Red and Silver cart contemporary...?

[Spirantho]

Hi everybody,

 

I just received a nice copy of Vanguard with the red label.. except the cart is, of course, silver, so I still need to get the cart to go with the box.

 

However, I did notice something odd....

 

The silver label is copyrighted 1988. By this time it is understood they were producing red labels. Indeed the Millipede label, for example, on AA has a 1987 copyright date. This puts Vanguard Silver after the birth of the red labels. The text on the silver label is also different to the 1982 issue, so it was a specially designed label.

 

It would appear to me that Atari were producing the red labels and the silver labels at the same time, and stuffing them all into a red box. I always assumed that the silver labels in red boxes were just from an old stock of carts but now it appears they were made specially!

 

Anybody have any input on this?

[Clint Thompson]

Pics?

 

Sounds odd..

[Spirantho]

Don't have pics off hand but there are pics on AtariGuide.com....

[akimmet]

I have a copy of Space Invaders like that; in a red box with matching manual, but had a silver cart in it. I never really thought much about it when I opened it, I just assumed Atari just used the old labels to get rid of them. I'll look later to see if it has a 1988 copyright date on it.

[akimmet]

Here are some pictures of my Space Invaders cart in question, yes I know there is a huge black spot on my cart, hey I didn't take that good of my carts as a kid. However, it isn't silver but gray.

 

It looks like both my manual and cart are the old style, but have 1988 on them.

 

After some searching, it appears these aren't rare or even uncommon, Atari must have been too lazy to design a new label so they just used the old design sans the metalic effect.

[akimmet]

Oops... I decided to not post the pictures, but I forgot to change the post.

[+FujiSkunk]

Generally speaking, Atari Corp. was doing some weird stuff with their 2600 releases in the late 1980s. Silver-label games were being rereleased with red labels, and black-label games were being rereleased in both silver-label and red label editions! And yet, the original versions, with the "Atari Inc." copyright replaced by "Atari Corp." of course, were also often available.

 

And that's just the cartridges. As you've noticed, the boxes and instruction manuals also went through load of different revisions. Usually you'd get a black-and-white version of whatever manual the game originally had, but sometimes you'd get a multi-lingual (also black and white) version of the manual (the multi-lingual manuals and boxes originally were only available outside of the U.S.), or you might get a red-label re-release of the manual and box.

 

I have several red-label boxed games, mostly bought from European eBay'ers, that ended up having something other than red-label manuals or cartridges inside. My guess is, that's just how Atari packaged them. Good luck finding the variations you want, and if your quest is to collect them as Atari released them, that just might be another Impossible Mission.

[sku_u]

I've noticed a lot of oddities when it comes to copyright dates on carts. A perfect example in Night Driver. I have a Picture label that is dated 1978 and a Text Label is dated 1983. Seems like the opposite should have been true given when text labels and picture labels were around.