I think now I understand why the NES beat the 7800

[Rex Dart]

Fine, you're right, Nintendo swept in under cover of night and assassinated Atari's internal developers that they of course had the foresight to hire instead of waiting half a decade to do.

[Retro Rogue]

Fine, you're right, Nintendo swept in under cover of night and assassinated Atari's internal developers that they of course had the foresight to hire instead of waiting half a decade to do.

 

And more childish nonsense. Atari Corp. had no internal game developers. Atari Corp. was once again a different company than Atari Inc. - the company with all the developers, which was closed down in '84. You keep saying "Atari, Atari" like it's one continuous company with the same staff, etc.

Edited March 9, 2011 by wgungfu

[DracIsBack]

but they could've offered Golf Ninja's Shanghai Freakout.

And I probably would've prefered it.

 

LOL

 

They started to do that in the end ...

 

see DARK CHAMBERS (Gauntlet)

Fatal Run (Roadblasters)

Alien Brigade (Operation Wolf)

Basketbrawl (Arch Rivals)

Scrapyard Dog (Super Mario/Alex Kidd)

Barnyard Blaster (Duck Hunt)

Ninja Golf (Uhhh ... Hmmmm ... Uhhh ...?????)

 

But yeah, those games with bigger carts and more detailed level design didn't come out until way later. Seemed as though Atari needed to finish off the XE Game System exercise. When that didn't really work, they went back to what they had and started doing in 1989 what they probably should have done in 1986/7.

[Retro Rogue]

When that didn't really work, they went back to what they had and started doing in 1989 what they probably should have done in 1986/7.

 

The problem was they had one guy - one programmer, Tom Sloper, doing everything at that time. Writing the dev manual, trying to line up outside developers and farm out game projects and oversee any licenses they managed to get a hold of. Not much of a "creative department".

 

 

 

 

[Tubular Gearhead]

And around in circles we go. It was indeed Nintendo's fault for Atari Corp. not being able to go to any of the dev studios - Nintendo had a lockout. If they developed games for the NES, they couldn't develop for anywhere else. Consequently it took time to get themselves to anywhere near to what you're talking about - which they did do by the late 80's. Sorry, but this ostrich head in a hole in the ground thing of yours just isn't going to work.

 

And this is one of the many reasons why I just don't like Nintendo- no matter how many great games have been made to "water down" all the goofy, childish games and franchises that Nintendo proper seems to spit out over and over again (across all their platforms up to and definitely including the Wii).

 

Although I really do appreciate the wealth of knowledge kool kitty (and others) give out. It makes Nintendo a little easier to stomach when just looked at from a technical perspective and not a monopolistic, strong armed "thou must accept the new wave of Japanese gaming" (I know, I know - time machine back to 1985) perspective...

[Rex Dart]

And more childish nonsense. Atari Corp. had no internal game developers. Atari Corp. was once again a different company than Atari Inc. - the company with all the developers, which was closed down in '84. You keep saying "Atari, Atari" like it's one continuous company with the same staff, etc.

 

Insert "Corp" mentally if it makes you feel better. I'm calling them Nintendo and Atari instead of Nintendo Co., Ltd. and Atari Corp. for brevity's sake. It doesn't make their practices any more successful.

Edited March 9, 2011 by Rex Dart

[DracIsBack]

The problem was they had one guy - one programmer, Tom Sloper, doing everything at that time. Writing the dev manual, trying to line up outside developers and farm out game projects and oversee any licenses they managed to get a hold of. Not much of a "creative department".

 

Haha!

 

Speaking of which, here's his linkedin. Though knowing you, you've got it!

 

http://www.linkedin....k=ppro_viewmore

 

And his portfolio:

 

http://www.sloperama.com/business.html

Edited March 9, 2011 by DracIsBack

[Retro Rogue]

The problem was they had one guy - one programmer, Tom Sloper, doing everything at that time. Writing the dev manual, trying to line up outside developers and farm out game projects and oversee any licenses they managed to get a hold of. Not much of a "creative department".

 

Haha!

 

Speaking of which, here's his linkedin. Though knowing you, you've got it!

 

http://www.linkedin....k=ppro_viewmore

 

 

 

Thanks, yah I interviewed a while back. He was adamant how it was just him at the time having all this piled on him, he was given no staff not nothing. Would wear any person down pretty quick, which is why he was there for not a long time.

[The_Laird]

And more childish nonsense. Atari Corp. had no internal game developers. Atari Corp. was once again a different company than Atari Inc. - the company with all the developers, which was closed down in '84. You keep saying "Atari, Atari" like it's one continuous company with the same staff, etc.

 

Insert "Corp" mentally if it makes you feel better. I'm calling them Nintendo and Atari instead of Nintendo Co., Ltd. and Atari Corp. for brevity's sake. It really doesn't change history. And you can quit with the name-calling, it doesn't really do much either.

 

And one again you miss the point. Did you even read that quote?

 

He is trying to tell you that Atari Inc and Atari Corp were seperate companies and you are confusing the 2 or not recognising the difference.

 

Got it now?

[kool kitty89]

What's with all the NES fanboyism around here anyway? I do really enjoy all the technical discussions and historical insight, but I don't like it when people around here are so suprised and offended when other members actually really like Atari and think it is superior (for whatever reason- nostalgia, technically, game style, etc). This is an Atari site after all...

