hy did Atari release the the XEGS at a time when the 7800 was out?

[Lost Dragon]

Plus, i used to see Tape Based games for sale (£1.99 budget range etc) in Petrol Stations, market stalls etc down my way.Disk Based games were the domain of stuffy, specalist Micro stores and mail order.As for cartridges? mail order only.2600 carts yes, plenty of in shops everywhere but A8 carts? hell no.

[Lost Dragon]

Ok price guide comparision between 800XL with Tape Deck and one with Disk drive.

This from 2-page advert by Atari, issue 1, vol 1 Atari User Magazine, May'85 (£1)

800XL, 1050 Disk Drive, Home F.Manager, The Payoff and Demo Software:£269.99 (normal cost £364.99)

800XL, 1010 tape deck, inv.to programming, demo.software and Pole Position: £129.99 (normal price £194.96).

How does that compare to USA prices from same era?

[zetastrike]

I can't help but think many these GBP 1.99 budget games that were sold to the masses weren't that good. I've been an avid reader of Retro Gamer for close to 10 years and many of the 8 bit micro games made in Europe just look cheap, like it's worth what you paid. European game design was very very different from what we got in NA.

 

The strategy that all those dev houses seemed to be: 1) design a game for one platform. 2) port it to everything under the sun and do not waste any time or money optimizing it.

Edited October 7, 2014 by zetastrike

[chinnyhill10]

Monitors weren't the norm either at least in the UK (it was more common to have disk-based machines in most of Europe)

 

Unless you were an Amstrad owner who would get a monitor with your machine by default. Likewise about half of all CPC's sold had disc drives.

 

The Spectrum, C64 and Atari were competing at the budget end. Tapes were cheaper than floppies. Likewise using the family TV was also cheaper.

 

At the bottom of this webpage it lists what games Mastertronic launched on what format in the UK in the 1980's so it gives a good idea as to what machines were big at what time. http://www.guter.org/mastertronic_stats.htm

 

Note Mastertronic making a big MSX push in 1987. Machine didn't take off so no games the following year.

 

Also note the 1988/89 CPC and Spectrum figures are distorted by the separate listings near the bottom for the dual tape format that Mastertronic pioneered in those years.

 

C16 support is also distorted as a lot of machines were dumped on the market cheaply after not selling and Mastertronic were one of the few software houses that supported the format.

[zetastrike]

Did the MSX fall flat as soon as it came out? It had all those great games, but they were on carts. Did all those konami games get released there?

 

Also, it's controller port isn't compatible with the atari standard. Did people just use normal joysticks regardless?

[chinnyhill10]

Did the MSX fall flat as soon as it came out? It had all those great games, but they were on carts. Did all those konami games get released there?

 

Also, it's controller port isn't compatible with the atari standard. Did people just use normal joysticks regardless?

 

There was some buzz about it. But there was no real marketing effort as the machines were from so many different manufacturers.

 

I believe the MSX was big in the Netherlands (and Mastertronic sold their games across Europe). But in the UK it was a flop. No support, no high street magazine, no advertising.

 

Amstrad (who also owned Sinclair by that stage) and Commodore had the 8 bit market sewn up. Both had deals with the big high street distributors who were wary of a repeat of flop machines like the Oric and Dragon from a few years earlier.

 

The BBC Micro/Electron and Atari 8 bits were on the fringes and the MSX was just a footnote.

Edited October 7, 2014 by chinnyhill10

[kogden]

Monitors were fairly common in the US. I think everyone started with a TV though unless word processing was your primary excuse to buy the machine. I moved from a B&W 12" TV to an Apple green screen then to an old Amdek Color I composite monitor on my 130XE.

 

Floppy drives were quite common here though. I didn't know any serious 8-bit users without one actually. Especially later on as prices dropped. Most users started with a bare system and threw money at it as they could.

