The Atari VCS Controversies Thread

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, toiletunes said:

I kind of like the current setup, you can pretty much tell by a thread's title if it's for the lovers or the haters. You don't see any taco posts in the "new games announced" thread, only in places like "is it dead yet?" so I call that a win-win. People that want serious discussions can figure out where to go, and those other people know where to get a good laugh.

Well, it was requested of the "taco folk" to not shit on any other threads about the VCS else we (uh, I mean they) get banned from the thread.  Lots of the hate for this turd now has to be internalized.

[jerseystyle]

On 8/3/2021 at 7:29 PM, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Back to the original OP instead of retreading the same waste-of-time-back-and-forth that has been going on for years now.

 

Both of these guys are VCS fans, not "haters." Both mention that there isn't a lot of content that's been added. 

 

Keyword: "Underwhelming." Also looks like it just sat there for a while collecting dust for him, since he had to update everything.

 

 

Paraphrase: "They are going to need to do a lot of work in the next six months to prove to others that it's worth it." "I don't love it, I don't hate it, I'm in the middle." Already saying that the price has to come down, which is also what the commentors are echoing.

 

 

Thanks for sharing these. It’s a shame that not very much has been done since release.

[Rev]

On 8/3/2021 at 5:22 PM, ColecoJoe said:

OOF!

Sir, that noise is trademarked.  Do you have authorization to utter it?

[Rev]

Question.  Where is the best deal on an Atari VCS?     
 

Have these shown up at discount stores yet?

 

I dont follow the VCS that much at all. 

[ColecoJoe]

1 minute ago, Rev said:

Sir, that noise is trademarked.  Do you have authorization to utter it?

I claim fair use 

[Rev]

24 minutes ago, ColecoJoe said:

I claim fair use 

Good enough for me!  
 

Now, send me your unopened dust covered VCS. I have an empty space on my shelf between my Intellivision Flashback and Mattel Hyperscan, and doesnt look like it will be filled anytime soon. 
 

Thanks in advance!

[+x=usr(1536)]

4 hours ago, Stephen said:

Well, it was requested of the "taco folk" to not shit on any other threads about the VCS else we (uh, I mean they) get banned from the thread.  Lots of the hate for this turd now has to be internalized.

I hereby coin, claim, and give to the world as my legacy the word, "turdhate" and all of its derivatives.

 

"The turdhate for this thing is amazing!"

 

"League of Turdhaters, assemble!"

 

"Unconsoles aren't the only target of turdhating these days."

 

"Just heading out to engage in an evening of turdhatery!"

 

Etc., etc., etc.

[roots.genoa]

2 hours ago, Rev said:

Sir, that noise is trademarked

You mean copywritten, right?

[Shaggy the Atarian]

20 hours ago, Gunstar said:

It may be different owners, but honestly, it seems like the same old Atari to me, the "Atari" that remained ever since the video game crash. The 5200, classic Atari arcade games re-spawned from the computer line, caught in the game crash and very little support for it and a very small library. The 7800 came out late, mostly remakes of re-spawned Atari classic and very little support through it's life. The XEGS, late again to the game, more old hardware and games re-spawned, very little support until it's demise. Atari Lynx, a bit better off, but still little support and games few and far between throughout it's life. Atari Jaguar, again very little support with games slow to come out and another early demise. I've owned them all, I love them all, I still own them. Used to little and no support, but enjoy them for what they got and what they are.

Sorry GS, but I don't see it. The primary thing that the two share in common is a love of lawsuits and a logo; That's about where it ends. Granted, we don't know how the Tramiel marketing would have been in an age of social media, but it's hard to believe that it could be any more incompetent or cringeworthy as the PR companies that Atari has used in recent years. "What's your high score on Pong, fellow kids?" 

 

 The Tramiels employed both hardware and software designers in-house with some 3rd party support, while modern Atari has relied entirely on 3rd parties to figure something out with the IP that they have. Granted the Lynx and Jaguar were created by 3rd parties, but at least the Tramiels paid them for the work, while modern Atari has turned stiffing their "partners" on payments into something of an art form. Whether that was Curt Vendel's Legacy Engineering, Human Head Studios, Feargal Mac, Rob Wyatt, the list goes on and on. 

 

Also should be noted that the Tramiels would have released the 7800 in 1984, but Warner being assholes over the payments to GCC are what resulted in that delay, not the Tramiels. Of course, you could fault the Tramiels for skimping on things like the High Scort Cart, keyboard and stuff like 512k carts, but it wasn't their fault for the delayed release in that regard. 

