How come a lot getting into retro games skip Atari?

[Andromeda Stardust]

The DPad won because it's cheaper to build versus an actual joystick. That's why Nintendo designed it in the first place. It was all about profits, not ergonomics or any perceived game play enhancements.

 

Nintendo's DPad also didn't originally test well here in America when the NES debuted. That's why Atari Corp's advertising at the time mentioned the 7800 came with "real joysticks". They also later highlighted that when the XE Game System debuted:

 

 

In truth, it took several years for gamers to warm up to DPads. It's also why Nintendo sold quite a few Advantage joysticks. I know that's what I preferred to use with Super Mario Bros.

 

The revival of joysticks via the thumb stick proves the superiority of it over the DPad. However, they are analog in nature. And which company brought analog joysticks to consoles first? Atari via the 5200. Which console had the first Pause button on their controller? Again, Atari with the 5200.

While I agree with you that a Dpad is much cheaper to produce, it is by no means a bad design. But for those of us who want a little more, nothing beats a real arcade joystick. Truth is, Dpads and joystick + buttons use completely different muscle groups. The joystick you actuate with your wrists, the buttons your fingertips. Gamepads are operated primarily by your thumbs. So while both control schemes are equally valid, it requires practice and building up a little bit of muscle memory to become proficient with either. It took me a while to get good enough to beat Super Mario Brothers with my handmade joysticks, but now I'm equally good with either control scheme. But it takes some effort to go from one to the other. So it's no surprise the generation X kids that grew up with the Atari prefer joysticks, and the generation Y kids who grew up with Nintendo prefer Dpads.

 

Had Atari Inc survived, most likely what would've happened is that the 7800 ProLine joysticks would've been abandoned quickly in favor of a smaller joystick - and not a DPad based game pad - that didn't break as much and would be more comfortable to use than a DPad controller. That being something like the Amiga Power Stick:

 

Oh, and Atari was in the process of acquiring Amiga [which was started by ex-Atari people anyway] when Atari Inc started collapsing and Amiga's management decided to defraud Atari for the sole purpose of selling themselves to Commodore for approximately $19.5 million more. Atari's intent was to use the Amiga Lorraine chipset in a 16-bit video game console code named "Mickey" which they intended to release for Christmas 1985.

 

Amiga also famously created the JoyBoard for the 2600 25 years before Nintendo's Wii Balance Board:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyboard

 

You are correct that a lot of us are cranky that a lot of the pre-crash companies didn't survive and we don't like what we've been subjected to since then. How true. Both the computer and video game industries would be far different - and far better - today had the original Atari Inc survived. As Nolan Bushnell says, the crash cheated us out of a good decade of tech that would've been released but so many companies and start-ups got crushed in the crash. A surviving Atari Inc would've kept Nintendo boxed in Japan meaning the industry wouldn't have been monopolized by them and they would've had to play by Atari's - and other American and European companies' - rules. It would've meant the 16-bit console era - and no, I don't count the Intelllivison as truly 16-bit - would've started with Christmas 1985 with the Atari "Mickey", not in 1989 with the Sega Genesis. And considering Atari had dual processing 68000-based computers in development using a GUI sitting atop BSD back in 1983/1984 years before NeXTStep and Apple Mac OS X, I'd say we lost a great deal in the computer industry too. That's like 2 decades of setback right there without even factoring in Microsoft's destructive practices into the equation.

We can play the "what if" game all we want, but the fact remains that Atari made a series of poor business decisions in the mid-to-late 80s, as did Sega in the mid-to-late 90s, and it seems Nintendo is sliding down that same slippery slope during the 2010s. The NX most likely will be their Dreamcast, as the likelyhood is small they'll pull another Wii out of their hat. Whatever happens, I'll be a sad panda the day Nintendo exits the console market. But the legacy of hardware and great games left behind by Atari, Sega, and Nintendo will not be forgotten.

[bretthorror]

I thought ledzep was insane, but Lynxpro now takes the cake.

 

Everything you're saying lacks merit and it's apparent you're just bitter that Nintendo proved to be more successful than Atari. You're dismissing landmark gaming traits they created (even Donkey Kong, doesn't that pre-date Pitfall and Miner?) and acting like their AAA after AAA Mario titles that kept changing gaming meant nothing. You're crying because a game had boss battles and an end? That's insanity. You cry about high scores, but most every NES game still had that feature and it had the NES Advantage if you somehow can't grasp a d-pad. Nintendo also had dozens of arcade ports that you could use your Advantage on that looked and played better than the other home console version. Whether by design or by chance, even Atari and arcade fans were taken care of in the NES era. Nintendo brought new idea after new idea after new idea to the table to this day and they're giving the people what they want. The Wii U may not be selling well, but the library is great. The Wii was a tremendous success and anyone who scoffs at the legendary titles on that system needs a kick in the ass too - that includes modern day gamers. I don't take anything away from anyone, Atari, Sega or the guy who coded an indie game on his own when done right. I'm sorry man, but video games had to evolve beyond the shit you played from 1980-1983. Jesus Christ. The literature world didn't just stop after Hamlet.

 

But the be all end all where I question if you're really just trolling is saying Activision employees didn't have every right to do what they did and found a gaming company and quit Atari when Atari didn't give them a fair shake. That is beyond ludicrous. You're no crossing the line between being a fanboy and saying people should just work at any job that treats them like shit without any freedom to leave and do something similar elsewhere.

 

And for the record, you can use two NES d-pads in Smash TV.

 

EDIT: Not to mention, Atari beat themselves as a company before Nintendo even had the chance to come in and do so! They're entirely unrelated. I don't understand any fanboy shit, but if you love Sega and Nintendo laid the smack down on them (well, they beat themselves, too), I could see your anger because they at co-existed and went head to head. Atari was essentially done before Nintendo began in the US.

Edited November 29, 2015 by bretthorror

[Andromeda Stardust]

And Arkanoid on NES has a Paddle/Spinner controller bundled with it. That's because it's a rip-off of Breakout which Atari sued Taito over and won.

 

Source? I was aware Arkanoid was just a glorified breakout clone, but I had no idea that Atari won a lawsuit against Taito. Looking at the wikipedia articles on Breakout and Arkanoid, I found no mention of an Atari/Taito lawsuit.

[Lynxpro]

Except Activision broke away because David Crane and company were tired of being the ones who made all these great games for Atari and then getting the shaft in terms of recignition and royalty. But then Atari was always recalcitrant to the demands of its employees wanting better wages.

 

A high royalty per game because they were the ones who were not only doing the manufacturing but eating the shipping costs as well as providing Atari with first party titles that would be localized by Nintendo themselves. Why should Nintendo give Atari cartridge and motherboard rights williy nilly? Nintendo would have run into the problem it would later run into with Sony. Nintendo would have the threat of losing control over a product they have created and there would be a danger of Atari undercutting Nintendo by producing its own games and not releasing any Nintendo IPs. It's like people forget that companies make consoles at a loss and only recuperate those losses via software and licensing.

 

Ah, the the much vaunted and gallant 7800. The famed white knight that would have saved Atari's ass. Only no, it wasn't more powerful as the system had to do significant trade offs to get more sprites on the screen. Further more it was a bitch to program for and forced prospective developers to pay extra for sound hardware that should be standard on the console.

