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Action 52 was released in 1991, and it was mostly advertised in really small print ads in the back of Gamepro and so forth, although the Christmas 1993 ad pictured to the left was a full-page one. The original suggested retail price was a mere $199.00 (at a time when you could get a used Genesis and several games for that price). Needless to say that they didn't sell too many of these at that price, and several months after its release they could be found in flea markets across the state of Florida for $99.99, as well as for rent in really sleazy video stores. Even later, in 1993, Active tried selling them in Gamepro again for $79.99, before they finally ran out of business. I've heard that most of their remaining stock was either shipped off to Europe to be sold for cheap, or fell into the hands of liquidators.
As a result, Action 52 is really hard to find, and when you do find one, chances are it's going to be from a silly flea market dude who'll charge you $2 per game for it. Until recently, Action 52 was thought to be the only Active release until copies of Cheetahmen 2, a "sequel" to one of the games on Action 52 that's not any better than its predecessor, started turning up.
This game was actually unreleased by Active, but copies started to be released a year or two ago by the distributor that manufactured carts for the company. Apparantly, the Florida based distributor was never paid for the 1000 carts he initially manufactured for Active, so he eventually gave up and sold off his stock to various retailers and collectors, making this probably the scarcest (in terms of numbers) NES game in existence.
Generally, there are believed to be less than 10,000 of each Active cart produced, so.. if you are truly insane.. try adding them to your collection before it gets too difficult.
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http://web.archive.org/web/19990220095052/http://atarihq.com/tsr/odd/scans/active.html
Postdates back to February 20, 1999
