Don’t piss off Bradley, the parts seller keeping Atari machines alive

Every old video game console dies eventually. Moving parts seize-up, circuit boards fail, cables wear out. If a user needs a replacement connector, chip, ribbon, gear, shell-or any of the thousands of other parts that, in time, can break, melt, discolor, delaminate, or explode-they're usually out of luck, unless they have a spare system to scavenge.

But there is an exception to this depressing law of nature. In San Jose, on a side street next to a highway off-ramp, inside an unmarked warehouse building, is part of the world's largest remaining collection of factory-original replacement Atari parts - a veritable fountain of youth for aging equipment from the dawn of the home computing and video gaming era. This is the home of Best Electronics, a mail-order business that has been selling Atari goods continuously for almost four decades.

But if you'd like to share in Best's bounty, as many die-hard Atari fans desperately do, there's a very important piece of advice you need to keep in mind: whatever you do, don't piss off Bradley.

I love this story. There's a lot you can say about having one person dictate nebulous terms like this, but we're not talking a primary, secondary, or even tertiary life need here. It's his way, or the high way, and I like that, in a romantic, old-timey kind of way. His website is glorious, the outdated catalog that is entirely outdated unless you combine it with decades of online updates - it's almost mythical, a modern fairy tale.