 

Atari changed their ways over the years. It's not like other companies didn't do the same thing. Imagic was created by ex-Atari and ex-Mattel staff. The only reason why it doesn't happen in Japan is because their employees are subservient and they have a culture that encourages their citizens to bend over willingly for their employers. Look at Mr. Gameboy himself. He was rewarded with a window seat with no power over the VirtuaBoy.

 

As for your point with Nintendo, you act like Nintendo HAD to manufacture it. Atari had more manufacturing infrastructure and capacity all over the world back then…Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ireland, the USA. They had a close relationship with Synertek who made most of their chips for them. They didn't need Nintendo one bit for motherboard or cartridge PCB manufacturing. It was Nintendo who was trying to keep all of that to themselves so they could attempt to charge Atari exorbitant fees for the pleasure of marketing Nintendo's wares. That's corporate sodomy, not charity on Nintendo's behalf as you fanbois try to paint. Nintendo was a playing card company and purveyor of cheater hotels/brothels. They didn't know jack about manufacturing back then, unlike Atari. It was a totally different situation than what Sony wanted to do to Nintendo years later with the "Playstation" CD-ROM. Sony was trying to freeze out Nintendo from all royalties related to the games on CD format. As for your comment about companies making consoles at a loss, that didn't happen then! Atari never embraced the razor blade business model. Atari always made a profit off their console sales. It was Sony - and Microsoft later - who introduced that business model to the industry in an effort to drive out their competitors [Atari Corp, 3DO, ahem Sega]. Nintendo has never embraced that business model either. After all, they made massive profits off of their fanbois buying the GameCube 1.5, excuse me, Wii.

 

You are insane if you think the NES is more powerful than the 7800. The 7800 can do 100 sprites at once and has a 256 color pallet. The NES has 52 colors and can do less than 50 sprites. You mention developers having to pay extra for better sound chips for 7800 games yet you fail to mention or take into account all the extra hardware each Nintendo cartridge - excuse me, Game Pak - has to be packed with in order to do a damn thing. How do you not know about Mappers [MMC chips]? They're in almost every NES cartridge and that raised the price for each of those titles by $10 - $15 when factoring in Nintendo's profits. That's why NES games were $40 - $50 back then. You take away the mappers and the NES doesn't even belong in the same console generation class as the 7800 or Sega Master System. But do enjoy your Single Dragon while 7800 and SMS enthusiasts laugh at you. Funny how a stock 7800 has a better looking version of Ballblazer, Operation Wolf [ahem, Alien Brigade on the 7800] and several other shared titles than the NES even though the 7800 didn't use any mappers and relied on the same MARIA chip that was available in 1984. Oh yeah, that's because the MARIA *IS* more powerful than the NES' stock hardware.

 

Crom-damn the AVGN-influenced ignorance in here. The 7800 "failed"* because Nintendo locked up all of the third-party developers coupled with the 2 year delay of getting it to market due to Warner selling off Atari Inc in pieces and then Tramiel's subsequent Atari Corp not having access to any of the new games created by Atari Games…you know, the folks known at that time as TENGEN. Had Atari Inc survived and the 7800 was on the shelves nationally and internationally for Christmas 1984, it would've crushed the later NES. And all of those Atari Games titles would've been exclusive to the 7800 instead of the NES: Gauntlet, Paperboy, Marble Madness, 720 Degrees, Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom, Road Runner, Roadblasters, Gauntlet II, STUN Runner, Xybots, Cyberball, APB…the list goes on. Then add up all of the Namco games to that total too. Meanwhile, Nintendo would've encountered all of the retail resistance and anti-Japanese sentiment they ran into all the way until 1986 in our time line but in this case it would've been permanent. Yeah, the R.O.B. wouldn't have helped them at all and then they would've crawled back to Atari in order to negotiate getting Super Mario Bros onto the 7800. Don't confuse the 7800's level of success in our time line due to its technical capabilities.

 

If you don't want to face the facts, then go back to the NintendoAge website. Yeah, even their fanbois copy Atari fan sites. Why is this place named Atari Age? Because it's named after the Atari Club's magazine which was yep, you guessed it, named Atari Age! NintendoAge, if they had half a brain, should be named after the Nintendo Fun Club or the later Nintendo Power Magazine but then again, Nintendo would sue them into oblivion over it because they are such an awesome company that always places their fan base first.

 

 

 

*Failure as defined as being the #2 console behind the NES and outselling the SMS by a factor of 2 during its original North American and Western European shelf life.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Namco's Pac-Land predates Super Mario Bros.

 

Namco always > Nintendo.

Well said. I have PacLand ports on the Famicom, Lynx, and TG-16. It's a fun little platformer.

 

As for your point about Activision surviving even until today and thus their management has been historically better than the train wreck of management that the Atari brand has suffered from, well, the Activision of today isn't the original Activision. It's a brand just like Atari is today. The original founders of Activision parted ways a few short years after they founded the company. They splintered off and created other game companies like Accolade and Absolute. That was during the time that "Activision" decided they wanted to be exclusively a computer software company - like Electronic Arts back when they not only published computer "simulations" but also actual applications like Deluxe Paint - and tried for a couple of years renaming themselves as "Mediagenic". That plan was abandoned when the console market was revived.

Thanks for clarifying.

[Lynxpro]

Source? I was aware Arkanoid was just a glorified breakout clone, but I had no idea that Atari won a lawsuit against Taito. Looking at the wikipedia articles on Breakout and Arkanoid, I found no mention of an Atari/Taito lawsuit.

 

I'm not finding anything right now other than Atari [Games] v Oman. The way it was presented way back when by the media was that it was Atari Corp that sued Taito. Atari Games would've sued Taito over the original arcade distribution of Arkanoid because Atari Games would've owned the arcade rights to Breakout while Atari Corp would've sued Taito over home versions of Arkanoid due to them owning all of the non-arcade rights to Breakout.

 

Interesting to note how Atari's [infogrames, owners of all old Atari Corp IP] modern Breakout Blast - or is it Boost? - has Arkanoid play mechanics.

[Lynxpro]

The Interton VC4000 (I think it was) had analog joysticks in 1976. [/devil'sadvocate]

 

Okay, outside of West Germany then. The Interton didn't have a Pause button on the controller though.

 

Interesting. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I'm getting a lot of conflicting reports in this thread on who won or lost what lawsuit and who sued who. Somebody set the record straight or back up your claims with facts. Every single person that posted recently have stated facts at odds with each other.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Atari changed their ways over the years. It's not like other companies didn't do the same thing. Imagic was created by ex-Atari and ex-Mattel staff. The only reason why it doesn't happen in Japan is because their employees are subservient and they have a culture that encourages their citizens to bend over willingly for their employers. Look at Mr. Gameboy himself. He was rewarded with a window seat with no power over the VirtuaBoy.

