phuzaxeman
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Posts posted by phuzaxeman
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3 hours ago, christo930 said:
I think cost played a major role They should have done a lot to cost reduce it before releasing it and trying to get it down to 179 with the Colecovision. Just the physical size alone, not to mention shipping costs from Asia in those giant boxes probably added significantly to the cost.
The 5200 shared Atari 400/800 hardware from the late 70s so the cost were lower. I believe the 5200 was made in California.
3 hours ago, christo930 said:Most people just didn't want to spend the extra money to get the better graphics and sound. But that was at nearly 300 Dollars. At 179, lots of people plopped that down to get a Colecovision.
At the end of the day, Colecovision sold more than the 5200 but Coleco only sold 2-3 million consoles from 82-85. The 5200 sold about 1 million in two years.
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15 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:
Agreed; interest does seem to be picking up somewhat. Circling back to the point that originally started this tangent, though, it doesn't really seem to be translating out into expanding the core group of enthusiasts for it - or, at least, not in a way that visibly demonstrates that growth if it is happening.
Being completely straightforward, though, I doubt we'll ever see a sizeable revival of interest in the 5200, let alone one similar to that of the 7800. That's not to condemn the machine, but rather to say that there's a lot of inertia that has to be overcome in order to make it an attractive platform for development and/or porting. The points raised by @pirx and @MrFish earlier in the thread pretty much detail why I feel this is going to remain the case, but we'll see what happens. There certainly has been development for it, so maybe it's just a case of the right killer app releasing to the right audience at the right time.
Yeah, the improved reputation and future development are two different situations although they are related.
I'm actually happy where the 5200 is today. I'd like it to be like the lynx but there are a lot of great titles.
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QIX was an iconic game. It's not a flashy game like the other titles but the 5200 QIX was the best version in 1982. I had both the 8bit and 5200 and the 5200 was more accurate to the arcade.
Did you know the 1990 Game Boy port of Qix had Mario intermissions?
Such a cool game. Any 5200 QIX fans out there?
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31 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:
Which is true. The system was generally seen as a pretty significant step forward; there's no denying that.
While I don't disagree with you on that, please remember what I said originally:
Note the emphasis on 'practically'. We're 40 (almost 41) years removed from its launch, and the poor image has been largely gathered post-discontinuation of the machine. No implication was made that it was launched and immediately disliked, but, as we've both seen, opinion - favourable or otherwise - loves to propagate itself unchecked. That's the situation the machine finds itself in, rightly or wrongly.
Nobody's attacking the machine here, least of all me - if I were, it'd be incredibly hypocritical of me to do so seeing as how I own two of them and have one plus peripherals that I enjoy using routinely.
I think the image of the 5200 is changing for the better. You can see it on the more positive reviews on YouTube. I've been reading more posts and support of the 5200 since there are more joystick options and homebrews like Tempest and Intellidiscs.
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On 6/7/2023 at 8:14 PM, x=usr(1536) said:
This kinda reminds me of the early days of CDs, when some albums were released with three markings denoting their recording, mastering, and duplicating stages. Each stage received either an 'A' or 'D' marking for analogue or digital, respectively - so an AAD album would have been recorded and mastered in analogue, but the pressing masters (for duplication) would have been created from digital copies of the final mix masters.
Just to help clarify....remember my studies in music production, the SPARS codes for an AAD album would be an analog recording, using analog mixing, and finally mastering in digital.
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7 minutes ago, zzip said:
Yeah my memory of the time they came out was both the 5200 and Colecovision had a "Wow factor" around them, both promised to finally delivier arcade-quality graphics at home.
I don't even think the Pack-in was the problem, it was that most of the library was a duplicate of the 2600 library at first. Maybe we kids wanted the new consoles now, but the parents who have to spend the money are much more likely to delay the purchase of a new console until some must-have games arrive- they also don't like having to rebuy their entire library either
So I think there were a lot of people interested in the 5200 that put off the purchase until it was more compelling. I also think the Atari/Lucasfilm partnership that was developing Fractalus and Ballblazer was the kind of thing that was needed sooner. Both of those games were supposed to arrive on 5200 in '84 and would have brought something unique and not just more arcade ports which people were fast losing interest in at the time.
Those are good points. By the time Fractulus and Ballblazer were out, I had already made the 8bit switch. The duplicate 2600 library was a huge problem. Atari didn't learn and still did that on the 7800 despite other titles.
