My dad once had a Samsonite briefcase with those stickers to put initials on the case. He gave me the stickers and I put them on my G7400 more than 25 years ago. I had completely forgotten about that, but when I saw the photo in the auction, the memories came back immediately.

I sold my G7400 in my hometown in 1985 to raise money for my new home computer, an Atari 130 XE. In the early 1990s my girlfriend wanted to buy the console back for me, but we noticed that it was the wrong one. The kid I had sold my G7400 to had apparently two of them. Later the traces disappeared. Now, two and a half decades later, the console resurfaced, 130 kilometers from my hometown.

Fortunately I could win the auction, however not very cheap because the seller mentioned the DIK in the auction title, so people thought it could be something special. I was excited when I opened the parcel. I still had the warranty card from 1983, so I just had to compare the serial numbers on the card and on the console. Match! It was really MY G7400!

The seller had bought the console only a few weeks earlier with other flea market stuff in the town where I live now. So he picked the console up here, drove 130 kilometers home, put it on ebay and, as I won it, shipped it back to the town where he picked it up. Anyway: my G7400 is back home and this time I will not sell it to raise money for my next home computer …

The cartridge was probably used at Videopac demo stations in stores. The text on the demo label is in German, French, Italian and English, so those carts could have been used in other countries as well. Would be interesting if someone else also found similar demo carts. Maybe this demo label style was used for other Videopac games as well?

So if you live in Austria and your parcel from the USA is much overdue, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it got completely lost somewhere over the Atlantic. It might also be that, even if the sender wrote the correct address on it (Austria, without “al”!), to some unknown reason your parcel makes its way over the wrong ocean (Pacific instead of Atlantic) to Melbourne, Australia (with “al”!).

It might also be that some unknown but conscientious and well-educated post clerk in Australia knows the difference between the continent he lives on and the small country in the heart of Europe, and forwards the parcel to the correct addressee. So even if you live in small Austria, you might face a happy end with your overdue parcel.

On more than 50 sales tables you will find items from the very first Pong systems up to the Playstation 2 era, both computer and video games, hardware and accessories.

Don’t miss this opportunity to enlarge your collection and chat with other enthusiasts about the whole video and computer games history.

Please visit www.retroboerse.at for more details.

But there was another Odyssey3 prototype game: Baseball! Magnavox showed the well known Odyssey2 game with additional background graphics for the Odyssey3 – which made sense, because America was, and still is, crazy about Baseball. However, Philips did not take over the prototype for the European G7400, simply because that sport was never really popular in the old world.

So I decided to make a run of 100 carts of Baseball+. René van den Enden patched the game so it will run also on PAL consoles – including the nice background graphics for the G7400 and compatibles of course.

Find all info on my Videopac page!

On more than 40 sales tables you will find items from the very first Pong systems up to the Playstation 2 era, both computer and video games, hardware and accessories.

Don’t miss this opportunity to enlarge your collection and chat with other enthusiasts about the whole video and computer games history.

Please visit www.retroboerse.at for more details. You can also discuss about the Retrobörse in our forums, there is a German and English thread.

In the following two years, Rafael and René improved the game and added high resolution background graphics for the Videopac Plus machines. Now the new version of the game is again available on cart, and this time 100 copies have been made, so that every Videopac/Odyssey2 collector can get one. It was the wish of the authors to make the game available in both Videopac and Odyssey2 styles, so every copy of the game will be shipped with label, manual and inlay/index card in both styles.

The Plus version of Route 66 was released at Eurocon/Retrobörse on 24th October 2009 in Vienna and is available via mail order since 8th November 2009. I hope you all like this improved version by Rafael A. Cardoso da Silva and René van den Enden. More info on my Videopac page.

I have made a page with the list of participants, my photos, four short video clips of the live bands and links to the photos of other attendees. Enjoy!

On Friday the participants will arrive during the day, so there will be already a lot of chatting with old and new friends. In the evening we will visit the famous Prater for gaming in the arcades, having food and drinks, and maybe visit the Praterdome discotheque. On Saturday there will be a Retrobörse in the Technical University. The Retrobörse will be open for the public, but the first hour in the morning will be only accessible for Eurocon participants. Saturday evening there will be a Retroparty at the Wombat’s, open for the public, with 80′s music, live bands (electronic music), retro videos and retro games. Sunday the Eurocon program will continue with Show & Tell, contests, an auction and much more …

For detailed info please check out the official websites of the Eurocon and the Retrobörse.

The book has been updated, some sections have been expanded, a few new photos can be found, as well as more entries in the indices. Of course all sections of the latest hardware generation have been updated and now contain all hardware variations that have been released since edition two of the book (2005), like Apple iPhone and Nintendo DSi.

The third edition of Gameplan 1 is available for 27,80 Euro. www.gameplan.de