 

As for comparing the little support of the classic Ataris to the VCS - at least you can name original, exclusive games for every single classic Atari platform. Months after the backer & retail releases, there still isn't a single real exclusive for the VCS, nothing to truly make it stand out from other Atari systems, or make for a "# games that defined the Atari VCS" YouTube video. Even the 5200, which was basically just an arcade port harem, had Countermeasure, Gremlins and the only home port of Space Dungeon. It would have had more original exclusives if it's lifespan had gone on just a little longer, like Meebzork, Spitfire, Xari Arena, Black Belt, etc.

 

Quote

Now the new VCS, again, late, under powered compared to the "competition," releases slow to release, will probably have an early demise and reach sky-high prices as a collectors item just like all the rest. I don't own it yet, I'm suppose to be getting one as a gift, we will see if that person has changed their mind about getting one for themselves and me...but it seems like the same old story of Atari to me. Nothing has changed. Much of it of course are the haters hating it all through development and it getting a bad wrap...but wait, that also sounds like every other Atari system I remember owning and hoping would succeed. It seems like this Atari is keeping the Atari tradition (post Bushnell & Warner) up just fine and so are the haters that have hated since the 2600.

Did the Tramiels take money from customers first, then string them along for almost 4 years to deliver the Jaguar or the Lynx? Did they lie about interviews that they had with professional journalists? Did they show in those interviews that they didn't have a clue about what their own hardware was supposed to do? Not that I recall. Imagine if Jack or Leonard were as clueless in this interview below as Michael Artz was with The Register in the interview above. That'd have probably ended Atari right then and there.

 

 

Any "hate" that modern Atari has garnered for the brand or for the VCS they brought on themselves through their own actions. That doesn't mean it changes how anyone has to feel about the classic systems, but also doesn't mean you need to give blind loyalty to the people running the show right now either.

 

14 hours ago, jerseystyle said:

Thanks for sharing these. It’s a shame that not very much has been done since release.

 

Feels somewhat like the NUON. That had 1 game for it at launch, took 9 months before the first real batch of games came along for it. At least the VCS has more than that going for it like PC mode, but then again, most NUON games at the time couldn't be played anywhere else and it worked as a great DVD player so you had all of that content to use.

 

Hardware needs the momentum of content to stay afloat. I'd be surprised if there isn't some discount on it by the time Christmas hits; If not then we'll certainly get that after the holidays. That still won't save it though.

Edited August 5, 2021 by Shaggy the Atarian

[Gunstar]

*Sigh* I'm not talking about how it came about or what's going on inside the company, who they employ or any of that. Not even the pre-order situation. I'm speaking merely from the perspective of an owner of Atari systems through the years and the support I and other owners got. From that perspective, as The Who say, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." I thought it was pretty damn obvious.

 

But feel free to turn your opinion on the matter into a thesis.

Edited August 5, 2021 by Gunstar

[zzip]

11 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Did the Tramiels take money from customers first, then string them along for almost 4 years to deliver the Jaguar or the Lynx? Did they lie about interviews that they had with professional journalists? Did they show in those interviews that they didn't have a clue about what their own hardware was supposed to do? Not that I recall. Imagine if Jack or Leonard were as clueless in this interview below as Michael Artz was with The Register in the interview above. That'd have probably ended Atari right then and there.

They promised products that never materialized.   Things they did deliver were often a day late and a dollar short.  They are the ones who took the biggest name in videogames and ran it into the ground.   (Atari was the 2nd most recognized brand name in the world when they bought it as Len Tramiel likes to point out)

 

It's funny how people look at the Tramiel era with rose-tinted glasses these days.  I recall the Atari community at the time was often very annoyed with the moves the Tramiel Atari were making.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

55 minutes ago, Gunstar said:

*Sigh* I'm not talking about how it came about or what's going on inside the company, who they employ or any of that. Not even the pre-order situation. I'm speaking merely from the perspective of an owner of Atari systems through the years and the support I and other owners got. From that perspective, as The Who say, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." I thought it was pretty damn obvious.

 

But feel free to turn your opinion on the matter into a thesis.

You're right, why waste my time when nothing can compare with all the warm fuzzies that the brand brings to us all. Enjoy your VCS when you get it. 

 

51 minutes ago, zzip said:

They promised products that never materialized.   Things they did deliver were often a day late and a dollar short.  They are the ones who took the biggest name in videogames and ran it into the ground.   (Atari was the 2nd most recognized brand name in the world when they bought it as Len Tramiel likes to point out)

 

It's funny how people look at the Tramiel era with rose-tinted glasses these days.  I recall the Atari community at the time was often very annoyed with the moves the Tramiel Atari were making.