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4 minutes ago, Flyindrew said:
You also have to be of a certain age demographic to truly appreciate the 5200. Im sure the majority of us were either pre-teens or teenagers back in '82/83 when the system came out. We remember going to the mall arcade, wishing we could play those same arcade games, with arcade quality at home. We also grew up during the first generation of home consoles and probably thought the 5200 was a fantastic marvel when we first saw it, along with its controllers. I can speak for myself that these nostalgia factors is why I love the 5200.
For someone who did not grow up in this era, came of age maybe in the 1990's or 2000's , does not have the same frame of reference and appreciation we have, and views the 5200 only at face value, I can see them look at it like a "piece of junk".
This post is spot on. To see 5200 Centipede in 82 was an amazing experience to witness. A lot of the hate comes from people that were not in that time.
I had the 7800 in 87 and the NES and Sega was already out. The Atari brand was already fading and a new breed of gaming was already evolving.
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1 minute ago, x=usr(1536) said:
On a purely technical level: I agree with you. But, public opinion being what it was, the machine quickly gathered baggage. Whether or not that baggage was justified is another matter, but the momentum was there and carried on through to the end of its life and beyond.
True; it had a lot of unrealised potential. Thing is, that doesn't change what 40 years of history have saddled it with.
Here's the thing, I had practically every video game magazine from 82-84. The 5200 coverage was overall positive. Even the controller issues was not an issue in many of the reviews. I had 4 friends to trade 5200 carts (Eric, Brian, Jeff, and Steve) and we all thought the 5200 was $hit back then.
The baggage was much later (as apparent in the youtube video hate). If you want to talk about "baggage" the Jaguar was a real mess in its release. Atari did so many things wrong in their release of new consoles.
I feel the launch of the Lynx was actually good but the Gameboy was just lighter, cheaper, better battery life, and had Mario. The lynx was great but too costly.
I've owed every Atari console in its release date and the 5200 hate is one of the most exaggerated since the release.
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20 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:
The 5200 is a machine that has a poor image, and has had it for practically its entire existence.
I don't agree with this. The 5200 when it came out was cutting edge in 1982. The 5200 and Colecovision were kings of the new consoles in that era and were better than the 2600, Intellivision, Astrocade, and Magnavox Odyssey 2 that was still selling at stores.
The image of the new cool Super System console was present even in the advertising.
If you look at sales per year (about 1 million in 2 years), the 5200 did better than Atari 8bit, Jaguar, 7800, and Lynx. So any console released after the 2600 was considered a failure. It's unfortunate the 5200 didn't get the proper backup from Atari. If you looked at magazine ads, the 2600 mostly shared ads with the 5200. The better graphics and sound wasn't enough for many to make the jump to a newer system.
If Atari would have concentrated on 3rd party support (which has been the problem with every Atari console not named 2600) and unique titles like Countermeasure and Space Dungeon, plus started a pack in game like Defender or PacMan, the 5200 would have lasted longer.
But it's all hindsight because the NES changed the market and even Colecovision was discontinued. To me the non-existing images 7800 and joke of 64bit Jaguar was worse than the 5200.
The XE game system was 70s technology in 87. That was the whole problem with Atari back then.
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To repair just get a new flex circuit and buttons.
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On 5/25/2023 at 1:59 AM, CaptainBreakout said:
if the 5200 had come out with a similar console sleekness to the 7800, and a controller like an NES, pokey audio, plus lots of muticarts based on the Atari 800 games, I'd have been ALL IN.
Having owned the 7800 (87) and 5200 (82) during their release dates, hands down the 5200 was much sleeker than the 7800 in terms of looks. Yeah it was big, but the shiny black was amazing to look at. Still looks amazing.
A controller like the nes? The 5200 is the only atari console with analog controls. There were games like Realistic Baseball that used the keypad and analog controls that blew out the 7800 version years later.
Pokey audio? 5200 has that. Better sound than the 7800.
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This game is cool. I'd buy a 5200 version like the old days of HERO. Hero on the 5200 was amazing.
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On 4/19/2023 at 4:52 PM, Mr.JT said:
Doesn’t sound like much future for VCS / hardware… describing the VCS performance as struggling and not unique enough…
But the article also says that "the company plans to introduce hardware this year that can serve as a VCS add-on or function independently."
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On 4/2/2023 at 5:12 PM, BIGHMW said:
As a matter of fact I have the entire library of ROMs of the Mean Hamster titles, and even though I have never played any of them I'll indeed give them all a spin and maybe post a review on The Atari 5200 SuperReport as soon as I get my (proverbial) head out of my duff and finally do the in-game voiceovers on "Space Assailants 2121" (Episode 3) and "Turmoil" (Episode 4) in which is the only thing I have yet to do on those episodes, they were filmed a month ago, but not posted due to lack of motivation caused by the lack of viewership of my channels and the low numbers related to it.
