Opinion of Atari 5200

[CV Gus]

Here are a few magazine articles about the 5200 and its controllers...

 

This is from Intelligent Gamer: August 1996

 

Cool, but do you have any from the '80s talking negatively about the controllers? '96 is a bit late!

 

EDIT: Still, thanks for the article, I've never seen that one.

 

I am uploading more as we speak.

[Mirage]

Here are a few magazine articles about the 5200 and its controllers...

 

This is from Intelligent Gamer: August 1996

 

Cool, but do you have any from the '80s talking negatively about the controllers? '96 is a bit late!

 

EDIT: Still, thanks for the article, I've never seen that one.

 

I am uploading more as we speak.

 

Yeah, I realized that after I typed it, sorry

[CV Gus]

From Next Generation: March 1996.

 

Note that in later years the 5200 controllers were being bashed- and Arnie Katz was a veteran reviewer.

[CV Gus]

This is from Electronic Games: March 1984.

[CV Gus]

From Electronic Fun (With Computers and Games): November 1983

 

A review for 5200 Ms. Pac-Man, and an all-too-typical complaint...

[CV Gus]

Now this one is from Electronic Games: November 1984.

 

It's actually an article about the Atari 7800, but notice the comment about the 5200 controllers...

[CV Gus]

Electronic Games: July 1984.

 

It's not so much the letter writer's comment about the 5200 controllers, but what he points out about EG's own columns. Add those to it overall.

 

And no, it is NOT a "stupidsystem," although one might have applied that to a certain bunch in Atari back then...

[CV Gus]

Last, this is Electronic Games: September 1984. The very next page, about the 7800, went on to further bash the 5200 controllers!

[DracIsBack]

The 7800, with it's primary use of the same low-res sprites (albeit colorful and non-flickering), 2600 sound quality, and choppy gameplay in many games, was just a 2600 with a band aid.

 

7800 a bandaid?

 

Sorry dude - but if you think the 2600 or 5200 can pull off anything like Sirius, or Alien Brigade or Tower Toppler or Scapyard Dog or Midnight Mutants or Commando, I'd like to see what you're smoking.

 

I get you having a preference, but referring to it as "just a 2600 with a bandaid", is ridiculous.

 

The entire graphics architecture is completely different. You might as well call the NES a "2600 with a bandaid", with that OVER-SIMPLIFICATION.

 

2600: 6507, TIA, 1 button controller, 128 bytes

NES: 6502, PPU, 2 button controller, 2K+2K

7800: 6502, 2 button controller, 4K

 

I DO NOT understand for the life of me, why some 5200 owners always feel the need to even bring up and bash the 7800??? Is it jealousy because the system got killed? I swear to god, someone could write a post on how they once played 5200 on a Beach in Hawaii and some other 5200 owner would find a way to bring the 7800 into the topic and start bashing!!! And some 5200 brasher will start commenting on the controller ...

Edited February 16, 2011 by DracIsBack

[Mirage]

Ok, well, thanks for digging all those out. You must have spent quite a bit of time finding all those!

 

Of course there was criticism about the 5200's controllers. Especially since it was an unusual setup, considering the 5200's action/arcade game bias. Maybe it had some minimal impact on sales. I would still doubt it played a large part in the 5200's lack of success though. If that were the case, you could just as easily make the case that ColecoVision's or Intellivision's sales were affected by the controllers (and maybe they were). Though, it's a really good point that at least with the CV, you could just plug in an Atari-compatible stick for use with many games. That was a nice design-feature whether intentional or not. Either way, it's amazing to me that so many people complained (probably without having gotten used to them yet), and I also still wonder how many people in the "real world" complained about them. I sure never heard of it, and I still like them to this day, very much. Far far far more comfortable and usable than CV or Intv controllers for most games!

 

Anyway, thanks for all the effort, and so the magazines did print some criticism back then, ok.

[CV Gus]

The whole point about the above posts was this: the 5200 controllers were not what you'd call overly popular back then, or even in later years.

 

In a way, one has to wonder what Atari was thinking. Didn't they actually test the controllers with the kind of games the 5200 would have?

 

If most arcade games back then used analog controllers like that, then it might have worked. But the fact is, almost none of them did, and those that did use analog usually used paddle or steering wheel (often the same thing) controls.

