5200, 2nd generation, or 3rd?

[Andromeda Stardust]

VCS/2600 is the second generation of video games.

 

7800 is the third generation.

 

5200 is clearly more advanced than the 2600, but is it truly 2nd gen?

 

NES/Famicom is 3rd gen and it was released in 1983, at least in Japan that is.

 

So, does the 5200 belong more in the 3rd or the 2nd generation of video games?

[+DamonicFury]

I don't personally care for the way that Wikipedia has classified the 5200 and its fellow 1982 consoles (Colecovision, Vectrex). They clearly seem to be a generation ahead to me, but one whose lifespan was cut short by the crash. In my own mind, the early dedicated systems shouldn't really count as consoles, as they didn't have the ability to accept new games. So the 2600/Channel F/Odyssey2/INTV would the the first generation and the 1982 systems would be the second. This works for me as the rest of the Wikipedia-approved generations can be kept as they are.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Interesting hypothesis. I guess it makes sense in a way. Honestly, I'm not familiar with how various early consoles produced graphics other than NES and Atari. Did the 5200 and Colecovision use sprite technology? Maybe a better way to look at the problem is to compare hardware capabilities rather than the year of release or conception. I always considered the Atari to be of the beginning generation. Most first generation consoles were discrete logic aka PONG units, or what we would now consider "TV games" rather than consoles with removable media. They were followed by 80s LCD handhelds. Tiger Electronics and Nintendo Game & Watch were the video games I had as a kid since mom never got me a Nintendo.

[BydoEmpire]

Did the 5200 and Colecovision use sprite technology?

Yes, but so did the 2600.

 

Personally, I'd put them both in the 2nd gen. The style of games was basically the same, even if they looked better. It is fuzzy, and I can certainly see the argument the other way.

[Mirage]

How is it (or should it be) defined? Generations of video games? Or generations of programmable video games?

 

If as video games in general, then I definitely think the early discrete-logic games should be first gen, and 2600/O2 etc as second gen. Then I would make 5200/ColecoVision/Vectrex as third, and 7800 along with NES as fourth. There definitely is some grey area though, and I can see where it could be debatable what gen is what.

[Greg2600]

It's 2nd. The generations are not only hardware based, there's also timing.

[high voltage]

Even way back Electronic Games refers to the 5200 and Coleco as 'next generation', Wiki is totally wrong (as usual). But the thing is in those day the term 'generation' wasn't numbers based, it was just called the 'next' generation.

Here's from a German book (dritte (third) Generation):

 

 

Third Generation: 5200, Coleco, Hanimex (Emerson Arcadia 2001), Vectrex

Fourth: Sega SG1000 - SMS, Famicom/NES, 7800

 

Not even worth arguing about

Edited February 12, 2013 by high voltage

[Mangia-Boy]

I don't personally care for the way that Wikipedia has classified the 5200 and its fellow 1982 consoles (Colecovision, Vectrex). They clearly seem to be a generation ahead to me, but one whose lifespan was cut short by the crash. In my own mind, the early dedicated systems shouldn't really count as consoles, as they didn't have the ability to accept new games. So the 2600/Channel F/Odyssey2/INTV would the the first generation and the 1982 systems would be the second. This works for me as the rest of the Wikipedia-approved generations can be kept as they are.

 

Very interesting aspects in your classification. I like it very much.

[high voltage]

It's 2nd. The generations are not only hardware based, there's also timing.

 

If they were hardware based is NES second gen, being 8-bit like the 2600, and is the Intellivision up there with Genesis and SNES?

Edited February 12, 2013 by high voltage

[high voltage]

Very interesting aspects in your classification. I like it very much.

Except first gen is Magnavox Odyssey and 70s Pong and PC50X.

Odyssey was the FIRST home console, be it programmable or not. Ralph Baer invented home video gaming, the FIRST of its kind.

Edited February 12, 2013 by high voltage

[Ransom]

If as video games in general, then I definitely think the early discrete-logic games should be first gen, and 2600/O2 etc as second gen. Then I would make 5200/ColecoVision/Vectrex as third, and 7800 along with NES as fourth. There definitely is some grey area though, and I can see where it could be debatable what gen is what.

 

That's the way I've always thought of it, even back when. The pong consoles, then Channel F/2600/Odyssey 2, then Intellivision/ColecoVision/5200, then SMS/NES, etc.

 

But like you said, there's always room for debate. Looking back, maybe the Intellivision is second gen, maybe it's generation 2.5, maybe it's third. Or, perhaps Intellivision, Astrocade, and Arcadia 2001 are actually third generation consoles, and Coleco/5200 are fourth, SMS/NES are fifth. So many ways to slice it.

 

But I know one thing for sure, the way Wikipedia has it makes too little of the changes between the various early consoles.

