At 08:25 AM 1/11/00 +0000, you wrote:
I'm sorry if I missed this before, but does anyone know about how many
Superchargers were made? Just curious if there was a horde of 'em out
there or if my SC is part of a real elite crowd.
I can't say how many, although I might be able to get an approximate figure
from Steve Hales, but I do know that there are far fewer tapes out there
than there are superchargers. Cartridges are more durable beasts than
tapes, and audio tapes I think are far more likely to get thrown away than
cartridges (which are more likely to wind up in the thrifts). I've seen
supercharger tapes mixed in with audio tapes all the time. Since audio
cassettes are very much a dying media right now, I'm sure plenty of
supercharger tapes have and will continue to get thrown out accidentally.
More specifically, not all tapes were made in equal numbers. The latter
tapes were pretty much invisible to me when they were coming out. I only
remember seeing a handful of games in the stores like Mindmaster, Fireball,
and Suicide Mission. I don't think I ever even saw Dragonstomper, let
alone Survival Island or Party Mix.
When the Starpath supercharger was being liquidated in my area, in the end
all they had were superchargers themselves, no tapes (other than Phaser
Patrol, the pack-in). It didn't make sense to purchase a Supercharger just
for one game or go hunting for the others, so I didn't get one (until much
later).
Luckily, if you get the Stella CD, you can probably find a
Supercharger. But you'll be hard-pressed to find a complete tape
collection, not without parting with serious dollars. Vice versa, if you
already had a Supercharger and were kinda bummed out because you only had a
couple tapes, the CD restores the unit's full value. I'm happy to still be
receiving orders from people whose stories fall into one of these categories :)
Because of its multiple uses to both host Starpath games and load any 4K
ROM image, a Supercharger is a must for any 2600 fan.
Glenn Saunders - Producer - Cyberpunks Entertainment
Personal homepage: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/1698
Cyberpunks Entertainment: http://cyberpunks.uni.cc
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