Does any other console show the same advancement...?

[Room 34]

I was just pondering the way that the late era Atari 2600 games (1986 to 1990) were so incredibly far advanced beyond the initial 9 games released for the system in 1977.

 

I am just wondering if anyone thinks the games for any other system "evolved" as much as those of the Atari 2600 did. I doubt this is the case, since few other systems had the longevity and the inertia to keep programmers plumbing the depths of its capabilities. But I am still interested in what you all think about this.

[Cupcakus]

The GBA has come a great distance from it's early days...

 

The NES however evolved arguably as much as the 2600. The variation from Duck Hunt to Epic RPG's was a massive undertaking.

 

But the 2600 really had the best potential to see improvement. The software market was huge and fierce. Companies were forced to spend extra money on development to find new ways to trick the system into doing bigger and better things in an attempt to outstep their opponents. And some developers were just plain damn genious, Doug Neubauer and Solaris was really the pinacle.

 

Bankswitching and SARA Superchip are prime examples IMHO...

[Mindfield]

I think pretty much every system did, as long as it had a long enough run to let the developers explore its outermost boundaries. The thing about developing for any new system is that the programmers have to first get their feet wet getting to know the system. First-generation games are usually pretty simple and fit well within the confines of the system architecture. Once programmers get to know the system well, they begin to stretch their coding legs and start writing things that approach the machine's limitations. Once developers hit the system's walls, the good ones begin looking for ways around them -- fancy programming techniques, undocumented opcodes, tighter, more optimized routines, new ways of doing old things that improve upon the quality of whatever it does (such as getting rid of those black bars at the left-hand side of a lot of 2600 games). That's when all the really good games come out.

 

I think this is probably best shown in Activision's titles; their earliest are also their simplest, but once the real star coders like David Crane started pushing the 2600 envelope, you began to really see the that old architecture in a new light.

 

Having said that, I must admit that I think the Colecovision suffered most from the lack of obvious advances in programming techniques and envelope-pushing games. In fact, I've noticed that, for some reason, Z80-based systems all seem to have that in common. There always seems to be something about the architecture of systems built around the Z80 that puts a natural cap on how far you can really go. The Colecovision never really had any games that used tricks to achieve more colours on-screen or increased the resolution. The Sinclair Spectrum -- ditto. Same tiled graphics, same number of colours on-screen. Maybe it's just me, but that's what I've noticed, anyway. Atari machines often end up in the opposite direction -- the architecture of the Atari machines, computers or game consoles, always seem to be open enough to let programmers really roam around its innards and find new and interesting ways to tweak the hardware to get it to do things no one ever thought it could.

 

Maybe that's why I've always been an Atari nut. :-)

[Nukey Shay]

But the Gameboy was built around the Z80...right? Or was the Z80 used for the display only? And that platform has changed significantly during it's lifetime.

[SteveW]

Ever notice that the Lynx's first generation games look more technically advanced than it's last generation? The EPYX designed games have a lot better graphics and special effects than the later stuff. Only Battlewheels (last generation) compares favorably with earlier games like Electrocop and Blue Lightning.

[Mindfield]

But the Gameboy was built around the Z80...right?  Or was the Z80 used for the display only?  And that platform has changed significantly during it's lifetime.

 

Only in the cosmetic design of the games. On the technical end, nothing really changed on the original GBM. Games like Donkey Kong Land only improved gaphically for having been rendered on SGI workstations before being boiled down to little 4-level grayscale sprites (which themselves were boiled down from the original sprites used in the SNES DKC games) Only the GBC improved technically through the use of fancy colour manipulation to achieve a high-colour display (Tomb Raider). It was a neat trick for such a limited machine, I have to admit, but it's about the only example I can think of where the programmers really pushed the technical envelope and got that little handheld to do something it wasn't designed to do.

[Nukey Shay]

Right...but couldn't that be said about all computers? Necessity really hasn't been as demanding on the GB compared to the 2600...particularly since the 2600 would be more difficult to work with. There are undiscovered ways to exceed it's limits...especially since new ways are still being discovered for the much older VCS. And a Z80 is still a computer. IIRC the chip was conceived by the people who went on to design processors for Intel...so perhaps that is where the stagnation originated (since people who understood it best had moved on)? That's a bit of catch-up it would need to do.

