The game has never sold at a public auction so the exact price is hard to know. The price listed is based upon offers that one of the owner's claims he has received. It is a very reasonable estimate considering the game's rarity.
Karate for Atari was released by two companies, Froggo and Ultravision. The Froggo version is quite common and sells for hardly anything. The Ultravision version is very rare and sells for top dollar. Ultravision has two versions of Karate, a T-shape cartridge pictured to the left and a standard shaped cartridge.
Both have the same artwork on the front and sell for roughly the same amount. Pepsi Invaders was a custom designed game for Coca-Cola. They took the Space Invaders game concept and changed the aliens to letters spelling "Pepsi". The game was given to executives at a sales convention in Only were originally produced. Based upon the number of sales for this game it is assumed that the vast majority were destroyed by the recipients.
Mangia was developed by Spectravision and like most Spectravision games it was only available via mail order. The mail order distribution method made all their games much harder to find than ones available at retail stores.
Mangia is the rarest of their games. In Mangia you control a boy who eats pasta until his stomach explodes. To avoid dying you throw pasta to a dog or cat, but must avoid your mom seeing you waste food. Eli's Ladder is an educational game for the Atari You count and do addition and subtraction games and drills. The game was released by SimAge. The game was originally packaged with a wall chart and motivational stickers to help motivate kids to learn and play.
These are even more difficult to find than the game. The game Shark Attack was originally released with the name Lochjaw. Apollo decided to change the name after they were sued for infringing on the copyrights for Jaws the movie.
Because the game was only released for a limited time with this name and cover art it is very hard to find today. The game play is almost the exact same as Shark Attack.
You try to collect diamonds in each level before a sharks eats you and before he eats too many of the diamonds too. Gauntlet is another mail-order only game for the Atari This one was released by Answer Software. It has nothing in common with the dungeon crawling game with the same name. In this game you must prove your manhood to an ancient Indian tribe by running through their gauntlet of obstacles.
The game was originally sold in a foam case with no box so this game is never found with a "box" like most games. Atlantis II is a special edition of the original Atlantis that was only given to a few gamers as part of a contest. The developers held a national contest to crown the best Atlantis player. Numerous people reached the maximum score in the game so in order to crown a champion they mailed entries with the maximum score a new version of Atlantis that is much faster.
The exterior of both Atlantis games looks the exact same. The easiest way to tell the difference is by looking at the font on the high score. In order to know which version a newly submitted high score came from the developer changed the font.
The Music Machine is a Christian video game based upon a series of products with the same name including, CD's, coloring books, and movies.
You play as two children who must collect the Fruits of the Spirit - love, kindness, self-control, patience, etc - as they fall down the screen. The game was only sold through Christian bookstores.
Its limited distribution makes the game very rare today. River Patrol is based upon the arcade game with the same name. You must navigate a boat down a river while avoiding obstacles. The exact reason for the game's rarity is unknown, but is more than likely due to the game releasing after the great video game crash in After this point, Atari plummeted in popularity and games for the console sold very poorly.
You race on various tracks and half-pipes with a BMX bike. Near the end of the 's life, Atari bought the rights to the game and re-released a limited number of copies. The Atari re-release is the expensive version. You can tell which version you have by looking at the cover art. If the cover art on the game matches the cover art on the box at left, you have the rare version. Out of Control is a spaceship flying game released by Avalon Hill. You control a spaceship that must fly through buoys, pops balloons, and then land in a space station.
This is another game that was the victim of the video game crash in Publishers severely limited their production after the crash to make sure they didn't waste money on cartridges that wouldn't sell.
Instead of selling cartridges with a permanent game inside, Xante decided to make re-writable cartridges. They setup kiosk where you could return your games to have them rewritten as another title. They even printed a plain white label for you with the name of the new game.
All six games are extremely rare. You created an initial state of "life" - a series of dots - and then watched as they took on a life of their own. The game only worked if you already owned the rare MagiCard programming tool see below. This severely limited production and sales of the game.
Similar to Xante games, the ECPC cartridges are re-programmable cartridges but they all started off blank. You would buy the cartridge and bring it to any ROMOX software center and choose a game from their selections. Another blank cartridge that allowed you to change the game on the cartridge.
This time you need a hardware called a "Duplicator" in order to transfer a game. The game with the Duplicator is extremely rare, but without it the cartridge could just be a collector's piece if a game was never transferred onto it. The Color Bar Generator does exactly what it's name implies. It would create 15 different color bar patterns to diagnose TV color or alignment problems.
The item was sold so consumers to diagnose problems themselves without needing a technician. One of the patterns was designed to test the color producing circuits on the Atari system.
MagiCard is a programming tool released by CommaVid. The software was only available via mail-order and only worked with the keyboard accessory for the Author: JJ Hendricks. This game was the only video game release by Sparrow and a Music Machine LP was released at the same time which contained several inspirational songs which could be listened to at the same time.
