Do you have any cool 2600 stories to tell?

[Radio F Software]

Do yall have any cool/funny/interesting stores on how you got a piece of Atari equipment? Whether it be a system/game/controller/etc lets hear it!

 

I remember once when I was 10 or 11 I helped mow my grandma's yard and then helped clean out their backyard small storage shed (those ones they sell at Home Depot pre-assembled). I just moved a bunch of boxes around. Well, afterwards my grandma had gone thru some of them while I was still working and found a copy of Lock And Chase (by M Network) and gave it to me as a payment, since she didnt have any cash on hand at the time.

[+Random Terrain]

I don't know if this is cool, but I was supposed to move some bushes for an old lady (mother of a long-gone step-father). I caught a ride to Woolco, which was only a few miles away from her house, so I decided to walk. I thought I could find a shortcut through some woods, but instead, it took many hours to get there because I kept hitting 'roadblocks' of all kinds: fences, trenches full of bushes and trees that were too deep and wide to cross, vicious dogs, and so on. I'm having trouble remembering how I finally got there (maybe I have it written down), but I did get there. I transplanted the bushes, got paid around $30 and her husband drove me to a store so I could buy Yars' Revenge for $24.97.

[CPUWIZ]

Haven't been able to beat this one yet.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=50943

[Radio F Software]

You lucky SOB.

[NovaXpress]

I met the MegaManFan and gained access to his endless supply of games. That was pretty cool.

[bcprs1]

I might have told this story before, but when I was in 3rd grade I broke my collarbone at school. While my parents and I were waiting for x-rays at the hospital, my mom asked "is there anything we can get you to make you feel better". Needless to say, I asked for an Atari. Later that day while I was in some other waiting room, my dad and brother went over to the local Bradlees (remember that store?) and picked one up. That night, my dad hooked it up to the old black/white tv and my brother and I played combat for hours.

[Lauren Tyler]

When I was about five or six, I injured my leg, and it was in an immobilizer. On the way home from the hospital, we stopped to see my new sitter's place. They had a miniature arcade Frogger which, alas, didn't work. To cheer me up from the disappointment of that and the fact my leg was in an immobilizer, my parents took me to Toys R Us to let me buy an Atari game. It was there that I got Pitfall 2. To this day, I still have the game and, while it does have its moments, it still works fine.

[AncillaryDrone]

I got my Atari for Christmas in a very "Christmas Story" manner. My dad and I had been at Sears a few weeks before playing video games, Odyssey and Atari(this would have been 79 or 80) and the way my dad was talking I was expecting a system for X-mas, although I wasnt sure which one. Well X-mas came and I opened all of my present and no video games. I was crushed. Then my dad says "hey what's that poking out from under the couch there?". Yeah it was the Atari wrapped in green wrapping paper (oh yes I remember that). Spent the whole rest of the day, well month really, playing Space Invaders and Target Fun (it was a Sears).

[highinfidelity]

Well mine, the only one I still have, was borrowed from my sister's father in law, who already presented her with a "pong" unit, when we were kids. He was a very rich man who didn't really care about his goods and got annoyed pretty fast by things, so we had it for years and years. One day, inexpectedly, he wanted it back.

 

Time passed and I was already into the VIC20 stream, so I didn't cried for that, but I got very nostalgic later when I was around 20. Since that nice man used to buy very expensive presents for us at Christmas (which we didn't exactly like so we had to change them every and each year - poor fellow!) I had an idea: why don't ask him his old Atari that sure he was not using anymore? (supposed it didn't already made its way to the city dump, that is)

 

So I called him and said "Well, you always made great presents for christmas to us, didn't you? Please, that's not needed, thank you, we love you as a person, not for your presents..." and I was planning to put here an effect sentence telling him that no cash was needed, that that old console would be a good present, since it recalled us of playing with him, and the years spent playing it thanks to him... | But he abruptly ruined my fine plan by saying "As a matter of fact, this year I planned not to buy any gift anymore, since you guys are both way over 18"...

 

Well, believe it or not, my face turned into an A$$ and I got the gripe to ask for my present anyway! I got my Atari, but I guess my unpolite request represented the lowest point in my social behaviour ever...