 

As for your point with Nintendo, you act like Nintendo HAD to manufacture it. Atari had more manufacturing infrastructure and capacity all over the world back then…Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ireland, the USA. They had a close relationship with Synertek who made most of their chips for them. They didn't need Nintendo one bit for motherboard or cartridge PCB manufacturing. It was Nintendo who was trying to keep all of that to themselves so they could attempt to charge Atari exorbitant fees for the pleasure of marketing Nintendo's wares. That's corporate sodomy, not charity on Nintendo's behalf as you fanbois try to paint. Nintendo was a playing card company and purveyor of cheater hotels/brothels. They didn't know jack about manufacturing back then, unlike Atari. It was a totally different situation than what Sony wanted to do to Nintendo years later with the "Playstation" CD-ROM. Sony was trying to freeze out Nintendo from all royalties related to the games on CD format. As for your comment about companies making consoles at a loss, that didn't happen then! Atari never embraced the razor blade business model. Atari always made a profit off their console sales. It was Sony - and Microsoft later - who introduced that business model to the industry in an effort to drive out their competitors [Atari Corp, 3DO, ahem Sega]. Nintendo has never embraced that business model either. After all, they made massive profits off of their fanbois buying the GameCube 1.5, excuse me, Wii.

 

You are insane if you think the NES is more powerful than the 7800. The 7800 can do 100 sprites at once and has a 256 color pallet. The NES has 52 colors and can do less than 50 sprites. You mention developers having to pay extra for better sound chips for 7800 games yet you fail to mention or take into account all the extra hardware each Nintendo cartridge - excuse me, Game Pak - has to be packed with in order to do a damn thing. How do you not know about Mappers [MMC chips]? They're in almost every NES cartridge and that raised the price for each of those titles by $10 - $15 when factoring in Nintendo's profits. That's why NES games were $40 - $50 back then. You take away the mappers and the NES doesn't even belong in the same console generation class as the 7800 or Sega Master System. But do enjoy your Single Dragon while 7800 and SMS enthusiasts laugh at you. Funny how a stock 7800 has a better looking version of Ballblazer, Operation Wolf [ahem, Alien Brigade on the 7800] and several other shared titles than the NES even though the 7800 didn't use any mappers and relied on the same MARIA chip that was available in 1984. Oh yeah, that's because the MARIA *IS* more powerful than the NES' stock hardware.

 

Crom-damn the AVGN-influenced ignorance in here. The 7800 "failed"* because Nintendo locked up all of the third-party developers coupled with the 2 year delay of getting it to market due to Warner selling off Atari Inc in pieces and then Tramiel's subsequent Atari Corp not having access to any of the new games created by Atari Games…you know, the folks known at that time as TENGEN. Had Atari Inc survived and the 7800 was on the shelves nationally and internationally for Christmas 1984, it would've crushed the later NES. And all of those Atari Games titles would've been exclusive to the 7800 instead of the NES: Gauntlet, Paperboy, Marble Madness, 720 Degrees, Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom, Road Runner, Roadblasters, Gauntlet II, STUN Runner, Xybots, Cyberball, APB…the list goes on. Then add up all of the Namco games to that total too. Meanwhile, Nintendo would've encountered all of the retail resistance and anti-Japanese sentiment they ran into all the way until 1986 in our time line but in this case it would've been permanent. Yeah, the R.O.B. wouldn't have helped them at all and then they would've crawled back to Atari in order to negotiate getting Super Mario Bros onto the 7800. Don't confuse the 7800's level of success in our time line due to its technical capabilities.

 

If you don't want to face the facts, then go back to the NintendoAge website. Yeah, even their fanbois copy Atari fan sites. Why is this place named Atari Age? Because it's named after the Atari Club's magazine which was yep, you guessed it, named Atari Age! NintendoAge, if they had half a brain, should be named after the Nintendo Fun Club or the later Nintendo Power Magazine but then again, Nintendo would sue them into oblivion over it because they are such an awesome company that always places their fan base first.

 

 

 

*Failure as defined as being the #2 console behind the NES and outselling the SMS by a factor of 2 during its original North American and Western European shelf life.

Wow, dude. Wow. I think I'd know anti-fanboyism when I see it. Why do you hate Nintendo so much? You're just as bad as the Nintendo fanbois that knock Atari because "sucky graphics, sound, and gameplay."

[Lynxpro]

I thought ledzep was insane, but Lynxpro now takes the cake.

 

Everything you're saying lacks merit and it's apparent you're just bitter that Nintendo proved to be more successful than Atari. You're dismissing landmark gaming traits they created (even Donkey Kong, doesn't that pre-date Pitfall and Miner?) and acting like their AAA after AAA Mario titles that kept changing gaming meant nothing. You're crying because a game had boss battles and an end? That's insanity. You cry about high scores, but most every NES game still had that feature and it had the NES Advantage if you somehow can't grasp a d-pad. Nintendo also had dozens of arcade ports that you could use your Advantage on that looked and played better than the other home console version. Whether by design or by chance, even Atari and arcade fans were taken care of in the NES era. Nintendo brought new idea after new idea after new idea to the table to this day and they're giving the people what they want. The Wii U may not be selling well, but the library is great. The Wii was a tremendous success and anyone who scoffs at the legendary titles on that system needs a kick in the ass too - that includes modern day gamers. I don't take anything away from anyone, Atari, Sega or the guy who coded an indie game on his own when done right. I'm sorry man, but video games had to evolve beyond the shit you played from 1980-1983. Jesus Christ. The literature world didn't just stop after Hamlet.

 

But the be all end all where I question if you're really just trolling is saying Activision employees didn't have every right to do what they did and found a gaming company and quit Atari when Atari didn't give them a fair shake. That is beyond ludicrous. You're no crossing the line between being a fanboy and saying people should just work at any job that treats them like shit without any freedom to leave and do something similar elsewhere.

 

And for the record, you can use two NES d-pads in Smash TV.

 

EDIT: Not to mention, Atari beat themselves as a company before Nintendo even had the chance to come in and do so! They're entirely unrelated. I don't understand any fanboy shit, but if you love Sega and Nintendo laid the smack down on them (well, they beat themselves, too), I could see your anger because they at co-existed and went head to head. Atari was essentially done before Nintendo began in the US.

 

 

Nintendo didn't create Donkey Kong; Ikegami did.

 

I also mentioned the Advantage in other postings. I liked the Advantage. I merely pointed out correctly that the DPad was created due to Nintendo being cheap, not that it was actually better than the joystick experience. I don't necessarily dislike DPads but I've stated several times that they cannot replicate the Trak-Ball experience or any other specialized controller experience for that matter. And thumbsticks are superior to DPads. I also didn't cry over high scores. You are putting words into my mouth. I merely mocked "Bosses" and Nintendo's "Save the Princess" bullshit. Nintendo didn't innovate by creating "endings" for console video games. Raiders of the Lost Ark had an ending. E.T. had an ending. The Swordquest games had endings. So don't falsely attribute to Nintendo things that they didn't create.

 

I never said the Activision folks didn't have the right to break off and create their own company. I stated for a fact that they ushered in third party video game development and that's what actually caused the industry crash because of all of the other companies that jumped in trying to replicate their earlier success with one-twentieth of their talent. Had they not broken away from Atari, it's doubtful others would've tried doing the same thing. Hence, no crash and consequently no Nintendo fanbois to have to deal with today.

 

If your words were truth and Nintendo was actually giving gamers what they wanted then they'd be much more successful than Sony or Microsoft. And yet they're the also-ran of the industry now. Hmm…but I thought you said they were giving gamers what they want?

 

Wow…using 2 DPads for NES Smash TV. Oh my gawd. Had Williams implemented that in their arcade original, they would've been so rich they could've bought Nintendo. OMG. That's so superior of a gaming experience. Why would anyone choose to use Dual Joysticks instead? [/snark].

