Found over 100 brand-new Atari 2600 games in a junk shop!

[fishsandwich]

Unfortunately, they were all the same title: SPACE JOCKEY by US Games aka The Quaker Oats company.

I was in Cherokee, NC this past weekend. It's a growing casino town with a lot of cheesy shops that sell a lot of trash.

I went into a variety store and "As Seen On TV" store that sells the crap you see on TV directly to the consumer. I'm walking around the store and I come to a HUGE DISPLAY that has nothing but brand-new copies of Space Jockey from 1982. There were NO other games in the entire store... just this one title. There were well over 100 new copies.

Price? Buy one for 99 cents, get one free. So two for a dollar basically.

I wish I had taken a picture.

Anyone seen anything like this before? The owner of the store must have bought them in bulk but he sure as hell can't sell them... they were all coated with dust.



?

[portnoyd]

Dude. Awesome.

Go back and buy them all. I'll take six.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I wish I had taken a picture.

I bet it looked SOMETHING like THIS!

[Kitsune Sniper]

Well, if anything, they'd make great repro cart cases...

[Sunnyvale]

Well, call me a video-crackhead, but he'd have gotten my $50 in a heartbeat.

[Clownzilla]

Well, if anything, they'd make great repro cart cases...

Yeah, these are not the rarest games in the world but the value of having new original 2600 cases for repros would be well worth the price. I would of purchased them all

[Steve W]

I bought Space Jockey pretty early after release (probably before the price had dropped down to the super-cheap levels it eventually became famous for) and have the original box and instructions, but I still would have bought a few just for the hell of it. There's something about finding new Atari games in 2011 that makes me smile.

[Leo_A]

The dollar store in the local mall was full of these in 1993 or so. Bought three copies of it at the time.

Not a horrible game. I've played plenty of 2600 games that were unplayable, but there's a tiny bit of entertainment value with this game. With a bit more effort, I think they could've had a solid game here like some of their other games in the US Games library were (I love Mutually Assured Destruction).

[Keir]

Yeah, definitely one of the more overstocked games for the 2600, but still a cool find! If I walked into a shop and saw that it would give me the warm fuzzies. Probably would have bought at least a couple just to make the guy happy.

[Steve W]

Not a horrible game. I've played plenty of 2600 games that were unplayable, but there's a tiny bit of entertainment value with this game. With a bit more effort, I think they could've had a solid game here.

With a bit more memory, you mean. The game is only 2 kilobytes, well after Atari had even stopped making 2k games. They wanted to put out a game that was cheap to manufacture, henceforth the 2k ROM. It makes the game monotonous after a few minutes with so little to do in it, but back when I was a kid, most Atari games had that quality so you really didn't notice too much. I wish some homebrewer would take the basics from the game and expand it to something like 16k, throw in stages and maybe even bosses. I'm sure the 2600 couldn't pull off a 'bullet hell' shooter, but it would be fun to play a shooter that used the Atari's hardware to its fullest.

[MachineGex]

I'll trade you a sealed copy of Indigo Prophecy(Xbox) for one or two of them!

[fishsandwich]

WTF... this game was seriously overproduced, no? I can't believe there's another picture of them!

I'm going back to Cherokee next month... anyone want me to buy some of these?



!

[InsaneDavid]

WTF... this game was seriously overproduced, no? I can't believe there's another picture of them!

I'm going back to Cherokee next month... anyone want me to buy some of these?



!

I'll take ten. This game gets no respect so when talking with someone that disses it or doesn't remember it I'd like to be able to pull a boxed complete one out, give it to them, and say "here, try it out again when you get home." It was always one of my favorite VCS games.

The sound effects alone should give it classic status... bumbumbanum - bumbumbanum - bumbumbanum - bumbumbanum - BANOOM - bumbumbanum - BANOOM - bumbumbanum - bumbumbanum...

[T2KFreeker]

WTF... this game was seriously overproduced, no? I can't believe there's another picture of them!

I'm going back to Cherokee next month... anyone want me to buy some of these?



!

Hell, I'll take two of them, seriously. I'll even give you Four Bucks for the trouble plus shipping on it. I am dead serious. I actually liked this game back in the day and haven't seen it in ages.

[Mattiekrome]

Damn, just missed it. I was up there camping over Labor Day weekend. I didn't do much shopping, hell didn't even make the Casino. Fun find OP.

[MachineGex]

Ill take 6. Plus I toss in an Indigo Prophecy(Xbox) as a freebee! Let me know and I will shoot the paypal over and send out your free game!

[portnoyd]

I'll take six.

Your message is too short.

[OldSkoolBrian]

I would have bought some too.. Pretty cool find wish you had gotten a picture..

[GameNinja]

Is there a cool reason why apparently these can be found in huge quantities or is it just random overstock? You should ask the store if there is a story behind it!

[portnoyd]

Likely a casualty of the video game crash in the early 80s.