Share your pickup loot and finds

[AdamAnt316]

Not a game console, but it was made by Atari using glorified Pong technology, so I figure it belongs here. It's an Atari Video Music, circa 1977, just before they released the 2600. It connected to both your stereo system and your television set, and generates geometric shapes which flash in time to the music. Sales were poor, and Atari pulled it from the market about a year later, making it fairly rare. I managed to pick this up for $120 from a vendor at a music-related convention; it's in good cosmetic shape, and while I purchased it untested, I hooked it up to a small TV and one of my iPods, and it works! Here are some photos of the unit, including one of it powered up and working:



Someone else's demonstration video of an Atari Video Music in action:



More on-topic, I picked up an Atari 2600 setup for $30 last weekend at a flea market. Somewhat interestingly, this one is housed inside some sort of plastic rental case lined with (deteriorating) foam. It's gonna need a fair amount of cleaning before I can do anything with it, but it seems to be in fairly good condition otherwise. Here are some photos:




Not long before that, I picked up an APF TV Fun 402 pong clone for $15. Also known as the "Sportsarama" for some reason, it includes the usual pong-type games, plus a couple of target shooting games using a frighteningly-realistic light gun. Both said light gun and the external hand controllers were included, as were the TV/game switch and power supply, though the latter has been chewed up and needs repairs. Here are some photos:

[Niku-Sama]

oh man i have been looking for an Atari Video Music for eons now.
I haven't found much lately, haven't been looking much either. More interested in trying to figure out what my next move in life is gonna be.

I did finally get my hands on a copy of Relayer for PS4



this is an odd one, its a mech tactics turn based strategy game. thats not the odd part though.
This game went from nothing to immediate clearence for PS5 on gamestops website and it listed a PS4 version but the page would never load for it. when i went in to a gamestop the dude at the counter encountered some odd things on his side of things too. it was never available any where else either even though it had been listed as being out for a few months at that point.

Fast forward a year to May '23, i get a wild hair to search for this game again and it now pops up on best buys website for regular $60 MSRP, it seemed odd that it was suddenly there, i think the non clearance version on gamestop was $40. so i let it ride for a little bit and the other day i noticed it dropped to $40 at BBs site, so i nabbed a copy when i got paid and now its here.

Potentially rare? maybe, but its showing up on more storefronts now, still only available online. its also avail. as a download eshop thing but thats not worth collecting

Links for interested parties:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/relayer...?skuId=6502987
https://www.target.com/p/relayer-pla...4/-/A-86252096
https://www.gamestop.com/video-games...-4/342501.html

strange its back at game stop now,wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[Gamevet]

I got a couple of Switch games on discount at Walmart. Also, picked up Resident Evil 0 for $20.

[Steve W]

Man, I'm envious of that working Atari Video Music. I have one, found it in a thrift store that briefly popped up in a strip mall next to my job, but it had the power plug cut off. And I could never get proper information on what the power requirements for it were (it was maybe 15 or more years ago) so it's sat untouched in storage all this time. Congratulations for getting one that's working!

[AdamAnt316]

oh man i have been looking for an Atari Video Music for eons now.

Yeah, I've been curious about these for several years as well, particularly after a friend of mine showed me a Devo video (embedded below) which makes use of one. I may have seen one for sale at the (in)famous MIT Swapfest several years back, but it was too pricy for my blood. There are numerous YouTube videos of the Atari Video Music being demonstrated, so they may be more common than some think. Happy hunting, and watching!

Man, I'm envious of that working Atari Video Music. I have one, found it in a thrift store that briefly popped up in a strip mall next to my job, but it had the power plug cut off. And I could never get proper information on what the power requirements for it were (it was maybe 15 or more years ago) so it's sat untouched in storage all this time. Congratulations for getting one that's working!

The label on the 'wall wart' for the Video Music gives the voltage as 16.6V AC @ 100mA. It's center tapped, so I assume the transformer is rated for 8.3-0-8.3V. A video details the successful conversion of a Video Music to 230V input using a 18VCT transformer mounted inside, but I found that the Hammond 166F16 outputs 16VCT@0.25A, which is a bit closer. Mouser sells them, so hopefully you'll be able to bring your Video Music back to life.
-Adam

[Steve W]

The label on the 'wall wart' for the Video Music gives the voltage as 16.6V AC @ 100mA. It's center tapped, so I assume the transformer is rated for 8.3-0-8.3V. A video details the successful conversion of a Video Music to 230V input using a 18VCT transformer mounted inside, but I found that the Hammond 166F16 outputs 16VCT@0.25A, which is a bit closer. Mouser sells them, so hopefully you'll be able to bring your Video Music back to life.
-Adam

Thanks for that! I hope mine will work, there's other things that can go wrong with them. For example, I could kill the thing because I know nothing about repairing old electronics.

