15 replies to this topic

[S1500]

At Terrrget.

Does anyone remember these back in the day? When I was a wee lad, I remember going to Target and seeing these small, shiny gold cardboard box games for the Commodore 64. I didn't have a C64, so I never bought 'em.

But I remember seeing these for MANY MANY years at Target for sale. What's the story behind them? It's akin to finding NIB Genesis games at a Kmart in 2006.

[save2600]

How long ago are you talking about seeing C64 titles at Target? That store was relatively 'new' to Chicagoland in the mid 90's and none of ours carried anything like that. And boxed Genesis games at K-mart in 2006? Best we had were loose used N64, Genny, NES and SNES games shrunkwrapped to a small piece of cardboard around then. Been years since I've seen those games sold at any K-marts. Leftovers from video rental stores they were. Somehow K-mart must have had an in with to do the liquidation. I remember Venture stores selling NIB Atari Lynx's though in Mundelein, IL up until the mid-late 90's.

[Chris Leach]

We had stores in mid michgan call Pamida that carried snes games up into the early 2000.....cheap! But who wanted that stuff then? I was just a poor college student then. Couldnt afford new games...

[TI99Kitty]

S1500, on Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:12 PM, said:

At Terrrget.

Does anyone remember these back in the day? When I was a wee lad, I remember going to Target and seeing these small, shiny gold cardboard box games for the Commodore 64. I didn't have a C64, so I never bought 'em.

But I remember seeing these for MANY MANY years at Target for sale. What's the story behind them? It's akin to finding NIB Genesis games at a Kmart in 2006.

I don't remember game carts in gold boxes, but I bought my Commodore 128 at Target, when I worked there, around 1990-91. They had all been recently clearanced out, but there was an out-of-box 128 in the chargeback area in the back room, along with a disk drive and a monitor. I asked the store manager if I could buy them at the clearance price, and she said yes. I think I paid something like $30 for the 128 (and the drive), and $50 for the monitor. They had been returned by a customer who said they didn't work, but when I took them home, everything worked just fine.

So, while I don't remember the games you mentioned, I *do* remember Target selling Commodores until at least 1990 (but no later than 1991).

[save2600]

TI99Kitty, on Tue Nov 17, 2009 8:45 AM, said:

They had been returned by a customer who said they didn't work, but when I took them home, everything worked just fine.

So, while I don't remember the games you mentioned, I *do* remember Target selling Commodores until at least 1990 (but no later than 1991).

Classic and typical confused consumers, returning a system and then saying "it didn't work". They probably tried to stuff an MSDOS disk into it

When I sold Amiga's through Montgomery Ward (and after I qualified the customer extremely well) and would take the time to educate them about just what it is they were looking at, I'd still get returns on the Amiga for crazy stupid reasons. And don't get me wrong - while I as pro Amiga, I would never have wasted my time trying to convert a WinTel customer (okay, so I tried a little). Those drones were the kind that would gladly fork over $4k on an inferior system, just because it had a sticker on its 1x CD ROM labeled 'Multimedia'. And at 6% commission, whatever - it's your money. lol But anyway, you'd think the kind of person looking at an Amiga would have somewhat of a clue what the machine was all about, but nope. Didn't help our store was located right smack dab in the middle of an extremely hostile anti-consumer melting pot of garbage though - Niles, IL. Blech.

Edited by save2600, Tue Nov 17, 2009 9:10 AM.

[tiggerthehun]

I picked up 5 BEAUTIFUL boxed Odysesy 2 games at Best Buy a few years back - for $2.99 each! Still don't know what that was all about. (MegaMan has them now - WITH the receipt, incase you think I'm crazy!)

[save2600]

Wow! O2 games at Best Buy a few years back? Sure you weren't abducted by aliens and lost a few years there? lol

As a matter of coincidence, I just received a boxed C128 system today with a price sticker from Target @ $269.99! I don't know if their price labels have dates on them, but above the price reads: 085 73825 - with the 25 being underscored. Price sticker looks like this:

085 73825
128$269.99

Edited by save2600, Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:48 AM.

[BydoEmpire]

tiggerthehun, on Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:42 AM, said:

I picked up 5 BEAUTIFUL boxed Odysesy 2 games at Best Buy a few years back - for $2.99 each! Still don't know what that was all about. (MegaMan has them now - WITH the receipt, incase you think I'm crazy!)

Wow, that's amazing.

As for the c64 games at Target, I don't remember Target specifically but a lot of those types of stores carried Mastertronic and Gold Star budget software fairly late in the system's life. At least, I think it was Gold Star... hard to remember the names of all the publishers back in the day. It's a lot easier now that there are only three...

