Happy labor day, everyone! Today I found out about this an awesome item from the ‘bay. Huge thank you to T Sal for giving us a heads up on this one! It is an Atari 2600 XANTE cart for Worm War 1. Click here to check out the listing.
In case you don’t know the story behind Xante, I’ll give you a quick rundown. So back in 1983, this super smart programmer, Roger Collins (Princeton and Wharton alum) had an idea to create on demand games for the Atari 2600. The idea was that you could walk up to an attended kiosk and buy a game. The game would be downloaded via phone line and burned to your cart’s EPROM while you wait.
It was piloted in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Alas, the program failed and was not meant to be. While this concept was promising (considering the response from retailers who would be able to significantly lower inventory costs and overhead), the videogame crash of ’84 left Xante in bankruptcy sadly. But during their time at gas stations and grocery stores, some games were burned and played.
Fast forward to 2016 and we find one of the absolute rarest atari game (one of them anyway), Worm War 1.
While these games may be hard to find, they are easy to recognize. The bright blue casing (it’s difficult to see in this photo) and embossed logo are kind of their trademark. I took a look at other listings for Worm War 1, this listing is the only Xante version I came across. This one shows a little wear (it is over 30 years old—not that 30 is old, trust me) but it has been tested and is in working condition. These Xante games are true collectors’ items and only make rare appearances, so you might want to take a look, at least, if not place a bid on this one.
Feeling nostalgic? I decided to look for more retro treasures
- Star Wars: Jedi Arena (Atari 2600, 1983) Complete In Box With Manual – I’m a sucker for Star Wars (uh… some Star Wars game and movies at least).
- COLECOVISION BAGMAN COMPLETE IN BOX RARE
- Intellivision – Scarfinger – RARE – CIB NEW MINT – Complete listing for the classic Intellivision game. Owner is including the original box which was damage along with replacement box.
I also came up with a few items that don’t go back quite that far:
- Thor Aackerlund 1990 Nintendo World Champion Signed Tetris NES Cartridge W/ Insc – Signed items are usually great finds. Up for purchase is a Tetris NES cart signed by THOR AACKERLUND, winner of the 1990 Nintendo World Chapionships in LA
- NINTENDO Super Mario World I Love Yoshi SNES Video Game Kids / Womans L T SHIRT – How could anyone not love Yoshi?
- DRAGON QUEST – SLIME Large 16″ Plush Doll 2002 SQUARE ENIX prize – Exclusive prize (not for sale) from Square Enix. Seller is in Japan, so you may have import fees
- Rare BIOHAZARD Resident evil GSX by Umbrella 100UMB-ZERO (mn123) – Special edition Umbrella watch.
- Blizzcon Blizzard Signed “Tristram’s Got Talent” Poster Rare Exclusive – Another interesting signed item from Blizzcon 2014. Signed by major voice actors from Diablo 3.
