I may be biased, because they are mine, but I will let you know the range, from my experience:
Highest priced video game ever sold on ebay: A white Computer Space, 10,100 USD Average sale price for computer spaces @ 4500-5000 Last sale on ebay: 4000 USD, buy it now, lasted less than 24 hrs.
I tried to buy one of a member on here, who shall remain unnamed, and he turned down 5000.
Although they could be construed as coming down in price like every other video game, they are quite hard to find( less than 1500 ever made), they are the first video game( predate pong by several months), and I would guestimate that in Canada there are less than 10( I know of 6)
For purposes of comparison, I sold a non working 2 player version ( green model), minus the monitor, for 2000 USD.
The bottom line is that these are quite hard to come by, so the value is really whatever the market will bear, and there are some hardcore collectors that require one of these in their collection to make it "official." Again, I am biased, but I think that there is some truth in what I say.
Here is a quick price estimate:
working: 4000-6000, depending on colour( white is the most rare) non working , complete 1500-3000, again depending on condition, and to what state of disrepair it is in( Eg is is fixable?) non working, incomplete 1000-2000. Depending on if it is missing boards( very hard to find), and the condition
These are all for 1 player models( As the ones in the picture are...)
Again, I use the disclaimer that I am biased, but apart from myself, there is only one guy on this entire board, that I know who owns one, he would probably be the best objective person to speak to about this.
hope this helps
( PS Lets break the record and make it 10,200$ !!!) haha
If you see me walking down your street with camouflage on ,a duffle bag in my hand, and muttering "B1, B1" to myself, better go back inside.......
Can we make some popcorn and sell tickets??
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Hmmm, non working green 2 player you say for 2000....hmmmmm
double hmmmmmmmm
What if its complete, but not tube...they are only BW tv's anyway?
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Hmmm, non working green 2 player you say for 2000....hmmmmm
double hmmmmmmmm
What if its complete, but not tube...they are only BW tv's anyway?
Yes, but a certain kind, and those are also very hard to find. There is a posting about it on one of the american boards, it is a very strange looking tv, a kind of portable type, with the controls in a strange place. A standard tv, even of that era, wont fit properly. I also read somewhere that it will accept an old cctv security monitor.The guy I sold it too never mentioned if he got the tv for it, but I know he was having quite a hard time. I was too, thats why I let it go.
Didn't the seller for the 10G+ one claim it was the one from the movie Soilent Green?
That's the one. It was purchased by Greg McLemore from KLOV/VAPS. I stopped bidding at 6K on that one. He actually has a number of them now - including the sole white one.
Have: Twilight Zone Looking for: Reactor Superman Pong NineBall Drag Race Defender Attack From Mars Stargate Robotron Galaga PacMan Centipede SpaceWar Computer Space
Yes, and he claimed it was the only one ever made..until another guy showed up one and he accused him of painting it. Then they actually contacted the guy who started Atari( With a few others), or something like that, and he said that he only thought there was one white machine, but there could have been 3. Also the white one is not metal flake, like most of the others( Except for yellow?, which I have never seen in person).The guy that bought it is a pretty voracious collector of Computer spaces and rare black and white machines, as in he has # 1 and # 2 of quite a few recognizable classics. maybe I'll paint one of these black, and see if he flips out. haha
Shouldn't take much to tell the difference between paint and gelcoat. In fact if someone were so inclined to make an accurate copy, I am guessing they could replicate the entire cab since I assume it is just fiberglass. Painting it I would think could be readily detected.
working: 4000-6000, depending on colour( white is the most rare) non working , complete 1500-3000, again depending on condition, and to what state of disrepair it is in non working, incomplete 1000-2000. Depending on if it is missing boards( very hard to find), and the condition
That's probably not far off.
People who want one of those, will pay the price....
That said, I still get goose bumps thinking of the guy (Mark) who picked up a working CS in Kitchener for $50 three years ago...
So why did Computer Space fail to ignite the imaginations of a public that never saw video games before? Why did it take Atari and Pong to start the whole video game craze?