Yea, but "superior" is just wrong. It's fine to say "I like X system more personally" but blatant claims of superiority (from a technical/software/business/marketing PoV, etc) is something you'd better be ready to back up with facts and real supporting evidence.

 

 

I'd like to see some Atari fanboys respond to the actual good points made by Nintendo defenders, rather than eg. pulling the "THIS IS AN _ATARI_ FORUM. IF YOU LOVE THE NES SO MUCH, GO FIND A NINTENDO FORUM." card.

I totally agree, it's just a jerk move for people who don't want any realistic discussion or others who are overly defensive as such. (I can understand those who get defensive over the 7800 being overlooked -same for the SMS- but that's totally different from unreasonably boosting the 7800 beyond its place in history or as a peice of hardware in general)

 

 

tell me what's superior about the 7800 over the NES in the context of that generation?

 

There have clearly got to be 50 different NES vs. 7800 threads on AtariAge that discuss this at length, Just do a search on it.

Actually, I don't think any of those did a proper comparison of the merits from those with an intimate understanding of both platforms. (my understanding is limited to a general/high-level undersntanding)

 

I've seen proper comparisons of the likes of the SNES/PCE/Genesis or SMS and NES, but there don't seem to be enough people who really understand (and have programmed for on a low level) the 7800 and NES to give a full and comprehensive comparison as such. (malducci is a homebrew programmer after all, just not one involved with the 7800 -worked on the NES, PCE, Genesis, SNES, I think some on the SMS, and a few others iirc -I think some Atari computer stuff and I remember him mentioning some old CoCo demos he did years ago) The PCE is the only system he REALLY has a bias for iirc.

 

 

Constructive criticism of the NES is great. It's fine to prefer other consoles to the NES.

 

But comments along the lines of "I hate the NES with every inch of my soul"...? Or exaggerating the NES' flaws and saying that the system is garbage because it has many of the same shortcomings as other consoles of the era?

 

I don't understand it. I am not an Atari fanboy. I am not a Nintendo fanboy. I like video games, and a fun game is a fun game no matter what particular company's console it is running on.

I totally agree, this is a very simple/concise way of stating what I've tried rambling about.

 

Again, I wouldn't be on any site/discussion forum that was filled with "fanboys" as such, and that's what relatively refreshing (a reasonable amount of the time) on sites like AA and Sega-16, among a few others, but that are totally lacked in the Nintendo retro community. (Nintendoage seems to be the best case but is still too full of idiot fanboys from what I've seen)

 

 

 

I don't think there's a need to badmouth the NES either. Personally, I like it and have fond memories of many games. Only wish they were a bit more reliable today. My NES sits next to my 7800, and my SMS too.

Yes, Nintendo may get more credit by the masses than they deserve, but blowing things out of proportion in the other direction (towards Sega or Atari, etc) doesn't do anyone any good either. (hence why I'm no glad for the work Curt and Marty are doing with Atari history)

 

Honestly, as much as I dig the 7800, how that product launch was executed by Tramiel Atari fell vastly short of how Nintendo executed on the NES launch.

It's a hell of a lot more than that (especially the launch -only a small facet of the overall situation), but that's been discussed a ton already in other threads (and this one), and I think you've seen most of those discussions.

 

 

 

 

Atari had no choice but to sell you more Joust because Nintendo had bottled up the world's creativity in a magic jar? Oookay.

 

If you don't understand the going-on in the industry at the time, that's fine, but sarcastic comments like that simply magnify that you're not familiar.

 

As has already been explained, two different Ataris. Atari Corp. was not Atari Inc., it had no in-house game developers and no actual game division (the Entertainment Electronic Division was started up in October of '85 for that purpose).

 

When operations started up that October, Katz looked to start licensing more games for the relaunch. He wound up hitting a brick wall as the popular titles of the time and most of the 3rd party studios were already locked up with Nintendo. Nintendo's locking in of 3rd party developers and licenses is part of factual history and legendary, not something made up as an excuse like your sarcasm seems to try and portray it as.

 

As such, he had to go to the computer industry (where he had just come from as the former head of Epyx) to start licensing computer platform games for the 7800. They also had the issues of farming out development. Once again the industry being very different than it was now, there was not a million and one different studios and startups to go to for developing games for a platform.

Yep, most of those are the "circumstances" I was talking about above too.

 

Again, they also had limited funding in general, so even with in-house resources (they did have the computer programmers, many experienced in game development), they lacked the funds to compete with Nintendo's in-house R&D, let the 3rd party developers. (plus Atari Corp had other platforms to support too -more significant for the marketing budget)

 

As I mentioned above, there seems to be a few things they could have done differently under the circumstances (more favorable licensing arrangements for 3rd party publishers, possible loop-holes around Nintendo, and pushing towards the considerable European computer game developers of the time), but their options were obviously limited and Katz did an amazing job with all that considered. (even with Atari's brand name helping out)

 

 

 

2) You're confusing creativity with licenses, and Atari's unwillingness to create wasn't Nintendo's fault. So Atari couldn't offer a port of Ninja Gaiden... but they could've offered Golf Ninja's Shanghai Freakout. And I probably would've prefered it.

