us here.

 

[+jgkspsx]

The funny thing is that you would be extraordinarily lucky to only wait a year with most of the modern limited print companies like First Press, Strictly Limited, Special Reserve, and Limited Run (until recently when they sped up to 7 or 8 months). First Press is FIVE YEARS behind, Strictly Limited is over two, Special Reserve was averaging 18 months with some games taking three years, and Limited Run was over two years for a while there. All of the companies I listed have at least three or four full time people and several have ten. They have other companies manufacture everything for them and they just assemble it and ship it out.

 

Not to mention some French company called Syzygy? Or Key? Or Infogrames? Or Atari? or something like that? who took more than a year to ship cartridges. I am still waiting on some of last year's orders from them.
 

Meanwhile AtariAge has just Al, and he on his own is personally manufacturing, assembling, packaging, and distributing a larger number of different games at the same time as all of these various multi-person companies put together. When he announced the Last Chance Sale I knew he was in for a tsunami of work and I am not at all surprised it has taken this long. I am surprised that others are surprised.

[+frankodragon]

Not to mention Al was in the process of moving while making all those cartridges.  Wherever he's moving to, that's none of my business.  But with all those arcade machines and furniture (which I hope use used plenty of bubble wrap to cushion against bumps) that's not an easy task. 

[CPUWIZ]

1 hour ago, frankodragon said:

Al was in the process

 

Is   As you say, that's not an easy task, especially when you are old and amassed too much shit. LOL

[Editorb]

17 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

I am surprised that others are surprised.

All quite correct, but surprise may be caused by the July update last year (following my June 24 order of three games) that stated it would take two to three months to fulfill orders.

[+SabertoothRetro]

Happy order anniversary, plus one day!  Where are my fellow 366ers? 

[+evg2000]

30 minutes ago, SabertoothRetro said:

Happy order anniversary, plus one day!  Where are my fellow 366ers? 

Well today would be day 367, this was a leap year. 😎

[+Neon Wraith]

I just checked, this is day 367 for me too.  I think Al did say that there were about a years worth of sales during that sale.

[Editorb]

I’ve wondered at what point the apparent magnitude of the task became apparent. The fall updates stopped mentioning timeframes, although December’s requested address updates and shipping 100-150 orders (of 500 games) every two weeks, and April’s stated 800 games 100 orders) were being shipped. 

 

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