 

--Kevin

[TMR]

I can't help but think many these GBP 1.99 budget games that were sold to the masses weren't that good. I've been an avid reader of Retro Gamer for close to 10 years and many of the 8 bit micro games made in Europe just look cheap, like it's worth what you paid. European game design was very very different from what we got in NA.

Budget software was initially written by backroom coders (and that remained true until near the end of the 8-bit era) so the standards varied, some people like the Darling brothers treated it like a job and pushed their earnings into starting companies, others were just doing it for fun and the money was a bonus.

 

The earliest games were often weak because... well two quid and amateur programmers, but it didn't take long for some excellent games to turn up and the magazine reviews pointed out both the gems and howlers.

[Bill Loguidice]

 

I don't think they were the norm in the U.S. either.

 

I agree. If you were a TRS-80 or Apple II user, you almost certainly had a monitor, but most other mass market computers ran off of color TVs here in the US until the switch to 16-bit computers. As was stated, disk drives were definitely common here, though.

[Lost Dragon]

ZZap 64 introduced a seperate award for the best Budget software, the Siver Medal (to sit alongside the Gold Medal and Sizzler awards for the best full price stuff).Sure there was a lot of dross out on budget, but then again you could say the same of full priced software, at least with the budget games you were taking far less of a risk with your money.

If it was'nt for Budget priced software, i'd have gotten rid of my 800Xl long before i did, often it was all i had to survive on.

[+MrFish]

I agree. If you were a TRS-80 or Apple II user, you almost certainly had a monitor, but most other mass market computers ran off of color TVs here in the US until the switch to 16-bit computers. As was stated, disk drives were definitely common here, though.

 

I used a small color television for the whole time I ever used Ataris back in the day. It must have been a pretty good one, because I don't remember ever thinking that I needed to upgrade the video. The only thing I ever recall not being able to do was use programs with a soft 80-col display, as the combo of artifacting, RF, and smaller display pretty much rendered them useless.

 

Disk drives were another matter. I only used the tape drive that came with it for a couple of months. After that I purchased a pair of 1050's for about $80, which also included a ton of software -- mostly pirated.

Edited October 8, 2014 by MrFish

[chinnyhill10]

Budget software was initially written by backroom coders (and that remained true until near the end of the 8-bit era) so the standards varied, some people like the Darling brothers treated it like a job and pushed their earnings into starting companies, others were just doing it for fun and the money was a bonus.

 

The earliest games were often weak because... well two quid and amateur programmers, but it didn't take long for some excellent games to turn up and the magazine reviews pointed out both the gems and howlers.

 

The Atari is also more variable in terms of the quality of budget software. I reviewed all the versions of Feud recently and the Atari version is dreadful (although nowhere near as bad as the C64 version).

 

If you were on one of the 3 big machines, there was a better chance you were you were getting a budget game written natively for your machine. So a game like Super Robin Hood started life on the CPC and had dodgy ports for the C64 and Spectrum. Likewise all the Pickford Brothers games started life on the Z80 machines and had ports to the 6502 machines (where they were usually not as good). Ports weren't always bad, but more often than not they were quickly done for the least money possible.

 

Unless a native game like Hover Bovver turned up, all the Atari was getting was poor quality ports with the occasional original release. If you were any good at programming, why would you program for the Atari when you can make many times the royalties putting that 6502 knowledge to good use on the C64.

 

In the UK the Atari, like the MSX, was an afterthought in most cases. Hence substandard ports. A case of "If we can knock out a port in a couple of weeks and sell 5000 copies we can make a bit more money".

[Lost Dragon]

Budget games on A8 were very much a 'mixed bag' compared to the C64 versions (once i switched to C64, i sought out all the games i'd loved on A8).For every Amaurote and Ninja which i found much better on A8, i came across far better versions of games like Thrust, Spellbound and Panther etc on C64.