Actually it is sort of Nintendo's "fault" . . . or more Atari being a victim of circumstances and Nintendo imposing monopolistic licensing contracts on Japanese and US developer to virtually lock them out on top of Nintendo's strong market position. (the market position favored due to weak initial competition in Japan and the crash in the US -Sega had the resources to compete directly with Nintendo in the US in 1986, but they seemed to be very lacking in the right management for marketing and distribution).

 

Not only did Atari not have the resources to directly compete with Nintendo's in-house software development, but they couldn't get the 3rd party support that was critically needed. (a relatively small percentage of the NES's library was Nintendo produced)

 

As such, it's rather ironic that you put Ninja Gaiden as an example since that was a licensed Arcade conversion that was ported and published by a 3rd party and NOT Nintendo.

 

Nintendo had Japanese 3rd parties locked up from the start in the US (the bulk of quality console software development of the period) with the exception of Sega who had their own priorities obviously (albeit they did license some games to the Famicom/NES like Space Harrier, Altered Beast, and Afterburner) and soon had most US publishers locked up as well. (hence why almost 100% of 7800 games were Atari published)

 

And, of course, even without the lock-out of 3rd party publishers and arcade licenses, Atari was very strapped for cash. (and as that problem dissipated in the late 80s, the competition grew and grew)

 

 

Interesting to note that Atari later DID get a license for Ninja Gaiden for the rather good arcade conversion to the Lynx. (it's an actual arcade port -a beat-em-up- rather than the remake the NES got)

Edited March 9, 2011 by kool kitty89

[Rex Dart]

And one again you miss the point. Did you even read that quote?

He is trying to tell you that Atari Inc and Atari Corp were seperate companies and you are confusing the 2 or not recognising the difference.

 

I'm ignoring it, because selling a console you don't intend to develop new games for is a losing strategy no matter who you are.

[Rex Dart]

Not only did Atari not have the resources to directly compete with Nintendo's in-house software development, but they couldn't get the 3rd party support that was critically needed. (a relatively small percentage of the NES's library was Nintendo produced)

 

As such, it's rather ironic that you put Ninja Gaiden as an example since that was a licensed Arcade conversion that was ported and published by a 3rd party and NOT Nintendo.

 

That relatively small percentage is what made them popular, at least in my neighborhoods. And I listed Ninja Gaiden specifically because of the reason you mentioned, to show that Atari didn't have to say "we're ****ed, they got ___ license, that's it for ninjas/beat 'em ups/sidescrolling action".

[malducci]

Yeah real mature and grown up of you to single me for abuse. I don't like the NES and don't make a secret of it, so what?

 

Heh, yeah I singled you out - but specifically because I think you have thick enough skin to take it I only used you as one example (for a single reason I pointed out), not for everything. And definitely nothing personal.

 

The way I see it is, you are an NES fan then fine go hang out at an NES forum. This is an Atari forum so you should naturally expect and accept the Atari fanboyism that will take place here.

 

I'm a fan of a lot of different systems, though. So are you saying AA is only welcome to Atari hardcore fans (fanboy is a derogatory term)? I get the feeling it's not. I've seen members here on other "system" forums, so..

 

I do understand the bias of a community or forum. Specialized/specific forums. I understand it and I expect to see it. I don't understand such openly or underlying intense hate for another system/company, to the point were everything is distorted and nothing can be any good of the competitions side (weakness/strengths/aspects/things/etc get over exaggerated). And I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seen it in other forums as well (Nintendo didn't get to be #1 for a period of time, without making some enemies/anti-fans).

 

 

 

 

There have clearly got to be 50 different NES vs. 7800 threads on AtariAge that discuss this at length, Just do a search on it.

 

That's the whole point. I've already read through a lot of those threads in the past. I've been here a number of years, even if I don't post much. I read quite a bit. The guy seemed pretty confident and as well as to have some experience with homebrew. I'm a coder. I rather have a direct technical discussion to someone that knows what they're talking about. Especially if he felt that intensely about the subject. And I actually tried to chose my words carefully in the second paragraph to him. I hadn't realized he'd left. Too bad.

 

 

 

 

 

Well that's really nothing to go by whatsoever

 

That was my point. I don't think the 7800 capabilities are accurately displayed by the library.

 

But yet, there is never a shortage of people in line to bad mouth the 7800, and it has been that way for years.

 

To be honest, I completely forgot about the system until a few years ago. The 7800 has gained more popularity in the past few years, in that it's showing up in threads/discussions about it in other forums. But to be honest, the only 'technical' VS threads are the ones here. Or any real VS threads. I don't ever recall Nintendo fans making specific VS threads to show off how much 'better the NES is comparison' - blah blah blah. The first VS threads I ever read were the ones here a couple of years ago. I don't remember anyone actively bringing up the 7800 just to bad mouth it in other forums. Then again, I limit myself to just a handful of forums.

 

Atari Joe: Sorry your thread turned into something serious, but these kind always do after a while. Still, I thought the initial post and humor was funny.

 

It was indeed Nintendo's fault for Atari Corp. not being able to go to any of the dev studios - Nintendo had a lockout. If they developed games for the NES, they couldn't develop for anywhere else.

 

Sure, in name they couldn't. But the actual development of original or 'cloneish' titles would have been perfectly doable, no? Or am I maybe missing some important piece of information here (I think I am)? Atari software development side was a separate company from Atari that handled the 7800, right? IIRC, it was that the same game couldn't come out on another system if it had already come out on the NES (and.. something about 2 year grace period and it could). If that's the case, why didn't the simply jump ship to support the 7800? Was there more money to be made on the NES system for the games?

