[If YOU owned Atari...]

I'd make sure we were working with the best developers and so I'd hire Steve Ballmer as a consultant to help us figure out how to do that

 

 

 

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

59 minutes ago, Defender_2600 said:

You are in contradiction. So is the TIA sound 'horrid' or can it sound good?

No contradiction,  I explained myself in the part of my post you chose not to quote.

 

1 hour ago, Defender_2600 said:

It doesn't always happen, in fact in some circumstances TIA has beaten POKEY and NES APU.

So POKEY and NES APU sound 'horrid'?

Pokey sounds harsh to my ears,  I'm no huge fan of it, but it does sound better than TIA in general.  Of course programmers can always make a better chip sound worse and a bad chip do impressive things.

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

6 minutes ago, RevEng said:

Well, you're fighting against claims not made. I never said TIA is the same calibre as Pokey, SID, YM2151, etc. I just said it was good enough for the original launch titles, which it was, after which TIA audio would be supplemented by whatever was in-cart. +$2 or whatever per cart isn't a deal breaker, and it opens the door to custom per-game wavetables. (part of the minnie design) The Famicom has a similar in-cart audio feature, and the NES folks missed out on enhanced audio for some games.

Right but the difference is NES games seemed to take advantage of this more.   My understanding is only two commercial 7800 games used Pokey?   If more games had done so, it might change my opinion of the system.   But even Pokey was kind of dated by the 7800 launch.  (it has a harsh quality to it compared to other sound chips-  Can't imagine what the happy, bouncy music of NES games would sound like on Pokey)

 

Maybe this part of the 80s was a time when the good sound chips were just out of reach, or custom like SID, Amiga, and Atari's own ill-fated AMY, and that's why even the ST has a rather disappointing YM2149.

 

26 minutes ago, RevEng said:

I'll also suggest that If the 7800 had been shipped with quad pokeys, it wouldn't have helped sales in the least.

I'm sure it wouldn't, because games sell consoles.     But I would expect certain things at a minimum to be in a late 80s console.

 

28 minutes ago, RevEng said:

There aren't any issues with 320 mode that kept games from using it - it has some quirks, but you can design around it without much difficulty - people just preferred high-color to high-res visuals at that time. People's tastes have skewed the other way, so now you see more 320 development on the console. That's the nice part of having selectable modes.

I wanted both.   The competition was showing both.    160 is just not enough because it gives weird elongated pixels that limit the amount of detail you can have in sprites.   That's fine for early 80s, with the 5200 or C64,  but by the late 80s I believe it needed more.    Even 240 or 256-width would be an improvement if 320 was too much.

 

33 minutes ago, RevEng said:

I think you're getting a bit caught up in the idea that a console must be dramatically superior in most aspects to win a console war. It's about the experiences the console can deliver, and always has been. The 7800 was in the same class as the NES, with each one having strengths in different directions.

No it's price and games that win a console war.

 

My thinking is more like this--  

   1. Atari had no business releasing a new console in 1984, the 5200 was too new

   2. The Atari sale turned  the 7800 effectively into a 1986 console built on 1983/4 tech.

   3. What if Atari had told GCC in 83 that they aren't quite ready for a new console, but they think the 7800 tech is promising.   If they go back and refine it and add this and that, it will be the eventual 5200 successor,  by the time it does come out, it would be built on newer 1986ish tech that would certainly crush the NES's (1983) specs,  but of course Atari still has to bring the games (and if Jack & Co are in charge in that timeline, it would probably end just as poorly)

 

The 7800 as it was suffers from bad timing,  

 

52 minutes ago, RevEng said:

TBH I agree with your assertion that Atari shouldn't have put out so many platforms. But if we're undoing business decisions, Atari should gone with the Candy game console concept in the first place, rather than making the 400, and later re-entering the console market with 5200, 7800, and XEGS.

 

I just disagree that the 7800 tech as launched wasn't competitive with contemporaries. The tech was there - as many homebrew titles have shown - but the management and development wasn't.

Yeah the other way out of Atari's 5200 quandry is not release the 5200 at all.   If Candy was released a couple years earlier, then maybe the time would be right for the 7800 in 84.   7800 seems to have been designed as a Colecovision killer and it has the specs for that-  Although Colecovision had a 256x192 graphics mode and could sometimes produce visuals Atari systems of the time would have a hard time matching.   

