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Anyone grew up with both an NES & 7800 Back in The Day?


ZippyRedPlumber

Anyone grew up with both an NES & 7800?  

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  1. 1. Owned both an NES & 7800 back in the day?

    • Yes
      19
    • No
      32

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  • Poll closed on 11/01/2022 at 03:26 AM

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I had both.  Got the Atari 7800 first.  Later got the NES because that's what all of my friends were playing.  Loved the NES for the RPGs and platformers, but still got plenty of use with my 7800.  Ultimately I ended up selling my 7800 to fund my obsession with the Amiga and kept my NES.  Still have my original NES.  Had to rebuy the 7800 back in the early 2000's and start my collection over again.  Today I get far more use out of my 7800 than any other system.

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I didn't own either. I was in college 86-90 and I worked too.  I still had a 5200 and 1200XL but rarely played them during those years.  I was much more obsessed with learning and playing guitar.  A  couple times I saw friends playing the NES and it was much improved over early 80s consoles, but nothing interested me then. I remember looking at the 7800 at Kmart in disbelief. Asteroids again!? But the Atari fan in me still was somewhat interested. 

 

I got my 7800 in the late 2000 decade and I've had a lot of fun with it and the amazing Homebrews which gave it real life and purpose, starting with Bob's super fun Pac-Man Collection. But my first impression was not good because my first games, DK and DK Jr, had terrible sound and music! 

 

I never owned an NES console. But have played it's games in emulation. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

In the UK (where I lived at the time), nobody wanted the 7800 that I knew of - I bought and used my first 7800 a few months back! All my friend were either going for Sega or Nintendo. That said Toys R Us did stock quite a lot of 7800 games, although at the time I was buying games for my 800XL. Except for the ST, Atari seemed pretty absent in the UK. Although I read some years later, that they had some success in selling the 7800 on some regions. I gather it was far more successful in Germany.

 

Overall, the killer for Atari in general, was the lack of games that really grabbed the attention of people. That is not to say the games were bad, just they were not what many in Europe were looking for. My brother had a SMS for that reason, while many friends owned the NES. I never heard anyone talk about Atari games in the school yard, although occasionally people did mention the Lync only to say that they had a Game Gear or Gameboy instead.

 

Atari really messed up the games across although their platforms, there are some really great ones, but not enough to have grabbed people. I say that as a console, 8-bit and Falcon owner (over the years).

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The sale of the Atari home division to Jack Tramiel really hurt the 7800. Not only in that it released 2 years too late but also that he really didn't care or understand games. They stretched themselves really thin trying to sell and support the 2600 Junior, the 7800 and XEGS at the same time. 

 

In the Midwest of America, the kids in my school never talked about Atari.  I was the only kid with a 7800 but when I tried to talk about it everybody assumed I had a 2600, they just didn't know the 7800 existed and they didn't care. We all talked NES.  

 

I had a few friends over for sleepovers and we had to play the 7800 until dad went to bed, then we were allowed to play the NES in the living room. Usually we would just go out and play football or baseball or wrestle or something until we could play NES. But if we did play 7800 I made sure to put my best looking games in to prove to my friends it wasn't the old Atari. Honestly they didn't care, most of them never gave it a chance lol. 

 

Oh what could've been with Atari...

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4 hours ago, Gemintronic said:

 

Yeah, us 'Muricans got stuck with the hand cramp controller.  Waited as long as I could to get the NES style controller seen in Europe.  Never happened (at least in the stores around me).

It’s honestly not that bad once you get used to it.

 

Edit: and it’s miles ahead of the 5200 controller.

Edited by Ecernosoft
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Nope, not until recently. I got an NES back in the day from my parents as a kid and grew up playing that, but haven't owned a 7800 until just earlier this year. Wish I wouldn't have waited so long.. I love it! It's a great system and have been playing more 7800 than anything lately. 👍

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  • 2 weeks later...

Although I had neither I had friends with the NES and friends with the 7800. The NES was much more desirable. It's obvious why. My favorite game for the 7800 back then was Food Fight. My friend and I enjoyed that. I personally only had a 2600. Later my dad got us an Amiga which was better than the NES and 7800 combined

 

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In my tiny corner of Pennsylvania, the 7800 suffered from the same fate as the Virtual Boy and the 32x. It was a next generation experience that just improved on the wrong things, in the eyes of the public. And if you were too poor to buy the system everyone wanted, and you waited until those they ignored were taking up too much space on store shelves, you could take that next generation leap before people with a lot more money than you.

 

Of course, in those days before the too much information age, you'd have no idea what you were really leaping into. Sure, my brand new Super 2600 Advance could sometimes display so much detail that it felt like the still backgrounds of Pole Position II were alive...in the rare moments when I wasn't torturing it with Pac-Man, Defender, Rampage (2600), and Revenge of the Beefstake Tomatoes instead...but was it any better than Enduro?