[Lynxpro]

No, you're once again not reading (which is obvious by brushing it off as "History of Atari", which also clearly shows you're not grasping that this was a different Atari company than the one that did the 2600/5200). Atari Corp. is not Atari Inc. THEY HAD NO GAME PROGRAMMERS OR DESIGNERS and were locked out of doing anything with the major 3rd party studios at the time. They were finally able to do what you're talking about later in the console's life, which was of course to late. I've talked directly to Katz and the others there, I know exactly what was going on. Katz came in and literally had to build a department from nothing.

 

 

Do you know if Katz or anyone else at Atari Corp. ever approached the programmers at INTV about developing for the 7800? Seems that was a missed opportunity since INTV was busy beating the dead horse that was the Intellivision I/II/II for several more years. Then again, INTV did make money via mail order so perhaps Atari Corp could've actually learned a trick from them...

 

 

 

Fine, you're right, Nintendo swept in under cover of night and assassinated Atari's internal developers that they of course had the foresight to hire instead of waiting half a decade to do.

 

And more childish nonsense. Atari Corp. had no internal game developers. Atari Corp. was once again a different company than Atari Inc. - the company with all the developers, which was closed down in '84. You keep saying "Atari, Atari" like it's one continuous company with the same staff, etc.

 

 

While I hate Nintendo probably more than any other Atari fanboy, there is a point to be made. Atari Corp. could've went through the old Atari inc. rosters and hired back a lot of the old 2600/5200 programmers and or sang koombaiya (sic) with GCC and got them to program again for them, but they didn't. Nintendo beat Atari Corp's lawsuit basically by asserting Sam Tramiel was an incompetent CEO who inherited 100% of the video game industry post-1984 and squandered it. Although that white washes Nintendo's monopolistic practices, there was a certain truth to it.

 

 

Regardless, Nintendo still sucks, IMHO

 

 

 

Not only did Atari not have the resources to directly compete with Nintendo's in-house software development, but they couldn't get the 3rd party support that was critically needed. (a relatively small percentage of the NES's library was Nintendo produced)

 

As such, it's rather ironic that you put Ninja Gaiden as an example since that was a licensed Arcade conversion that was ported and published by a 3rd party and NOT Nintendo.

 

That relatively small percentage is what made them popular, at least in my neighborhoods. And I listed Ninja Gaiden specifically because of the reason you mentioned, to show that Atari didn't have to say "we're ****ed, they got ___ license, that's it for ninjas/beat 'em ups/sidescrolling action".

 

 

Atari Corp. got to finally license Ninja Gaiden for the Lynx because by that time, Nintendo had relaxed their restrictive contracts due to all the pressure they were receiving from both the Atari Corp. and Atari Games Corp. antitrust lawsuits against them. Had they not relaxed the terms of their contracts, other companies would've started suing them as well and the Feds would've also stepped in even more than they had done with a different lawsuit against Nintendo at the time. No matter what you say, there is much historical evidence that Nintendo played dirty, nearly as dirty as Microsoft has done throughout their history...

[DracIsBack]

It's a hell of a lot more than that (especially the launch -only a small facet of the overall situation), but that's been discussed a ton already in other threads (and this one), and I think you've seen most of those discussions.

 

I'm quite aware of the many facets of the 7800's failure. Don't confuse me making a quick off-handed comment for not being quite familiar with the plight of the 7800.

Edited March 10, 2011 by DracIsBack

[kool kitty89]

THEY HAD NO GAME PROGRAMMERS OR DESIGNERS

 

NOT NINTENDO'S FAULT

And around in circles we go. It was indeed Nintendo's fault for Atari Corp. not being able to go to any of the dev studios - Nintendo had a lockout. If they developed games for the NES, they couldn't develop for anywhere else. Consequently it took time to get themselves to anywhere near to what you're talking about - which they did do by the late 80's. Sorry, but this ostrich head in a hole in the ground thing of yours just isn't going to work.

 

Those contract only (officially) blocked publishing, didn't they? Thus the same game (or another game from the same developer) could be published under a different label without conflicting with that contract. (of course, Nintendo had unofficial areas of influence as well: they could restrict cart production for developers why weren't happy with, they were sometimes known for refusing to distribute to retailers selling unlicensed games, etc)

Those unofficial areas were the only influence Nintendo had in Japan beyond development tools and their official seal/license on the box. (no hardware lockout whatsoever)

 

But the official contracts should only have hindered Atari from getting 3rd parties to publish for their platform, nothing more. (nothing officially stopping those developers from publishing under Atari or some other label)

 

Then you had the option for European developers who would be less influenced by Nintendo in general. (odd that Atari Corp wasn't commissioning games from European devs at the time or didn't managed to get any Euro published games even)

 

 

 

Marty, do you have details on how Atari Corp managed their licensing agreements for the 7800?

Given the near complete lack of 3rd party publishers and weak position they were in, it seems like they may have even been best off offering free publishing for all 3rd parties (no royalties for Atari) and only charging for dev kits and such and the only other restrictions being reviewing for quality control. (to avoid the problems some early 80s VCS games had) Maybe they could have had agreements that only gave royalties to Atari if they game sold beyond a certain amount.

