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AMERICAN VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AVE was founded in California in 1990 and released 18 games before going out of business in 1992 and suing Nintendo for having an alleged monopoly due to their lockout chip technology. One of the founders of AVE was the same executive that had previously worked for Tengen and also headed up American Game Cartridges, Inc. They released most of their games in two cartridge designs, one that is completely square, and one that has the upper-left corner cut at a 45-degree angle. A random assortment of each type is pictured below. Maxi 15 only exists in the square cart, and Rad Racket: Deluxe Tennis II and Venice Beach Volleyball only exist in the angle cart. The rarest AVE variant is Wally Bear in the square cartridge.

Solitaire

Tiles of Fate

Maxi 15
Ultimate League Soccer
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Blackjack

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DeathBots

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Double Strike

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Dudes with Attitude

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F-15 City War

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Impossible Mission II

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Krazy Kreatures

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Mermaids of Atlantis: The Riddle of the Magic Bubble

Puzzle

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Pyramid

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Solitaire

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Tiles of Fate

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Trolls on Treasure Island

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Venice Beach Volleyball

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Wally Bear and the NO! Gang

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Maxi 15

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Rad Racket: Deluxe Tennis II

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Ultimate League Soccer

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Other than square cart Wally Bear, the other really rare AVE item that collectors search for is a sealed copy of Trolls on Treasure Island that includes a toy troll figure, with 1 of 4 different hair colors, literally zip-tied to the box. According to AVE founder Richard Frick, the first print run of 5,000 copies included the toy. If you have a Trolls box with holes punched through it, it used to have this promotional item attached.

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Trolls on Treasure Island

with troll toy included

Maxivision 30

Maxivison 30-In-1

AVE Prototype Cartridge

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AVE is also responsible for another famous piece of video game collecting lore: The Maxivision 30-In-1. In 1991 a man named Bob Borgerson from a company called Maxivision International, Inc. in Las Vegas, NV contacted AVE president Richard Frick about manufacturing a 30-game multicart. Maxivision had produced a prototype but did not have any production or distribution capabilities, and also did not have licensing for any viable games to use. AVE had access to all of those things, and Frick decided to give it a try based on 2 prototypes Maxivision had submitted. AVE made a handful of working prototype boards and put them in AVE cartridges that were spray-painted gold. The label that was placed on the cartridge is the original concept art from Maxivision.

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What makes the Maxivision cart stand out among hundreds of other prototypes for NES games is the 30-minute informercial AVE produced to launch the product. The informercial is staged as a video game championship competition where teams of kids play through the 30 games. It's hosted by Hulk Hogan, and even features Frick himself as one of the announcers. The production company handmade a Maxivision cartridge mockup by painting a Tengen cartridge gold, which is shown in the graphics throughout the infomercial, but there was never a real Tengen-cart version of the game. Ultimately the infomercial only aired one time, in the middle of the night, and it was decided that the project was not financially sound.

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AVE did take the multicart concept and went on to release Maxi-15 without Maxivision, although Bob Borgerson does have a production credit on the game. As for the Maxivison 30 prototype carts, each of the kids appearing in the infomercial was given a copy, and AVE had a few, but it is unknown how many still exist today.

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Screen shot from Maxivision infomercial featuring the gold Tengen cartridge

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Legend (ledge-end) noun: the part of a map explaining how to identify and understand the symbols used.

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