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So why did Computer Space fail to ignite the imaginations of a public that never saw video games before? Why did it take Atari and Pong to start the whole video game craze?
I'd suggest the controls were far too complicated for the time - remember, PONG was a huge success with just a knob. I took a few more years for similar games with multiple buttons (Space War, Asteroids etc.), to become mainstream.
Also, although the theme is almost identical to Asteroids, the implementation was relatively poor and more closely resembles the Atari home version of Asteroids. Computer Space is a raster game, and would surely have benefited from a vector version - which would have been easily doable at the time.
Having said all this, one very cool thing about Computer Space is there are no program ROMS at all. The programming is all built on discrete, off the shelf, TTL chips and a simple (and visually obvious), diode matrix for the graphics.
The machine itself is pretty neat on a few levels, and may have actually done better if it appeared later in history on the video game time line, rather than first.
Have: Twilight Zone Looking for: Reactor Superman Pong NineBall Drag Race Defender Attack From Mars Stargate Robotron Galaga PacMan Centipede SpaceWar Computer Space
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I would be very interested to see the schematic and a breakdown of how they crammed all that stuff into discreet components and how many parts it took.
I'd suggest the controls were far too complicated for the time - remember, PONG was a huge success with just a knob. I took a few more years for similar games with multiple buttons (Space War, Asteroids etc.), to become mainstream.
Also, although the theme is almost identical to Asteroids, the implementation was relatively poor and more closely resembles the Atari home version of Asteroids. Computer Space is a raster game, and would surely have benefited from a vector version - which would have been easily doable at the time.
Having said all this, one very cool thing about Computer Space is there are no program ROMS at all. The programming is all built on discrete, off the shelf, TTL chips and a simple (and visually obvious), diode matrix for the graphics.
The machine itself is pretty neat on a few levels, and may have actually done better if it appeared later in history on the video game time line, rather than first.
Nolan Bushnell has said that it wasn't cost-effective to use Vector monitors at the time. It wasn't until a few years later that vectors became less expensive and more practical for use in vids.
Absolutely freakin fascinating information in retrospect. Some damn interesting reading on the above site for anyone who cares to take the time. Really enjoy that kind of perspective.
Thanks very much for that.
Toujours à la recherche de vos histoires liant Montréal et les machines à boules. Always looking for your Montreal based pinball stories.
So it was basically just ahead of its time? Makes sense.
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Necessity is the mother of invention. The post states $10,000 for a CPU at the time so to be marketable the game was designed without one using discreet components. I don't know if this was a spark of genius or verging on the brink of insantity?
Necessity is the mother of invention. The post states $10,000 for a CPU at the time so to be marketable the game was designed without one using discreet components. I don't know if this was a spark of genius or verging on the brink of insantity?
The game is incredibly simple (and relatively crappy too), so it wouldn't have been much of a stretch for them to produce it as described - even for the time. The PCBs consist of 3 small, well laid out and stacked boards. The diode matrix for the "Sprites" are laid out on the board in the actual shapes that they are displayed on the screen - I've never understood why they did this but, it's kind of neat to look at the PCB and see the shapes of the main ship and enemy ships laid out in diodes. I have the manual and schematics around somewhere and they're very easy to read. I initially had a problem where the top segment of the digits that keep the score and time would not show and it was very simple to trace the problem back to an off-the-shelf 7-segment driver chip. It certainly opened the floodgates of the video era, and looking back (and living through it from beginning to end), it was incredibly short lived. There was a lot of innovation, progress and spent quarters in a very short time...
Have: Twilight Zone Looking for: Reactor Superman Pong NineBall Drag Race Defender Attack From Mars Stargate Robotron Galaga PacMan Centipede SpaceWar Computer Space
You really should have seen the looks I was getting driving home from COlumbus with them... even the US border guards stopped me leaving the US... just to look at them
wth B1, on CGCC you told us these came from elsewhere...?!
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