"Handheld" arcade games hit eBay

Wow, talk about a blast from the past. I still remember my friend Brian having these versions of Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac-Man when we were about 10 or so.

Good times.

wow! i had a really bad racing game like this and a pacman. who knew i could have made money of them now =/

This is not news, I have that pac-man thing lying around in my basement, it is a pretty terrible machine. It probably still works, but who cares? It only has one level.

Ah yes how I loved my Pacman and Donkey Kong 'Handhelds'. Brings back memories of a time when C size batteries powered more items than vibrating items purchased at an adult bookstore.

um, aren't these kind of already covered by DS, PSP, and mobile phone offerings?

So Joystiq is doing stories on random eBay listings now? I mean really, stuff like this goes on eBay all the time...

Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who collect these things, despite the fact that "better" versions of the games are available elsewhere. It's more the hardcore collectors who go for this stuff though, which is probably why the prices go so high. Game & Watches usually go for quite high a price as well, despite the fact that you can pick up the (updated) compilations for the Gameboy.

I used to have the ms pac man, it was sweet.

This is gonna sound really lame but I wanted to get a 360 JUST for PacMan CE

Hopefully it will come out on Steam like Geometry Wars. Maybe.

I have the Pac-Man one. It has the most annoying sound imaginable. I remember a friend of mine had a Donkey Kong one that somehow used light light that shone in from above to display its color graphics - curious technology I'd never seen before nor since.

I used to hate these games. As bad as the handheld LCD games. 1 frame per second, usually monochrome.

Man, I remember when I first saw these. It was in a Sears catalog at the time and in there it said it was a tabletop game, but it was a closeup shot, so it made the thing look huge. There was nothing else in the picture..just the game by itself on a white page background. So I was all excited and thougght it would be a sizable tabletop game. Shit, two players could play, so it had to be a good size!

A week later I'm in Kmart with my mom and dad and they have them in a big display and I was more than disappointed. Suddenly, I didn't want one anymore. Hilarious that they would "simulate" that whole two player thing, though I do believe the Pac-Man game had a variation where two people played at the same time, which must have been ridiculous. I do recall playing the Galaxian one at Kmart that day and thinking to myself, "What a cheap piece of shit." Thanks for dashing the dreams of another innocent kid in the '80s, toy manufacturers!

Wow, I still have all of these, plus some others! It's a good thing I never throw anything away, maybe I should put my collection on ebay and become a hundredaire!

Hey Joystiq, I have a bunch of old 2600 games I'm planning on unloading on eBay, how about some free promotion for those?

Seriously, couldn't you have just linked to a fan page or something rather than shilling for "Retro Treasures"?

This is so unremarkable. There are 50 of these units on eBay on any given day. Can Joystiq post some ads to my auctions? I'm sure I'd get more hits and bids.

"Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaxian, and Dracula have been preserved from the dark era of 1981 and are fully operational"

Dark era of 1981!!!??? Oh my friend, you must not have been alive in 1981. Eapecially since two absolute classic games came out that year (Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga). There was a reason why it was called "the golden age".

And I still have my Coleco Donkey Kong and Frogger tabletops. Still working.

You can find these tabletop arcade games on eBay at any given time, however they're pretty cool collectibles and they're not easily available. I've had Donkey Kong Jr. since I was a kid and I've recently picked up Donkey Kong, Frogger, Ms. Pac Man and Galaxian.

I seriously had some of these about 10 years back... We actually found them in a building we were renting for our business... We had pacman, frogger, donkey kong, and one other that I cant remember.