Denial

I think that the only version of the box for Visible Solar System that I've ever seen is this one:



Does anybody have a different version of the box? E.g. with the illustration printed on the box and a standalone manual?

(Like Sargon II Chess.... there's a version with the manual that is also the box cover, and a version where there's a standalone manual)

Checked mine, same as yours.

Mine is slightly different with the text on the box being in French and English and the manual having one side in French and the other in English.

Man, since 1981, so much more has been discovered about the solar system. Anybody looked at Stellarium lately ?

Not long ago I was looking at Visible Solar System, saying, "Wrong. Wrong. Way wrong." Mostly about the number of moons.

Back in the day I loved flying around the 3D model of the planetary orbits.

I don't remember any image or eBay auction of a version with the image printed on the box.
So... the book will feature the box like the one in my first post. It will be the only exception among Jelly Monsters.

By the way, Visible Solar System is one of the few games that was quite difficult to find for me... I think that the rarity list by Peter Ward (I know he's been around here lately) is very US-centric. I see Jelly Monster pop up a lot more than Visible Solar System here in Europe, especially in the UK. Well, until the UK is still in Europe...

I would suggest referencing the online guide at Digital Press for the Vic20, I took over from Ward and yes, quite a number of rarity and price values have been altered over the last decade. Jelly Monsters is an odd one. I believe it was released in Europe first in the UK, and Atari took out the injunction against Commodore UK apparently, so I believe that's one reason why it's easier to find here than most other countries.

Mayhem wrote:I would suggest referencing the online guide at Digital Press for the Vic20, I took over from Ward and yes, quite a number of rarity and price values have been altered over the last decade. Jelly Monsters is an odd one. I believe it was released in Europe first in the UK, and Atari took out the injunction against Commodore UK apparently, so I believe that's one reason why it's easier to find here than most other countries.

Yes, it never made to the US thanks to Atari's injunction. What I meant is that the rarity code on the list makes everyone in the world think that Jelly Monsters is rare everywhere (and priced accordingly).

I know that it is quite a challenge, but rarity should be localized :-)

Yeah, that's not really going to happen, especially now via the internet people can theoretically buy from anywhere in the world (especially using eBay). So it's more a generalised rarity, as in, how difficult would it be to find a copy somewhere on the planet. Sometimes rarity is about owned copies too, how do you mark a game that has say 10000 copies but no one is selling? Is it not that hard to find because there are 10000 copies, or ultra rare because you can't buy one if you don't own one already? These are things I considered when revaluing the games.

oldcomputr wrote:(Like Sargon II Chess.... there's a version with the manual that is also the box cover, and a version where there's a standalone manual)

If you count the Canadian boxes, then almost every cartridge has a version where the artwork is printed directly on the box (international) and another version with a generic silver sleeve where the artwork is printed on the manual cover, but shows through a large hole cut in the centre front of the sleeve (Canadian localized).

In Canada, I believe that almost all cartridges from Commodore for the VIC-20 were sold as the second version due to the language law requirements. The sleeve had to have French and English and the manual had to be either bilingual or two separate copies (one for each language).

I guess it was just easier for Commodore Canada to get generic bilingual sleeves made and pop in localized a bilingual manual (or separate manuals in each language).

That's actually quite a good solution to the language problem.

Mayhem wrote:Yeah, that's not really going to happen, especially now via the internet people can theoretically buy from anywhere in the world (especially using eBay). So it's more a generalised rarity, as in, how difficult would it be to find a copy somewhere on the planet. Sometimes rarity is about owned copies too, how do you mark a game that has say 10000 copies but no one is selling? Is it not that hard to find because there are 10000 copies, or ultra rare because you can't buy one if you don't own one already? These are things I considered when revaluing the games.

I get it. But (for example) Jelly Monsters remains hard to find for an US citizen that has to look on eBay UK and gently ask the seller to ship overseas; at the same time, many UK sellers check the rarity guide and set a high starting price for it, just because it's marked as very rare on a global level.

But anyway we all have a copy of Jelly Monsters, don't we? ;-)

Back to my original question...
Apparently Visible Solar System and Jelly Monster are the only games that don't have a box version with the image printed directly on the box.

I wanted to check about VSS because to uniform the content of the book I'm working on, I have chosen the box variant that has the (most) complete set of games: the one with the illustration directly printed on it.

I've never seen JM or VSS with non-sleeved versions, so you're probably correct there.

As for rarity, if you look at the DP Guide, you'll see I've reduced the rarity of JM down to 5 (out of 10)

oldcomputr wrote:But anyway we all have a copy of Jelly Monsters, don't we?

Back in 1983, when I got my VIC-20 and a year before getting it, I saw a game called "PAC MAN" in the archives for dumped images of game cartridges we had access at the local VIC-20 club. (Sorel VIC-20 club founded by Jean-François Lefebvre who also provided me with the elusive BASIC V4 of which we still don't know the exact origin)

The thing is, until Atarisoft came up with its own version of Pac Man in 1984, I couldn't see any cartridge game called Pac Man on any store shelves for the VIC-20 so I had absolutely no idea where this first "PAC MAN" came from.

I only figured out it was a Jelly Monster dump around the late 1990's when I got in touch with Ward Shrake.

So if you ask me... Jelly Monster is indeed extremely rare from my point of view. I have never seen this cart in stores, I have never seen the cart with my own eyes and never knew anyone who owned it in the 1980s.

I think it is a PAL thing ? Common here.

Mayhem wrote:I would suggest referencing the online guide at Digital Press for the Vic20

I think that no one lands to the up to date, database-driven version of the guide. People just search "VIC 20 rarity" on Google and click the first or second link: to me, the first result is the old 1998 version on commodore.ca, and the second result is the 2002 version on digitpress.com.

The updated, database-driven version never shows up on Google, probably because the list is showed after submitting a form, not good for search engines.

I would suggest to edit the 2002 txt and at least add a first line with a text like
This list is outdated / not maintained anymore. Updated version here: http://www.digitpress.com/video-game-guide/