Went back to my new favorite game store today, picked up Mystery Chronicles: One Way Heroics, Lost Sea, and The Swindle for the PS4, all Limited Run games and with their additional collector's cards and stuff intact.



I stopped at a Movie Trading Company next to the Parks Mall in Arlington, TX and found they must have gotten themselves a full case of brand new Aura Interactors, the plastic vest with a subwoofer built into the chest to give you a rumble style feedback when you're playing your Genesis and/or SNES games. They're all new and shrinkwrapped, which I'm assuming the store did themselves - anybody who has worked in retail knows how often low-I.Q. morons love ripping boxes open to look inside, despite all the words on the outside of the box telling people what's inside to keep people ripping merchandise open that doesn't belong to them.

I might have to go back and get one at some point. I don't know when I'll ever find any more of them new, or really anything from the Genesis/SNES era that's unopened and in good shape. It tingles the collector part of my brain.

[AdamAnt316]

Thanks for that! I hope mine will work, there's other things that can go wrong with them. For example, I could kill the thing because I know nothing about repairing old electronics.

Unless you feel comfortable working around 120V AC, I suggest bringing it to someone with more knowledge of working on electrical or electronic devices. Anyway, the most important part is to make sure the new transformer is wired in properly; according to the schematic, each of the green wires on the secondary (16V side) should go to either of the outer pins on the board connector the original transformer connector plugged into, while the green/yellow center tap goes to the center pin. The black wires on the primary (120V input) side can then be (carefully) connected to a power cord. I've attached below an annotated section of the above-linked schematic showing how the Hammond 166F16 (aka the new T2) should be wired to the original board connector (aka P1/J1) for the wall-wart. Once again, good luck!
-Adam

[Gamevet]

A walmart near my home had about a dozen Switch games marked down to below $30. I managed to pick up 3 of the titles I’d wanted.

[Steve W]

I managed to get out of the house early enough to go game shopping yesterday. Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX and Chasm came from a local GameXchange. Bishoujo Battle: Double Strike! and Void Terrarium were games I ordered off Amazon. A great little game store (that stopped selling video games and went all tabletop) always had the collector''s edition of Void Terrarium on the shelf, but I never bothered looking at it. Came across it a couple weeks ago for the PS5 at my new favorite game store and decided to order the PS4 version, but I thought I ordered the regular edition, didn't expect the collector's edition would arrive. And Bishoujo Battle is something suggested to me by Amazon, it's basically knock-offs of Shanghai and QIX, but with cute anime girls. Ordering that was a real "why the hell not" kind of moment. I love checking out the "suggested for you" links for PS4 games because you can easily go down a weird game rabbit hole and find some true gems.

[Niku-Sama]

this came in on monday finally



the console 5 package is a VA.0 model 1 cap kit, a japanese one i have has stopped booting. power light but nothing on screen and research tells me the cpu and CD caps cause this.
and since its a early model one these are all SMT caps so.....yay?

[Steve W]

I woke up a bit earlier than normal and headed out to do something useful with my day off. I stopped at two Movie Trading Company locations, bought a Japanese PS3 game, Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy. Both locations had those new Aura Interactor vests from the Genesis/SNES days, so somebody must have traded in multiple caseloads. Weird. Then went to a fairly new game store only a few months old, and found stacks of Japanese PS3 games. I picked up Nier: Replicant, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, and Tears to Tiara. The sequel was translated and came out in the US but oddly not the first game, so at least I have that one now. I can't read the text, but I've got it.

The kid at the store said the manager brought those back from a Japan trip he recently took, and he was planning on going back around October (when it's cheapest) and grabbing a bunch more. It just occurred to me to print up a list of Japanese games I'd really like to get my hands on, see if he can pick them up for me on his next visit. I've attempted to order some Japanese games from PlayAsia in the past, but my credit union halts the transaction each time, thinking it's some kind of scam or fraud. So I'll hopefully get the store manager there to be my "mule".

[Steve W]

The game store I bought the Japanese games at a few days ago has a second location, so I went there today. I was incredibly happy to find even more import PS3 games there. I already have El Shaddai and Tokyo Jungle in English, but they were shockingly cheap so I bought them anyway. Shining Resonance did get a release on the PS4 in the US, but I couldn't resist the PS3 version, especially when it was $14.

That store had three copies of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle for the PS3, the US version was over $100 last time I saw one at a store and I have the Japanese version, bought at a Half Price Books in 2020 for $50. Theirs were around $20. I've really got to get a games list to the manager of that store for the next trip to Japan he takes.