 

Part of the problem was it got delayed for two years,  probably kept on the market for too long with no real successor until the Jag, and the hoped-for carts that would have extended the systems capabilities were few and far between.    So it ended up competing in an era that made it look dated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Excluding Pac-Man and ET, which is the worst game?]

7 minutes ago, NE146 said:

I might be totally off on this but I recall Berzerk and Phoenix coming out pretty well after Pac-Man gave us shellshock lol.  But yes, Atari definitely hit their stride when it came to arcade ports after Pac-Man. Most everything from them after that seemed pretty decent whether it was Vanguard, Phoenix, Berzerk, Ms. Pac, Moon Patrol, Joust, Dig-Dug, Pengo, whatever. (and of course the much later games like Jr. Pac and Stargate). the games were all VCS'-ized/downgraded but there was definitely an effort to capture the arcade game in at least some way.

 

You could be right, I don't remember the exact timeline, but I do remember Atari having a series of fairly impressive arcade ports right before Pac-man dropped.

 

I spent a lot of time playing the arcade Vanguard machine (the local laundromat had it making it the closest arcade game to my house   )     So the VCS version was slightly disappointing.    I think the worst problem was my favorite zone, the "stripe zone" was vertical instead of horizontal.   But from a purely technical standpoint, it seems like a good effort.

 

 

[It's probably easier to convince a brick wall to try out Atari's games than most modern gamer's]

Maybe I'm a brick wall, but as much as I like what Wade has done,  Atari would still have a long way to go to be able to take Nintendo on.   Nintendo has a multiple-decades long reputation for quality games while Atari has been an extremely bumpy ride.

 

I don't know if most recharged games will appeal to people who haven't played the originals (but maybe the new Haunted House could)

 

The big different between modern gamers and retrogamers is modern gamers expect games to last 30 hours or more, while retrogamers were brought up on arcade-style games that might last five minutes but has high-replay value.   Modern gamers don't seem to know what to do with those types of games.

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

54 minutes ago, Defender_2600 said:

To get an idea, let's take as an example SMB3 (3 megabit cartridge + custom MMC3 for animated tiles, extra RAM, diagonal scrolling, etc), the game's total development and marketing budget was $25.8 million ($59 million adjusted for inflation) and the team consisted of more than ten people who took over two years to complete the game. And we could continue with SMB, SMB2, The Legend of Zelda, etc.

 

The 7800, although it had powerful hardware, couldn't compete with the NES, and to say the competition was unequal is an understatement. A 7800 third-party game was typically programmed by a single man who in several cases also worked on the graphics, having only a few months for development and for a fee of around US$25K (for example, 7800 Toki). With such resources available, there wasn't much that could be done.

This too is a function of the sale to Jack.   Atari Corp never had the development and marketing budgets needed to compete.     Under Warner,  Atari had marketing muscle that scared even Nintendo.   They would have spent the money to keep the competition at bay..  that free-spending was part of their undoing.

[Atari Future Acquisition Poll]

1 hour ago, jhd said:

 

 

Presumably the copyright belongs to the corporate body, so the term is 95 years from the date publication. Thus the copyright will expire in about 2079.

 

If the copyright is still held by an individual (i.e. the original programmer), the term is life plus 70 years. 

 

So, yes, the copyright will eventually expire, but not in the lifetime of anyone participating in this discussion. 

Oh wow, I thought it was shorter than that,  but I know they've adjusted the copyright lengths over the years..    (Thanks Disney!)

[Excluding Pac-Man and ET, which is the worst game?]

1 hour ago, davyK said:

Fair point about the backgrounds - but maybe 2600 was managed under a different dept? I definitely remember reading about the black screen requirement but not sure what the source of it was.

 

I've read about this requirement as well.   But I can name a number of non-space games that violate it.     So I don't know if it was a real rule or urban legend.    Or maybe it was a rule that was in effect for a limited time?   "Too many black background games, we want things to be more colorful"  and maybe the backlash to PacMan caused them to re-evaluate?   IDK

 

1 hour ago, davyK said:

It's a pity Pacman was the worst experience for you. But you were lucky - there are some real stinkers.  I was quite careful about what I bought back then - I was quite happy with every game I got.

I had a friend who got an Atari before I did, and he seemed to get a new game every week that we'd all play.  So when I got mine, I had a pretty good idea of which games I wanted and which I didn't.     Then after I got mine, the bargain bins started appearing,  so if I spent $4.99 on a game that turned out to be a dud, it wasn't a huge deal.   But I think even in the bargain bins, I only bought one game I didn't like because I'm still kind of choosy.  I'm not going to buy a game just because it's $5, it has to look interesting.   