You're looking at the Warner Atari (and the current one) with the same glasses. Warner were the ones that promised one new console and accessory after the other, showing them off in either distribution materials and press releases, only to never release them. The Atari Cosmos, the Mindlink, the 3600, the 5100, all of the accessories for the 7800 like the laserdisc player, keyboard, high score cart, the 1450XLD, the 1600XL, the exercise bike for the 5200, the Last Starfighter arcade machine and on and on... none of that was Tramiel era. Did the Tramiels promise some things that were never delivered? Sure. No where near as much as warner did though. 

 

Modern Atari's done the same thing. How quickly people forget that they made a big deal at E3 2014 about a new line of Atari-branded gaming tablets, phones, phablets and general tablets that they were going to launch - which never came into being.  Or the Gameband. Or Asteroids Outpost. Or so badly botching Minimum that it became a product that people paid for and is permanently unplayable. Yep, modern Atari totally doesn't do the thing you always harp on the Tramiels for doing. ?

 

[zzip]

29 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

You're looking at the Warner Atari (and the current one) with the same glasses. Warner were the ones that promised one new console and accessory after the other, showing them off in either distribution materials and press releases, only to never release them. The Atari Cosmos, the Mindlink, the 3600, the 5100, all of the accessories for the 7800 like the laserdisc player, keyboard, high score cart, the 1450XLD, the 1600XL, the exercise bike for the 5200, the Last Starfighter arcade machine and on and on... none of that was Tramiel era. Did the Tramiels promise some things that were never delivered? Sure. No where near as much as warner did though. 

Yeah there was this crazy peripheral arms race in the Warner days.   They'd announce things simply because their competitors announced similar peripherals.   But I don't think the consumers wanted half of that stuff.   Laserdisc player?   The idea of playing Dragon's Lair at home might seem cool,  but how much would that unit have cost in 1984?  Probably outside of the budget of most.

 

The Tramiel Atari announced a lot of stuff that users actually wanted-  Improved 8-bit disk drive, 80-column display, ST blitter,  ST/TT LAN.  But it always came late if at all,  and was underwhelming when it did.   The STe was a nice upgrade,  but didn't even match the spec of a 1985 Amiga, and in 1989 was still falling behind what PCs were doing.   The Falcon would have been awesome if that came a few years earlier.   The game side was a mess where they kept regurgitating old stuff instead of staying on the cutting edge.   I never saw a product get the existing userbase more up in arms than the XEGS though.   Existing Atari 8-bit owners who spent years defending their purchase as not simply "a games machine" saw the XEGS as a slap in the face.   There was this feeling in the community of always being let down by Atari management.   Yeah the Warner years saw crazy announcements, but they were also exciting times to be an Atari owner because Atari systems were where the action was.

 

At any rate, there was no iteration of Atari that was exactly "well managed",  so for that reason I don't hold a grudge against the current management. 

Edited August 5, 2021 by zzip

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Just because you might not have wanted what the 1600XL offered, or got "holographic gaming" with the Cosmos doesn't mean that others wouldn't have. The fact of the matter is that Warner set the precedent of this time honored Atari tradition. Although it's not like other companies haven't shown things off before that they didn't follow-up on or underwhelmed on. Isn't the VCS a prime example of that, when you compare the lofty things they said it would do at the get-go, compared to what it actually does? all the "six months later" videos I've found have echoed the same thing - that it's underwhelming. Why don't you hold modern Atari to the same standard that you hold the Tramiels to?  

 

Also re: "being let down by Atari management" - that started with Warner too and culminated in the crash of the whole North American game industry. It doesn't take any glasses to see that the Tramiels had nothing to do with that either.  

[zzip]

2 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Isn't the VCS a prime example of that, when you compare the lofty things they said it would do at the get-go, compared to what it actually does? all the "six months later" videos I've found have echoed the same thing - that it's underwhelming. Why don't you hold modern Atari to the same standard that you hold the Tramiels to?  

The complaints seem to be around lack of content in the VCS store.  But I said many times before release that I expected that would be the case.   I always wanted it because it was a PC in console form and I wanted it to use it as a retrobox, and it serves that purpose much better than the Pi it replaced. 

 

In the Tramiel days, the Atari platforms were largely proprietary and relied on Atari to support them with peripherals and software written specifically for the platform, and the frustration came from Atari not delivering them fast enough.    But after 1996,  nobody expected a new console or computer from Atari ever again.    So VCS came as a surprise, and since it's compatible with standard USB, SSDs and tons of x86 software, it offers more freedom than any Atari device ever and we don't have to wait for Atari to release stuff for it.

