January 31, 2002

8:58 AM

The chances you've played these games are slim.Very slim. We're talking about arcade games made by Atari limited to runs of 2 or 3. Prototypes from dumpsters and ex-employee yard sales, original (hand-drawn!) marquees, garage-soldered circuit boards.

Somehow, this one guy keeps getting his hands on them. Lucky bastard. Sure obsessions like this might seem unhealthy, but he has working versions of Marble Man, Primal Rage II, and Beavis and Butthead; you don't.
posted by jcterminal (11 comments total)

Pretty neat. Reminds me of the legendary Atari test room that was spoken of in hushed whispers when I was a kid.

Myself, I'm waiting til I have room for one of these. Pinball is still the best game in the world if ya axe me.
posted by Kafkaesque at 9:04 AM on January 31, 2002

Who does he play online against?
posted by vbfg at 9:06 AM on January 31, 2002

Sweet.

I know it's like talking about cds to a dj spinning vynil, but I've found some of the rarer 2600 games for Stella floating around the net. Mostly the games that didn't sell or were very hard to find at the time (Custer's Revenge, Friday the 13th). Of course using my keyboard isn't the same as the sweet ass old 2600 sticks.
posted by eyeballkid at 9:13 AM on January 31, 2002

I agree with eyeballkid, about it not being as fun when playing with a keyboard, but it sure is hell is still fun to play paperboy, having been reminded from that site how fun it used to be.
posted by trioperative at 9:29 AM on January 31, 2002

At last year's arcade extreme show in San Jose, I got to play these. They were surprisingly complete, with cabinet art and everything.
posted by mathowie at 9:44 AM on January 31, 2002

Bummer, no I, Robot.
posted by NortonDC at 10:01 AM on January 31, 2002

Yes there is NortonDC, for MAME. I play it all the time. Lately it's my fave MAME game.
posted by eyeballkid at 10:24 AM on January 31, 2002

As do I, eyeballkid, but I haven't seen a cabinet in maybe 15 years, so I was hoping this guy would have one his site.
posted by NortonDC at 11:07 AM on January 31, 2002

There was an I, Robot cabinet at last year's California Extreme, too.
posted by waxpancake at 11:20 AM on January 31, 2002

Hah, good find, waxpancake. That picture made me feel 14 again.
posted by NortonDC at 11:45 AM on January 31, 2002

The documents and art in his collection are rather interesting, too. The goofy bellbottom conception art for the box cabinets are sweet. And I enjoyed reading the proposals for Star Wars, as well as LucasArts response which called for change for some inconsistancies with the Star Wars arcade game.
posted by crog at 1:13 PM on January 31, 2002