 

2 hours ago, davyK said:

I still think it's a miracle anything past Breakout, Combat and Air Sea Battle was done on the console as that is all it was designed to do. 

Right and those blocky graphics were all we expected of the console at first.  But then Activision showed up and revolutionized what could be done with the 2600 graphics,  and soon Atari was following suit with improved graphics.   And Atari seemed to hit a stride with arcade ports.   Berzerk looked closer to the arcade game than I thought a 2600 game could.   Phoenix seemed like a decent effort, and then suddenly Pac-Man comes and wrecks that streak. 

  

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

53 minutes ago, RevEng said:

The TIA sound was always a stopgap, and TIA music quality is also a function of the care given to it. I can point to several amazing homebrew/demo TIA tunes. Even going back to the original lineup, I reject that Ms Pac Man, Food Fight, Joust, Robotron, and Xevious have "horrid sound".

Even the 2600 can sound good at times.   Still when you get into any kind of distortion, the 7800 clearly reminds you of it's TIA sound.    Even at TIA's best,  Pokey sounds better,   and SID and YM 2151 sound better than that.    There's simply no  excuse for a 1984 console to have such an ancient soundchip as its primary.

 

1 hour ago, RevEng said:

Your original argument was they should have built a 5200 successor instead of the 7800, based on your perceived 7800 hardware issues. When we point out it's mostly a matter of software, you pivoted to the quality of commercial library, which nobody was arguing about

No my argument was always bringing the 7800 for 1984 release was a mistake.    Atari's most loyal fans just shelled out $270 for 5200 (a lot back then) on the promise of great games to come, only to have the system killed well before its 2nd birthday.   How many of those burned by that would have enthusiastically embraced a 7800?   Not many I would guess.   I cannot overstate how bad this move was, brand loyalty is crucial in this industry.

 

The eventual 5200 replacement could have been based on some 7800 tech.   The Maria chip was ahead of it's time.   But GCC would have had an extra 2 years at least to refine it.   At minimum it has a decent soundchip and a resolution fix.   7800's 320 mode has issues that kept many games from using it.   Either fix the shortcomings if possible, or come up with a 256 mode like some of Atari's competitors had.   160 just doesn't cut it for the late 80s.

 

1 hour ago, RevEng said:

Your imagined hyper-capable 5200 successor with an arcade port library would have also crumbled against the NES software library, especially in Jack's hands.

Well yeah,  I'm sure Jack & Co would have screwed whatever console they inherited.   They weren't videogame focused, and it took them a long time to get there.   In the meantime Nintendo ate their lunch.

 

Part of my scenario assumes Atari was better managed and perhaps a panic sale to Jack wouldn't have been necessary.    I don't think the Tramiels could ever have beaten Nintendo, but I think Warner could have.

[Atari Future Acquisition Poll]

How long does a copyright on a videogame last?    If Imagic hasn't done any business since ~84, then their games will go public domain at some point, right?

[Excluding Pac-Man and ET, which is the worst game?]

2 hours ago, davyK said:

Atari had a rule at the time that only space games could have a black background. Madness I know - they had hangups about the use of colour.  Frye's problem was the 4K limit.

Even a blue maze with a dark blue background (like Ms. Pac Man did) would have been an improvement.   Also why did this "rule" not apply to other platforms?   Pac-man on 400/800/5200 had the colors more or less arcade correct.   Also Centipede and Swordquest were non-space game that were allowed to have a black backgrounds,  so it's not clear if this was an actual rule or an excuse people have given over the years.

 

On 10/16/2023 at 9:39 AM, 1980gamer said:

I think a lot of the PAC MAN is worst game ever talk is crazy.

 

I think maybe... Most disappointing game ever?  Could be a better way to look at it.

Worst game "ever" is hyperbole.   But it is easily the worst experience on the 2600 for me.

 

6 hours ago, Random Terrain said:

By the time Atari 2600 Pac-Man was released in March/April 1982, Arcade Pac-Man was everywhere. Remember how popular Nintendo's Mario was in the late 1980s and beyond? Arcade Pac-Man was like that. Besides being in actual arcades, the coin-op game was in grocery stores, 7-11 type stores, pizza places, and so on. The arcade game screen and characters from the arcade game were on T-shirts, trays, and other merchandise. There were also books out about how to beat the arcade game.

Yeah it was a craze that might be like our generations "Beatlemania".    