[Gabriel]

I don't personally care for the way that Wikipedia has classified the 5200 and its fellow 1982 consoles (Colecovision, Vectrex). They clearly seem to be a generation ahead to me, but one whose lifespan was cut short by the crash. In my own mind, the early dedicated systems shouldn't really count as consoles, as they didn't have the ability to accept new games. So the 2600/Channel F/Odyssey2/INTV would the the first generation and the 1982 systems would be the second. This works for me as the rest of the Wikipedia-approved generations can be kept as they are.

 

Same here. I feel the Channel F/2600/O2/INTV were first generation while the 5200/CV/Vectrex were second generation. The early "pong systems" are a separate category of gaming device altogether.

[+Cafeman]

It is '2nd gen' to me, and I was one of the ones who were there.

 

Concerning Wikipedia and Atari - why can it have a 2600 homebrew page, but not 5200 or 7800 homebrew page? Or why not all on one page? In the past I've seen some of this content but it always was removed by moderators.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Yeah, Wikipedia has spewed a bunch of misinformation. One of the biggest errors I know of is PAL/NTSC games being "17.5%" faster or slower than the other. It is not. PAL games run at 50 fps; NTSC games run at 60 fps. NTSC games are 20% faster than PAL; PAL is 16.67% slower than NTSC. You may notice those two percentage values aren't the same, but the ratios are the reciprocal of each other, 5/6 and 6/5. This is why, in my opinion ratios should never be expressed as "% difference", "% error", etc. A "difference" is subtraction; a "ratio" deals with division; they are not the same thing, which is why a 16.67% decrease is the inverse of a 20% increase. But try telling wikipedia that. The "17.5%" figure has been misquoted all over the internet, and I still haven't figured out where it originated. Once upon a time, I attempted to change this value, and even including some info in the change log as to why the "17.5%" figure was mathematically inaccurate, but the change was reverted just 20 minutes later by the "Wikipedia police".

 

Also, when I asked earlier as to whether the 5200 supported sprites, I was referring to "2D" sprites. In other words, on a console which supports true 2D sprites tiles (like NES), the PPU or graphics processor will automatically update the sprite data with every scanline, without the necessity of wasting CPU cycles to rewrite new data into the register with each scanline. The VCS is truly a unique piece of hardware in that it's display capabilities are essentially one dimensional.

 

Is the VCS truly unique, or do other "2nd gen" consoles run one scanline at a time instead of using a frame buffer like NES? The NES is also unique I believe in that it's the only console I know of which utilizes separate ROMs for graphics versus program data. I really have zero working knowledge of how the other 2nd and 3rd generation consoles output graphics to the screen.

[+Cafeman]

2600 and 5200/A8 computers don't use "sprites" as newer systems did, but they instead use players and missiles, which act like sprites in that these move overtop the background graphics and have dedicated collision registers and Horizontal Position (HPOS) registers.

 

A 'player' is an 8-bit (8 1-color pixels) width, but it runs the entire vertical length of the screen. So you can draw a 1-color image of (for example) an 8width x 8 height square at "Y" position 10, then again at position 20, and 30 , and 40, etc. then between scanlines you could change the HPOS register for this player so that on-screen it looks like a whole bunch of individually moving blocks each being a 'sprite'. but really - it is just one player.

 

A 'missile' is same thing but only 2 bits (2 1-color pixels) wide.

 

2600 has a 'ball' sprite too; 5200 does not.

2600 has 2 players, 2 missiles, 1 ball. It also has repeat registers to repeat sprite images.

5200/A8 has 4 players, 4 missiles. No 'ball'. Also no 'repeat registers'.

 

I hope that helps, if that is what you are asking.

Edited February 14, 2013 by Cafeman

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

A 'missile' is same thing but only 2 bits (2 1-color pixels) wide.

 

2600 has a 'ball' sprite too; 5200 does not.

2600 has 2 players, 2 missiles, 1 ball. It also has repeat registers to repeat sprite images.

5200/A8 has 4 players, 4 missiles. No 'ball'. Also no 'repeat registers'.

 

I hope that helps, if that is what you are asking.

I think you explained it well enough. The 5200/A-8bit have more display options than the 2600, but each scanline still has to be updated. I guess with more sprites you get more flexibility and better options to layer sprites on top of one another to give the illusion of multiple colors, etc. Really the scanline-by-scanline display makes it more in common with the 2nd generation and less like the 3rd imo.

 

Are the background tile graphics repeated/mirrored like the VCS/2600 or do they run the entire scanline? This would at least allow the programmer to do asymmetric backgrounds easily without rewriting the playfield register twice per scanline, a very costly CPU waste on many VSC titles to say the least.

[+Cafeman]

The mirrored bg graphics is 2600 only, thank goodness.

 

5200/A8 allows the whole screen to be in RAM as a Display List. You can mix and match different graphics modes as you paint down the screen. Scanlines 0-50 could be Antic 2 for the score part, then the rest Antic 4 for traditional tile/character set style bg graphics.