 

 

DPads…this is what they'll do to you, unlike a good joystick or Trak-Ball:

 

Edited November 30, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Lynxpro]

Wow, dude. Wow. I think I'd know anti-fanboyism when I see it. Why do you hate Nintendo so much? You're just as bad as the Nintendo fanbois that knock Atari because "sucky graphics, sound, and gameplay."

 

The better question is why would Gen X gamers not hate Nintendo? We've went through nearly 30 years of listening to morons falsely attribute every video game industry success to those usurpers, not to mention how they supposedly "saved" the industry when the industry was already on the rebound path without any of their "help". We've seen better consoles and handhelds - not just from Atari but also from Sega and NEC, and in the case of the PSP, from Sony - destroyed due to Nintendo's strong armed tactics and their former monopoly.

 

To me, they are just as bad and as contemptible as that other corporate titan located in Redmond Washington.

[sega_SHARK]

Lynxpro just tied firecrackers to all of your Amiibos.

[AtariORdead]

You have issues Lynxpro, serious issues.

Edited November 30, 2015 by AtariORdead

[Lynxpro]

Lynxpro just tied firecrackers to all of your Amiibos.

 

Yet another fine example of innovation brought to you by the geniuses at Nintendo.

 

Now you're ripping off the rest of the industry with power!

 

 

 

I swear, this wasn't me:

 

Edited November 30, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Andromeda Stardust]

Lynxpro just tied firecrackers to all of your Amiibos.

He'll have to find me first!!!

[empsolo]

Nintendo didn't create Donkey Kong; Ikegami did.

They only did the coding for the game as the lawsuit generally revolved around the source code ownership. Ikegami has not at any point ever claimed to have created Donkey Kong. Stop lying.

 

 

 

You are insane if you think the NES is more powerful than the 7800.

This isn't an argument I've made. However, the 7800 is, at best, comparable to the NES.

 

 

The 7800 can do 100 sprites at once and has a 256 color pallet. The NES has 52 colors and can do less than 50 sprites.

This is true. But what you don't admit or rather what you hide is the fact that the Atari 7800 can do either 100 sprites or can have 256 colors in it's pallet and have good resolution at the same time. THe 7800 can not do all three at once and further has to do it while taxing the CPU. The NES can get the job done due to the fact it has graphics and video buses that make the console much more efficant in terms of resolution, color, and the amount of sprites. Further more the 7800 considers everything a sprite, therefore backgrounds will suffer in terms of resolution, color and the quality the backgrounds.

 

 

 

You mention developers having to pay extra for better sound chips for 7800 games yet you fail to mention or take into account all the extra hardware each Nintendo cartridge - excuse me, Game Pak

Except the NES made no use of extra chips for sound as the NES did not have the extra sound channels on the hardware. Every single game that was released in the US made use of the audio hardware found on the NES. However if you were a developer looking to make a game for the 7800, you had to pay extra if you wanted 5200 quality sound. This sounds like a huge minus in my book.

 

 

 

 

- has to be packed with in order to do a damn thing.

This is categorically and demonstrably false.

 

 

How do you not know about Mappers [MMC chips]?

This is utter ignorance. For MMC chips were not used for audio hardware. I don't know why Atari fanboys keep circulating this falsehood as it isn't true. Further more, MMC chips were only used in a handful of games and only a select few Nintendo first party titles made use of them. The MMC1 chip was used mainly to make multi-directional scrolling easier as well as to make it feasible for cartidge based games to make use of battery back up save data. The MMC2 Chip is only used in Mike Tyson's Punch out and the MMC3 chip is only used in games that require a portion of the screen to stay static while the rest of the screen scrolls. The MMC3 chip as also used for two player split screens that made use of scrolling. The MMC chips had nothing to do with graphics,audio, or video capabilities. As that was all done by stock hardware.

 

 

They're in almost every NES cartridge

False.

 

 

and that raised the price for each of those titles by $10 - $15 when factoring in Nintendo's profits.

This too is absurdly false because they were of the same price for games both past and present. IE within the 50-60 dollar price range.

 

 

That's why NES games were $40 - $50 back then.

And why are new games 60 bucks today? You mean better games with more bells and whistles costs more to develop than a game that doesn't. Oh. My. God. Stop the presses!

 

 

You take away the mappers and the NES doesn't even belong in the same console generation class as the 7800

Hahahaha.....no.

 

 

 

 

or Sega Master System. But do enjoy your Single Dragon while 7800 and SMS enthusiasts laugh at you.

You mean the game the game which looks better, plays better, sound better than it's contemporaries save for the fact the developer chose for whatever reason to omit two players? Something they fixed on subsequent releases? Oh wow, you really got me there.

 

 

 

 

 

Funny how a stock 7800 has a better looking version of Ballblazer, Operation Wolf [ahem, Alien Brigade on the 7800] and several other shared titles than the NES even though the 7800 didn't use any mappers and relied on the same MARIA chip that was available in 1984. Oh yeah, that's because the MARIA *IS* more powerful than the NES' stock hardware.

Ah yes, "better looking" even though they are a pixelated mess at resolutions used for most TV's at the time and with less color and shitty soundware. Further more, this also doesn't answer the question of whether or not they play better. So yeah, score a point for the 7800 for having barely passable titles over some NES ports that could have been better. You guys need *something* in the win column.

 

 

 

Crom-damn the AVGN-influenced ignorance in here.

Somebody doesn't realize that AVGN is a character played by a guy for youtube monies and shouldn't be taken all that seriously.

 

 

The 7800 "failed"*

Yes, yes it did.

 

 

because Nintendo locked up all of the third-party developers

Except Atari didn't go fishing until it was too damn late and by the time they did Sega was locking up third parties for the Genesis. Edited November 30, 2015 by empsolo

[Lynxpro]

They only did the coding for the game as the lawsuit generally revolved around the source code ownership. Ikegami has not at any point ever claimed to created Donkey Kong. Stop lying.

 

This isn't an argument I've made. However, the 7800 is, at best, comparable to the NES.

 

This is true. But what you don't admit or rather what you hide is the fact that the Atari 7800 can do either 100 sprites or can have 256 colors in it's pallet and have good resolution at the same time. THe 7800 can not do all three at once and further has to do it while taxing the CPU. The NES can get the job done due to the fact it has graphics and video buses that make the console much more efficant in terms of resolution, color, and the amount if sprites. Further more the 7800 considers everything a sprite, therefore backgrounds will suffer in terms of resolution, color and the quality the backgrounds.

 

Except the NES made no use of extra chips for sound as the NES did not have the extra sound channels on the hardware. Every single game that was released in the US made use of the audio hardware found on the NES. However if you were a developer looking to make a game for the 7800, you had to pay extra if you wanted 5200 quality sound. This sounds like a huge minus in my book.

 

This is categorically and demonstrably false.

 

This is utter ignorance. For MMC chips were not used for audio hardware. I don't know why Atari fanboys keep circulating this falsehood as it isn't true. Further more, MMC chips were only used in a handful of games and only a select few Nintendo first party titles made use of them. The MMC1 chip was used mainly to make multi-directional scrolling easier as well as to make it feasible for cartidge based games to make use of battery back up save data. The MMC2 Chip is only used in Mike Tyson's Punch out and the MMC3 chip is only used in games that require a portion of the screen to stay static while the rest of the screen scrolls. The MMC3 chip as also used for two player split screens that made use of scrolling. The MMC chips had nothing to do with graphics,audio, or video capabilities. As that was all done by stock hardware.