It's hard to "keep posting away" when you get SO discouraged due to and by poor-to-low viewership and subscription numbers, so help a brother out AND SUBSCRIBE!!!
If you do a review on the rare games like the Hamster titles, you should get more views and supporters. I'll definitely watch.
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On 4/3/2023 at 10:10 AM, christo930 said:
This is why I said "in some ways" and not "is a better machine" Overall, it's inferior.
I take issue with you saying there isn't a game on bally that is near arcade quality. The Incredible Wizard is an example.
Like what I mentioned before, I grew up on the Astrocade. And I had fun playing games IW, Astro Battle, and Galactic Invasion. But if you want to talk about a limited console, Astrocade in 82 was very limited not to mention there was hardly enough games. IW was definitely one of the best games on the console.
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On 4/3/2023 at 2:33 PM, christo930 said:
[sorry about breaking up my reply into 2 posts. It was an accident]
We're talking about a different timeline where Atari is not a shell of its former self, is a well known brand name associated with games and is a successful arcade game maker,
Is not a shell of its former self? In some cities, the 7800 released in 1984. The 7800 was stopped in 92. That's 8 years in existence with only 59 official titles released, a poor sound chip, and about only 3 million units sold.
Atari was already a different company in the late 80s.
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3 hours ago, christo930 said:
The 5200's capabilities are identical to the Atari 8 bit line.
The Bally Astrocade has multicolored sprites. I'll point out The Incredible Wizard looks better than Wizard of Wor.
Other than the sound, which had the crash not happened, would have been addressed, the 7800 is better. It was also backwards compatible. Comparing a greatly expanded NES to the unexpanded 7800 is kind of silly. The NES without the cartridge hardware was a fairly limited machine. The 7800 was capable of cartridge upgrades, but other than a few POKEY games, this was never exploited. Atari was a zombie corporation for the entirety of the 7800's life. Had Atari been financially healthy, games would have vastly improved.
Besides, what's your alternative? The 5200 vs the NES?
5200 had twice as powerful CPU than the Astrocade. The 5200 came with more ram built in, 4k vs 16k. It had a better resolution 384×240 pixels while the Astrocade only had 320×204. The 5200 had 256 colors available with 16 on screen at once. The bally only had 8 colors total. Sprites mean nothing if all the games were inferior to the 5200. Wizard of War looks better, sounds better, and flows better. There isn't a game on Bally that is near arcade quality.
Had Atari been financially healthy in 87? The 7800, which I owned in 87, was competing with Sega and NES and wasn't anywhere near the race. There are games like Centipede, Real Sportsbaseball, and Mario Brothers released in 83 on the 5200 that are better than the 7800 versions.
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3 hours ago, christo930 said:
The 5200's capabilities are identical to the Atari 8 bit line.
In terms of gameplay and control, the analog sticks on the 5200 is a different experience. So gameplay and controls capabilities are not the same. The 5200 trackball in 82 for Centipede was also much different than Centipede for the 8bit.
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13 hours ago, BIGHMW said:
...and then later on they corrected the munching sound on both A8 and 5200 versions to the proper "wacka-wacka" sound in which it should be.
I'll include the links to both of those tomorrow morning. That was well before the brilliant Pac-Man Arcade came out for both, some 25+ years later.
Pac Man arcade is even more incredible.
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11 hours ago, christo930 said:Quote
I'm not comparing the libraries, I'm comparing the hardware.
Comparing hardware on a computer vs a console isn't a good comparison because both c64 and 5200 have different purposes. They are not in the same market.
11 hours ago, christo930 said:QuoteI didn't make a blanket statement. I said "in some ways" I don't believe the Astrocade is better overall.
In some ways? What ways? There literally isn't a single game nor is the hardware in every aspect better than the 5200.
11 hours ago, christo930 said:Quote5200 Pac Man is a big disappointment. Much better than the 2600 version, but still has single color sprites. It was also 2 years old at the time the 5200 version was released.
5200 PacMan is better than any version of PacMan in 1982 including the mono sounding and choppy looking Muncher from Astrocade. Unlike the 800 version, the 5200 version had all three intermissions too. The proof is in the pudding. 5200 was smoother, had better sound, and music was sounded like the arcade. Mucher sound was terrible.
