Atari rarity question + I got my package yesterday

[The Manimal]

Yesterday my friend dropped off the package of Atari goods I posted about earlier. System works, all the games work except for Pac-Man (doesn't work damnit! argh)...and Tennis works fine but is missing the black bottom piece and it just has the board sticking out like more modern cartridge games. What was this black plastic bottom for anyways? I played the system for a while, and noticed that with the paddles, they are unresponsive! I noticed this a week earlier when I tried playing my own previous system with it's paddles. Do these things just 'die' all of a sudden? Strange.

So in whole System works fine
5 of 6 games work
Joysticks are fine
Paddles giving problems (but then again, so are mine and I thought those worked too! *insert twilite zone theme*)

Now the rarity question. When I picked this VCS 4 switch up, I was surprised at how LIGHT the thing is! It's featherweight! LOL So this makes me wonder about my older system. It is a Sears Tele-Games 6 switch and the thing is at least 3 or 4 times as heavy! So if the 'Heavy Sixer' is the rarest of the bunch as I've read, and these Sears units were actually made by Atari but labelled differently...what's the difference in rarity of the Atari and Sears versions? Which was more common? Is this Sears machine that's heavy as a brick compared to this 4 switch Atari unit I just got a nice thing to have?


I played Tennis for about an hour. Good game :)

[Raedon]

a true heavy sixer was produced in Sunnyvale, CA All others are just six switch Atari's.

[The Manimal]

Were all six switch units considerably heavier than the four switchers?

[Arcade Antics]

...and Tennis works fine but is missing the black bottom piece and it just has the board sticking out like more modern cartridge games. What was this black plastic bottom for anyways?

The plastic piece you mention is a door to keep out dust and other nasty stuff (dirt, pet hair, oatmeal, jell-o, hamburgers, etc.). Activision carts never used the door and most later carts dropped the door as well as a cost-cutting measure.

[The Manimal]

So out of like 20 games I have, this was my first Activision cart. Never noticed that.