[TI99Kitty]

save2600, on Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:48 AM, said:

Wow! O2 games at Best Buy a few years back? Sure you weren't abducted by aliens and lost a few years there? lol

As a matter of coincidence, I just received a boxed C128 system today with a price sticker from Target @ $269.99! I don't know if their price labels have dates on them, but above the price reads: 085 73825 - with the 25 being underscored. Price sticker looks like this:

085 73825
128$269.99

Target used (maybe even still uses) a 6-digit number to identify their merchandise, which cashiers could type in to the POS terminals rather than type in the UPC. Usually, these numbers would show up as "xxx xxx" or "xxx-xxx" at the top of the sticker. It looks as though yours has the numbers arranged vertically, though. So the "085" would be the department code (each department of the store had its own number), and probably the "128" is the item code.

Of course, it's been a long time since I worked for Target, and I *used* to know more about reading Taget's stickers... And, of course your 128 probably predates when I worked for Target (1989-91), since by that time price stickers were mostly used only on clearance and seasonal items.

Well, and also because Target stopped selling Commodores by 1991. ^_~

[save2600]

Thanks for the explanation TIkitty, we had similar codes at Sears to circumvent the UPC. Division #57 was/is the TV/stereo/vcr/dvd department whilst #03 was the computer/telephone/fax machine (home office) department. Then followed a 5 digit code to identify the product, etc. Ahh... the fond memories when stores were stores. I've compiled a list of electronic retailers from Chicagoland no longer with us. Totally depressing.

[InfernalKeith]

The first 'gold box' games that came to my mind were from Keypunch Software, but I don't know if/when they sold them in Target. They generally have three or four cheap-o games (sometimes in BASIC) on one disk, and retailed for a pretty low price. I've got a few with copyright dates as late as 1987 or 1988 on them, though I can't imagine too many people were thrilled with the games they got if they bought 'em then - they have the look of 1982-era software about them, for sure. Kind of the equivalent of those "250 GAMES FOR YOUR PC!" CD-ROMs you see at Office Depot now, with clunky games going back to the mid-90's on them.

One of my favorite little geek-outs, when I pick up a batch of old computers or software, is to check out the original price stickers on them. Seeing stickers for Rink's, Nichols, Conley, TG&Y, Ames, etc brings back a lot of memories (as do the prices - $50 for Connect Four for the TI 99/4A??)

[S1500]

Fifty frickin' dollars for Connect Four for the TI? Wow. Guess $60 for an AAA title nowadays isn't so bad.

omg, remember COMPUTERLAND?

[Keatah]

S1500, on Wed Nov 18, 2009 11:50 AM, said:

Fifty frickin' dollars for Connect Four for the TI? Wow. Guess $60 for an AAA title nowadays isn't so bad.

omg, remember COMPUTERLAND?

Yup!

Go back as far as Data Domain! Then came CompuShop and Computerland, then Egghead Software. I think the software industry took a major downturn with Egghead. That seemed to be the time when the balance of fluff vs. substance took a turn for the worst.

DataDomain and Compushop sold software in plastic baggies and only serious people went into the store. The BEST of times.

[Austin]

Chris Leach, on Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:26 PM, said:

We had stores in mid michgan call Pamida that carried snes games up into the early 2000.....cheap! But who wanted that stuff then? I was just a poor college student then. Couldnt afford new games...

This was probably due to the Majesco re-releases in the late '90s ('98/'99, even). They were at a lot of stores at that time, Kay Bee being one of them. I remember seeing them floating around for a few years after that, so I wouldn't doubt them being around elsewhere for longer. Same with the re-released Sega Genesis stuff Majesco put out.

Edited by Austin, Sun Dec 13, 2009 3:53 AM.

[BydoEmpire]

S1500, on Wed Nov 18, 2009 11:50 AM, said:

Fifty frickin' dollars for Connect Four for the TI? Wow. Guess $60 for an AAA title nowadays isn't so bad.

There was some of that, but if you flip through any gaming magazine from back in the day you see an awful lot of big games from $30-$40. Just like today, the specialty retailers can be pricey.

[Spoon]

tiggerthehun, on Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:42 AM, said:

I picked up 5 BEAUTIFUL boxed Odysesy 2 games at Best Buy a few years back - for $2.99 each!

I have dreams like this all the time. Walk in somewhere, find a stash of classic games that have been inexplicably unearthed, and cherry pick through them all. Then I wake up and sadness ensues.