 

False.

 

This too is absurdly false because they were of the same price for games both past and present. IE within the 50-60 dollar price range.

 

And why are new games 60 bucks today? You mean better games with more bells and whistles costs more to develop than a game that doesn't. Oh. My. God. Stop the presses!

 

Hahahaha.....no.

 

You mean the game the game which looks better, plays better, sound better than it's contemporaries save for the fact the developer chose for whatever reason to omit two players? Something they fixed on subsequent releases? Oh wow, you really got me there.

 

Ah yes, "better looking" even though they are a pixelated mess at resolutions used for most TV's at the time and with less color and shitty soundware. Further more, this also doesn't answer the question of whether or not they play better. So yeah, score a point for the 7800 for having barely passable titles over some NES ports that could have been better. You guys need *something* in the win column.

 

Somebody doesn't realize that AVGN is a character played by a guy for youtube monies and shouldn't be taken all that seriously.

 

Yes, yes it did.

 

Except Atari didn't go fishing until it was too damn late and by the time they did Sega was locking up third parties for the Genesis.

 

The code is the game. I wasn't arguing over who ripped off Universal Studios in creating the cartoon ape itself.

 

I never hid anything about the 7800's capabilities. The 7800 can do more sprites than the NES. Does the NES split bus have advantages? Yes. Can the 7800 also do tile graphics? Yes.

 

Is it a negative that the 7800 didn't come with a POKEY audio chip standard and thus the games either rely upon the TIA chip for sound or has to provide a different sound chip via the cartridge? Absolutely. No argument there. Of course, the 7800 can also use both a cartridge based sound chip as well as the on-board TIA which is why 7800 Commando has 6 channel sound. On a side note, 7800 Commando plays better than NES Commando. Thanks for jogging my memory! Sega also committed a similar act of stupidity with the non-Japanese SMS consoles lacking the FM chip.

 

Your downplay of the importance of MMC chips to the NES is astoundingly.

 

Here's a list of NES games that do use MMCs. It's rather extensive contrary to your assertion:

 

http://tuxnes.sourceforge.net/nesmapper.txt

 

Do I care about the NES first-party titles? Not really. The strength of the NES when compared to the 7800 and the SMS is in regard to its extensive third-party library and a large number of those titles use MMCs. Your claim that hardware scrolling abilities aren't related to graphics capabilities is ridiculous.

 

Why do new games cost $60? It's called inflation. $50 during the NES era was a lot of money compared to $50 today.

 

Selling 4 million consoles isn't a failure. But the 7800 certainly could've sold a lot more had the third party developers not been restricted from developing for it for a good portion of its product lifetime due to Nintendo's business practices.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Lynxpro

[empsolo]

coupled with the 2 year delay of getting it to market due to Warner selling off Atari Inc in pieces and then Tramiel's subsequent Atari Corp not having access to any of the new games created by Atari Games…you know, the folks known at that time as TENGEN.

If you have trouble getting something out to it's market audience in time due your company experiencing an existential crisis and then that system whiffs on it because that target audience has left that specific market... Well, I'd call that a failure.

 

Had Atari Inc survived and the 7800 was on the shelves nationally and internationally for Christmas 1984,

1. This reeks of coulda, woulda, shoulda. 2. More importantly in relies on Atari not fucking up. Especially producing newer games that would meet the growing tastes of it's target audience. Something that Nintendo was doing when it released Super Mario Bros in Japan.

 

it would've crushed the later NES.

Much like how Atari crushed Coleco and Mattel electronics right?

 

 

And all of those Atari Games titles would've been exclusive to the 7800 instead of the NES: Gauntlet, Paperboy, Marble Madness, 720 Degrees, Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom, Road Runner, Roadblasters, Gauntlet II, STUN Runner, Xybots, Cyberball, APB…the list goes on.

Wow, either games that either had already had appearences on 20 consoles earlier or just flat out sucked.

 

Then add up all of the Namco games to that total too.

LOL No. Namco, despite thier beef with Nintendo of America, kept steadily releasing games for the Famicom in Japan on a monthly basis. The Master System has a better chance of getting Namco to jump ship then for them to not follow one of the Japanese giants.

 

Meanwhile, Nintendo would've encountered all of the retail resistance and anti-Japanese sentiment

If we are playing the what if no crash scenario then Nintendo of America doesn't adop it's policies that adopted in the wake of the crash. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Also, it's kind of nice to to see the Atari fanboy support racism as means of winning a console war, makes me proud to be an American.

 

 

 

they ran into all the way until 1986 in our time line but in this case it would've been permanent.

They had resistance because retailer were still clearing out inventory of older pre-crash consoles and games and didn't want to order new systems that wouldn't sell. But here there is no crash.

 

Yeah, the R.O.B. wouldn't have helped them at all and then they would've crawled back to Atari in order to negotiate getting Super Mario Bros onto the 7800.

This is extremely wishful thinking.

Don't confuse the 7800's level of success in our time line due to its technical capabilities.

Who is saying this? but even so, you seem to either underplay the weaknesses or even pretend that the 7800 didn't have its own share of major problems.

 

If you don't want to face the facts, then go back to the NintendoAge website.

Actually, I came here from r/retrogaming on Reddit. But please do try to poison the well even more. That I know you have no real arguments to play.

 

 

Yeah, even their fanbois copy Atari fan sites. Why is this place named Atari Age? Because it's named after the Atari Club's magazine which was yep, you guessed it, named Atari Age! NintendoAge, if they had half a brain, should be named after the Nintendo Fun Club or the later Nintendo Power Magazine but then again, Nintendo would sue them into oblivion over it because they are such an awesome company that always places their fan base first.

Dude, what is your problem?

 

*Failure as defined as being the #2 console behind the NES and outselling the SMS by a factor of 2 during its original North American and Western European shelf life.

Except the NES sold around 1 million units in the Christmas of 1986 and ended up selling 61 million units in total. And I thought Sega fanboys were crazy..

[empsolo]

The code is the game. I wasn't arguing over who ripped off Universal Studios in creating the cartoon ape itself.

Except the design of the game, the characters, how the game moves, etc. Everything was owned by Nintendo. What wasn't owned was the source code for the game as Nintendo had hired Ikegami to port the game from it's prototype to the arcades. I reiterate that Ikegami has never in claimed to own the IP of Donkey Kong or the game itself and furthermore only retained the rights to the arcade source code.

 

 

 

 

I never hid anything about the 7800's capabilities.

 

By under playing the problems with the 7800's capabilities and then trying to argue it was "more powerful" despite the inherent drawbacks on the fact that the CPU was being tasked to do resolution, color, sprites. In my book, I would call this a lie by omission.

 

 

 

The 7800 can do more sprites than the NES.

 

Which is technically true but at no point ever really does considering the fact that this also includes background images.

 

 

 

Does the NES split bus have advantages? Yes. Can the 7800 also do tile graphics? Yes.