 

And then I bought Ball Blazer; which was my very first taste of smooth, high speed 3d gaming. And it was something the NES's tile based graphics simply couldn't compete with.

 

Just like it couldn't compete with the sprite flicker free armies of Robotron 2084.

 

Between these two games? It was like looking into the future of gaming.

 

But I didn't know that. I instead dreamed of running into the darkness with Samus or seeking out mysteries and secrets alongside Mario. Or just getting Double Dragon on any platform I owned, because it would somehow legitimize my Atari collection. It's not like Atari fans were getting a lot of modern arcade ports. Just seeing the Atari 2600 version exist on store shelves and be priced out of my reach? It was proof that Atari's future was in good hands.

 

Similar to seeing Commando on the Intellivision at Toys R' Us, because I loved that console too. Oh, and my Colecovision, even if there were no new games sold for it. And the TI 99/4A, which seemed even deader. Plus two LED games. And, of course, any educational software I could find for the the classroom Apple IIGS. Like 'The King of Chicago.'

 

Unlike most kids, I had so many divided loyalties... I was always just a player.

 

Eventually, I'd get my NES, when I was trying to buy a Master System instead. The temptations of Galaxy Force screenshots were no match for the vast library Nintendo's illegal monopoly had won them. And besides, have you heard what Sunsoft was doing with Fester's Quest? There was no way my elderly Sunday school teacher's heart could survive that much excitement.

 

Unfortunately, my trusty 7800 could no longer compete with the vast worlds, charming characters, and contagious music expected of a modern day gaming platform...or even with Ultima: Exodus. But who cared about all that? Xevious on the 7800 shrunk the Solvalou's targeting reticle, so that every bombing run was a high stakes game of chicken. 7800 Joust's less demanding physics were more fun on Atari than it'd ever be in arcades, and there was nothing more fun than teasing the lava troll. There was plenty of room in my heart for two versions of Title Match Pro Wrestling to keep M.U.S.C.L.E. company - even after I discovered how much more fun a wrestling game could be when it wasn't one of the worst things ever made. (Mind blown.)

 

Even now, I still play both 7800 and NES games. I couldn't possibly choose between them.

 

 

 

Edited by NinjaFlicker
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On 9/3/2022 at 4:53 PM, tkarner said:

I didn't own either at the time but I sold both (and the Sega) in the late 1980s. During college I had a part time job working the video game booth at the Toys R Us in Paramus, New Jersey. I'd say we sold about 75% NES cartridges, 20% Sega, and 5% Atari (7800 and 2600 combined). For consoles it was about 80% NES, 20% Sega, and I sold a grand total of one 7800 console in my time there. I still remember the guy who bought it. He was in his 20s. He told me before college he had a 2600 and liked going to arcades so he chose the 7800 to play those games again. So even back then the 7800 was already a retro console.

 

At that time I was going there and buying 2600 games. I used to get the little piece of paper if I recall, take it up front and some guy, probably you, would give me the game. I bought kaboom there, I bought Pitfall II there. I would go around to the last isle and you guys had Sega Genesis hooked up. I was blown away playing some wolf game on the thing. I remember that I was able to buy joysticks and paddles for the 2600 if I needed them. And when I was younger there was also a Child World there in Paramus too. It later shut down but I never thought I'd see Toys r Us shut down too. I haven't lived in New Jersey since the '90s.

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Yes, that was the procedure at Toys R Us. The sales floor had empty boxes mounted on the wall, to prevent theft, and a stack of tickets for each game. You'd take the ticket to the cashier, pay, and then take the receipt to the video game booth at the front of the store where I'd give you your game. Same procedure applied to consoles. Though by my time there we didn't bother with this procedure for the 2600. We just put 2600 games and Junior consoles on the sales floor. I guess management didn't think anyone would steal 2600 games (or they didn't care). The only 2600 games we still sold at the time were late release red boxes. We might have had some late release Activision/Absolute games too, like Double Dragon, Kung Fu Master, F-14, and Skate Boardin.

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On 10/10/2022 at 12:28 PM, Gemintronic said:

 

Yeah, us 'Muricans got stuck with the hand cramp controller.  Waited as long as I could to get the NES style controller seen in Europe.  Never happened (at least in the stores around me).

 

Funny but I felt the same way first time I've played with the standard NES gamepads.  In fact I really wanted to get an NES Advantage because it was like an arcade joystick, my neighbor had one and playing Xevious felt great (and that's not even counting the rapid-fire).

 

I did get a Beeshu Zinger joystick because it was like the ones I had for my 2600, but it's much better for shooters than platforming games.