 

All else used digital controls.

 

Thus, for the precise moves such games required, analog controllers like the 5200's could only be a disaster. The CV's controllers weren't great, but they were digital, and that one single point alone gave the CV a tremendous advantage in gameplay.

 

But there was more. With the CV, almost any 9-pin controller would work, so all you had to do was plug it in- and since, unlike the 5200, you could usually select a game using Controller 2, the lack of a keypad was no problem, assuming the game itself did not need it.

 

Had Atari released the 5200 with digital controllers, it would have helped. And since a paddle adapter is easy to make, that would have scored with games like Super Breakout and Pole Position.

 

And by the way- today I sent away for Pengo (it's been many years) and Jungle Hunt...for the 5200. `nuff said.

Edited February 16, 2011 by CV Gus

[Mirage]

It probably would have helped, or hurt less at least you could say. Releasing the CV with comfortable controllers would have helped, or hurt less too. Obviously we all had different experiences, but seriously, back then all I ever heard people saying (in person) was how bad the CV controllers were, but hardly anyone said anything about the 5200's controllers. To this day, I cannot use a CV controller for more than a couple minutes, but the 5200's controllers are my favorite. But again, the Atari-joystick compatibility of the CV is a huge bonus on that front.

 

Different strokes I guess.

 

Thank goodness that today we can easily just have all the systems and any controllers we prefer!

[DracIsBack]

Couldn't help but notice this ...

 

Always wondered where that came from as I've seen it on the net a few times!

[Mirage]

Couldn't help but notice this ...

 

Always wondered where that came from as I've seen it on the net a few times!

 

LOL, so much for the 5200's controllers hurting it against the CV!!

 

They're both really good systems with some unfortunate design choices.

[jetset]

Interestingly enough, not much about the controllers breaking in any of those articles. Just the typical lack of gaming skills from people who've played on the controllers for all of five minutes to do a quick review (see videogamecritic.com). If you owned the system back then, and weren't decent at playing videogames, after a bit of practice the controllers weren't a problem. I must admit there was a lot more discord about the controllers than I thought. I saw some negatives about the CV controllers too in some of those comparison articles. Just more of the same. Lack of skill. Even Reagan back then said videogames were good for hand-eye co-ordniation. Some ppl just didn't have it, and blamed the controller(s).

[jetset]

Couldn't help but notice this ...

 

Always wondered where that came from as I've seen it on the net a few times!

 

Makes sense. Initially, the pack-in killed it. When that was corrected by changing it from Super Breakout to PacMan, and better arcade games were coming out, it stands to reason sales picked up. Both systems had the same strengths and "weaknesses". Both had a 2600 adapter, both had controllers which gave inept gamers frustration, both had what people wanted back then...arcade games at home. Difference being the 5200 boasted better graphics and more popular arcade games. The only advantage the CV had was Donkey Kong. Eventually that one advantage lost out.

[jetset]

Electronic Games: July 1984.

 

It's not so much the letter writer's comment about the 5200 controllers, but what he points out about EG's own columns. Add those to it overall.

 

And no, it is NOT a "stupidsystem," although one might have applied that to a certain bunch in Atari back then...

 

 

What are those red/orange buttons on the roller controller?

[bmcnett]

Difference being the 5200 boasted better graphics and more popular arcade games. The only advantage the CV had was Donkey Kong. Eventually that one advantage lost out.

 

No doubt 5200 had the more popular arcade games, but the graphics were a toss up.

 

1. Atari had hardware scrolling, CV didn't.

2. CV had 32 16x16 hardware sprites, Atari had 4 8x256 hardware sprites. Arcade sprites were 16x16 at the time.

3. CV had 256-pixel-wide multicolor backgrounds, Atari had 160.

4. Atari could do scanline tricks, CV couldn't.

 

Coleco had the advantage with early arcade games that didn't scroll, because it could do 16 background colors per scanline.

Atari had the advantage with later scrolling games, because it had hardware scrolling.

 

Though even this is a matter of taste. I prefer Coleco Zaxxon for having more color and detail, but I guess other people prefer Atari Zaxxon for its smooth scrolling.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aebXvAkjWho

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGIAKKsNylU

[toptenmaterial]

Couldn't help but notice this ...

