I was yard sale hopping today, and it had been pretty slow. Slow until I came across a very late in the day yard sale where I could see an Atari 5200 sitting amoungst some things. I decided to check it out, and asked if he had any more games. He told me he had some more in the garage. He pulled out 32 NES games, 2 NES units, 2 SNES units, gameboy stuff, N64 stuff, and Atari 2600 stuff. I was very surprised this was all still here and he hadn't put it out at the actual yard sale. As I was looking I noticed some strange looking Atari 2600 games with labels on them in the very bottom of the atari 2600 box of stuff he had. They were completely loose boards too. I asked if he knew what they were. He told me his grandmother used to work for Atari. She used to bring games back home and play them before they were released. He said they used to have a lot more, but they had since been lost or thrown out. I eventually bought all the games he had at the yard sale, and I was very curious as to what these might be?
 
I'm no expert on atari stuff, or if they are actual protos or anything. I have cleaned and tested them all. They all worked!
Here's some pics:
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Top left: Frogger
Top right: Realsports Baseball
Middle 3: Pheonix
Bottom 3: E.T.


(Picture I took on my phone when I found them.)

i never find cool stuff like that at yard sales around my way it is a bunch of used clothes, dishes and books with the occasional bike and kids toys

Nice find there! While I doubt they are worth much, I know the Atari gami g museum guys would love it! Me personally, I'd get them framed in a shadow box after thoroughly comparing them to the retail versions.

Actually I'm comparing them right now. So far I don't notice any differences, but I haven't had much of a chance just yet. I believe they just may be protos since I just opened an extra ET cartridge I had(man are they hard as heck to get open), and the board has that normal one large chip on it. The board looks nothing like these. I'll be thoroughly comparing them today. =)
 
I'm no expert though, maybe someone can chime in to make a final judgement?

Just glop tops, lots of games had them, but I don't know the circumstances. Probably more common later in their lives as I see red label 2600 games with them more. And I doubt they're prototypes, you don't just make prototypes from glop tops which cost hundreds of thousands to even start producing, heh. But still, cool find none the less.

Yea so far no differences so maybe they aren't protos, but what are they? Also the frontside with the glop tops on it says Signetics on the board. Is that who produced these perhaps?
 
Edit: I just noticed extra markings on the E.T. ones. One says V5 on the back(as can be seen in the picture - middle E.T. one.) The one of the left has a D carved in it(also visible in the pics), and the right one has E.T. carved into it. The only other marking is a carved in T on the right Pheonix.

That was something cool about the 2600 you could play the carts without the cases. they were probably just games with broken plastic that they took the board out from. back in the early 80's my copy of fishing derby broke and i played it like that for years with no plastic shell

That's what I thought they were at first, but the labels on them and the odd boards seemed to indicate otherwise. Although I really have no idea. You know I should make a post over at Atari Age... surprised I didn't think of that already. 0_o

I hope they are something special. there are bound to be some guys on Atari age that could look at it and know right away what your dealing with. Good Luck with the find

Maybe they are review copy ?

Someone on Atari Age linked me to this: http://hozervideo.net/atari/docs/...
 
Whether or not that page is accurate though, I don't know.
 
Also I discovered these were made by Phillips which used to be the old Signetics. The new one is different, and is Korean based.

Make a post at Atari Age and be done with it, you'll have an answer in like 4 posts. Why speculate so much? I still think these are just normal cheap crap later boards in later release games. All my moon patrols have an epoxy board, and a few more of mine just normal carts, later releases. Glop top prototypes don't exist because that's not what glop tops are for, period. Maybe they are, because Atari did some weird stuff. But, like I said, we don't know, but the AA people will, just posts there.

Unfortunately so far they haven't been much help... in fact they just trolled me really. 0_o

Looking at the AA thread, I'm disappointed how stupid they're acting. But yeah, they're definitely not protos.

It's unfortunate they'd act like that, especially the mods.

Yea, I figured they weren't protos because those would have EPROMs. They still don't match retail copies of ET though, and that's what I'm wondering. Maybe they are just something as simple of some kind board variant? I really still don't know though...

What is different? Maybe there's two versions of ET?

Assholes at AtariAge? What a surprise... I'm glad I don't post there anymore...

I went to atari age and read the posts and they were pretty much talking down to you when you wanted help. i know sometimes people get ribs on the site but i haven't seen anything like the rude comments in that thread. i actually unbookmarked atari age after seeing that

Atari Age, despite its collection of know it alls, is still one of the best resources on the Internet.

I've had somewhat negative experiences with AA as well which is why I stopped going to the site. I wouldn't recommend the site to anyone, just doesn't seem like a very friendly bunch to me.