[pacman000]

32 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Just because you might not have wanted what the 1600XL offered, or got "holographic gaming" with the Cosmos doesn't mean that others wouldn't have. The fact of the matter is that Warner set the precedent of this time honored Atari tradition. Although it's not like other companies haven't shown things off before that they didn't follow-up on or underwhelmed on. Isn't the VCS a prime example of that, when you compare the lofty things they said it would do at the get-go, compared to what it actually does? all the "six months later" videos I've found have echoed the same thing - that it's underwhelming. Why don't you hold modern Atari to the same standard that you hold the Tramiels to?  

 

Also re: "being let down by Atari management" - that started with Warner too and culminated in the crash of the whole North American game industry. It doesn't take any glasses to see that the Tramiels had nothing to do with that either.  

As the head of Commodore, Jack Tramiel started a price war which hurt most home computer companies, including Warner's Atari. The 1983 Home Computer Price War | Low End Mac

[Lord Mushroom]

52 minutes ago, zzip said:

At any rate, there was no iteration of Atari that was exactly "well managed",  so for that reason I don't hold a grudge against the current management. 

I think Bushnell did well.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

55 minutes ago, zzip said:

At any rate, there was no iteration of Atari that was exactly "well managed",  so for that reason I don't hold a grudge against the current management. 

When you complain about the Tramiels, you say that it was underwhelming the whole community by over-promising, under delivering and showing up late on a bunch of products. But when it comes to the VCS, then it only applies to what you expected out of it, but since your personal expectations were low, it gets a pass. Doesn't look consistent, especially when you look at how over-promised, under delivered and late the VCS has been.  

 

 

[zzip]

Just now, Lord Mushroom said:

I think Bushnell did well.

In interviews he said there were many times when he didn't think he was going to be able to make payroll.   And most of the success came after he left,  so IDK.

 

2 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

When you complain about the Tramiels, you say that it was underwhelming the whole community by over-promising, under delivering and showing up late on a bunch of products. But when it comes to the VCS, then it only applies to what you expected out of it, but since your personal expectations were low, it gets a pass. Doesn't look consistent, especially when you look at how over-promised, under delivered and late the VCS has been.  

you aren't getting my point.   As Atari owners in the late 80s, most of us didn't have the luxury of owning multiple computers or consoles..   we NEEDED Atari to support the Atari ecosystem.   The frustration came from rarely getting the level of support we were looking for.  

 

Nowadays most people have multiple systems.  VCS is a side hobby,  not our primary machine.  There isn't that sense of  dependence on Atari that made owning an Atari machine in the Tramiel years so frustrating.  Unless of course you only play games from the VCS store.

[+x=usr(1536)]

33 minutes ago, zzip said:

In interviews he said there were many times when he didn't think he was going to be able to make payroll.

To be fair - and I say this having been in Bushnell's shoes as a business owner - that's not uncommon in the early days of running a business.  In my case, I did everything I could to make sure that my people were paid before I was (FWIW, the sheer stress of wondering if an employee can be paid or not is one that has to be lived, not described), and that all business-related expenses were covered before I saw a penny of income.  Thank God my wife had a steady job at the time, because there was a solid year where I seem to recall that my personal income was somewhere in the region of $4000.

[pacman000]

58 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

I think Bushnell did well.

If Bushnell was doing well, he wouldn't've had to sell to Warner.

[Lord Mushroom]

41 minutes ago, zzip said:

In interviews he said there were many times when he didn't think he was going to be able to make payroll.   And most of the success came after he left,  so IDK.

He started with next to nothing and sold it for about $30 million dollars 5 years later, which was a bargain for Warner. Under his leadership they went from nothing to being a very successful arcade game developer. They also had the idea for the 2600. 

 

I am not saying he was perfect, but he was good. His biggest mistake was selling it to Warner instead of raising cash by for example going public to finance the launch of the Atari 2600 and remain in control.

 

Atari was making a ton of money at one time. That is not possible unless someone ran the company well over some period of time.

Edited August 5, 2021 by Lord Mushroom

[Lord Mushroom]

3 minutes ago, pacman000 said:

If Bushnell was doing well, he wouldn't've had to sell to Warner.

He didn´t have to sell to Warner. He chose to, and it was a mistake.

[Matt_B]

9 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

He didn´t have to sell to Warner. He chose to, and it was a mistake.

He personally made $15 million out of that deal. It was no mistake. ?

[Lord Mushroom]

15 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

He personally made $15 million out of that deal. It was no mistake. ?

 

 

It was a mistake for the company, and I think for him too. In real life, not just financially. If I recall correctly, the $15 million turned out to not be enough. I think he became near broke at some point.

 

And it is not just about being able to afford to consume stuff. He has always had a lot of ideas. If they had gone public, he could have used Atari´s profits to invest in his other ideas. Atari could have been like Google or Amazon in that sense.