Big Player

That could help. I do wish I had posted this thread in the arcade forum, so we could hear from the experts and collectors who might not read the 2600 form.

I also wish I had put Electronic Games magazine in the title of this thread, not EGM. But I didn't realize EGM stands for Electronic Gaming Monthly, a magazine that wasn't even arround in the early 80's.

So we have some concensus that the arcade game was uncommon. I've read 2,000 units were made, compared to Centipede's 50,000 units, also released in 1981. Yes, I am now convinced of the 1981 release date.

Here is where I got the production numbers: http://web.archive.o...video/atari.htm

In defense of KLOV, they only list Warlords as manufactured in 1980. They say nothing about the release date.

The other interesting thing at KLOV is that if you sort all of Atari's arcade games by year, there were no games manfactured in 1981. Interesting, at the start of the arcade boom? http://www.arcade-mu...game_id=&sort=3

I don't know if you would say the game is rare. But my experience is the same as RT's. I never knew it existed until 1996 when I first got on the Internet and started downloading roms for MAME.

The only time I've played the game was the cocktail version at a classic gaming convention. If I remember correctly, it seems that the game was a new sight for most of the other convention attendees. I have still never seen an upright Warlords game.

high voltage, on Wed Dec 21, 2011 2:13 AM, said:

But you don't just accept it when someone tells you something that contradicts most of the known literature about a topic? Without looking for any other corroborating evidence?

It does suck that we have only websites to use as the known literature for old video games. Almost every website says that the arcade version of Warlords was released in 1980. From what I can tell, the primary source for these websites is KLOV.

My guess is KLOV gets 1980 from the copyright that appears on-screen during the attract mode. It is there in roman numerals.

But this doesn't mean that was the release year. 2600 Pac-Man has an on-screen copyright date of 1981 but was released in 1982.

But I still don't know for sure. I would like to see some evidence supporting a 1980 release date.

It doesn't help that Warlords was a relatively unpopular arcade game and not seen by many. I was hoping that someone who was an arcade game dealer back then would know more. Or possibly our resident Atari historians Curt and Marty would have some internal documents that tell us something?

Random Terrain, on Tue Dec 20, 2011 10:21 PM, said:

Agreed. Some of those sites have more credibility than others. I would not use Wikipedia as a primary source, since it generally aggregates information from other web sites.

What is interesting about KLOV is that they have a PDF of the Warlords Operations, Maintenance and Service Manual. Take a look at it. The copyright date is 1981 (page 4.) It also says first printing at the top of page one.

My guess is that Atari didn't start printing the manual a year after the game was released. So it seems that the 1980 release date for the arcade game is becoming less credible.