Stuff I Wish The XL/XE Had

[Lynxpro]

 

 

Right, and those systems never saw the light of day. That's why the Amiga folks left, rather than try to build the Amiga at Atari. Atari management at the time was more focused on milking the 2600 than building the next-generation systems the engineers wanted to make (and knew had to be made, in order for Atari to remain competitive).

 

Not exactly. Jay Miner left because they wouldn't authorize him to build a 68000-based computer in 1979. Other ex-Atari people who joined Amiga later on went there after their stints at Activision so building the "hypothetical" Amiga wasn't their reason for leaving Atari Inc. It was to receive the recognition they wanted as game designers/artists and to receive compensation like most creative types in Hollywood [which they probably never would've even thought up had Atari's parent company not been a major Hollywood studio].

 

Atari Advanced Research was designing stuff for the future that could've ultimately made it into the consumer products. They did want to release their computers as workstations then but Warner didn't want Atari Inc competing in the professional markets at the time. That was 1982 on. And in hindsight, perhaps Warner was right considering how Apple failed with the high-end Lisa shortly thereafter.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Lynxpro

[Lynxpro]

Although it was the Wild West frontier of consumer videogame console/computer systems etc - there is the failure of recognising that history repeats - that the first wave was the 2600 - which was highly successful, and while the 5200 was not as successful - it was that significant upgrade from the 2600, though it was based on the Atari 400/800 computer lineage - the 7800 needed to be as significant an upgrade - which it wasn't due to too much penny pinching and lack of imagination in it's design? The Jaguar did not live up to it's hooha advertising - although Raiden was a good sign of it's sprite/scrolling/playfield capabilities but failed in the 3D area when compared to the PlayStation.

That a different videogame company captured the mass market - with the Atari 2600, Nintendo NES, Sega Genesis/Nintendo SNES, Sony PlayStation, Sony PlayStation 2 / Microsoft XBOX --- shows how technical superiority with very strong leading software (killer games) - and with mass market sales - the ability to deliver at a reasonable price. Though games prices have not really come down, nor new videogame consoles when they first appear.

 

I believe that the Atari 400/800/5200 hardware can still surprise us with it's software - if you are willing to step out and experiment with it. Perhaps even the 7800 too? But it's a harder beast to develop for?

 

Harvey

 

Raiden was one of the titles on the Jaguar that was originally designed for the cancelled Panther game system thus it doesn't really show off the capabilities of the Jaguar. It is a fantastic port though.