This is true but the 7800 requires more CPU power to do basic tile processing while not so with the NES. Hence, why most 7800 utilizes sprite processing for backgrounds instead of tile backgrounds.

https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/7800-compared-to-the-nes

 

 

 

Is it a negative that the 7800 didn't come with a POKEY audio chip standard and thus the games either rely upon the TIA chip for sound or has to provide a different sound chip via the cartridge? Absolutely. No argument there. Of course, the 7800 can also use both a cartridge based sound chip as well as the on-board TIA which is why 7800 Commando has 6 channel sound. On a side note, 7800 Commando plays better than NES Commando.

 

Except the main problem with this method is two fold. First and foremost POKEY is archaic and doesn't sound as good as the sound system built into the CPU on the NES. Secondly and more importantly, this is an added cost. It's one thing for developers to pay for chips that can enable themto program more sophisticated games than if just using stock hardware, it's another thing for developers to pay for sound chips for cartridges for a current generation system. Why would developers work on a system where not only do they have to pay or special mapper chips but they have to now pay for graphics and audio chips well. One can really see all the missteps that Atari took in the development and subsequent release of this console. I can really see why japanese developers especially avoided this console like the plague. Simply too much hassle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You downplay the importance of MMC chips to the NES is astoundingly.

 

Not really. Look at the list again. The most common MMC that is used is the MMC1. A chip that was used specifically for games that utilized either a battery back up save file or for more efficient multu-directional scrolling.

 

 

 

 

The strength of the NES when compared to the 7800 and the SMS is in regard to its extensive third-party library and a large number of those titles use MMCs.

 

Except you seem to not realize why the MMC was used or what the MMC is even used for.

 

 

 

 

 

Your claim that hardware scrolling abilities aren't related to graphics capabilities is ridiculous.

 

Not really. Considering that the early MMC1 chips were used to help make multi-directional scrolling easier to program. By the time Super Mario Bros 3 was released, most publishers could program multi-directional scrolling without the need for special mapper chip. Super Mario Bros 3 can do it's scrolling on stock hardware. All the MMC3 chip does is keep the status bar screen static.

 

 

 

Why do new games cost $60? It's called inflation. $50 during the NES era was a lot of money compared to $50 today.

 

Yet games have pretty much leveled off at 60 for more than 30 years.

 

 

 

Selling 4 million consoles isn't a failure.

 

That number isn't four million. That number is bundled with the Atari 2600, 2600 jr, and XEGS. We don't actually know how many 7800 units sold. And even then, being generous, Atari came away with less than 10% percent of the market share.

 

 

 

But the 7800 certainly could've sold a lot more had the third party developers not been restricted from developing for it

 

They weren't. It's just that Atari didn't try to license properties from other publishers until it was too late.

 

 

 

 

for a good portion of its product lifetime due to Nintendo's business practices.

 

Right and ceasing advertising on the 7800, forcing devs to pay for added costs of the 7800's basic hardware, and putting out yet another game system by no means turned away publishers. It's just big bad Nintendo's fault.

Edited November 30, 2015 by empsolo

[Lynxpro]

If you have trouble getting something out to it's market audience in time due your company experiencing an existential crisis and then that system whiffs on it because that target audience has left that specific market... Well, I'd call that a failure.

1. This reeks of coulda, woulda, shoulda. 2. More importantly in relies on Atari not fucking up. Especially producing newer games that would meet the growing tastes of it's target audience. Something that Nintendo was doing when it released Super Mario Bros in Japan.

Much like how Atari crushed Coleco and Mattel electronics right?

Wow, either games that either had already had appearences on 20 consoles earlier or just flat out sucked.

LOL No. Namco, despite thier beef with Nintendo of America, kept steadily releasing games for the Famicom in Japan on a monthly basis. The Master System has a better chance of getting Namco to jump ship then for them to not follow one of the Japanese giants.

If we are playing the what if no crash scenario then Nintendo of America doesn't adop it's policies that adopted in the wake of the crash. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Also, it's kind of nice to to see the Atari fanboy support racism as means of winning a console war, makes me proud to be an American.

They had resistance because retailer were still clearing out inventory of older pre-crash consoles and games and didn't want to order new systems that wouldn't sell. But here there is no crash.

Except the NES sold around 1 million units in the Christmas of 1986 and ended up selling 61 million units in total. And I thought Sega fanboys were crazy..

 

First off, I didn't state I supported racism. I'm just stating the facts. During that time, we [the USA] were practically involved in a trade war with Japan. And due to that, Nintendo of America certainly felt a lot of hostility aimed in their direction due to being a Japanese subsidiary. The book Game Over chronicled a lot of it. Considering how xenophobic and protectionist Japan was back then against the US and everyone else, I really don't care. The retailers did want to clear out their inventory at the time - from 1984 to early 1986 - and they didn't want any more non-2600 compatible consoles and especially any from Japan.

 

Your ignorance of non-Nintendo games of the era is alarming. All of those Atari Games arcade titles were hits and they sold well on the NES by Tengen [and others after Tengen withdrew from the NES market as a developer/publisher]. And contrary to your ridiculous comment, they hadn't appeared on 20 systems [video game consoles] already at that time. They went to the NES first due to Nintendo's dominance which they arrived at due to their previously mentioned ethically challenged business practices.

 

As for your snide comment about Atari crushing Coleco and Mattel; as of 1984, of the 3 of them, only Atari [Corp] was still in the video game business. Unless you count the Telegames Colecovision compatible system that was available through mail order or the INTVIII as actual legitimate competitors. But your disdain for Atari and your market metrics would preclude their inclusion.

 

Yes, the NES sold 61 million consoles over its long reign. They ultimately even eclipsed the Atari 2600 in total sales but that also has to do with the fall of communism and various markets opening up for the first time which weren't open during the 2600's heyday. Had the third party developers been free to develop for the 7800 and the SMS at the time, those numbers would've been dramatically different - in North America and Europe - which is a point you and your ilk continue to fail to both recognize and comprehend.

 

Aren't your Amiibos and R.O.B. getting lonely while you waste your time here in Atariland?

[CPUWIZ]

That number isn't four million. That number is bundled with the Atari 2600, 2600 jr, and XEGS. We don't actually know how many 7800 units sold. And even then, being generous, Atari came away with less than 10% percent of the market share.

 

No, the 2600 alone sold more than five times that amount.

[BassGuitari]

Wow, has this thread ever gotten stupid.

All this fanboyism is really disappointing. We're supposed to be better than that here.

[bretthorror]

 

 

Nintendo didn't create Donkey Kong; Ikegami did.

 

I also mentioned the Advantage in other postings. I liked the Advantage. I merely pointed out correctly that the DPad was created due to Nintendo being cheap, not that it was actually better than the joystick experience. I don't necessarily dislike DPads but I've stated several times that they cannot replicate the Trak-Ball experience or any other specialized controller experience for that matter. And thumbsticks are superior to DPads. I also didn't cry over high scores. You are putting words into my mouth. I merely mocked "Bosses" and Nintendo's "Save the Princess" bullshit. Nintendo didn't innovate by creating "endings" for console video games. Raiders of the Lost Ark had an ending. E.T. had an ending. The Swordquest games had endings. So don't falsely attribute to Nintendo things that they didn't create.

 

I never said the Activision folks didn't have the right to break off and create their own company. I stated for a fact that they ushered in third party video game development and that's what actually caused the industry crash because of all of the other companies that jumped in trying to replicate their earlier success with one-twentieth of their talent. Had they not broken away from Atari, it's doubtful others would've tried doing the same thing. Hence, no crash and consequently no Nintendo fanbois to have to deal with today.