 

Even if they didn't make any money off those games, having stronger 3rd party development would have meant better sales of the 7800 hardware and Atari published games.

 

 

When that didn't really work, they went back to what they had and started doing in 1989 what they probably should have done in 1986/7.

 

The problem was they had one guy - one programmer, Tom Sloper, doing everything at that time. Writing the dev manual, trying to line up outside developers and farm out game projects and oversee any licenses they managed to get a hold of. Not much of a "creative department".

Huh, I thought you mentioned that Atari Corp had hired most of Atari Inc's computer programming staff. (many of whom had developed games for the A8)

 

Didn't Doug Neubauer contribute heavily to TOS?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That relatively small percentage is what made them popular, at least in my neighborhoods.

Hardly, their 1st party and (more) MASSIVE 3rd party line up of software on top of very well managed (and funded) advertising is what made them popular.

 

The most important 1st party games were the pack-ins (one thing Sega screwed up with early on too -and even Atari made poor choices with from the limited games available: Ms. Pac Man probably would have been the best launch pack-in from the lineup), but that's not what made them hugely popular, just one facet of it.

 

I highly doubt your friends had mainly Nintendo published games (I didn't know anyone like that and it hardly seems to be the case from any online accounts from NES owners back in the 80s and early/mid 90s either).

Sure, maybe they had more Nintendo games than any other single publisher (especially for an average user with only a dozen games -maybe less- after a few years of owning the system), but that should still have made up less than 1/3 of the games they owned. (and even then, you might have many other cases where the pack-in was the only Nintendo game they owned -all others from 3rd parties; we only had the pack-in cart from the power set and Zelda back in the mid 90s -it really depends on your preferred genre)

Edited March 10, 2011 by kool kitty89

[Retro Rogue]

When that didn't really work, they went back to what they had and started doing in 1989 what they probably should have done in 1986/7.

 

The problem was they had one guy - one programmer, Tom Sloper, doing everything at that time. Writing the dev manual, trying to line up outside developers and farm out game projects and oversee any licenses they managed to get a hold of. Not much of a "creative department".

Huh, I thought you mentioned that Atari Corp had hired most of Atari Inc's computer programming staff. (many of whom had developed games for the A8)

 

No, I said they hired some of the computer engineers and coders. And by '86 a bunch of those people had left. Likewise that was for computers, not for a games division, games design, etc. Computer programmers and engineers != game designers. All the original people of those types were still with Coin at Atari Games or elsewhere in the industry by then. Tom was the only guy involved in the games during that time at Atari Corp.

 

 

Didn't Doug Neubauer contribute heavily to TOS?

 

No, according to his page he was a casualty of '84 and then did some contract game work for Atari Corp. later.

[atarilovesyou]

If there was ever a more useless thread that went down the toilet that started with a fun post about whistles...this is it.

 

Anybody who blames Nintendo for the failure of Atari's many attempts at dominance post 2600 era...now they're the true fanboys.

 

Here's a tip: People obviously didn't want to play rehashes of early 80s games in 88 or 89!...and I'm pretty sure everybody knew it. Just like kids today don't give a rat's ass about playing Playstation 1 games now that the third machine is here. Believe me, I love my old systems and prefer those games, Atari, NES, Coleco, whatever. But time moves on. Arguing over this stuff is just goofy.

[kool kitty89]

Do you know if Katz or anyone else at Atari Corp. ever approached the programmers at INTV about developing for the 7800? Seems that was a missed opportunity since INTV was busy beating the dead horse that was the Intellivision I/II/II for several more years. Then again, INTV did make money via mail order so perhaps Atari Corp could've actually learned a trick from them...

There were tons of developers they could commission stuff from, but that wasn't the issue: the issue was the amount of funding they had for it and how their position put them continually behind Nintendo for 1st party support. (outsourcing or hiring new programmers, it's all effectively the same thing, just with different cost/investment trade-offs and ALL requires money)

 

The REAL issue was actual market interest in the 7800 and 3rd party support, that's what will make or break a system in most cases: those that rely mainly on 1st party software are the exceptions to the rule. (and THAT's where Nintendo's licensing policies really killed Atari -that and the fact that Japanese software was dominant in that generation and such developers would have no interest to develop for the 7800 in their home markets and thus would require substantial influence to develop for a western-specific platform even without Nintendo's restrictions -licenses to western developers would be easier, but that would tend to have less consistent results, especially as games got more complex)

 

Regardless of any of that, as I've already mentioned, the absolute biggest missed opportunity for 3rd party development resources to tap would be from Europe: both commissions/licensed games and pushing for interest in actual 3rd party publishing on the platform for both increased European support and for the US. (hell, there's a ton of Euro-specific games that would have been exclusives to the US console market of the time unless Nintendo had caught on quickly)

 

While I hate Nintendo probably more than any other Atari fanboy, there is a point to be made. Atari Corp. could've went through the old Atari inc. rosters and hired back a lot of the old 2600/5200 programmers and or sang koombaiya (sic) with GCC and got them to program again for them, but they didn't.

Lack of funding, again, funding was the only thing stopping them from doing that very same thing after the fact (other than not having the exact same programmers).

