Some catalogue goodies

[YOK-dfa]

I was going through my catalogue collection when i noticed 2 Parker Brothers catalogues from Germany. They had some pretty interesting illustrations. Don't know if anyone is interested, but here goes.

 

First Amidar and Super Cobra. I noticed that box boxes and carts do not show the final label as used in production. It seems to be some early concept art. Has anyone ever seen this particular kind of label before in the wild???

[YOK-dfa]

Ok, next scans show a number of made-up screenshots next to the cart.

 

- James bond 007. I don't know if it shows in the picture, but look at the wheels of that wagon. In the catalogue they are perfectly round. I don't think the 2600 could achieve such details.

 

- Popeye. I don't know where this screenshot comes from, but it looks way too good (Save Our Ship from Technovision looks very similair to this. Coincidence ?)

 

- Q*bert. This screenshot also has a resolution that the 2600 is not capable of in my opinion. Just look at the details of all the characters.

[YOK-dfa]

And i saved the best for last

 

Screenshots + box art for 2 unreleased games.

 

-Revenge of the Jedi. This screenshot actually looks real. I have never seen a screenshot of this game (there is a protype of this right?) so i don't know what it's supposed to look like.

 

- Lord of the Rings. This is the best one Just look at the screenshot. Totally unbelievable. Way to high resolution and doesn't make sense at all. Guess they were totally out of ideas when they were designing this catalogue...

 

Well, that's it.

 

Cheers,

Raymond

[NovaXpress]

Obviously, those are illustrations. Not screenshots.

 

This was commonly done back then when good screenshots were difficult to capture. Look through any old school magazine and you'll see much more of the same.

[YOK-dfa]

I know that they are not 'really' screenshots, but i found it interesting that in some cases they didn't even try to make them look like the original.

 

Anyway, just noticed that this GI Joe - Action Force box also isn't in the rarity guide.

 

Cheers,

Raymond

[Tempest]

Popeye and Q*Bert kinda look like the Atari 8-bit computer versions (although Q*Bert himself looks really odd).

 

That James Bond picture has been floating around out there since forever. I wouldn't doubt a prototype is out there.

Obviously all those screenshots are mock ups though.

 

LOTR is odd. Looks like they took one high res drawing and pasted it six times (you can see another column of the same picture has been cut off to the right). Very VERY odd.

 

I like the Super Cobra box art in this catalog much better than the one they actually used. Too bad the game sucks no matter how you try and pretty it up...

 

Tempest

[Stingray]

That LotR screen shot does look really wierd. As far as th eothers go, I remember as a kid often being dissapointed by the actual game after seeing a "screen shot" in a catalog or magazine. After a while I came to disregard them altogether.

 

-S

[ATARIPITBULL]

Those type of drawings of game boxes happened a bit, I collect atari ads and one of them shows a box cover for Warlords that never existed.