Do you prefer the NES or the Atari 7800? Experiement

[Serious]

I've only had a 7800 for less than a year, and I've never owned an NES before (but I have played it).. So I guess I don't have any nostalgia for either of them.

 

NES games feel very NES-ey to me and hard to compare to anything else.

 

I don't think the 7800 has more than 1 side-scrolling platformer (Scrapyard Dog), and my impression of the NES library is that it has these in abundance.. So its hard for me to weigh one against the other.

[+wood_jl]

I like the 7800, and it has some great games. In the "classic days," however, most of what it had to offer was improved (over 2600) versions of arcade classics, and some re-hashes of Atari 400/800 games, all of which I'd had. While the 2nd fire button was an improvement, the overall design of the controller was such that there has never been a time when discussions have ceased - nor solutions have not been sought as to how to correct it, such as adapting the NES controller to 7800, or using one of Yurkie's modded 7800 controllers, which are awesome.

 

The NES, on the other hand, just had the games that the Tramiels were NOT willing to pay for the development of. To be sure, the people at Nintendo were BULLIES - with unfair practices, exclusive contracts that kept Sega Master System and 7800 from getting the good games, bully practices towards retailers, etc. I *HATED* the NES at first, but when I finally played Super Mario Brothers (1 and 3, in particular), Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Super R.C. Pro-Am, Legend of Zelda, Metroid - it was the GAMES that made me like it. There was **NEVER** any software on this par, on the 7800; those games were so much fun that I don't care about the hardware.

 

In recent times, I rather like the 7800, too, and I'm quite happy to have one, especially with controller mods and A/V mods, etc. They're both good, but those NES games were just unmatched, for the time. Either that, or the vast majority who enjoyed their NES' were fools, and should have reasonably been expected to be satisfied playing yet *another* port of Asteroids, instead of new, innovative titles such as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out or Zelda. I'd never seen such great home console games as those that the NES offered, and this is despite the fact that I didn't like the company (they were dicks back then).

 

I just couldn't argue that the games weren't great; they were. If Tramiels would have invested in some fine software development (they never did, after coming to Atari, on ANY front (XL/XE/ST/7800/Jaguar) - then things might have been different, because the 7800 has some nice capabilities that home-brewers are tapping into, in recent times. Too bad Atari (Tramiels) didn't invest in better games; they did not.

[+wongojack]

Ah the NES vs 7800 fight. I think I posted in a thread like this 10 years ago when I first joined AtariAge.

 

tldr: I wish my answer was the 7800 but it's the NES

 

I was exactly the right age to have been a target audience for the NES. In 1985, I turned 9 and the system matured to it's prime as I went through Jr High/MIddle School in the USA. My family already had a Commodore 64 which I absolutely loved, so the NES had some tough competition right from the get go in my little bubble.

 

I first played the NES at a friend's house and remember having fun with different games like Duck Hunt, 1942, Volleyball, and others. We played SMB but I never really liked it. They always knew the secrets and would play for a long time while I just died. First impression was that I thought most NES games were childish and could recognize that the games I played on the C64 were targeted at adults which made me (irrationally) like them more.

 

I don't remember exactly, but I think we must have had game rentals back then because my friends would have new games for a short period of time and I'd go over and play it with them. I discovered Zelda and Bionic Commando this way. Zelda made me want a NES, and I asked my parents to get me the model without SMB/Duck Hunt because it was cheaper and I thought they'd be more likely to go for that. It came with the player's guide which I have since lost

 

From there, I discovered NES games that I loved and some I did not. I borrowed Metroid, and Punch Out. I got the original Tecmo Bowl and pounded the sh!+ out of my NES in what were probably my first experiences with gamerage (fond memory now). Bionic Commando, Ice Hockey, and RC Pro AM were also great and I played them a lot . . . Lolo brings back fond memories.

 

There were bad experiences however. The games were expensive, so I couldn't get many of them - I had to borrow them and there was more than one occasion of games being stolen at school and then traded around. It got a little "Lord of the Flies" for me in 7th grade at one point. I played some games that just weren't really worth the money like Wizards n Warriors, TMNT, and Rygar. I didn't like SMB 2 when it came out because it still seemed childish and stupid to me. Contra was too hard even with the code, and I ended up buying and returning Zelda 2 because it was just too different for me. The console really faded out for me when I got Dragon Warrior. I know people love this game, but I was playing Bard's Tale 2 on my Commodore at the same time, and DW just felt like a joke of a kid's game compared to that.

 

I stopped buying games for the NES and pretty much dropped out of consoles until the PS1. I played the C64 for years after that and transitioned to PC games. I didn't even know the 7800 existed until I found AtariAge. No one had a 7800 that I knew of, and I had never seen one until I got one off of local Craig's List last year.

 

I think about the ways that the NES changed gaming and I love/hate them. I still prefer a joystick and wish someone could have just designed a decent 2 button variation of the CX-40. I don't really like sidescrolling games, but there have been exceptions to that. I don't like that the success of sidescrollers on the NES meant that console gaming would be stuck in that genre for almost 2 gaming generations. However, the NES has had many positive influences on gaming. It moved past the arcade and created a new console experience where players could truly explore and play a game by themselves (or with friends) with rewards that went way beyond high score tables. Even my comment about joysticks is with a grain of salt as pretty much every modern controller revision has built on what the NES did, and I really like the current gen controllers.

 

I often think about how gaming could have been different if Atari had managed to stick around. If the talent that went into creating games for the 2600 could have been used to push an American console forward, I think that the games that would have been created would have been more appealing than the middle and bottom of the NES library. Even with the criticism that I have put in this thread, I can still recognize that the NES has fabulously amazarific games, and the top end of the library might be better than any other console in history. The 7800 can't say this, and the homebrews (while great) are focused on the arcade market that the NES left distantly in its wake. I WISH that I preferred the 7800, but I don't. I (reluctantly) prefer the NES.