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Friday, February 18, 2011

Foghat on the Atari 2600?

On my way to work today I was listening to a classic rock station and I heard the song Slow Ride by the 70's group Foghat TWICE. I would be hard-pressed to name another Foghat tune but I was very familiar with this one as it is the very first song in Guitar Hero III (the only Guitar Hero that I own).

And it reminded me of an ad I saw a while back for a Foghat 8-track that was also an Atari game.  So I googled it and found the ad.  Mik, you thought that family on your 2600 boxes was crazy - check out this guy. Hard to tell if he is having the greatest time of his life or is in excruciating agony!



I was interested in searching out and possibly buying this unique product that was an Atari cartridge on one end and a Foghat 8-track tape on the other - but other than the image there wasn't much info out there. Then I found the apparent source material from which the image seems to have sprung - this article from the Van Gogh-Goghs website. A minute or so of exploring this web comedy site told me for sure that this ad was just a fake. Darn!

But at least the search did lead me to discover a different type of Atari game cartridge that I had never seen before - the double-ender. These fairly rare 3rd party cartridges had two separate ROM chips - one at each end of the cartridge. So if you inserted it into your Atari 2600 one way you had one game and then you could flip it around and you had another game.  Not sure if that is more practical really than just buying two separate cartridges, but pretty cool anyway!  Plus if you are ever out on a boat and your motor goes out you could paddle back to shore with the cartridge.  Look how long this thing is!  A quick scan of eBay shows several for sale ranging from around $14-$35 with shipping.



...and as often happens to me in my video game wanderings - this research circled back around to another game that I just recently took a look at - Custer's Revenge.  When I did that previous post, I had read that the company PlayAround had purchased the rights to Mystique's "adult-oriented" 2600 titles and re-released them as 2-in-1 cartridges - one of which was "General Re-Treat / Westward Ho!".  Westward Ho! was just Custer's Revenge with a different title, but in General Re-Treat, Custer was the one on the cactus and you played as the Native American girl trying to get to him. Radically different gameplay...

But what I didn't realize at the time was these re-releases were actually these so-called double-enders.  So I leave you with a couple of pictures of their classic double-ender "General Re-Treat / Westward Ho!" that I found on the excellent Atari website - Atari Mania. Enjoy!



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8 comments:

Fallguy40 said...

I like the "Two Totally Different Adult Video Games" line on the packaging. They are very different.

MadPlanet said...

Yeah - TOTALLY different! :)

What a ripoff. They could've at least split them up on 2 separate double-enders with a couple of their other adult-oriented games.

Also note how the girl isn't tied up in Ho and looks like she is really having a great time. Guess they learned something from the whole rape controversy from the Custer release.

Mik said...

OH. MY. GOD.

While the man looks like Tom Selleck after being shot during Magnum P.I., the girl is really sad for some reason. Apparently, no normal family played Atari back then!

And that "TOTALLY" really made me rolling on the floor.

MadPlanet said...

Nice! Yeah the girl looks a bit put off. Her brother must be putting the Slow Ride smack down on her.

gnome said...

A fake ad? For shame. Well, at least the double feature porn extravaganza was real...

MadPlanet said...

I was really rather more excited about the Foghat cart than the porn though. Now there's a sentence I never thought I would write.

Anonymous said...

A bad compromise is better than a good lawsuit.

MadPlanet said...

...and well begun is half done.

OK - this is what I don't understand about spam. I understand when spambots leave links to their products behind but these random linkless statements get left sometimes too and I don't get the point.

Or is this maybe a legitimate post from a rogue French philosopher who just wants to spread proverbs?

Am I missing something here???