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Why were donkeykong and donkeykong jr NEVER released on the atari 5200???


johannesmutlu

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Why were Donkeykong and donkeykong jr NEVER released on the atari 5200??

i ask this because donkeykong donkeykong jr were releasen on both the atari 2600 and atari 7800 among other systems, sure the atari 5200 wasn’t a success but so was the atati 7800 either,

BTW while mariobros and popeye were released on the atari 5200 BUT popeye was not released on the atari 7800,wich again is just pretty weird,

yes i know about homebrew ported versions of donkeykong and donkeykong jr on the 5200 but off course these are unofficial and that’s it,

so am really curious about the real reasons about this.

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I know that coleco had the rights back in 82 and made the Gemini and 2600 add on for the colecovision so they were basically designing games for systems they produced.  The 7800 versions didn’t come out until 1988 so by then the 5200 had been discontinued for a long time.  I think Atari somehow used their rights to the computer versions to be able to publish the 7800 versions.

Edited by theoakwoody
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Licensing

 

Atari had the rights to release it on computers,   Coleco had the rights to release it on consoles.

 

When Coleco started showing Donkey Kong on Adam, Atari lost their shit and reamed out Nintendo.

 

Popeye was licensed by Parker Brothers, and I think they exited video games by the time 7800 came out.   After then the only ports that came were by Nintendo for their own systems.

 

Mario Bros was Atari, but a 7800 port probably got lost in the shuffle with the Atari sale and the 2 year gap between when the 7800 was supposed to release in 84 and when it finally got released in 86.

 

Coleco exited video games in 85 I think, but that was around the time Nintendo entered North America, so it's surprising that Atari had the rights to publish Donkey Kong on the 7800 at all.

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3 hours ago, zzip said:

Licensing

 

Atari had the rights to release it on computers,   Coleco had the rights to release it on consoles.

 

When Coleco started showing Donkey Kong on Adam, Atari lost their shit and reamed out Nintendo.

 

Popeye was licensed by Parker Brothers, and I think they exited video games by the time 7800 came out.   After then the only ports that came were by Nintendo for their own systems.

 

Mario Bros was Atari, but a 7800 port probably got lost in the shuffle with the Atari sale and the 2 year gap between when the 7800 was supposed to release in 84 and when it finally got released in 86.

 

Coleco exited video games in 85 I think, but that was around the time Nintendo entered North America, so it's surprising that Atari had the rights to publish Donkey Kong on the 7800 at all.

WoooW now that’s pretty interesting if atari got the rights after the fall of coleco in 1985 on donkeykong ,then it is no wonder they could publish it on their 7800 system,but then why did coleco did put donkeykong on the atari 2600 and also not on the 5200?? Well to use the infirioriry of atari’s 2600 system against them because coleco did probably realize that if they would,ve ported donkeykong and donkeykong jr to the more advanced atari 5200 with it’s better graphics & sounds, it probably would,ve turned against coleco itself as they did know that their colecovision was that all more advanced then the 5200,so it was a wise decision from coleco to not try to grab cash to benefit from atari’s advanced hardware but instead taking advantage of atari’s infirior 2600 hardware against atari ,because if coleco did had ported both donkeykong games to the atari 5200,not only would the colecovision only sold half the amount of units but the atari 5200 would,ve atleast twice the numbers then it normally sold,

BUT at the other hand coleco did made the intelevision versions of their donkeykong games look & sound infirior on purpose to make everyone believe that their own hardware was al the way better then that from mattel, now what if coleco also did made a bad port of noth donkeykong games for the atari 5200 in the hopes to trick everyone to believe that the 5200 became a infirior hardware,well maybe then the atari 5200 would,ve only solf half the amount of units,o,o,o

I cannot think of a more potential trolling strategy joke from a company against another one just to make their system stand out from the rest,ouch

just imagine if sega and nintendo did this against each other in the 16bit wars,whoooaaah ooo???

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14 hours ago, johannesmutlu said:

but then why did coleco did put donkeykong on the atari 2600 and also not on the 5200??

The 5200 came out kind of late in 82, after Colecovision and Donkey Kong released.   That may have contributed but also the fact that 5200 was direct competition to the Colecovision.

