I picked up some atari 8 bit computer games ( yeah big surprise there ) and from the picture didnt look all that exciting. I knew there was a tester cart and a Pilot programming preproduction cart. But from the date (3/80) I didnt expect anything too crazy cause thats the year it was released. Anywho, it got mailed to my house while I was on the road and getting back on the 6th thats the first box I opened and theres where the fun began.
Here are the carts and items that cause my interest. ( And really muted the fact that the atari 800 I got is the 2nd lowest serial number documented so far on Atariage which doesnt mean too much i guess ). What I didnt put in the pictures below were the 5.25 disks of demos, works in progress and apparently some version of Atari DOS 2.7 that never made it out to release ( maybe a work in progress of Dos 3.0 but its dated 1980 on the disk ). Also not pictured is a disk that was corrected instructions for a few Atari Cassette based programs that Atari released ( also dated from 1980 ).
The lot of carts that really interested me.. ( For those wondering the game "Life" was the announcement name for the game program " Video Easel". It was changed for the general release ( well I had thought so ) but this is a finished copy of the game with what looks like a regular production label of the announcement title when they talked about the game before it was released. When they changed the name to Video Easel is beyond me now. I have never seen one of these online or in person in my 19 yrs of collecting atari 8 bit carts so who knows..
Missile Command Prototype for the Atari 2600
Start Screen for the Pilot cart I expected to be a finished 1980 copyrighted program with Ready prompt.