11 hours ago, christo930 said:QuoteDespite the fact that I like the 5200 and its games, Atari should never have released it, at least not in the form they did. The 7800 was everything the 5200 should have been.
The 5200 and Colecovision were the top consoles in 82. The 7800, which I owned in 87, couldn't compete with Sega and Nintendo. 7800 sound was really bad, some games were good, but compared poorly to the NES. There are games like Realsports Baseball that were better than the 7800. 5200 library was stellar. So many great games.
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2 hours ago, christo930 said:
While not a console, the C64 was better. In some ways, the Bally Astrocade was better.
The reason I say they were limited for 1982, was they couldn't even faithfully reproduce arcade games from 1980. Multicolor sprites were pretty standard by 1980 with only a few exceptions. By sprite stacking, you end up with a bunch of flickering.
First, comparing a 1000+ disk games C64 computer to a video game console is not a good comparison. There are a million threads on the 8bit vs. C64 discussions.
Second, I grew up playing the Astrocade. My uncle and cousins owned the Bally, and my family would play it a lot. We would always compare the Bally with our first VCS. At the time, I felt some games were better on the Astrocade than the VCS. The Bally controllers took some time to get used to, but it was a lot of fun. I spent a lot of time playing Galactic Invasion and Bally Pin.
But when the 5200 arrived in 82, it was a different beast in the console battle.
5200 had hands down better graphics than the Astrocade. In terms of graphics, the Intellivision was better than Astrocade, and the 5200 was even better than the Intellivision. The Astrocade was impressive during the date of its design, but the 5200 was easily better and on a whole different level. Compare Bally's Star Battle to 5200 Star Raiders or Star Wards. So many Astrocade games look like a better version of the Fairchild Channel F. Muncher vs. 5200 Pacman? Grand Prix vs. Pole Position? It's not even close.Atari 5200 had much better sound. Incredible Wizard had some great audio but listen to Pitfall II, Moon Patrol, and Berzerk. Hands down the 5200 is on another level. You have games like Berzerk and Realsport Baseball with speech too.
5200 also had more complex games like Star Raiders or Realsports Baseball that utilized the keypad, analog sticks, and two shooting buttons. Countermeasure also used the keypads to break codes while the top button rotated the cannon.
The 5200 also has a high-quality list of games. Over 85%+ are arcade classics. Bally has no game that comes close to the 5200's Centipede version or Defender. This is because there are so many hits on the 5200. Astrocade has about three or four A-list games, while a bunch are the generic late '70s arcade and number games that are versions of Channel F, Atari VCS, and Odyssey 2 consoles. You won't play a game like Space Dungeon or Gremlin quality games on the Bally. Bally only had 28 official games.
Astrocade was fun and had some decent titles. It was innovative for its time. But the 5200 was on a whole different gaming level. I grew up on both systems.
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On 3/19/2023 at 3:54 PM, christo930 said:
The Colecovision was a better buy. I think the MSRP was only 179 or something like that. The problem they had was all the best arcade games were tied up by Atari and to a lesser extent, the Intellivision. For the price of 2 games, the Colecovision could play 2600 games. The 2600 adapter for the 5200 came later.
Frankly, they all cheaped out on the ROM size. AFAIK from some reading I did, but cannot find again, Coleco had a shipped out the door cost of like 5 bucks. Doubling the ROM might have raised the out-the-door shipped price to $6 maybe But for a slighter higher price, could have the missing levels or other things kept out?
I honestly cannot see how the Colecovision can be a different generation from the Intellivision. That's probably true for the 5200. The Intellivision has a "16 bit" processor and uses sprite and tile graphics and has a music chip (not just a noise maker like the 2600. And it has a bios with runtime functions and a font built in. It's a bit of semantics I suppose. It's also hard in my mind to put the NES in a different generation than the Colecovision for the same reasons.
The Colecovision had a ton of arcade conversions. Of course, so did the 5200. But somehow Coleco did a better job of convincing us that it was like bringing an arcade into your living room.
This was a pretty common thing. I recall a lot of the store demo units were always breaking.
Nostalgia only goes so far though. For me, the old games is the type of game I like playing. They are just fundamentally different from later games. The early games were usually (though nowhere near always) pick up and play type games. They (meaning even original games) were the home equivalent of arcade games. You might have to scan the short manual for more specifics, but the object of the game and what you were supposed to do was usually very obvious.
After the 2600, the consoles and most of the computers could do "music" Even an Intellivision had a 3 voice chip. Unfortunately, even when we got music, it was often a short tune playing on a loop. Probably due to them cheaping out in ROM space..