 

14 hours ago, johannesmutlu said:

Well to use the infirioriry of atari’s 2600 system against them because coleco did probably realize that if they would,ve ported donkeykong and donkeykong jr to the more advanced atari 5200 with it’s better graphics & sounds, it probably would,ve turned against coleco itself as they did know that their colecovision was that all more advanced then the 5200,

Donkey Kong was definitely Coleco's flagship game, it was the pack-in for the Colecovision,  it blew everyone away with how arcade-like the graphics were.   I think Coleco was fully aware of this and were not going to produce a version on another system that could compete with the CV version

 

14 hours ago, johannesmutlu said:

BUT at the other hand coleco did made the intelevision versions of their donkeykong games look & sound infirior on purpose to make everyone believe that their own hardware was al the way better then that from mattel, now what if coleco also did made a bad port of noth donkeykong games for the atari 5200 in the hopes to trick everyone to believe that the 5200 became a infirior hardware,well maybe then the atari 5200 would,ve only solf half the amount of units,o,o,o

I cannot think of a more potential trolling strategy joke from a company against another one just to make their system stand out from the rest,ouch

just imagine if sega and nintendo did this against each other in the 16bit wars,whoooaaah ooo?

it was a popular theory at the time that Coleco purposely made bad ports to make their own system look good.    However the developer of the 2600 version says this was not the case and documented the challenges.  https://medium.com/swlh/how-i-spent-my-summer-of-1982-59638293f358

 

And to date nobody has perfected a 2600 DK game in the way they've done with Pac Man (pacman 8K).   There have been some attempts that improved graphics like DK VCS,  but there are trade-offs like an intense amount of flickering and flattened platforms that I'm not sure would have been acceptable in a commercial product.   So I just think DK is a game that's a bit much for 2600 to handle.

 

And Coleco produced other ports that were fine.   

 

Also Atari and Mattel started publishing their games cross platform through Atarisoft and M-Network,  and in general they did good ports.   Hell the unreleased Atarisoft Pac-man for Coleco was better than any of the versions Atari did for their own systems!

 

So it's hard to say if conspiracies to make bad ports for competing systems were true or not.   For Coleco,  INTV and 2600 were clearly inferior systems and ports to them would look worse whether they tried to do that or not.   Also 2600 and INTV were where game sales were.   5200 was brand new and had a tiny userbase.   So Coleco could conveniently justify ignoring the one system that could pose a challenge to CV.

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In addition to the 5200's limited install base, Coleco's investment and complete commitment to their Cabbage Patch brand was gaining steam inside the company throughout 1983.

 

Also, the Commodore 64 was creating major headaches and "quietly" (but not really quietly) eating up video game dollars. To this day, C64 spending is conveniently placed in the "computer" category, because it helps make the "video game crash" look worse--and everyone loves a great story. Truth be damned. Like any good fish story, the big fish you landed must become more collosal with each telling.  :-)

 

The C64 managed to stay very close to the Atari 5200 on initial price tag throughout the 5200's short life. That really (really) hurt. The details of total investment didn't matter much. People saw the bold print and made their decisions; Commodore did get us to spend more, but nobody really thought about it. We also told our parents we could learn and get good grades with a computer. Couldn't make up that lie about a game console. We knew what we wanted: games.

 

The market did its thing.

 

As always, the internets are absolutely packed with fanbois making up crazy conspiracy theories on why Atari products have failed. The internet has been circulating the same tired lines since Compuserve--and I've been reading the same recycled nonsense for decades. It's still not true, of course, but I know I can't stop it. So, flame away. I know you will.  :-)

 

Here's the inconvenient truth: Atari products didn't fail because of conspiracies. They failed because Atari made huge mistakes of many different kinds--and other companies outperformed Atari's poor management. For the perceived price, the C64 was the best buy in gaming during the 5200's life and they were essentially head-to-head on pricing.

 

Word of mouth mattered as well. I had friends down the street that had a 5200. After a few months, we couldn't play it; all their joysticks were busted. I knew what the 5200 was by 1983 (actually before) and everyone at school knew it. We were already making jokes about the joysticks in grade school. The mold was set and the verdict was in. We can't look it up on the internet and "prove it", so the conspiracy theories will continue. Flame on.

 

Flame away. Anyhow, the games didn't hit the 5200 because the machine was a failure and Coleco was hawking Cabbage Patch dolls.

 

 

 

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28 minutes ago, orange808 said:

The C64 managed to stay very close to the Atari 5200 on initial price tag throughout the 5200's short life. That really (really) hurt. The details of total investment didn't matter much. People saw the bold print and made their decisions; Commodore did get us to spend more, but nobody really thought about it. We also told our parents we could learn and get good grades with a computer. Couldn't make up that lie about a game console. We knew what we wanted: games.

Atari also had XL line competing with itself.  The 600XL was half the price of a 5200, just as powerful and didn't have the crappy joysticks.   That's the route our family went

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