 

Even without the Atari Inc programmers (coin or console -they did have some of the computer guys already), they could have invested in directly outsourced games that Atari would publish and profit from without a royalties deal as with a 3rd party published game. Likewise, they could have invested in recruiting programmers to develop games in-house.

 

Atari Corp just wasn't in the position to do that in 1984-86, and the sloppy transition of the split played a major role in that. (ie it slowed everything down considerably and made Atari Corp lag well behind where Atari Inc/Natco could have been -granted, in hindsight, there's a lot of missed opportunities that Tramiel and Co could have taken advantage of to make the best of things in spite of Warner's mismanagement of the split)

 

That lagging meant that even as they did build up more funds with things smoothing out by '87/88, the competition (namely Nintendo due to Sega's apparent ineptitude at marketing in the US) would be ever ahead of them and that they'd have to find other ways to compete.

In spite of that though, they actually managed a significant market share and surprisingly strong sales in the late 80s, albeit most of that was concentrated in 1987 and 1988. (1989 saw a considerable decline in hardware sales and also Nintendo's peak year with the NES -1990 was almost as strong, and in hindsight, 1989 was probably the year Atari should have had a next generation home console out)

They'd have had an uphill battle in the US regardless, but their position in Europe in the late 80s and early 90s was quite positive with the computer line (albeit that started experiencing problems at the very end of the 80s as well -from the DRAM shortage to Sam's transition in as CEO/President, things went south across the board from then on).

 

Nintendo beat Atari Corp's lawsuit basically by asserting Sam Tramiel was an incompetent CEO who inherited 100% of the video game industry post-1984 and squandered it. Although that white washes Nintendo's monopolistic practices, there was a certain truth to it.

That's hardly the case though. Firstly it wasn't Sam but Jack (and later managed by Michael Katz) who got the former Atari Inc's consumer products and they most definitely didn't "get 100% of the market" as such. (even at its peak, Atari had closer to 70% of the market and that likely would have changed if the competition had held onto the market rather than ditching it -namely Mattel and Coleco, and unfortunately the CV wasn't managed nearly as well as Intev did after the parent company dropped it)

 

The crash wiped things out considerably and almost made it anyone's market (the very fact that allowed Nintendo to enter with a competitive edge), and that was very little to do about management and almost all to do with the market position. (even more so with the Japanese market just starting to get big as the US market collapsed) Of course, there WERE management issues that exacerbated thing (leading to Mattel and Coleco leaving the industry prematurely and Warner liquidating Atari Inc), but given the situation of the crash, that's hardly surprising. (Coleco botching the Adam certainly contributed to that too)

 

Of course, the biggest counter argument would be the home computer market dominating the video game market in the '84-86 period (roughly) and that, at the time, it was more or less fused with the home console market with heavy overlap in competition and consumer interest. (how many people used the C64 almost exclusively as a game machine?)

Or even more, they could have pointed out

 

However, I will agree that Sam squandered what he was charged with in 1989, not just the video games, but the computers. (but that really has nothing to do with the Nintendo lawsuit)

 

 

Regardless, Nintendo still sucks, IMHO

I don't like many of the things Sony or Nintendo have done as companies (or Microsoft, EA, etc, etc -Atari Inc and Warner undoubtedly did some unsavory things with their corporate power, though I don't know of anything that really saw them pushing a monopoly as such -they squandered that potential with a lack of any 3rd party software licensing as Nintendo somehow managed without any real form of lockout in Japan . . .), but that doesn't stop me from liking many their products (or software published by 3rd parties for their platforms) or respecting their legitimate accomplishments as much as any other. (while also noting boneheaded mistakes -the N64 being an obvious one )

 

 

Atari Corp. got to finally license Ninja Gaiden for the Lynx because by that time, Nintendo had relaxed their restrictive contracts due to all the pressure they were receiving from both the Atari Corp. and Atari Games Corp. antitrust lawsuits against them. Had they not relaxed the terms of their contracts, other companies would've started suing them as well and the Feds would've also stepped in even more than they had done with a different lawsuit against Nintendo at the time. No matter what you say, there is much historical evidence that Nintendo played dirty, nearly as dirty as Microsoft has done throughout their history...

Ninja Gaiden on the Lynx was, of course, almost nothing like the NES game but rather close to the arcade. (the NES game was an exclusive inspired by the arcade game -it's not even a beat-em-up)

 

I don't think it was just the antitrust lawsuits that Nintendo started shifting things for, but Sega's general competition (especially with their excellent marketing and 1st/2nd/3rd party software strategies in the US under Katz and Kalinske) and more and more 3rd parties becoming frustrated and (aide from potential lawsuits) threatening to drop Nintendo or find other loopholes to get around their contracts. (technically, there were some simple loopholes like publishing under a different label -more often done to bypass Nintendo's 2 game per year quality control limits that to publish for other platforms -Acclaim with LJN and Konami with Ultra- but then there's the other, less legal tactics Nintendo had as I mentioned above, some still practiced to this day -DS ROM production is still forced to go through Nintendo with Nintendo setting delivery dates and quantities)

 

I'm rather surprised that more publishers didn't go unlicensed on the NES given how relatively simple it was to get around lockout with the voltage spiking glitch. (Nintendo tried to protect against it in later models, but I'm not sure that ever worked satisfactorily and 3rd parties may have modified the hack to get around that as well)

Then again, Nintendo did have those other tactics that made such prospects unattractive. (namely making stores refuse to carry unlicensed games under threat of Nintendo pulling distribution -not sure on the specifics of that though)

I still find it ironic that Tengent went through so much trouble to build the Rabbit chip only to have massive legal headaches when the simple and cheap voltage spike glitch avoided cost and legal issues.

