Atari 2600 Air Raid box found

[TheDomesticInstitution]

In case anyone wants complete quotes... here are the 3 posts from the user who claims who's dad made the molds.


From Yesterday:

My father owned a injection molding company in the 70's-90's we were watching the news today and he started laughing He designed the mold and ran 51 parts shipped them out and never reserved payment. it was a test order for a company in Arkansas. He thinks he still has the molds. My father is retired and 74 yrs old. He is the type of man that saves everything, and forgets nothing. I have seen a few other old molds laying it the barn and they weigh a ton, so this should be fun on my back. We will be digging them out tomorrow.

Yesterday:

I more note before bed the whole operation from casting to shipping only cost my old man $4500.00 in 1980's money. I read though all this thread then posted this. Keep your fingers crossed,Or if I don't find them at least I might have 100 of you guys thinking it is some form of a late april fools joke

Today (Early this morning)

Ok the Name of the Company was Norwood Welding, tool, and die Located at 5312 Carthage Ave. Norwood Oh 45212 My Father Jay Moore was Contracted By Charles Rigdon of Felicity Plastics to create a Die/Mold. My father created, cast, made this mold. When Making a Mold it has to be tested. Dad said that 51 parts would really only be 25 and 1/2 games/carts. The one mold would run both sides of the cart. This test run is sent to the client and the mold is then sent to the injection molding people whom then make the carts. The reason why my father was never paid was not the game peoples fault but was the injection peoples. They told him that the parts were to big and the mold was returned. My fathers says his specs were never a small bit off. But the Client stated he made the cast for the part to large by about an inch. The 51 parts were not returned. I asked dad why the extra 1/2 and he said that there is always 1 extra for quality control. The parts were shipped to Arkansas to a P.O.Box with no name. I found this odd and after reading how skeptic everyone is I asked why would you send these parts to nobody. Dad said that Felicity plastics was where his paycheck came from not whomever else. Thats all the info I got, but I can tell you this. I remember my father coming in from work and scrapping potatoes into towels then putting them on his eyes to help with flash burns, he has a hard time seeing now. I was two young to remember much to any of this. I was born in 89 and I am only 20 now, I'll never tell him I said this but I believe my father messed up the order. You just have to know dad.... The jack of all trades master of none type of guy. Hope this has been helpful.

Anyway most of you are probably members at AA, but I'm one of the few that aren't. This is for those 3 people who may not be reading the thread over there... Anyway the more I read the more I'm interested. This may be complete bullshit... but it's still intriguing.

[TonyTheTiger]

Doesn't the cartridge have a screw hole on one side where there isn't one on the other and notches at the bottom of only one side? If that's the case the same mold can't be used for both sides.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

Doesn't the cartridge have a screw hole on one side where there isn't one on the other and notches at the bottom of only one side? If that's the case the same mold can't be used for both sides.

I was thinking about that. I have no idea about Air Raid, but most carts have two seperate sides, so you can attach them to each other. It smells like bullshit- but it's fascinating. I'm sure we'll know soon enough. So little is actually known about this game that it takes a while to sort out the con artists- at least that's how I see it.

[Rom Hunter]

Air Raid consists of two different plastic cart sides.

You can see both parts on the Atarimania database.

8)

[Greg2600]

Stick, on Fri Apr 16, 2010 4:47 PM, said:
I have been fighting the T-Storms and Weedeating all day to beable to even get into the Barn. Deforestification is one of my favorite pass times. I haven't seen anything yet and I really have no clue what it is I am looking for. After talking to dad and the fact that the cart brought 31 thousand I will admit I smell money so i am trying. Also to answer a few questions the parts were shipped to a P.O. Box 1987 Corinth AR 72824. Dad found a old carbon copy log book. My father said He had the blue material in the injector from running a test run of baby formula lids so I used it up. One more thing I still have yet to figure out how this is going to pay off for me just yet. If I do find this thing Dad could make more carts only if he could find the right mix of plastics to get the color and texture right, Which isn't easy and to sell the mold well shipping would be ungodly expensive.

That's the latest from the AA discussion from the "molders" son. So it's possible, as PingvinBlueJeans had reminded me over there, that Menavision stands for Mena, Arkansas.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

Air Raid consists of two different plastic cart sides.