 

Always wondered where that came from as I've seen it on the net a few times!

The folks at Warner/Atari were such consistent boneheads

[toptenmaterial]

Couldn't help but notice this ...

 

Always wondered where that came from as I've seen it on the net a few times!

The folks at Warner/Atari were such consistent boneheads

 

Anyway, fascinating thread guys. Now I'm just curious, anyone know of a flight or dog fighting game on the 5200? The non-centering analog stick would be perfect for that....

[jetset]

Difference being the 5200 boasted better graphics and more popular arcade games. The only advantage the CV had was Donkey Kong. Eventually that one advantage lost out.

 

No doubt 5200 had the more popular arcade games, but the graphics were a toss up.

 

1. Atari had hardware scrolling, CV didn't.

2. CV had 32 16x16 hardware sprites, Atari had 4 8x256 hardware sprites. Arcade sprites were 16x16 at the time.

3. CV had 256-pixel-wide multicolor backgrounds, Atari had 160.

4. Atari could do scanline tricks, CV couldn't.

 

Coleco had the advantage with early arcade games that didn't scroll, because it could do 16 background colors per scanline.

Atari had the advantage with later scrolling games, because it had hardware scrolling.

 

Though even this is a matter of taste. I prefer Coleco Zaxxon for having more color and detail, but I guess other people prefer Atari Zaxxon for its smooth scrolling.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aebXvAkjWho

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGIAKKsNylU

 

To each his own. There are better examples of games where the CV is comparable graphic-wise. Zaxxon on the CV is horrific. Yes it wins with more color I'll give it that. The 5200 graphics though there's not as many ground details are much sharper. And as far as scrolling the CV doesn't really scroll, it "skips" from inch to inch like a series of still images pieced together. Don't even get me started on the sound.

Like I said, to each his own, but Zaxxon is probably the last game to use if you want to make a case for the CV having better graphics. Galaxian would be a 100% better case.

[bmcnett]

...better graphics...

 

No, no no. You won't ever find me arguing about "better graphics" because there's no such thing. I think Zaxxon highlights the respective weaknesses of CV and Atari - CV couldn't scroll, and Atari had fewer pixels with fewer colors. That's why I posted the videos.

 

"When television came roaring in after the war (World War II) they did a little school survey asking children which they preferred and why - television or radio. And there was this 7-year-old boy who said he preferred radio "because the pictures were better." ~Alistair Cooke

 

And sometimes I prefer 2600 to PC because "the pictures are better."

Edited February 17, 2011 by bmcnett

[kool kitty89]

Don't forget Sega's SG-1000 Mk.I/II to Mk.III/SMS to Megadrive/Genesis.

 

Right, the adapter - like Coleco's adapter that played 2600 games.

No, the Mk.III/SMS was natively 100% backwards compatible out of the box with the older (colecovision like) SG-1000 Mk.I/II.

 

The Genesis was 100% Master System compatible internally, bug Sega chose to use an incompatible cartridge slot, thus NOT like the 5200 or Colecovsion, but more like the Famicom vs NES, PC Engine vs TG-16, or Japanese Mk.III/SMS vs western SMS. (all natively hardware compatible, but needing a pin adaptor to play games -the difference on the Genesis is that it wasn't done for region divisions but a different reason which I'm not sure of)

It's like if the 7800 used a unique cartridge port and required a piece of plastic and small PCB to plug into it for VCS compatibility. (which would have been cheap enough to do out of the box as well -though you'd only need that if you wanted to add more to the 7800's cart slot) The only reason the PBC is so bulky on the Genesis is due to the need for the card slot and a stable form factor. (otherwise it could have been the side of the Sonic & Knuckles cart or European PBC-II)

 

 

In '79 it was simply too expensive and it would have only had 8k RAM.

 

They were selling the 400 in '79 anyway - might as well have started establishing it as a viable gaming platform starting then, instead of waiting until '82 and releasing the 5200, which was essentially a keyboardless 400 with zero backwards compatibility. As for the 8k RAM, well that's twice as much as NES which arrived in America in '84! Those who needed more RAM for computing could have upgraded.