 

What people have to understand is Pac-Man was a videogame that was like nothing we had ever seen before.   For one, it was full color.   For most of the 70s, arcade games were still black and white.  It had catchy music and sounds that became iconic, it had characters with personalities,  it had cut scenes, it had fruit/pretzels and you would always know what level you were on by what fruit you had.   You can look at the games released in the arcade and on the 2600 before say 1981 to get an idea of what gaming was like before Pac-man changed everything.

 

People became obsessed with it,  It got all the merchandise you mention,  plus a Saturday Morning Cartoon (I think the first ever for a videogame),  breakfast cereals and so on.

 

The 2600 version stripped out almost everything we loved about the game.   Ghosts had no personalities,  The music/sounds are not even close.  no fruits-- you will eat your vitamin pill and like it!

 

7 hours ago, Random Terrain said:

For anyone who was paying attention to pop culture at the time, arcade Pac-Man was a huge hit and seemed to be loved by men, women, boys, and girls (including people who usually wouldn't play video games).

Yes and I maintain that this is what ultimately lead to the Crash, as all those people who usually wouldn't play games eventually went back to not playing games, and much of the astronomical growth gaming experienced from 81-83 evaporated

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

8 hours ago, Defender_2600 said:

And that 7800, made by that band of hackers? It shouldn't have existed, it didn't offer enough of an upgrade over the 5200 to justify its existence and it's a big step backwards in other ways. I really don't understand why some developers prefer 7800 and why they create all those 7800 games in 320 high resolution which has a lot of issues, as is demonstrated by the poor results achieved (see Rikki & Vikki).

Too bad developers weren't able to get this level of performance out of it in 1984-88 when it mattered.

 

8 hours ago, Defender_2600 said:

P.S. Of course the post is ironic and everyone knows that Rikki & Vikki is a masterpiece. The 7800 is a third generation 8-bit system and it is unrealistic to expect the performance of an Atari ST.

 

It didn't need ST performance, it just needed to squash the NES, and that includes not just hardware, but games library.   Instead playing a 7800 felt like playing a glorified 2600 because of the horrid sound.   It really should not have been that way

[anyone have the .ATR ('s?) for Miner2049er?]

11 hours ago, Houdini said:

Someone in Van Nuys tonight is like, "Who the hell keeps calling here so late? And who the f*** is BOUNTY BOB??" 🤣

Maybe his name is actually Bob and he starts to get paranoid that there's a bounty on his head?

[USB Stick Requirements]

It's it's old it might be USB 2.0.   A USB 3.x stick will be much faster.   As far as size goes, there's no limitations as far as I'm aware.

[If Atari should make a new Adventure, what would you like it to be like?]

14 minutes ago, Giles N said:

inventories these days don’t need to be limited to shifting screens; it couid just be a window in top corner of the screen - where you swap items with one the many buttons modern controllers are equipped with…

6 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

Inventory is a good idea and a 'quality of life' improvement.  If you want only 1-item-at-a-time, you can always play the original.  I really like how Zelda incorporated different weapons, hearts for health, and money.  We'd want some more sophistication to the game, not just a modern version of 2600 Adventure, right? 

 

I'm not necessarily opposed to having an inventory,  but it could change the game quite a bit.   For instance, should the bat be able to steal any item from your inventory?

 

5 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

 

It looks 3rd-person top-down/isometric to me. 

It is more isometric than true 3D.

 

11 minutes ago, ledzep said:

I agree, if they were going to abandon the look and feel of the original then that 1st-person 3D approach of the new Haunted Houses could work.  But I'd do the same nostalgia in there, the dragons would still be kind of duck-shaped, but 3D, the sword would still look like a (slightly more detailed) metal arrow, etc.

I think the challenge is to create dragons that look like dragons, yet still remind you of the "duck dragons" from the original.

 

 

[anyone have the .ATR ('s?) for Miner2049er?]

5 hours ago, Houdini said:

I used to play this one religiously BITD. What an awesome and challenging game! Since it is so challenging fortunately there is a level select cheat:

 

While playing, type 2137826861 and then press and hold the SHIFT key.

I believe this is also the phone number shown on the title screen, so no need to memorize it

[The Atari 2600+ is live for preorders!]

2 hours ago, Albert said:

2 hours ago, zzip said:

You'd be surprised, some people would rather fill the screen, even if the aspect is wrong and the video is stretched.   

This is very true based on my experiences speaking to people on this subject over the years. It is nice that the 2600+ gives you a choice. 