You can see both parts on the Atarimania database.

8)

Why hasn't anyone brought this up over there then? That to me seems to be a big unanswered question. On the other hand, there seems to be so many odd little details in his story, that it may not entirely be a lie.

[Carey85]

I'm currently in the midst of trying to contact Stick over at Atariage to see if I can't lend a hand in helping him find the Air Raid tooling as I believe that his story checks out.

[goatdan]

From what I know about injection molding and injection molds, as well as the design of the Air Raid cartridge, that story makes no sense. Air Raid has two sides to it as the side under the label has screws. If there was only 25, *especially* if they were sent as samples, that means way too many are still in existence -- over HALF the run.

A lot of 2600 games got thrown out back in the day. Give 25 people who probably aren't gamers a sample of a bad game during the video game crash, and it would be lucky if two survived. There is simply no way.

Either this guy's father is remembering things completely wrong, or this isn't the mold that they are looking for.

Also, if the molding was done in the US, why is Taiwan noted at all with it? I can't imagine they would send the molds over to Taiwan to be assembled, and I can't imagine their thought was to assemble everything in their run in the US after Taiwan shipped them the boards if that was the role Taiwan was to play. Finally, why are the PCBs inside (as I understand) production boards if the run was only 25?

I still say these are samples, but if they only ran 25 and found an error, they both wouldn't have finished the assembly of the carts -- either they wouldn't have fit in the cartridge slot or the PCBs wouldn't fit right, rendering them useless -- or they would have made the internals by hand. The fact that the carts are a finished product means they were definitely planning on producing more, and had geared up somewhere to do just that.

[TonyTheTiger]

Arkansas huh? Why the hell does the box say Taiwan and L.A.?

Curiouser and curiouser...

[Ryaan1234]

From what I know about injection molding and injection molds, as well as the design of the Air Raid cartridge, that story makes no sense. Air Raid has two sides to it as the side under the label has screws. If there was only 25, *especially* if they were sent as samples, that means way too many are still in existence -- over HALF the run.

A lot of 2600 games got thrown out back in the day. Give 25 people who probably aren't gamers a sample of a bad game during the video game crash, and it would be lucky if two survived. There is simply no way.

Either this guy's father is remembering things completely wrong, or this isn't the mold that they are looking for.

Also, if the molding was done in the US, why is Taiwan noted at all with it? I can't imagine they would send the molds over to Taiwan to be assembled, and I can't imagine their thought was to assemble everything in their run in the US after Taiwan shipped them the boards if that was the role Taiwan was to play. Finally, why are the PCBs inside (as I understand) production boards if the run was only 25?

I still say these are samples, but if they only ran 25 and found an error, they both wouldn't have finished the assembly of the carts -- either they wouldn't have fit in the cartridge slot or the PCBs wouldn't fit right, rendering them useless -- or they would have made the internals by hand. The fact that the carts are a finished product means they were definitely planning on producing more, and had geared up somewhere to do just that.

Who's to say that this guy's father was the only one who made cartridges from Men-A-Vision? Perhaps they had other people make handled carts for them.

[PingvinBlueJeans]

Finally, why are the PCBs inside (as I understand) production boards if the run was only 25?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The PCBs inside the Air Raid cartridges are generic EPROM boards with no markings, but they seem to have been made for those cartridge housings and haven't been found in any other games that I know of.

I still say these are samples, but if they only ran 25 and found an error, they both wouldn't have finished the assembly of the carts -- either they wouldn't have fit in the cartridge slot or the PCBs wouldn't fit right, rendering them useless -- or they would have made the internals by hand. The fact that the carts are a finished product means they were definitely planning on producing more, and had geared up somewhere to do just that.

Based on what he said (if it is in fact true), it sounds like the error could have had to do with the length of the T-handle, not the size of the cartridge. It could've been anything really.

In any event, the "error" claim could've just been a BS tactic by the company to get out of paying for the molds. Obviously whoever was behind Men-A-Vision wasn't exactly on the level.

[TonyTheTiger]

Hm. Come up with a weird unique design so that you can claim it's all wrong when the person you commissioned performs his duty? That's not too far fetched.