The 400 WAS inteded as a game console as such, but it was WAY too expensive back then and not until around '82 did that change. (or could have been in '81 if they got their act together and pushed a new consolidated design with the FCC class B regulations)

The 400's price was already low (for what it offered and the cost tied to making it class C compliant) at around $500-600 in '79/80.

 

Besides, Atari hardly needed a new console until '82. '82 was perfect timing IF they had gotten the hardware and marketing right, but waiting until '83 or even '84 would have been better than rushing a far from ideal system to market. (pushing the computers is a separate issue that definitely needed to be addressed as well, let alone the bigger problem of all around management and the extreme;y problematic distribution system)

 

The VCS was just coming into its own in 1979, and 1980 was the really big year when it hit massively with Space Invaders on top of the back library of decent to good games. (and good marketing)

As history has shown popular system (especially a market leading one) tends to have a healthy span of 6+ years from launch until a successor comes and the old system transitions to the budget market. (even non market leading platforms that do well tend to have close to 5 years before a successor comes along, but the really big ones are often 6 or 7 years on the market without a direct successor -ie Famicom/NES, SNES, Genesis -albeit the successors were quite probelamatic and the budget market transition was botched, PS1, PS2, etc)

In many cases, those figures persist in spite of mounting competition: NEC and Sega well ahead of the Super Famicom (Sega with the Master System and Mega Drive as well), Dreamcast almost 2 years ahead of the PS2 in Japan (and about a year ahead in the US), Game Cube and Xbox both technically superior to the PS2 (and more developer friendly) and both marketed aggressively. (the Xbox mainly doing well in North America, the GC weaker on average but more spread out), and the 360 also a year ahead of the PS3. (and the latter has been much weaker than its predecessor, but the later release is way down on the list of problems -price, cost/performance, bluray not being the same gimmick as DVD for the PS2, etc, etc -albeit the same may have happened with the SNES if NEC had pushed the PCE/TG-16 like Sony did with PSX some 6-7 years later -NEC's position as a megacorp with the PCE hardware at their disposal and rising Japanese market share was not unlike that of Sony in the mid 90s, Sony just took the initiative to push extremely aggressively on almost all fronts and also had the advantage of Sega screwing up heavily and Nintendo screwing up with the lack of optical storage -otherwise Nintendo may very well have dominated Japan for another generation or more, losing Square was the catalyst for that)

 

 

No need to drop the keyboard either, just make it a cheap membrane one like the 400 and offer the "full" 600 with a proper keyboard at a higher price. (probably with 16 and 32k models rather like the 400

it was replacing -or have the 16k model only for the cheap game system version)

When I was talking about releasing the 400 with an optional keyboard, I wasn't thinking about cost reduction in '79. I was thinking about forcing the mass market "videogame" cartridges from '79 onward to require no keyboard. Then a cost-reduced slim model could have been released in '82 maybe with no keyboard option at all, and still play all the "videogame" cartridges.

The keyboard wasn't that much of a cost addition and would have been a very attractive feature to retain in light of the low-end computer wars cutting in on consoles. (just have a cheap keyboard for the lowest end system and a slightly less lower end model with a proper keyboard then up to the mid-range 32/48/64k models)

 

Many games SHOULD have had keyboard support and wouldn't have been as good without it, if you were going to make a lowest common denominator for cartridge games, at least have it include a numeric keyboard and a few function buttons. (plus the space bar was usually used for pausing, a very important feature)

 

 

Again, I don't think making the shift after the fact and retaining a full (but cheap) keyboard would have been much of an issue, and could have been a selling point in general. (you could have 5200-like controllers using the standard A8 pinotu but with no keypads -relying on the system's keyboard and function keys- and thus only the joystick and fire buttons standard)

 

Maybe. But hopefully with a big library of cartridges from '79 to '82 already under your belt, the Donkey Kong license (and subsequent NES lockouts) wouldn't have been such an issue.