 

If your words were truth and Nintendo was actually giving gamers what they wanted then they'd be much more successful than Sony or Microsoft. And yet they're the also-ran of the industry now. Hmm…but I thought you said they were giving gamers what they want?

 

Wow…using 2 DPads for NES Smash TV. Oh my gawd. Had Williams implemented that in their arcade original, they would've been so rich they could've bought Nintendo. OMG. That's so superior of a gaming experience. Why would anyone choose to use Dual Joysticks instead? [/snark].

 

 

DPads…this is what they'll do to you, unlike a good joystick or Trak-Ball:

 

 

Pardon me, Nintendo added endings to games that didn't suck total balls like Atari's, I'll correct myself. Stop holding Nintendo at fault for Atari failing as a business. That's on Atari as a business. Was Nintendo shady? Fuck yeah, but I'm also not gonna sit here and act like the 7800 was gonna compete with Super Mario Bros. Dude, it was Mario. It was bigger than everything else in gaming. No one was worried about fucking Choplifter on 7800.

 

D-pads only ruled for a 10 or 11 year span before analog thumbsticks and then dual analog entered the fray. The dual analog has been around now for 20 years, so the d-pad was a mere temporary step. If the any Atari joystick was really great, I'd at least concede to you that joysticks are the way to go, except the 5200 ones don't even work and the 7800 stick doesn't seem to be really liked by anyone I've come across. As for the original 2600 joystick, it's really stiff and tiny and it's not that I hate it, but I'm not going out of my way to praise it at all. All I know is 99% of people seem to love their D-pad, so I don't see how anyone in such a minority act like their own small opinion should appeal to the masses when it's obvious the masses have spoken. D-pads are cheaper, trackball this, spinner that, you use every negative in the book in regards to them except for the fact that the world loved them and they in and of themselves were also just one of many other types of control pads back in the day, it just happened to win out for 10 years like the joystick did for 6 or 8 before it. There was no worldwide d-pad conspiracy that brainwashed the minds of millions of people. It won an Emmy award years later because people loved it. It worked, why is this so hard to understand without twisting this knowledge into some weird contradiction?

 

I'm confused at what you're trying to portray at times because you seem to just want to discredit Nintendo for everything they've ever done and they're a wildly successful company. You replace their success for what if scenarios based on a terribly managed company never being terribly managed in a fairy tale scenario that doesn't even matter because Atari hung themselves long before Nintendo was a threat in the US. Was the business world supposed to just stop and wait for Atari to catch up?

 

And for the love of God, why do you people keep bringing up trackballs and Tempest and all this shit? Should the video game world have just stopped one day and said "trackballs, joysticks and spinners - those will be the only controllers to exist until the end of time". Stop mentioning 20 games out of thousands in video game history that you cherry pick that can't be done as well on a d-pad because they were barely relevant when the d-pad was and certainly have lost all relevance today.

 

You do realize Nintendo has billions, right? You realize they aren't going to go away because they're not a terribly mismanaged company like Atari was. And do you realize that Sony may have money, but its video game section actually lost money in 2014? I'm not even gonna bother to research the numbers for you, but Nintendo is still more profitable than Sony's gaming division and I'm assuming Microsoft as well. Proper management and the support their gaming fans are giving them in all venues are making them money even with the Wii U sucking hind tit. Sony and Microsoft sell their consoles and shit at losses, man. The numbers don't add up even though it looks like they're downright dominating.

 

And how old are you to keep saying "fanbois?"

[Lynxpro]

Except the design of the game, the characters, how the game moves, etc. Everything was owned by Nintendo. What wasn't owned was the source code for the game as Nintendo had hired Ikegami to port the game from it's prototype to the arcades. I reiterate that Ikegami has never in claimed to own the IP of Donkey Kong or the game itself and furthermore only retained the rights to the arcade source code.

By under playing the problems with the 7800's capabilities and then trying to argue it was "more powerful" despite the inherent drawbacks on the fact that the CPU was being tasked to do resolution, color, sprites. In my book, I would call this a lie by omission.

Which is technically true but at no point ever really does considering the fact that this also includes background images.

This is true but the 7800 requires more CPU power to do basic tile processing while not so with the NES. Hence, why most 7800 utilizes sprite processing for backgrounds instead of tile backgrounds.

https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/7800-compared-to-the-nes

Except the main problem with this method is two fold. First and foremost POKEY is archaic and doesn't sound as good as the sound system built into the CPU on the NES. Secondly and more importantly, this is an added cost. It's one thing for developers to pay for chips that can enable themto program more sophisticated games than if just using stock hardware, it's another thing for developers to pay for sound chips for cartridges for a current generation system. Why would developers work on a system where not only do they have to pay or special mapper chips but they have to now pay for graphics and audio chips well. One can really see all the missteps that Atari took in the development and subsequent release of this console. I can really see why japanese developers especially avoided this console like the plague. Simply too much hassle.

Not really. Look at the list again. The most common MMC that is used is the MMC1. A chip that was used specifically for games that utilized either a battery back up save file or for more efficient multu-directional scrolling.

Except you seem to not realize why the MMC was used or what the MMC is even used for.

Not really. Considering that the early MMC1 chips were used to help make multi-directional scrolling easier to program. By the time Super Mario Bros 3 was released, most publishers could program multi-directional scrolling without the need for special mapper chip. Super Mario Bros 3 can do it's scrolling on stock hardware. All the MMC3 chip does is keep the status bar screen static.

Yet games have pretty much leveled off at 60 for more than 30 years.

That number isn't four million. That number is bundled with the Atari 2600, 2600 jr, and XEGS. We don't actually know how many 7800 units sold. And even then, being generous, Atari came away with less than 10% percent of the market share.

They weren't. It's just that Atari didn't try to license properties from other publishers until it was too late.

Right and ceasing advertising on the 7800, forcing devs to pay for added costs of the 7800's basic hardware, and putting out yet another game system by no means turned away publishers. It's just big bad Nintendo's fault.

 

Again, the source code *IS* the game.

 

Atari didn't force anyone to buy additional chips for 7800 games. Atari didn't force third party developers into having Atari manufacture their cartridges or chips for the 7800; that was a Nintendo practice. Activision themselves owned one of the first "mappers" ever created: the DPC which was used in Pitfall 2 for the 2600. Activision could've used them on any of their subsequent 2600 or 7800 titles. It's still a mystery why they didn't do so.

 

The 7800's 4 million figure in North America isn't in dispute and it isn't due to Atari allegedly tying all of their console sales together. Their market share percentage was based upon the total sales of all of their consoles.

 

The lack of Japanese third-party developers participating with the 7800 wasn't due to any hardware failings of the 7800. Even in the 2600's heyday, very few Japanese companies developed for it. Sega is the only one I can remember actually developing for the 2600. That's all about Japanese cultural and business preferences back then. Of course, they were more than happy to license those titles to the American video game companies while they were dominant outside of Japan.