[Philflound]

Well, it didn't say necessarily when you were young. I've mentioned this before, but maybe not to the extent of what I actually got.

 

Back in about 1996 or 1997, my friend was talking via one of the newsgroups (pre-website days), when all you had were them and BBS's. Anyway, this guy was up in Canada. He told my friend he had access to a selection of sealed Atari games. He originally told him that he could get us 8 Kid Vid units brand new sealed at $75 each. It wound up being 5, 4 of which were Sound 1 Canadian versions. Besides getting these, he also got me 4 sealed Snoopy and the Red Baron, some sealed Defender II games, a few sealed Stargate games, and I believe a few more games. I think I got everything for about $500.

 

I had to trust this person though, since I never met him, and if he ran with my money, I would have no recourse. To my bliss, he came through. I let my friend have one of the Sound 1 units for cost, since he got me the deal. I kept the Kid Vid for my collection along with one of each of the sealed games. The other Sound 1s I used as trade bait. I believe one of the bigger Atari collectors stopped by my friend's store to do a trade with me. Since I wasn't there, I don't remember who it was. He gave me a loose Halloween and Malagai for the Sound 1 though. If he reads this, he'll know who he is.

 

Overall, this was my big score.

 

Phil

[Dolt]

When I was a kid, I went to this all-boys catholic school way on the other side of our county--it took an hour to get there, so myself and the 6-7 other kids on my bus spent our time beating the crap out of each other and stuff. It was a little rough because I was one of the youngest kids on the bus--not as big as the others, at the time. While I lived in a nice neighborhood, most of the other kids lived in *reallly* nice neighborhoods. Nice enough that one day on the ride home, one kid, Tom Gallagher--who was a huge practical joker--mentioned that his neighbor had gotten an Intellivision so he'd given Tom all his old Atari games (to this day, I don't understand that logic, but whatever). Tom didn't have an Atari, so he offered to give one game to everyone on the bus.

 

We were blown away, especially me, because Tom was a straight-up bully to me. I used to get my ass handed to me by him plenty of times, the legendary moment being the time he gave me a wedgie that ripped my underwear in half--parents got involved after that, and I was more mortified about that than the wedgie itself. Anyway, Tom rattled off the games, and they were GOOD--games you hoped your family would get you for Christmas, not something like "Math Gran Prix" but "Yar's Revenge" and so on. When he said "Starmaster," I piped up with a big "ooh, pleasepleaseplease." It was really uncool to do that, but I just couldn't help myself.

 

So this was amazing--and yet we couldn't quite believe it. I mean, who would give away hundreds of dollars worth of games? It had to be a hoax, plus this was the last day before a school vacation, so even if it WAS true, Tom would probably come to his senses and sell them during the vacation. But we were pretty sure he was full of crap and that there weren't any games.

 

Tom told everyone he'd bring the games for us next time we were on the bus, but that wouldn't do--we decided to call his bluff. The rest of us immediately started begging the bus driver to drop Tom off first (instead of last like usual) so that he could run into his house and get the games for us. It took about half an hour of whining and pleading, but she gave in. We kept looking at Tom to see if he would flinch--to spot the moment when he'd fold and admit there weren't any games--but he didn't say a word.

 

We got to his house, he got off the bus and went inside.

 

And we waited....

 

and waited...

 

and waited.

 

DAMN, Tom had pulled another huge practical joke. That dick.

 

We felt like idiots. We were all too embarrased to look at each other, each of us ashamed at how greed had blinded us to Tom's avalanche of lies. The bus driver, understandably wanting drop off these stupid kids and go home, announced that Tom wasn't coming back out and that she was leaving.

 

But then the front door opened, and Tom came out, his arms crossed to hold on to about 10 games. We couldn't believe it! And there in the batch was Starmaster, which was still only a few months old at the time. Someone else went to grab it, and Tom said, 'No, Clive called it; it's his." I was really surprised by that, because like I said, he didn't like me much but he was a kid of his word. No manuals, but I managed to figure it out, and played it to death all through the vacation.

 

I won't say that Tom and I got along better after that (I don't remember it that clearly anymore to be honest), but I'm sure I thanked him a million times for it, and who knows, maybe he discovered that being nice to people made you feel better about yourself than kicking the crap out of them. But I'd doubt it.