 

I put the question of why was it the case of A8 Thrust being a lot weaker than the C64 version to 2 people from Firebird in a community interview many months ago, but they could'nt answer it as they were'nt involved, we know Andrew Hewson thought the A8 hardware was a 'step backwards' and that Ocean were'nt keen supporters of the A8 and often used coders who were'nt overly familar with the A8 hardware in few cases where they did write A8 versions...

 

 

So i guess it's a mix of factors:Publishers not seeing the A8 market of being 'worthy' of investing resources in, compared to the 'Big 3' home micro's avaiable at the time, lack of talented A8 coders...etc.

[chinnyhill10]

Just had a quick word on Twitter with Ste Pickford about the Atari versions of their games.

 

They were ported by out of house freelancers who were offered "low money". They would come into the office, take all of the existing game data and code home with them and hack it together to work on an Atari.

 

Explains why their games have the original graphics yet quite often ran slowly on the Atari.

 

The Atari version of Amaroute is interesting. On the C64 version they ditched the isometric view after the problems they had getting Glider Rider running on that system. Yet the Atari version uses the 3D isometric view of the Spectrum and CPC versions. Odd as you would have assumed the coder would have gone from the C64 versions 6502 code.

[Lost Dragon]

@chinnyhill10:That's fantastic.I don't use Twitter or Facebook myself, so often quite limited in terms of contacting people who were involved in Atari versions of games.

 

Ste pretty much confirms the route a lot of conversions seemed to have taken on the journey to appearing on A8, given to freelance coders and just basically told to port the best they could, rather be written from scratch to take advantage of anything the host hardware could offer.

[chinnyhill10]

@chinnyhill10:That's fantastic.I don't use Twitter or Facebook myself, so often quite limited in terms of contacting people who were involved in Atari versions of games.

 

Ste pretty much confirms the route a lot of conversions seemed to have taken on the journey to appearing on A8, given to freelance coders and just basically told to port the best they could, rather be written from scratch to take advantage of anything the host hardware could offer.

 

Ste also suggests some of the conversions were done "over a weekend" using programmers who had tools to partially automate the conversion of assets from other systems.

 

Probably explains why some of the ported games were so slow.

Edited October 8, 2014 by chinnyhill10

[TMR]

I put the question of why was it the case of A8 Thrust being a lot weaker than the C64 version to 2 people from Firebird in a community interview many months ago, but they could'nt answer it as they were'nt involved

It was usually a case of the publisher taking the word of whoever stepped forward offering to do a conversion when they claimed that that they could produce the goods, really; a school friend of mine wrote the C16 version of Thrust and the aborted C64 conversion of The Bubbler just before going to university, in both cases the work was sterling but Firebird and Ultimate essentially hired a teenager (albeit through a third party, but they were certainly aware that he was doing the work) for some fairly prestige titles.

[Lost Dragon]

Blimey, conversions done over a weekend? it makes Rebellions 5 day coding of PSP AVP look like a game stuck in development hell :-)

Cheers for the info as well TMR.I guess publishers must have thought we A8 owners would simply be glad we were getting a conversion at least....

[TMR]

Blimey, conversions done over a weekend? it makes Rebellions 5 day coding of PSP AVP look like a game stuck in development hell :-)

i think Steve Turner did the Amstrad CPC version of Ranarama in around six days from the Spectrum code (Andrew Braybrook's Morpheus diary mentions it)?

 

Cheers for the info as well TMR.I guess publishers must have thought we A8 owners would simply be glad we were getting a conversion at least....

It's all about the money really; publishers were just companies who went where the most users were but wouldn't say no if someone were to port their more popular titles to another machine since they could recycle the cover art and let it ride on the coat tails of the advertising for other platforms. Budget houses could still be cautious though, Shahid Ahmad has previously said that it took some persuasion to get the A8 version of Chimera released and that was Firebird, a publisher who wasn't beyond putting things out as a "joke" like Don't Buy This on the Spectrum or Sensible's Galax-I-Birds on the C64.

