Atari Game Tapes:

Today's punk kids can keep their fancy cartridges and floppy discs. True hardcore retro gamers know that the best game storage medium has always been and always will be the noble cassette tape! It has way more storage space than those old eight track and vinyl based games. During our last Ebay trip, we scoped out this interesting collection of fancy game tapes.

According to the listing, it is a limited edition set of text adventure games from Scott Adams. Adams was a legendary game designer from the earliest days of the medium. Adams is credited with releasing the very first commercial PC game, Adventureland, and his company, Adventure International, was one of the first PC game developers.

The text adventure genre dominated the early years of PC gaming, starting with Colossal Cave Adventure, the first game of it's kind, which was released in 1977. The genre remained popular until around the mid 80's, when they were pushed out by games that featured newfangled "graphics" and "sounds".

This collection appears to be intended for use on the Atari 8-bit line of computers. This includes the Atari 400, 800, XL, and XE lines. To play these games, you would need a special Atari cassette tape drive, (not to be confused with the Starpath Supercharger, which allowed you to play cassette games on your Atari 2600).

Unfortunately, if you want to enjoy this set, it'll cost you. The seller is asking for a cool $1000 for the tapes. That seems a bit steep for games that can mostly be found for free online. But if you happen to know the world's biggest Scott Adams fan, then you've just found the perfect gift!

Chrono Cross Music Box:

Here's a strange one. This is a wooden music box that plays a jingle from Radical Dreamers, a quasi-sequel to the awesome SNES hit Chrono Trigger.

Radical Dreamers was only available via the Satellaview service in Japan. The game was a Visual Novel, a genre not seen much in the US, which consists of very little gameplay and a lot of story (much like Xenosaga). Key members of the original Chrono team worked on Radical Dreamers, including scenario writer Masato Kato and composer Yasunori Mitsuda.

Radical Dreamers was a continuation of the story from Chrono Trigger. Unfortunately, the game did not make it over to the US. The official sequel of Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, incorporated many story elements from Radical Dreamers.

The music box itself was from a mail order promotion that corresponded with the launch of Chrono Cross. The box is made out of wood and when wound up plays the Radical Dreamers theme. It was allegedly produced in very low quantities, and judging by the lack of other specimens on Ebay, that is probably correct.

Much like our first item, this is a spendy piece of memorabilia. The seller wants $1500, which seems like a bit too much for a wooden box. However, if you just have to have every Chrono related knick-knack ever made, then you won't be able to pass this up.

NES World Championship Cart-

Here it is, the most sought after NES game ever, the World Championship cartridge! In 1990, Nintendo held a nationwide contest to find the greatest NES gamer. A series of regional contests were held with winners advancing to the national championships in Orlando. The idea for this contest was inspired by the plot of Nintendo's product placement movie, The Wizard.

The contestants in the tournament would play specially designed NES carts that were made exclusively for the competition. These carts features small amounts of gameplay from Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer, and Tetris. Players would have a set amount of time to perform certain tasks in the games, like collecting a certain amount of coins in Mario and completing laps in Rad Racer. Once the time limit is up, the game compiles a total score based on how well the player performed. The cart itself had external dip switches that allowed the game's time limit to be altered.

A total of 116 of the carts were produced for the competition. 90 were standard grey carts, while the remaining 26 were special gold colored ones. The grey carts were given out as prizes to tournament semifinalists. The rare gold ones were awarded to the tournament winners and given away as prizes in a later Nintendo Power contest. So far, only 12 of the gold carts have been found.

This particular auction is for a grey variation of the cart. As any collector knows, a high demand item like this won't come cheap. At the time of this writing, bidding is already at $1000 with more than three days left, and it is expected to go much higher. The seller has placed a reserve of $2500 on the auction so no bids less than that will actually win the cart. If you or somebody you know is trying to build a complete set of NES games, now is your chance to get the hardest one to find!

That's all for today, join us later as we dig up some more buried internet treasure. We will also be back to report on the final sale price of the NES World Championship cart.