 

NEC was probably putting pressure on Nintendo do loosen their Japanese licensing policies as well.

[kool kitty89]

When that didn't really work, they went back to what they had and started doing in 1989 what they probably should have done in 1986/7.

 

The problem was they had one guy - one programmer, Tom Sloper, doing everything at that time. Writing the dev manual, trying to line up outside developers and farm out game projects and oversee any licenses they managed to get a hold of. Not much of a "creative department".

Huh, I thought you mentioned that Atari Corp had hired most of Atari Inc's computer programming staff. (many of whom had developed games for the A8)

 

No, I said they hired some of the computer engineers and coders. And by '86 a bunch of those people had left. Likewise that was for computers, not for a games division, games design, etc. Computer programmers and engineers != game designers. All the original people of those types were still with Coin at Atari Games or elsewhere in the industry by then. Tom was the only guy involved in the games during that time at Atari Corp.

Did any of that computer staff cross over with games development? (ie staff who had worked on games but weren't used for such while at Atari Corp)

Was there any consideration into retaining some of them for actual games development in-house (or recruiting others) or was Atari Corp management dead set on outsourcing?

 

 

 

 

The way I see it is, you are an NES fan then fine go hang out at an NES forum. This is an Atari forum so you should naturally expect and accept the Atari fanboyism that will take place here.

 

I'm a fan of a lot of different systems, though. So are you saying AA is only welcome to Atari hardcore fans (fanboy is a derogatory term)? I get the feeling it's not. I've seen members here on other "system" forums, so..

As expressed above, I totalyl agree; this is exactly the problem I have with some statements made in this discussion.

 

 

I do understand the bias of a community or forum. Specialized/specific forums. I understand it and I expect to see it. I don't understand such openly or underlying intense hate for another system/company, to the point were everything is distorted and nothing can be any good of the competitions side (weakness/strengths/aspects/things/etc get over exaggerated). And I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seen it in other forums as well (Nintendo didn't get to be #1 for a period of time, without making some enemies/anti-fans).

Heh, even with the closest cases I can think of on Sega-16 with the Sony hate, it's not quite the same. (especially since the ones coming to mind tend to focus much more logical discussion -be it flawed logic or otherwise- and/or focusing more on Sega's actual internal issue or at least a broader view of the picture -except some obviously sarcastic or hyperbolic comments from Joe or such )

 

Though if you really want a well balanced retro forum, you'd probably want to look more towards the likes of Racketboy, though there's not a lot of tech oriented stuff there.

 

 

I really don't see how it's unreasonable to want to discuss Atari related stuff and also expect at least a reasonable amount of balanced/respectable (or at least logical) understanding of other companies/platforms in the market. (of course, one could simply ignore those who make blatantly hateful or off the wall comments as such)

And then again, if you want some REAL hatred and aggression, you wouldn't need to look any further than any of the heated computer discussions on these forums. (which I'm sure you're reasonably familiar with -wasn't the big C64 vs A8 one the longest thread ever on AA?)

 

 

That's the whole point. I've already read through a lot of those threads in the past. I've been here a number of years, even if I don't post much. I read quite a bit. The guy seemed pretty confident and as well as to have some experience with homebrew. I'm a coder. I rather have a direct technical discussion to someone that knows what they're talking about. Especially if he felt that intensely about the subject. And I actually tried to chose my words carefully in the second paragraph to him. I hadn't realized he'd left. Too bad.

Again, you'd really need to take Gorf with a grain of salt, he's good (or excellent) for some technical discussions, but for some things (especially the NES), he just is off and has no real (AFIK) technical experience and relatively little experience even playing games on the system iirc. (might be wrong on the latter)

 

From a thread I'm sure you'll remember:

Well whatever the actually technical reasons might be, I just never liked the video quality of the NES.

 

You mean "quality" as in "graphics capability" or the artefacts of the composite video output?

What I mean is what my eyes see on the TV when I play.

 

To be honest, I completely forgot about the system until a few years ago. The 7800 has gained more popularity in the past few years, in that it's showing up in threads/discussions about it in other forums. But to be honest, the only 'technical' VS threads are the ones here. Or any real VS threads. I don't ever recall Nintendo fans making specific VS threads to show off how much 'better the NES is comparison' - blah blah blah. The first VS threads I ever read were the ones here a couple of years ago. I don't remember anyone actively bringing up the 7800 just to bad mouth it in other forums. Then again, I limit myself to just a handful of forums.

Actually, I see the jaguar get laughed at a LOT more than the 7800 as such. (not so much specific threads, but general digs at it) The 7800 was more than an order of magnitude more popular than the jaguar, but the Jag seems to get a lot more notice as such.

 

 

It was indeed Nintendo's fault for Atari Corp. not being able to go to any of the dev studios - Nintendo had a lockout. If they developed games for the NES, they couldn't develop for anywhere else.