[chinnyhill10]

i think Steve Turner did the Amstrad CPC version of Ranarama in around six days from the Spectrum code (Andrew Braybrook's Morpheus diary mentions it)?

 

 

That figures. The CPC and Spectrum versions are near identical aside from better sound on the CPC and some annoying slowdown when there is a lot going on.

 

The advantage of porting from the Spectrum is that the system is so basic the Z80 is pretty much doing everything. So getting that code onto another Z80 based system isn't the hardest task.

 

What is interesting is why the Atari version of Amaurote appears to be the Z80 version and not the top down C64 version. And why no port of Zub to the Atari?

[WizWor]

I am extremely happy with the xegs. It is one of my favorite consoles!

 

Same here. Most of my Ataris are XEGS and my 'everyday' console is an XEGS. Why the XEGS over the 7800? It was more than a game console. You could sell it to parents as an educational tool while the kids got to play great games.

[Tickled_Pink]

The XEGS is cool. I don't have one. I've never had one. I want one.

 

HOWEVER...

 

At the time I couldn't understand the move. It was really nothing more than a re-badging and refreshing exercise. A bit like Ford restyling the Focus every few years. They knew at the time that 16-bit was the future. They were already a part of that future.

 

We're talking about technology that was already 8 years old and both the ST/Amiga were picking up steam. Developers had already lost interest in the platform. So they pumped money into a system that was always going to fail when they should have known it was going to fail. Even if the Atari 8-bits were more successful and holding their own, they should have learned from history. None of the previous attempts by computer manufacturers to turn a successful computer into a games console had done well. So what made them think that the XEGS would do any better?

 

In hindsight it's clear that perhaps what they should have done was try to build a machine based on the 65816 with improved graphics capabilities - there wasn't a lot wrong with the sound with some backward compatibility with the older 8-bit systems. They showed they could do it with the 7800. With a 65816 they could have had something capable of matching the SNES even before the SNES came out.

[high voltage]

I had (have) both A8, C64, so I could buy games for the both formats (Had an Apple ][ for a short time as well, but try getting A2 games in Europe, yep mostly non existent). But Atari was always KING for me, for obvious reasons.

 

But I'm with zetastrike, I always thought UK games looked more cheap and of inferior quality when compared to US games (sorry UK guys). I mean I had games on disk (and carts) from SSI, Epyx, Infocom, Microprose, Activision, Atari, Origin, EA, Synapse, Broderbund, Datasoft, Mindscape (the fantastic The Halley Project for one, which cost me in 1986 DM 150 (approx. GBP 50 in those days?), but you knew that you purchased a quality game), and plenty more.

 

UK had Ocean, Imagine, Elite, Codemasters, Martech, CRL, Quicksilva, Domark (and their awful James Bond games) and others. Few jewels existed like Rainbird, Level 9, Thamalus, System 3.....

 

Once I moved to UK I went to places like Boots, WHS and they offered games on tape, I was like 'wheyhey a step backwards indeed'.

 

Bottom line, UK catered for a computer without a space bar, and that used tapes only, so that was that.

Edited October 9, 2014 by high voltage

[high voltage]

Oh I like UK games better now, kinda hindsight maybe?

[Tickled_Pink]

UK games were of generally low quality. There just weren't the Atari coders out there. We were all into ZX81, Spectrum and BBC Micro. The latter because they were used to teach computers in school. The two formers because they were cheap. The only US computer to make it big over here was the C64. Having said that, I only knew 3 people in all my time who owned a C64 while I knew plenty who had Ataris.

 

English Software were probably the best out of the early developers. It was only much later that dedicated Atari developers came from the UK and produced some good quality stuff - such as Red Rat and Zeppelin.

 

But just because quality games weren't released by UK software companies, it doesn't mean that there weren't any quality games being developed by UK developers. Dropzone was published by a US company but developed by Archer MacLean ... a British developer.