[Gamevet]

One Half-Price books had about a dozen PS4 games for $3. I picked up AC Odyssee for a friend. I also found this Castlevania guide at anothe HPB. I was shopping at Walmart and they had Returnal for $15.

[Steve W]

I haven't been game shopping for a while, since my brother passed away a couple of weeks ago. It's been rough. My two sisters and one of my nephews came down and we've been clearing up his stuff since then. They're about to leave so I took my nephew to a game store since he has nothing like it out where he lives. Picked up a steelbook of Saturday Morning RPG and a collector's edition of Downwell, both for the PS4. I wasn't able to buy more since I've been paying off some of my brother's bills, buying groceries for the family, that kind of thing. That store is chock full of good games and I hope I can get as many of them as I can over time before somebody else grabs them.

[fpbrush]

Not a game console, but it was made by Atari using glorified Pong technology, so I figure it belongs here. It's an Atari Video Music, circa 1977, just before they released the 2600. It connected to both your stereo system and your television set, and generates geometric shapes which flash in time to the music. Sales were poor, and Atari pulled it from the market about a year later, making it fairly rare. I managed to pick this up for $120 from a vendor at a music-related convention; it's in good cosmetic shape, and while I purchased it untested, I hooked it up to a small TV and one of my iPods, and it works! Here are some photos of the unit, including one of it powered up and working:



Someone else's demonstration video of an Atari Video Music in action:

Wow Ive never seen one of these. Thanks for sharing!

[Niku-Sama]

I caved and bought a cheap 4k tv

TCL 43S470G
the previous model gets good reviews with low input lag and i think this ones pretty low too. had to manually set some settings since ALLM wasnt working right but pretty smooth



not bad for $230 shipped from costco
I figured i'd sell this once i got my LG OLED but i might actually keep it

[Steve W]

I had to go out today to clean up some of my brother's affairs, and I forced myself to go off and do something rather than go back home and be depressed. I ended up driving to the far side of Dallas to a Movie Trading Company where I bought Helmut for the PS4. Went over to a nearby Half Price Books and bought two boxed Romox games for the VIC-20, Typo and Princess & Frog. Typo looks like a decent Pac-Man ripoff. Also bought the caseless Windjammers there. Then went to a GameXchange on the way home and bought Dead Cells, Kaze and the Wild Masks, and a sealed copy of Monkey King: Hero is Back, all for the PS4.



There was a white-ish looking plastic case behind the counter on the floor of the GameXchange, looking very 1970s, so I asked about it. The sales guy told me, "That's a Magnavox Odyssey". My eyes popped out and I said, "can I look at it?" It was in absolutely amazing shape. There were six "cartridges" inside. The plastic case was also the official portable storage case. The poker chips looked like they were still shrink-wrapped. Looked like there were more than 6 screen overlays, too. They're selling it for $499.99. Too rich for my blood, I've got too many things to use money like that on. But it was tempting for a nanosecond until the weight of the price tag really hit me.

[Steve W]

A couple games I ordered off Amazon finally showed up. Crash Time 4: The Syndicate was a nice little German European exclusive, and Beat Sketch is one that I'd ordered twice before and it never showed up. Both times ordered from Japan, both times it went four or five months without the game ever getting shipped, and having to cancel the order. This one came from a US seller, so I knew it'd show up in weeks rather than months.

My nephew, my brother's son, is visiting right now. So I'll probably be taking him to a few game stores soon. He just lost his dad to cancer, and his mother is dying of a brain tumor. He's having a rough time at the moment.

[Steve W]

Went to a few stores just to get out of the house, I bought Ar Tonellico III, thinking that I had the two English releases already and this was the third in the series, it turns out that this one is the same as the second one that came out here. Bummer. Oh well, it didn't cost me much.

The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker for the PS4 looks like a FMV mystery with a Lovecraft-style twist. And at a Half-Price Books, I picked up Dragon Quest XI S still shrink-wrapped, for $19.99.

This is the most time I've spent outside the house since my brother's passing, it feels good to get back to normal life.

[Niku-Sama]

A couple games I ordered off Amazon finally showed up. Crash Time 4: The Syndicate was a nice little German European exclusive, and Beat Sketch is one that I'd ordered twice before and it never showed up. Both times ordered from Japan, both times it went four or five months without the game ever getting shipped, and having to cancel the order. This one came from a US seller, so I knew it'd show up in weeks rather than months.

My nephew, my brother's son, is visiting right now. So I'll probably be taking him to a few game stores soon. He just lost his dad to cancer, and his mother is dying of a brain tumor. He's having a rough time at the moment.

crash time 4 gives me burnout 1&2 vibes (aka the good ones) you have a chance to try it yet?