Even in the early days of the console business, there were times that a game got pushed aside by a publisher and developers go indie to sell their creations. Cubicolor was developed by Rob Fulop during his days at Imagic. Each cartridge was signed and numbered by Rob.
In the letter he mentions being flattered that anybody would pay attention to these games anymore. He goes on to say he kept 50 copies of the ROM and guaranteed that no more will ever be made. Due to a very limited run for a port of an obscure arcade game, River Patrol is considered extremely rare. It is unclear why the game is so rare, though there is speculation that it has to do with the trouble engineers had programming the game to licensing problems over the arcade game, as well as its post-video game crash release date.
The game also holds the distinction of being one of the few titles with music. Players must navigate a large boat down a river strewn with obstacles. In this release from Spectravision, you must either eat the plates of pasta your mother is constantly making, or throw it to your pets.
The game is also noted for having one of the most annoying sound effects of the entire Atari library. Xante was a small company based out of Oklahoma which opted to sell popular games via blue rewritable cartridges.
With this interesting innovation, whenever a player grew tired of a certain game, they could return the cartridge to a Xante kiosk and have a new game written on their cart, complete with generic label and box. The player must touch the aliens in the correct order to unlock the airlock before a time ends. Much like Gauntlet also from Answer Software , Malagai was a mail-order only game and game in a foam case instead of a box.
Much like Karate mentioned above, this game is only valuable if you have the Ultravision release. There are bare cartridges showing up on eBay fairly regularly, but a complete, boxed copy typically only shows up every now and then.
However, there have been a couple AtariAge members that have put up complete copies up for sale in Just another example of finding some treasures in oddball places. X-Man is a sexually-explicit game released in by Universal Gamex its only game publication. The game has nothing to do with the X-Men comic book series.
Instead, it plays off the Pac-Man inspired maze setup with a man trying to reach a woman in a limited amount of time. The adult elements are contained in the bonus mode after the player reaches their game objective. Understandably, most retailers declined to carry it — or if they did, it was restricted to adults or kept under-the-counter. X-Man cartridges could also be purchased via mail order, and an ad inviting such purchases appeared in at least one gaming magazine.
A full-page ad can be found in the July issue of Videogaming Illustrated. Obviously, with all these restrictions, it has been hard to track down a copy.
It is rumored that there are between 20 and 45 cartridges of this game in the wild. For the era, it gives a respectable presentation and challenge to keep improving your technique and score. In this game, you must catch and pass on the cakes as they come down different conveyer belts and avoid dropping them on the floor. This gem was published by CommaVid, one of the more innovative mail-order game publisher of the era.
Here is another rarity that is actually a solid gaming experience. Stronghold is a space shooter developed in by CommaVid same mail-order published as Cakewalk, mentioned above. This frantic shooter is actually rather impressive from a graphical standpoint and will definitely give you a challenge. It has 16 difficulty variations — the easiest of which is way more than just a warm-up.
I can sense inspirations from Robotron: , Breakout, and Defender. Check for Stronghold on eBay. The Swordquest series of games was an ambitious project started in the peak of the Atari boom of Earthworld sold around , copies, 5, players ended up submitting answers, and only 8 players had all the correct answers to grant them access to the tournament. Fireworld sold well, but had a much better turnout of correct answers, so there was an essay phase to narrow down to 50 tournament participants.
Instead of being sold in wide retail distribution at launch, the third installment, Waterworld was only available to Atari Club members who purchased via mail order, starting in February of The contest for Waterworld was abruptly ended in the middle of by request of Tramel CEO, Jack Tramiel, after his company bought out Atari during their financial troubles.
This title has edged up nicely since our last revision in This title was released exclusively via mail-order by Atari for their Atari Club members however, there are rumors that it have have made it into stores in very limited quantities. The Atari management apparently was scared off by this limited feedback and only produced 10, cartridges. While the the game might not have appealed to the girls, the game is still more interesting than many other games in the library and was the first Atari game to utilize voice synthesis the only other was Open Sesame.
The K-Tel corporation was previously known for selling disco compilations and teflon pots and pans on late-night TV. The decided to create a software division to jump on the video game bandwagon in the mid—80s.
The company ended up filing for bankruptcy in It is also easier to find in PAL format as it had more distribution overseas. Comparisons One weird thing that has surfaced is that some old Ultravision cartridges seem to have been sold off to K-Tel and re-labeled for K-Tel games. These Atari adaptations ended up being the first horror games in the industry. Because they are both rare and they have a cool tie-in with pop-culture horror franchises, they have become quite the collectible items.
They are especially challenging to find complete in the box. To make things more interesting, Wizard Video ended up selling a good chunk of cartridges with the name written in black marker sometimes misspelled to reduce labeling costs. Not surprisingly, the labeled version is more popular with collectors, but the unlabeled version may be slightly more rare. Then again, it also happens to be rarer than Chase the Chuck Wagon. Tooth Protectors was an interesting marketing tool in which you play as the Tooth Protector to save teeth from the Snack Attack.