Why bother though? COnsumers probably wouldn't have bought such an expensive $500+ machine if all it did was play games by default, and by '82 the price of the keyboard (a cheap, minimalistic membrane board) would have been relatively small on top of consolidation and cost reduction. (could have been significantly cheaper than the 5200 was historically, the Atari 400 already WAS price competitive with the 5200, so take that a step further with a consolidated single-board design and similar keyboard -if not more efficient to produce than the 400's keyboard- and you'd be even better off)

 

OTOH, you could have removed PIA from day 1 and used 2 controller ports with 4 POKEY pot lines and 2 GTIA I/O lines per port. (with the POKEY lines configurable as analog or digital -true digital with direct CX-40 compatibility or pull-up resistor pseudo digital- I/O lines and no need for PIA -unless the added 4 select lines on PIA were used for something else-) In such a set-up, you'd probably have 2 GTIA lines and 2 POKEY lines configures to the pins used for directions on the CX-40 (as such, probably have only 4 POKEY ADC channels for POT scanning and 4 plain digital I/O lines -though it could be hacked after the fact as it was, like was possible in a 5200 alternative) and have the 2 POKEY pot lines pin compatible with the A8/VCS as well and optionally employed for paddles, 2-axis joysticks, or as analog "buttons." (let alone analog multiplexing schemes allowing more than 2 buttons on those 2 analog lines using a matrix of pull-up resistors)

 

I see people make the claim about Miner all the time, but I can't find any detailed reference for his direct involvement.

I put the phrase "Jay Miner architecture" in quotes for this very reason. Of course Jay didn't design all those video systems. But the idea of a simplified GPU that required CPU support was Jay's. This idea made megabucks for 2600, and so it persisted in 5200, 7800 and Jaguar even if it wasn't practical and Jay wasn't personally involved anymore.

No, that's very wrong, the VCS is the ONLY Atari system that ever did that as such. The A8/5200 chipset has heavy hardware acceleration (for the time) with ANTIC managing the display lists for framebuffer or character graphics and hardware scrolling (in addition to sprites and the neat support for display list interrupts).

The 7800 also had heavy acceleration compared to the VCS, but MARIA was more bus hungry and made the CPU wait much of the time in active display due to the shared bus design. (the A8 knocked the CPU down form 1.79 MHz to about 1.2 MHz performance due to video DMA, but the 7800 could be much more, potentially saturating the bus to 100% if pushed -not CPU intensive, but halting the CPU for video access due to the shared bus architecture used to save cost over a dual-bus architecture)

In fact, the only real common ground from the VCS to A8 to 7800 to Panther to Jaguar is the single bus design. (also shared with the Atari ST for that matter except that is used interleaved DMA more like the Apple II and Amiga -later Amiga models offered the separate fastram bus, of course, as did Atari's TT)

 

 

The Jaguar is the exact opposite of the VCS in terms of CPU heavy graphics, but similar to the 7800 and A8 (more so 7800) in terms of bus contention. The Jaguar has EXTREMLY heavy hardware acceleration with a powerful object processor (2D background and "sprite" generation -all objects hardware scaled as well), powerful blitter with smooth shading and texture mapping (albeit the texture mapping was put on low priority and is thus unbuffered like the Sega Saturn -but on a shared bus vs the Saturn's multi-bus design), hardware Z-buffering, and a very powerful RISC GPU coprocessor that's a complex DSP-like processor with programmability more in line with a CPU (functionality is DSP-like in performance -and is ineficient at many CPU tasks- but it's much easier to work with than contemporary DSPs of the time -perhaps more like Hitachi's SH-DSP line derived from their SuperH RISC CPU architecture). The Jaguar uses a minimalistic 68000 CPU for low cost due and due to Flare expecting relatively little CPU time being needed (thus avoiding contention too heavily), but the sort of 3D games that ended up being pushed in the mid 90s demanded MUCH more CPU resource for the complex logic. (the GPU can be -and has been- hacked to offload some of that, but it's rather inefficient at it -only good because the 68k is so bus hungry and slow- and if the 68k was on its own bus with a chunk of work RAM, or they'd used a CPU with a cache -even a 68EC000 or perhaps a cyrix 486SLC- that wouldn't be seen as a useful option as the GPU has MUCH more useful and efficient operations for 3D math, transform, lighting, etc -and there's also the bugs that make things even more complicated)