 

And it wore out very quick with plastic flakes around the stick's base... :roll:

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28 minutes ago, MrMaddog said:

 

Funny but I felt the same way first time I've played with the standard NES gamepads.  In fact I really wanted to get an NES Advantage because it was like an arcade joystick, my neighbor had one and playing Xevious felt great (and that's not even counting the rapid-fire).

 

I did get a Beeshu Zinger joystick because it was like the ones I had for my 2600, but it's much better for shooters than platforming games.

 

And it wore out very quick with plastic flakes around the stick's base... :roll:

 

Went to arcades very rarely as a kid.  Plus, most of my experience with joysticks came from the Tandy 1000 which sucked and broke often.  Probably explains my bias :)

 

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  • 1 month later...

I bought an Atari 7800 in 1989 because it was cheaper than an NES (I think it was $60 from the Sears catalog). I didn't know anything about any of the games, so I bought a couple that looked good based on the screenshots and descriptions in the Sears catalog: Karateka and Super Huey. Unfortunately they both sucked. The pack-in game (Pole Position II) wasn't bad. I asked Dad for Donkey Kong for Christmas, and I liked that. I didn't notice anything wrong with the sound because I didn't have anything to compare it to. I only played an actual Donkey Kong arcade machine one time in 1981 when I was 6, so I didn't remember what the sounds were like. I had played the ColecoVision port in 1985 a few times, but again, I didn't remember the sounds. I knew it was definitely better than the 2600 version (which I already owned), and comparable to the ColecoVision version in terms of graphics and having three stages instead of just two.

 

I tried and tried to beat Karateka but I could never make it past the guy in the green uniform. I first beat him, and the rest of the game, decades later as an adult.

 

Later in 1989, or maybe 1990, my friend Ian offered to sell me his NES for $25, which I jumped on. But first I had him prove to me that it worked without blinking and having to mess with it (that was becoming a common problem with NESes around that time, and back then I had no idea how to fix them), which it did. It was practically like new. I don't remember getting any games with it other than SMB/DH, and the only game I bought for it was Ninja Gaiden. Fortunately there were plenty of NES games to rent at the video store, unlike 7800 games.

 

I didn't have the NES for very long, probably less than a year, because it started blinking every once in a while (which is what tends to happen when you feed one a steady diet of rental games that have passed through the grubby fingers of countless kids), and I figured that pretty soon it wouldn't work at all, so when a kid at the hockey rink offered to buy it I sold it to him.

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1 hour ago, MaximRecoil said:

Later in 1989, or maybe 1990, my friend Ian offered to sell me his NES for $25, which I jumped on. But first I had him prove to me that it worked without blinking

That must've been pristine NES because I never seen one that didn't blink!  Even back in those days it was common knowledge around the school yard that you "had" to blow in the carts.  

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19 minutes ago, Silver Back said:

That must've been pristine NES because I never seen one that didn't blink!  Even back in those days it was common knowledge around the school yard that you "had" to blow in the carts.  

It was nearly new. Ian was never really into video games so he didn't play it much. He probably got it for Christmas or something without having asked for it. He also had a ColecoVision that he rarely used, and some type of home computer with a cartridge slot on the side (Tandy Color Computer 3 if I remember right) and offered to sell me those too, but I didn't have the money for anything more than the NES.

 

It usually took a couple/few years for a new NES to start blinking if it was used a lot, especially if used with a lot of rental cartridges. The first one I saw it happen to was my cousin Mike's in about 1988 or 1989; he got his NES in the fall of 1986 a week or two after the NES got its full nationwide release in the US. I thought he must have dropped it, punched it, spilled something on it, or whatever, but by 1990 or so it was happening to tons of them, to the point that it started becoming the rule rather than the exception.

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My memories are pretty much like this...

 

In third grade I saw the 7800 commercials on the air (We reinvented the video game). I also started seeing NES commercials (dark warehouse Zelda, spaceship of tvs, rob, etc.)

 

I still routinely visited garage sales and flea markets with my mom on weekends.  I was always looking for Atari stuff.  My dad encouraged me to look for Nintendo stuff. That was not going to happen, I knew, but he meant well.

 

Somewhere around fifth grade, I encountered a 7800 at a flea market. I bout this thing. It couldn't have been for more then about 10 dollars considering the kind of funds I had access too.

 

The original owners sold it to me... It was their booth. I remember them telling me that they were all excited to buy it when it was new... But they were shrugging saying they really didn't find it as great as they hoped.

 

Whatever the case may be, they let me buy it for whatever a fifth grader could afford.

 

It came with a bunch of 2600 games.  The only 7800 game I had was Pole Position, which didn't impress me at all.

 

I only kept it hooked up for a week or two.

 

7800 games were not at garage sales. In fact, I don't know where I would have found any.