To do this, you must knock back the crumbs that Snack Attack shoots at you. If a tooth takes too much damage, you can clean it by using your trusty Reach toothbrush, Johnson and Johnson dental floss and Act fluoride mouthwash. However, one recent eBay sale featured the original styrofoam formed backing that was included in the mailer.
Published by Bomb in , Great Escape feels like it was inspired by Defender. It is a space shooter and, much like the arcade version of Defender, you have a small map of the course and the aliens in the bottom of the screen. However, instead of only moving left and right while adjusting your elevation in Defender, Great Escape gives the player the ability of point their ship in 4 directions and accelerate from there.
Bomb titles are very difficult to find in the US due to limited distribution, although they are easier to find outside of the US in PAL format. Bomb put their name in the prominent position of the artwork at more than twice the size of the actual name of the game.
The downside of this particular release is that the presentation really gets downgraded from the arcade or even the ColecoVision port, which nicely captures the arcade presentation.
Jumping on a cube causes it to change the color rotates in arcade and other ports. The goal is to match of line of cubes to the target color. This game is practically the poster child for what went wrong with the home video game market during the Golden Age. It was a mail-order release by Ralston-Purina, advertising dog food based on a popular commercial in the early s. Over a decade ago, Chase the Chuck Wagon was one of the most iconic Atari game collectibles, but it was often pointed out by hardcore collectors that there were many more games out there that were far more rare.
Of course, a complete copy is still quite hard to find, so it is still worth looking out for. It is rumored that fewer than twenty cartridges of the game were ever released, but that estimate may be rather low. Other collectors estimate that there may be about ten complete-in-box copies in the wild in addition to loose copies. CommaVid is one of the more interesting software companies of the classic era. All of their cartridges are difficult to find, most notably MagiCard.
MagicCard was a programming tool that allowed users to create their own simple games. It was only offered via mail order directly from the company and is one of the most difficult cartridges to obtain today.
Magicard was not packed into a box. The cartridge was available via mail-order only, hence its rarity. Several sample programs were included in the cartridge to help give an understanding of how it worked. The cartridge worked in conjunction with the keyboard controller.
The purpose of this diagnostic cartridge was to enable television owners to check the alignment and quality of their televisions.
It came with fifteen different patterns, including one specifically for checking the adjustment of the color generating circuitry of the Atari Several of these patterns were simply single color screens.
Back in , Chris Kohler scored an awesome deal in what turned out to be a complete-in-box Color Bar Generator. These were reprogrammable cartridges released by Romox. The Copy Cart was basically a blank cartridge that could have other games copied onto it.
You will also need the Duplicator to handle the process, as the cart is pretty useless on its own. For the complete package, the cart was originally packaged with both the Duplicator and the game Dishaster, but finding all three together can be extremely tough. They eventually gave up on this concept and released each of the games as single-ended cartridges. The boxed copies, on the other hand go for a nice chunk of change. There are quite a few other rare and valuable Atari titles.
If interested in finding more information, the website AtariAge. Another Great Article. With this considered, we decided to revisit this list and add a few more rare Atari games hard for collectors to come by. Believe it or not, some companies did not sell many games over many different cartridges.
The Xante cartridges allowed consumers to continuously rewrite new games onto the format. They coul play new experiences without having to clutter up their home with numerous games. If players thought a PS5 hard drive was too little space, think about this cartridge only holding one Atari game. Six games came out in total for this format, all of which are difficult to come by. Mangia means "eat" in Italian, and serves as a just description of the game's mechanics. Players are forced to eat plate after plate of spaghetti until their stomach explodes.
To prevent this game over, players must feed some food to their dog or cat without their mother looking. The graphics are surprisingly good for an Atari game. It's hard to tell if the game's rarity and desirability among collectors is because of the weird concept, or in spite of it. River Patrol came out in the arcades and several other platforms, but that does not stop the Atari version from being extremely valuable.
Players have to save NPCs on a river while avoiding hazards along the way. The arcade version came out in , but the port for the Atari was released in , the same year as the infamous video game crash. The poor sales due to the crash is seen as a major reason for its rarity. This simple shoot 'em up is worth well over 30 thousand dollars with the complete package. This is partly due to the curious T-shape design of the cartridge.
Even in an incomplete state, just the cartridge itself has been known to sell for about three thousand dollars. Less than five transactions of this game have taken place, making it the veritable holy grail for collectors looking for truly valuable Atari games. The story behind this game is as mysterious and magical as the biblical event that inspired it.
Only one hundred copies were made, and they all disappeared without a trace. Only within the past ten years have copies popped up, often selling for exorbitant sums. The real kicker is the coloring book that accompanies the game. If the two were sold together, the value would be exponentially higher.
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