#693 & #694 Impossible Mission II & Mermaids of Atlantis

Games #693 & #694

Impossible Mission II & Mermaids of Atlantis

Traded for a bag of magic jelly beans

4/24/11 - The Easter Bunny

What's the best way to obtain new games for the collection? When they're given as gifts! We've always thrown a couple of small gifts into the Easter basket along with the chocolate eggs and jelly beans - last year I was left boxed copies of Hogan's Ally and Duck Hunt (more on those in a later post). I've even received eBay gift cards that sure come in handy. This year the Easter Bunny threw down a couple of little BLACK squares - the SEI-published version of the PC port Impossible Mission 2 and the AVE cart Mermaids of Atlantis. As far as games go, they're not much to write home about, but as collector's pieces they can be tough to cross off the list.

These are both obviously unlicensed games (I call them bootlegs, but that term isn't entirely accurate). I've got a whole separate shelf for these funky shapes and colors. Here's a quick guide to unlicensed games:

Tengen games are rather easy to track down and feature a good number of quality titles. Tengen began as a licensed publisher, but fell out of favor over Nintendo competing with their own version of Tetris (among other problems). There are solid ports such as Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Gauntlet and Fantasty Zone as well as the excellent RBI Baseball series. The good-to-crap game ratio is fairly consistent with the normal gray licensed carts.

Camerica games are a shiny gold color and can be hit or miss. Their MicroMachines game is a good racer and there are some solid platformers such as the Dizzy and Big Nose games. There's a quirky dipswitch on the back of the cartridge that is supposed to help the game bypass the NES' lockout chip technology. If position A doesn't work, just try position B!

Bunch/Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree are hard to find aside from the religious games and only a couple of other common ones. This leads to the premium pricing online despite the games themselves being almost universally craptastic. Go play Raid 2020 and wonder if anyone who worked on it was proud of the final product. Most of the blue carts themselves are turning a puke/booger green after all these years thanks to a fire retardant chemical mixing with the coloring - sort of how a lot of old Super Nintendo systems you see look brown.

AVE carts are black and seem to be programmed well enough, but the games are just too simple or repetitive to be fun for very long (see: Venice Beach Volleyball, Solitaire, Blackjack). Notice in the picture the AVE version of Impossible Mission II - same game, different cart.

Beyond these companies you can get into AGCI, Caltron/Myriad, Active and a couple of other minor companies that only released 1 or 2 games. Like I said before, these are rare and therefore command a higher price among collectors and resellers, but if you're looking for a fun game to play, look elsewhere.

Next time...buying games I don't like!