Atari blew the 5200 in different ways. It should have come out earlier and it should have been cheaper. To this day it blows my mind that they released the 5200 with the joysticks they did and with super breakout as the pack-in game. This was the new "super system" shipping with a 4 year old game the pack-in controllers were not suitable for. It would be the equivalent of Taito releasing a game system with a joystick and packing in Arkanoid in 1994.
The 5200 and Colecovision were both years old at their launch. Though I am obviously a fan of both, they both were pretty limited for 82. The lack of colored sprites holds them both back, I think. Both have adequate sound though.
Are you talking about a bar in Fishtown in Philadelphia? If so, is it any good? Is it safe? Fishtown is a pretty rough area (I know parts of it are "gentrified" with well to do hipsters), though by the map, it looks like it's right at the edge..
Some of these ports were so bad you would think they deliberately did it. DK on the intellivision is indeed terrible. Though I have to give them credit for Carnival on the 2600. It's actually a pretty good port.
This was the problem with using old hardware. Both the Colecovision and the 5200 were 1970s machines. By the 80s, most arcade games had multicolored sprites. Though both have OK sound chips.
The lack of a lot of colors and "rules"(limitations) with color I find to be charming. I like viewing the artwork in game machines from the era. Recently a C64 game was released called "Pig Quest" which has some really nice artwork, plus some decent music. Colecovision has a game called "Suite Macabre," a recent release which also has some very good artwork.: The limitations drive the art. Once you are into this era. it takes artistic talent to design the graphics. I am not aware of any such projects on the 5200 though.
5200 and Colecovision were limited for 82?
What other console wasn't limited and was better?
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49 minutes ago, zzip said:
Whether or not Atari communicated it well, I remember that us kids who were into games thought of both the CV and 5200 as being arcade-like
But yeah Coleco seemed to do a much better job on marketing at the time.
The problems were that it was expensive- $269.99. or almost $840 in today's dollars! Also the 5200 was mostly the same games released on the 2600. It didn't really have a killer/app game that defined it. As much as kids may have wanted the better graphics, I could easily imagine parents saying "I'm not paying that much for a system that plays the same games you already have"
Back then we'd see both Colecovision ads and 5200 ads and be amazed at how much they looked like the arcade.
These days when you can compare the games side-by-side with MAME, you'll find that the CV/5200 ports are actually quite a bit off, but back then we couldn't do a side by side comparison easily.
Like what I said in my post, the sounds were very close.
I knew the differences graphically to the arcade even as a kid but you have to remember that prior to the 5200 and Colecovision, the 2600 and Intellivision were the standard. The 5200 was so ahead of its time in 82.
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5 hours ago, Keatah said:
I would say they were good ports considering the lesser capabilities of home systems compared against dedicated arcade hardware. They did capture the essence and smoothness however. Defender impressed me and I played it for hours on end.
I was surprised the 5200 ads never boasted about real arcade hardware though. POKEY and 6502 are, after all, used in arcade cabs.
It would be nice to figure out why that happened. Was it getting close to crash time? And fatigue was setting in? Were too many distractions from home computers? Were there too many consoles and carts coming out - and the 5200 just got lost?
I remember seeing 5200 PacMan intermissions for the first time. It was so amazing. Atari was able to get very detailed in their gaming.
Defender, Moon Patrol, Berzerk, and Centipede sounds were spot on close to the arcade. Graphics were so good.
What happened, imo, was Atari was still highly invested in the 2600. Advertising marketed both systems at the same time. Ads would literally show both systems.
Imagine Sony PS5 ads sharing with the PS4?
That wouldn't work.
If Atari released the 5200 in the summer of 82, and had the 5200 Pacman edition for Xmas, it would have been a hit. Or included the 2600 adapter in a 5200 combo, that would have also sold.
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So I think there were a lot of people interested in the 5200 that put off the purchase until it was more compelling. I also think the Atari/Lucasfilm partnership that was developing Fractalus and Ballblazer was the kind of thing that was needed sooner. Both of those games were supposed to arrive on 5200 in '84 and would have brought something unique and not just more arcade ports which people were fast losing interest in at the time.
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Qix - Any Fans?
in Atari 5200
Posted
The 8bit version is decent. It's a solid port. But the 5200 version was more true to the arcade with the layout, font, colors, scale, and speed. The 8bit was wider, the font was different, and very slow filling up. It also had less colors. The speed of the 8bit was faster than the arcade which feels different. Video game fans of the 80s don't talk about how much games like 5200 Qix was very close to the arcade hence my post.