 

A little tape, and a lot of patience...makes all the difference.

[Pipercub]

I would be tempted to say that the game boy comes close but the LCD was upgraded so it really wasn't the same hardware on the later ones as it was on the earlier ones.

 

The NES sure had huge leaps from the simplistic stuff like duck hunt to the later releases but ultimatly it was all within what the console was intended to be capable of. The 2600 was doing things that were never considered or intended.

 

The Playstation made huge leaps as well from the early games to the later ones and had a long reign, as did the NES.

[Mayhem]

I am just wondering if anyone thinks the games for any other system "evolved" as much as those of the Atari 2600 did.

 

Yes... the C64. Just compare some of the stuff from 1983 to 1993... graphically at least they are way beyond recognition that it could be the same machine. Games still played great from either era though

[Room 34]

The 2600 was doing things that were never considered or intended.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. People got it doing things that no one had conceived would be possible when the hardware was designed.

 

Yes... the C64. Just compare some of the stuff from 1983 to 1993...

Is that with the exact same hardware? (I am being serious... I don't know if the C64 hardware was upgraded.) I think computers are a different situation than consoles because there always seem to be hardware enhancements coming out, whereas a console's hardware is generally unchanged (at least LOGICALLY unchanged, although as opening up various 2600 consoles will reveal, the PHYSICAL changes are huge) throughout its lifespan.

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

Is that with the exact same hardware?

 

Certainly. There's lot of things people discovered over the years, like opening the screen borders for sprites, FLI graphics, etc.

 

Basically, for the general question of this topic, I think the end-of-system games are always way advanced over the launch titles for any console. It's just natural, games get better and better with programmmers gaining experience on the platform and discovering the *tricks*.

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Room 34]

Sure... there are always tricks to learn.

 

But has any other system gotten the sustained attention the 2600 has received that has allowed for tricks on top of tricks on top of tricks... to lead us from crude early games like Starship to modern miracles such as... Star Fire?

[sebastius]

All systems have continuous advancement in one way or another. Atari with more sophisticated programming (which is a lot easier now, with pc's and development tools), Nintendo with special chips (FX chip, DSP chip etc) and so many many others.

 

The main advancement in all consoles is the bankswitching, allowing for larger games. The early Atari or Nintendo games did not have such systems, those came in the later periods.

[Nukey Shay]

Part of the allure of programming things with the 2600 is that the small size and "uniqueness" of a game's kernal almost demands that they be done solo (i.e. no "team" of programmers)...as well as the nostalgia of working with the original "killer app" console. The (limited) similarities to the Atari 8-bit computers' processor/hardware also doesn't hurt Emulation helped strenghten this aspect in recent years, allowing even a novice to take a peek "under the hood".

 

And working under such constraints is just cool...like being a one-armed mountian climber Everybody loves a challenge.

[Spector]

There always seems to be something about the architecture of systems built around the Z80 that puts a natural cap on how far you can really go.  The Colecovision never really had any games that used tricks to achieve more colours on-screen or increased the resolution.  The Sinclair Spectrum -- ditto.  Same tiled graphics, same number of colours on-screen.  

 

No. The Spectrum's jump from "Space Intruders" in 1982 to "Knight Lore"'s revolutionary isometric 3D in 1984 was as big a jump as any ever seen in computer gaming history, and made it the most important gaming machine in the world at that moment. In fact, the company that made "Knight Lore" (Ultimate, later known as Rare) held the game back because they felt it was so far ahead of the competition that it would damage the market. Upon release it became arguably the most plagiarised piece of game code of the decade.

As far as the 2600 is concerned, you can't really compare it to the Spectrum and C64, because it used cartridges which gave the option of bankswitching. Spectrum and C64 games were being released in 1992 that would still work on the original machines from ten years earlier without any additional memory. While that's true of the 2600 as well, it at least had the benefit of 16K to work with rather than 4K in it's later years (in fact one game had 32K thru bankswitching), and that gives you many more options. A better example would be the comparison between all 4K games, starting with Adventure and going through to the Activision and Parker Bros games of the early 80's. Is the technical gap still there? Yes, but not nearly as big as before.