 

I put it back with my old garage sale gaming "junk".  I had a 2600, a Bentley pong machine, a TI-99 4a, and a few other things like that with a few carts. Mostly I was rocking the family Apple IIc.

 

I had a friend with a Colecovision. I had a friend with a Vic-20. I had a friend with a intellivision.

 

The 7800 just didn't make any waves in my world.  I just felt the same thing that those guys at the flea market must have felt.  I had no idea what games were available or even how I'd get any.

 

I got a Colecovision around the same time from another garage sale.  That at least had a handful of games, but I hated the controller.

 

Somewhere in sixth grade, I eventually convinced my parents I needed a NES (and one was NOT going to show up at a garage sale).

 

That rocked my world. Zelda, Metroid, all the Marios... I was there for all that and then some.

 

The 7800 just didn't do anything for me, game wise.  It was just another console in the pile that I'd hook up and play with just to make something work. It was all second rate to the Apple II... Although I think I had the most fun with the 2600.

 

Anyway, I LOVE the 7800 now!  Mostly thanks to the homebrew scene, and the seagull adaptor.

 

Sorry for the wall of text.  Just seemed like something fun to write about tonight.

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3 hours ago, CaptainBreakout said:

My memories are pretty much like this...

 

In third grade I saw the 7800 commercials on the air (We reinvented the video game). I also started seeing NES commercials (dark warehouse Zelda, spaceship of tvs, rob, etc.)

 

I still routinely visited garage sales and flea markets with my mom on weekends.  I was always looking for Atari stuff.  My dad encouraged me to look for Nintendo stuff. That was not going to happen, I knew, but he meant well.

 

Somewhere around fifth grade, I encountered a 7800 at a flea market. I bout this thing. It couldn't have been for more then about 10 dollars considering the kind of funds I had access too.

 

The original owners sold it to me... It was their booth. I remember them telling me that they were all excited to buy it when it was new... But they were shrugging saying they really didn't find it as great as they hoped.

 

Whatever the case may be, they let me buy it for whatever a fifth grader could afford.

 

It came with a bunch of 2600 games.  The only 7800 game I had was Pole Position, which didn't impress me at all.

 

I only kept it hooked up for a week or two.

 

7800 games were not at garage sales. In fact, I don't know where I would have found any.

 

I put it back with my old garage sale gaming "junk".  I had a 2600, a Bentley pong machine, a TI-99 4a, and a few other things like that with a few carts. Mostly I was rocking the family Apple IIc.

 

I had a friend with a Colecovision. I had a friend with a Vic-20. I had a friend with a intellivision.

 

The 7800 just didn't make any waves in my world.  I just felt the same thing that those guys at the flea market must have felt.  I had no idea what games were available or even how I'd get any.

 

I got a Colecovision around the same time from another garage sale.  That at least had a handful of games, but I hated the controller.

 

Somewhere in sixth grade, I eventually convinced my parents I needed a NES (and one was NOT going to show up at a garage sale).

 

That rocked my world. Zelda, Metroid, all the Marios... I was there for all that and then some.

 

The 7800 just didn't do anything for me, game wise.  It was just another console in the pile that I'd hook up and play with just to make something work. It was all second rate to the Apple II... Although I think I had the most fun with the 2600.

 

Anyway, I LOVE the 7800 now!  Mostly thanks to the homebrew scene, and the seagull adaptor.

 

Sorry for the wall of text.  Just seemed like something fun to write about tonight.

^This!

 

Oh except all the ages/grades were different...

 

Also...almost all of it was different.

 

I didn't know about the 7800 or Maybe I have some vague memory about wondering what it was...I had a Coleco ADAM, ColecoVision and Atari 2600,...Then the NES blew me away! 

 

But that near last sentence about the homebrew scene!  That's what I agree with!

 

Also I'm tired as hell and this beer is just really kicking in...

 

 

 

 

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I remember going to a friends house in 1987 to play his NES and being amazed at SMB and Mike Tyson's Punch Out. I had never seen one in person. My only home video game experience was with my 2600 and nine games. The NES felt so advanced and futuristic. He also had a 7800 and a box of around sixty 2600 and 7800 games. I was intrigued with the 7800 because I had never even heard of it. Sadly, even though it was new to me it already seemed like a "dead" console at the time. Little did I know there were still games being made for it. I loved playing Asteroids and Xevious and just seeing an Atari console that could produce those kinds of graphics was refreshing. It pretty much re-invigorated my love for Atari because I probably hadn't really touched my 2600 in the 3 or 4 years prior to that. And that huge box of games was like a treasure trove of new adventures.

 

He ended up selling his 7800 and that box of games to me and soon after I got an NES to get my SMB/Punch Out/Zelda fix. It was a perfect pairing of consoles to me.

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