The Jaguar's limitations come from a combination of foresight based on the 1989/1990 market (given the jaguar was laid down in 1990/91, Flare had some outstanding foresight, but obviously much more that they missed in hindsight -the weak texture mapping and lack of a true system/GPU cache -or CPU with cache- being among the biggest issues), but also due to Atari Corp's increasingly limited funding and struggling market position under weaker management -both in terms of Sam vs Jack and the lack of Mike Katz's marketing/entertainment management skills. (and no new game console on the market to replace the 7800 -which they really needed by 1989 or 1990 on top of the business and marketing management capabilities to make that a success -and then there's the mistakes made with the computers and the decline of that market in Europe and many, many other issues culminating from the end of the 80s onward -any early mistakes and shortcomings of the ST line made in 1985-1988 are relatively small compared to the shift that led Atari into a downward spiral and being on their last legs -in debt with almost no market share- in 1993)

 

By the time 5200 came out, arcade machines had sprite hardware - and so did ColecoVision and NES. Doing sprites on the 5200, 7800 or Jaguar is a nest of prickly tradeoffs and fun hacks that is still keeping programmers busy in 2011. Doing sprites on ColecoVision and NES means writing bytes for X, Y, and SHAPE. In retrospect Atari's more flexible GPU design was a productivity trap.

The limit of 4 8 pixel wide monochome sprites per scanline was a much greater limitation than the hassle of managing those sprites on-screen. (hence software sprites in character or bitmap graphics modes become an attractive option) The lack of flexible color indexing for character graphics was also a disadvantage against the TMS9918 and VIC-II (at least you had the 5 color mode, but that only gives you 1 optional added color and none for the 1bbp modes). DLIs go a long way towards helping that, but that's still limited on a horizontal line basis (and uses some CPU time -the NES could used raster interrupts for color reloading as well to take advantage of a palette that was considerably larger than even the GTIA/7800 palette, but few if any games used that -the NES has ~56 colors/shades in its default palette but 3 added registers that shift it with 1-1-1 RGB values for a total of some ~448 unique colors/shades but only one bank of ~56 to be indexed on any scanline -and then the limits of CRAM allowing 13 colors for the BG and 12 more for sprites -all as 3 color palettes plus one common BG color)

With more flexible color indexing (like a couple dozen CRAM/look-up entries or more even), the systems's large palette could really have shined, and character based software "sprites" could have been much more colorful as well. (though you'd have choppy per-cell character movement or attribute clash -but for fast paced games, the cell-wise movement isn't that big of a deal, and you've got 4x8 cells that are narrower than CV/SMS/NES 8x8 cells and thus will have less choppy horizontal movement than on those systems -though vertical movement would be more choppy)

 

OTOH, the Colecovision lacked the hardware scrolling assistance of ANTIC which would have become more and more apparent with later games. (as it is, you've got a few games like Zaxxon that show the smooth scrolling on the 5200 quite well -and the CV version had to hack in faster scrolling to make the charscroll less choppy -the SG-1000 and MSX versions opted for normal slow speed at the expense of extreme choppiness -same for MSX R-Type)

[jetset]

...better graphics...

 

No, no no. You won't ever find me arguing about "better graphics" because there's no such thing.

 

Well...I wouldn't go that far.

 

You say tomaytoe....

 

I say tomaahto...

 

Do you still say no such thing?

[5200Fanatic]

Interestingly enough, not much about the controllers breaking in any of those articles. Just the typical lack of gaming skills from people who've played on the controllers for all of five minutes to do a quick review (see videogamecritic.com). If you owned the system back then, and weren't decent at playing videogames, after a bit of practice the controllers weren't a problem. I must admit there was a lot more discord about the controllers than I thought. I saw some negatives about the CV controllers too in some of those comparison articles. Just more of the same. Lack of skill. Even Reagan back then said videogames were good for hand-eye co-ordniation. Some ppl just didn't have it, and blamed the controller(s).

 

I don't think a reviewer was someone that necessarily owned the system, but the controllers did break in my experience, not in pieces, but in terms of the buttons. At some point, the buttons stopped functioning, and then'd you'd take them apart and try to clean the contacts. But at some point, that wouldn't work and you'd have to find new ones, which became tougher to do in my experience as time when on. I actually had to buy an entire new console just to get controllers...no kidding!

Edited February 17, 2011 by 5200Fanatic