[Icarus Moonsight]

The story makes it sound more like Con-Men-A-Vision, huh? Someone should tell the mold hunter there that shipping wouldn't be an issue really... There is freight and in-person pickup.

I know a scrap or two about injection molds myself, it would make sense to me that both pieces would have been on the same die and with one injection precess, you'd produce both sides... Of course, unless the pieces were on separate dies (which would be still somewhat strange). So an odd number like 51 struck me as pretty odd from the get-go. Did get the 'how' though, which satiated the curiosity monster, for now. Thanks for cluing me in there. I don't look at AA or even NA often, only console/company specific board I look at very often is neo-geo forums.

[goatdan]

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The PCBs inside the Air Raid cartridges are generic EPROM boards with no markings, but they seem to have been made for those cartridge housings and haven't been found in any other games that I know of.

No, that's exactly what I'm saying. They are generic EPROM boards, but they were *made* to fit in the cartridge housing and aren't in any other games. Which means that not just did this group have the cartridge mold created, they *also* commissioned someone to do a PCB design, something else that -- while not as expensive as injection molds, isn't cheap either.

So, if the run was 25, why weren't these boards obviously assembled by hand like prototypes? I'm guessing the run had to be at least 100.

[understatement]

I’m not buying this mold story. I’m in a similar occupation and one (among others) thing that’s not clicking right with me is the 1” “mistake”.

While it is ultimately up to the customer on what they want other factors play a role, for example: if we know that a structure needs to be galvanized we know everything about all the galvanizing companies and the exact dimensions of their galvanizing tubs so if the piece the customer wants is too big for the tub we make them aware and redesign or cut the piece to fit or one of many other options.

So I don’t see how he did this for a living and didn’t know the specifications needed by the companies he would use to fulfill his contracts.

[NoahsMyBro]

I haven't decided for myself whether or not to believe 'Stick' and his story about the molds, but by nature I tend to be more trusting than many people and the story is appealing.

As for the questions about why Men-A-Vision might have done things certain ways - maybe they were simply idiots. It seems to me that every post I've read so far about this, both here and over at AA, tries to make rational sense out of their behavior, and theorize things based on sound judgement.

* Maybe the MAV guys were stoners and making lousy decisions.
* Maybe they were trying to impress somebody (A girl, A guy, Mom, Dad, etc.... LOTS of VERY BAD choices have been made throughout history to impress a parent.)
* Maybe they were simply rotten businessmen and didn't sufficiently think things through.
* Maybe they sunk $5k into the operation, with dreams of this being the gamble that pays off.
* I can't really explain the printed references to LA and Taiwan. Maybe the producers thought this would appear more legit and/or more professional than something from Arkansas? I can certainly believe that they may have worried outsiders wouldn't trust or respect a new tech firm from an unheard-of town in Arkansas.

-------------------------------------
A couple of other unrelated side-notes -

1) Men-A-Vision - it occurs to me this could have been a variation of "Men of Vision", even if there is a link to Mena, AK.
2) The Jaguar components being reused for the dental equipment - somewhere in AA a link was posted to an eBay auction for the original Jaguar molds. Turns out the manufacturer of the dental equipment purchased the Jaguar molds and then re-purposed it, to use it to create the new casings for their dental machinery.
3) Nothing else, but I felt this list needed to have 3 items.

[Zap!]

Whoa! Now someone over at Audiokarma by the name of MeatInStereo is claiming his dad bought the game new for $1 when he was a kid! Here's the thread and here's his two posts on it. He seems legit, with 671 posts there.

AHHH!!! I had that game!!! Going to my moms house and looking for it tonight!!!!

Really only 12 of them made....My dad brought that game home from Gold Circle back when I was a kid for me after work....he paid a buck for it...

[Greg2600]

Don't know if it's the same guy, but another person came out of the woodwork with having the Air Raid game.

[Zap!]

Well, I registered on Audiokarma and asked him some questions about the game. Did I miss anything?

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthr...91#post3627791

[PingvinBlueJeans]

Well, I registered on Audiokarma and asked him some questions about the game. Did I miss anything?

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthr...91#post3627791

Yeah, you forgot to ask the guy for his social security number.

Seriously though...why not wait until the guy actually finds the game before bombarding him with questions? (Assuming he actually owned one in the first place, and he isn't just telling some fish story.)