Lost to Time: Tax Avoiders and American Videogame

The story of Tax Avoiders and American Videogame is simple: the game came out, and the company folded. The strange part is how it simply disappeared.
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[@PaulWerkema]

Thank you for watching! If you know anything else about the game, please let me know.

[@slizzysluzzer]

Various threads on AtariAge suggest that American Videogame/Dunhill Electronics was mostly a tax writeoff scheme wherein games (or at least titles) would be furnished in order to allow for accountancy tricks. Apparently Dunhill Electronics has over 293 copyrights to its name on file! ' There's a brief interview purporting to be from Jon Simonds in a thread from 2004 that goes into a little further detail. Here's what he had to say at the time: "Most of the other titles were "tax scams" that LM developed to sell as a loss so very rich people could get tax write-offs. A few of those games had to actually appear in stores (and they usually did, for under $5 in weird toy stores) in order to make the tax write-off 'legit'. We probably did about 10 2600 games this way (they were all slight modifications of one another). I don't have the titles because we didn't give 'em titles -- the accounting firms that sold the games named them. They weren't real games, anyway. Another neat thing we did was develop a custom ROM chip that had a couple of special features (autoincrementing indirect pointer registers) and stuff like that that we could use to speed up certain time-critical instruction sequences. I think Coleco may have used the chip design in one or two of their games, but I left LM before that point." No idea what the 10 games he's referring to are, or what their titles would be. But I hope this helps point you in a direction. I can't post the links to the forum itself without triggering KZbin's spam filter - but if you just poke around there I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for.

[@PaulWerkema]

Thank you for letting me know!

[@thetruemrbeard]

This was really fascinating, I had never heard of this game until now! The tax write-off theory someone else mentioned makes sense, although it's rather ironic considering the theme of the game haha. Maybe one day we'll know for sure.

[@PaulWerkema]

I think the guy was right. Atari Age has been researching these games longer than I have.

[@figo3554]

The best way to play this game is to do it irl.

[@thatpart]

😂😂

[@PaulWerkema]

Probably. :)

[@figo3554]

@PaulWerkema keep up your good work man, I'm hooked on watching your videos :)

[@PaulWerkema]

@@figo3554 Thanks! I really appreciate it.

[@figo3554]

@@PaulWerkema ye

[@thatpart]

Tax Avoiders should be re-released with A DSP tie-in. 😂

[@PaulWerkema]

That would be funny!

[@seananon4893]

It was a CIA shadow corporation. I learned that back in the early 90's. BTW, I was discussing ways to avoid tax's with a group of men, minutes before I was suggested this video.