 

Sure, in name they couldn't. But the actual development of original or 'cloneish' titles would have been perfectly doable, no? Or am I maybe missing some important piece of information here (I think I am)? Atari software development side was a separate company from Atari that handled the 7800, right? IIRC, it was that the same game couldn't come out on another system if it had already come out on the NES (and.. something about 2 year grace period and it could). If that's the case, why didn't the simply jump ship to support the 7800? Was there more money to be made on the NES system for the games?

The big issue was that 3rd parties were blocked from publishing on the 7800 (same issue for the SMS), at least under their normal label.

 

1st party development was another issue entirely (be it outsourced or in-house -mainly outsourced) and almost completely limited by funding. (both total funds/revenue of the company and the amount management was willing to invest exclusively for games on software for the 7800)

Atari Corp was in a rather bad position up to 1987 when things really started moving forward (not sure if that's when they came out of debt), but by then, the added funding still paled in comparison to what the rising Nintendo had to work with. (let alone the interest from 3rd parties and clout to prevent them -or heavily limit them- from releasing games on competing consoles)

Sega had a different problem initially: just weak management and weak position in Japan. (they spent MORE marketing dollars early on than Nintendo and had pretty damn competitive 1st party software -and somewhat superior hardware- but lacked the management to back that up in the US market)

 

It was a snowball effect: the NES had a much stronger launch with a killer pack in in 1986, Atari had what almost amounted to viral marketing for the launch in '86 (mainly print ads iirc) and nothing but the initial GCC developed games form 1984 at launch. (Nintendo had a considerably library to work with from Japan and to selectively localize)

 

In 1986, the media saw Nintendo, Sega, and Atari Corp as virtal equals with the market as anyone's game, but after Christmas of '86, Nintendo already had a clear lead and '87 fully solidified that position. (Atari's brand name and Katz's excellent management under far from ideal circumstances still kept them well ahead of Sega in market share at the time -though part of that was due to 2600 sales rather than the 7800 specifically; if you go by the 2 million SMS figure in the US, the 7800 sold almost double, but I think the SMS figure may be flawed, especially given that Sega seems to have been only a little behind 1/2 of Atari's share and the market share would have included 2600 sales -which should have exceeded 7800 by a good margin, which implied the SMS may have sold more like 4+ million in the US)

 

 

 

Oh, and as to the different Ataris: the coin-op division was spun off as Atari Games in 1984 while the res of the company (the consumer division) was liquidated with 100% layoffs and the divisions properties (products, facilities, patents, etc) were sold to Trammel Technologies Ltd (TTL) which was then renamed Atari Corp. Atari Corp had a huge mess to deal with due to Warnr botching the liquidation and transition (Atari Inc personnel had absolutely zero notice ahead of time -including CEO James Morgan, leading to utter chaos and a slew of problems -as well as many of the myths that have only recently been corrected). In spite of that, Atari Corp managed to interview a number of former Atari Inc staff members (mainly computer hardware/software guys) and took them on with Atari Corp staff. (that didn't end up including any of the console game programmers)

 

Losing the coin-op guys mainly meant loss of exclusives on later Atari arcade games, but not any console programming prowess. (the arcade developers had little to nothing to do with console or computer programming iirc -aside from some who transitioned between the 2 divisions)

 

And again, it was really money that was the issue: even after missing out on hiring Atari Inc console programmers (which they could hardly afford at the time), they COULD have built-up internal game development after the fact if they had the funds, or pushed more for outsourced software in general, but funding was always a bottleneck. (they mostly outsourced for the 7800 and got next to no 3rd party publishers for the platform -hence why almost every game was programmed by a 3rd party but published and financed by Atari Corp)

They did seem to miss out on European software houses though, not sure if Katz ever commented on that issue to Marty or Curt in interviews.

Edited March 10, 2011 by kool kitty89

[Mord]

After due consideration, I think the whistle theory is more likely.

[DracIsBack]

People obviously didn't want to play rehashes of early 80s games in 88 or 89!

 

To be fair, by then, that wasn't what Atari was releasing. As we got towards that point, that's when the longer, larger NES like games were coming out.

[+Allan]

When that didn't really work, they went back to what they had and started doing in 1989 what they probably should have done in 1986/7.

 

The problem was they had one guy - one programmer, Tom Sloper, doing everything at that time. Writing the dev manual, trying to line up outside developers and farm out game projects and oversee any licenses they managed to get a hold of. Not much of a "creative department".

Is the developer's manual what Curt has on his site or is this something else that hasn't turned up yet?

 

Allan

[high voltage]

People obviously didn't want to play rehashes of early 80s games in 88 or 89!

 

To be fair, by then, that wasn't what Atari was releasing. As we got towards that point, that's when the longer, larger NES like games were coming out.

 

 

Funnily enough, Nintendo's been doing this for over 20 years now, rehashes of Zeldas and Marios, and Mario Karts, and now the old, SAME NES,SNES games re-appearing on Wiis, DSs.

 

Whilst the NES had a couple of good titles, Nintendo as a company are a nasty piece of work (Game Over book).

Edited March 10, 2011 by high voltage

[DracIsBack]

Funnily enough, Nintendo's been doing this for over 20 years now, rehashes of Zeldas and Marios, and Mario Karts, and now the old, SAME NES,SNES games re-appearing on Wiis, DSs.

 

I don't think that's fair. Nintendo has franchises (as do many, many, many other game companies) but most games are pretty different from each other.