Yeah learned the hard way when widescreens first came out.   When I see someone watching SD TV stretched,  I'd assume they just didn't bother to adjust their TV and I'd offer to fix it...  only to discover their distaste for black bars was as strong as my distaste for incorrect aspect ratio!   

[Microsoft now owning ABK could potentially be of great benefit to Atari]

2 hours ago, JPF997 said:

There's no need for lawyers in a case like this, if Microsoft and Atari both agree that it would be beneficial for both companies to license Activisions old ip's then that's it, no one else can say anything about it.

Of course there is, they would need to write up a contract that specifies which properties can be used, for how long and in what contexts,  what the licensing fees are and make sure the language in the contract is not ambiguous.   Also since game licensing can be tricky, they might have to research if they are free-and-clear to license out the property to begin with.

[If Atari should make a new Adventure, what would you like it to be like?]

I don't want something with the original graphics.   Those already looked dated by 1982.   I liked the graphical direction taking with the Adventure II homebrew for the 5200/8-bit.   Maybe they could do some pixel-art thing like they did for Atari-mania,  

 

Gameplay shouldn't be radically different, I guess, or it risks not feeling like Adventure,  so I guess that means no inventory, other than carrying one item at a time.   I'd like to see more items, a larger world with more puzzles.

 

Maybe add things from fables and fairy tales?   Trolls that guard a bridge,  Rapunzel's hair,  Magic Beans you can trade for and grow a beanstalk if you plant them in the right place.  

 

Music-  maybe just location based, like wandering minstrels that set the mood.

 

And randomization so that maybe the solutions to puzzles are different, not every element shows up in every game.

[Lynx+. Yay, or Nay?]

On 10/15/2023 at 3:14 AM, roots.genoa said:

That's what I said in the Jaguar+ thread. The easiest solution would be BigPEmu on the VCS, plus a Jaguar cart adapter. That could also happen through the Polymega partnership as well. But a dedicated Jaguar+ console doesn't sound likely.

It would also need a Jag controller.    Right now you'd either have to memorize the awkward keypad mappings of the BigPemu or hook up a keyboard.

[Alternate Reality: The City by Philip Price for Atari 800]

18 hours ago, phuzaxeman said:

Hi, I'm joining this talk late. I grew up with AR and I spent a half decade on the game. I also wrote a review many years ago. It's my top 3 8bit game of all time. I just started playing the game recently after decades of not playing AR on my PC.

 

To answer your question, I never got the impression that your mind was placed in some kind of virtual reality. The premise of AR is that you were abducted by aliens and placed in a doorway into the city of Xebec Demise.

 

 

I think it's something you would have discovered in the unreleased AR games

[Jaguar+, Yay or Nay?]

On 10/13/2023 at 6:29 PM, KainXavier said:

There's been a lot of talk in the other threads about Atari not having a mascot.  So there you go, that's the mascot.  Now we just need an Atari Karts 2 that stars Jynx the Jaguar, Bubsy the Bobcat, Bentley the Bear, and Trevor McFur the Lion.  DLC characters will include a Yar, one of the paddles from Pong, the Haunted House eyes, and Sonic the Hedgehog.

And Evil Otto,  Scraps, from Scrapyard Dog, Charley Chuck from Food Fight Tarra and Torr from Swordquest and a Ninja Golfer.   Guess Atari has more characters than we realized

[The Atari 2600+ is live for preorders!]

23 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Probably the most superfluous switch on a console EVER!  

You'd be surprised, some people would rather fill the screen, even if the aspect is wrong and the video is stretched.   

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

On 10/10/2023 at 12:24 PM, Flojomojo said:

It almost makes me wonder why GCC didn't take a shot of their own in the console market space. I guess it's safer to stay as an "employee" of Atari, getting paid for work completed, instead of taking the entrepreneurial risk of betting the company like that. 

I think GCC was more of a band of hackers than a company as such.   Atari was going to sue them for producing bootlegs and decided to hire them to create 2600 carts instead, at least according to a video by one of the GCC guys.   Probably didn't have the funding or business expertise (or recognizable name) to launch their own console.

[Microsoft now owning ABK could potentially be of great benefit to Atari]

On 10/14/2023 at 3:28 AM, D Train said:

all those lawyers are either in house or on retainer, so the money for all intents and purposes, is already spent.  I would see that as making a deal more likely, rather than less.

 

But opportunity costs- they in-house lawyers could be working on multi-million dollar deals instead.