I think the C64 and Spectrum went through bigger changes with the same memory and hardware than the Atari did.

[Trebor]

It's topics like this that *really* make me wonder about what could've been concerning the 7800. Most are 1st gerneration titles - with only a handful beiong the start of a 2nd generation (If even that) - Considering the Super-Games were really a part of the original line-up.

 

Imagine what a 7800 game could've been like if the system was released in 84 and games were still being produced say in 94 (or even 96) - There really could've been some legendary titles. Oh well, guess we'll never know....

 

But..here's to hoping/wishing/(beggin) for some talented programmers to develop some new 7800 homebrew games...

[Room 34]

It might be an interesting case study:

 

Most advancement on the 7800 would happen within the homebrew community, in a free, collaborative, open-source environment. Compare that to the 2600 which had most of its advancement occur in a commercial, competitive environment (more recent homebrews aside, of course).

[StanJr]

While I tend to agree with everything said here, I do think there is LESS room for modern systems to grow the way the Atari did. Seems to me that nowadays, when a new system is launched the games launched at the same time are designed to show off the system and make you want to buy it more. Therefore the programmers are already pushing the system to the limits from jump.

 

Someone else said it right, the innovation comes in when a programmer makes the system do something it was not expected or designed to do.

[DracIsBack]

Most popular systems tend to show major advancement between beginning of life and end of life. The less popular ones tend not to because the developers don't make the $$$ to continue finding ways to exploit the system.

 

Witness the difference on these systems:

 

Atari 2600: Combat vs. Solaris and California Games

NES: Super Mario Brothers vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game.

SMS: Hang On vs. Mortal Kombat 2

Genesis: Altered Beast vs. Toy Story and Vector Man

SNES: Super Mario World vs. Donkey Kong Country Series

[Lumpbucket]

While I tend to agree with everything said here, I do think there is LESS room for modern systems to grow the way the Atari did.

 

I'm not so sure; if you compare the Playstation launch titles with the ones just before the launch of the PS2, there was a definate improvement in the quality of the graphics, as developers had learnt their way around the hardware.

[DracIsBack]

It might be an interesting case study:

 

Most advancement on the 7800 would happen within the homebrew community, in a free, collaborative, open-source environment.  Compare that to the 2600 which had most of its advancement occur in a commercial, competitive environment (more recent homebrews aside, of course).

 

I have been longing for a 7800 homebrew effort for years. If I had any programming skills myself, I'd start work on a game. However, I'd be more interested in pushing it in the RPG, adventure game direction than the classic direction that some are going.

 

Thanks to the tight pockets of Jack T, the 7800 never really got pushed to its limit.

[Room 34]

Yes, the 7800 needs some good adventure and/or platform games. (I'm thinking of things that were big on the NES like SMB and Zelda.) That was "where it's at" in the late '80s, and Atari missed the boat.

[scrummy]

I think that room34 is on to something that is true, but I think the 2600 is more extraordinary than most because of the amount of interest it still garners. It is considered the "first" and therefore will always be a prominent system.

 

Good examples of later improvement:

 

PSX - Wipeout compared to WipeOut XL

PSX - Tekken compared to Tekken 3

 

Jaguar - Cybermorph compared to BS gold

 

Most dissapointing lack of improvement

1979 Atari Star Raiders on the Atari 400/800 compared to all games since.

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

Most dissapointing lack of improvement

1979 Atari Star Raiders on the Atari 400/800 compared to all games since.

 

So we're already getting into *religious* waters again...

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Godzilla]

I definately feel the 2600's range of improvement towers over all the other consoles. Graphically and sonically, stuff like solaris and pitfall 2 and space shuttle literally seemed like games running on a whole new sytstem. Heck the c64 (etc) version of space shuttle is pretty much identical to the 2600 version.

 

Sure, later in life there may be someone who composes better music or draws some better graphics in a modern game, but the 2600 started seemingly incapable of music and ended with gyruss (etc), it started with fist sized pixels and ended with hi-res multi-color gradients.