 

And no, Atari Corp couldn't go around originally and license the various Japanese game titles and do the work themselves. The third party developers who had already committed to the NES wouldn't even do that because they were afraid of Nintendo halting their cartridge allotments. They had wiggle room when it came to licensing their titles to computer platforms [which is why a lot of their titles were ported to the C64, the Atari ST, the Amiga, and others] but not other consoles. It wasn't until the various lawsuits were filed and Nintendo's practices were being challenged that titles like Double Dragon and Kung Fu Master ended up in the hands of Activision and Absolute to be ported over to Atari and other competing systems. And again, Nintendo's practices also hurt their fellow Japanese competitors such as Sega and NEC in North America and Europe. The TurboGrafx-16 bombed in the US yet its Japanese counterpart the PC Engine did extremely well in Japan because the very same Japanese companies weren't hamstrung by those agreements in the Japanese market. It was so ridiculous that TurboGrafx fans were [gray market] importing PC Engine titles to the US that weren't legally available here due to Nintendo.

 

As for the POKEY being archaic, well, that's a preference issue just as it is when arguing the merits of the MOS/Commodore SID in comparison. The NES sound chip with its distinct sound has its fans as well as its detractors. I'll take the 7800's POKEY based soundtrack in Ballblazer over the NES version any day; same with Commando. The homebrew POKEY based Double Dragon soundtrack is also closer to the arcade original [and the Sega SMS Japanese FM version] than the NES version. But you wouldn't know about that.

[empsolo]

Again, the source code *IS* the game.

 

Atari didn't force anyone to buy additional chips for 7800 games.

Yet they would have if anybody wanted to have better sound chips instead of using the shitty 2600 sound system. Ballblazer was had POKEY because Lucasarts ended up paying for it.

 

 

Atari didn't force third party developers into having Atari manufacture their cartridges or chips for the 7800;

IIRC, Atari ended up manufacturing all of the carts for the 7800. So I highly doubt that Atari wouldn't have done the same for custom chips.

 

The lack of Japanese third-party developers participating with the 7800 wasn't due to any hardware failings of the 7800.

To say any failing is a bit of a stretch. I will concede the failure wasn't entirely on the 7800's fault. I would say some of that falls on the shoulder of Atari in terms of marketing, in terms of announcing vaporware and then failing to meet those announcements, as well as shunting off yet another console. All would suggest to third parties that Atari doesn't care about the console they just released.

 

And no, Atari Corp couldn't go around originally and license the various Japanese game titles and do the work themselves.

They could have at least made the attempt. Hell, they didn't try garnering third parties in 1986-87 when was just Nintendo first party titles and a few of the Famicom stalwarts making those early releases. They didn't try to get Activision or any other western Third parties who were making PC games. Nor did they try to get third parties to make games that weren't ip's under contract.

 

The third party developers who had already committed to the NES wouldn't even do that because they were afraid of Nintendo halting their cartridge allotments.

An accusation thrown around with little evidence to back up that assertion. Atari games joined Atari Corps lawsuit in the late 80's alleging this happened but could provide no evidence to back this up in court.

 

 

They had wiggle room when it came to licensing their titles to computer platforms [which is why a lot of their titles were ported to the C64, the Atari ST, the Amiga, and others] but not other consoles.

They couldn't release the same game to another console for two years. What they could do was create an entirely new IP and port that game over to another console.

 

 

It wasn't until the various lawsuits were filed and Nintendo's practices were being challenged that titles like Double Dragon and Kung Fu Master ended up in the hands of Activision and Absolute to be ported over to Atari and other competing systems.

But that didn't happen until the very late into the NES's life cycle and even then it all seems like a half hearted attempt to keep the system alive, seeing the piss porr job they did on Double Dragon. Where was Atari making the agressive moves in 1986? in 1987? Where are they courting anyone to help get the system off the ground?

 

 

 

And again, Nintendo's practices also hurt their fellow Japanese competitors such as Sega and NEC in North America and Europe.

Nobody really developed games for Sega in Japan either and Europe wasn't under the same rules as Nintendo of America.

 

 

 

The TurboGrafx-16 bombed in the US yet its Japanese counterpart the PC Engine did extremely well in Japan because the very same Japanese companies weren't hamstrung by those agreements in the Japanese market. It was so ridiculous that TurboGrafx fans were [gray market] importing PC Engine titles to the US that weren't legally available here due to Nintendo.

The Turbo-grafx-16 bombed because the US arm of NEC was inept a promoting and advertising the system. Not to mention that the system came stock with one player controller and could only be two player if you bought an adapter for the system separately. Plus the system launched just after the Genesis in the United States and just prior to the SNES. And there was nothing stopping the US branch of NEC from bringing over thier big name titles, they could have gone to court if Nintendo really cared at this point.

 

In fact, Gamasutra has an article about the Turbo-Grafx. In it, some of the key players lay blame for the choice of US titles on a very specific group: (hint it isn't Nintendo)

 

 

While NEC was handling the hardware side, Hudson worked on software. Having designed the console, the company produced a huge number of games for it, which it began to localize. In fact, Hudson titles dominated the system's lineup in the U.S., even more so than in Japan.

The PC Engine had plenty of Japanese support; with a U.S. launch imminent, it was time to get Western publishers and developers on board with the TurboGrafx-16. Hudson, naturally, created the development tools for the platform -- which were ported from NEC's Japan-only PC-98 format to the Western standard, MS-DOS, under O'Keefe's watch.

Hudson staff flew from Sapporo to Monterey, California, to throw a two-day developers conference that covered everything from the financials of producing games for the system to how to develop for the TurboGrafx-16, and its upcoming CD-ROM add-on, which had launched in Japan in 1988.

"We invited, I'd like to say, 25 to 30 of the top publishers at the time. And spent, I think it was about a two-day event. So we hosted them and just had a coming-of-mind of how we were going to roll the system out, what kind of games we were looking for, how we run the business," says Greiner. Hudson controlled game production, thanks to its deal with NEC.

At the conference, Hudson didn't generate much publisher interest in the TurboGrafx. But it did succeed in alienating Electronic Arts.

"Basically, there was a kind of weeding-out of developers who could actually participate in development of the first round of CD-ROM games," Greiner says. "We wanted the kind of emphatic push that we would get from somebody who really knew how to use that kind of space -- in other words, really great game developers."

In a meeting, Hudson staffers asked EA's team if it was up to the task of developing great CD-ROM games -- "we didn't think EA was that at the time, obviously, or otherwise we wouldn't have to ask them so deeply," says Greiner. "EA took offense to that -- they kind of walked out of the meeting and said, 'How dare you question us?'"

Neither Hudson nor NEC was able to convince third-party publishers to work with them in the West prior to launch. In Japan, it was a different story -- Namco was an early supporter of the system, and many smaller companies hopped from NEC's dominant PC-98 over to the console space. Yet NEC published their games in the West. "NEC decided to create a brand new business in the United States and do it all -- to distribute the hardware and the software," says Balkcom.

The delay in introducing the PC Engine to the U.S. wasn't just thanks to the hardware redesign or software localization. NEC was unsure about the viability of the PC Engine in the U.S., and began the expansion project late. "By the time I think they got into the game business, I think they were a little bit nervous, and I think they wanted to see how well they did in Japan," says O'Keefe.

 

Specifically, the big Japanese devs refused to have their games localized because they felt that, unlike Japan, the US would not be receptive to a consolized PC. Namco ended up publishing games for the TG-16 just as they began to publish games for the NES.

 

Edit: More Importantly it was EA walking out and taking it's ball with it, that convinced developers to only port a few titles to the US and not get fully behind as they had in Japan.

Edited November 30, 2015 by empsolo