5200 and the arcade experience

[Flyindrew]

Last Saturday I took a walk to Barcade in my neighborhood (its a bar with dozens of 70's, 80's, 90's arcade machines). I played Pac Man, Defender, Moon Patrol, Dig Dug, Galaxian, Centipede, Jungle Hunt, Joust and Pole Position.

 

The next day, Sunday, I played these exact same games on my 5200 at home. 

 

In some instances the 5200 port of the games were exact arcade clones or near perfect. 

 

What amazes me is how overlooked the 5200 was, at the time, of literally bringing an actual arcade experience home.

 

 

[RB5200]

I agree 100%, when I got my 5200 as a kid I was floored at everything about it, the more real arcade look and play, It was just amazing to me and still is. heck I almost threw that 2600 in the trash. I didn't but as a kid that's how I felt. the 5200 is the only console I ever play on, except for switch.

[+cjherr]

While I enjoy exploring all older consoles, there’s something about the 5200 that brings be back time and again. It’s just a feel that epitomizes the joy of the times. 

[BIGHMW]

Been a 5200 guy since I got my first date with (what we call) Big Sexy on my 17th Birthday (May 19, 1983) when I proudly took delivery on her, it literally saved my mom hundreds in plays over at the arcade because she knew that I could play those same games at home with the same arcade-quality graphics. I felt SO HOTSHOT after that, knowing I didn't HAVE TO go to the arcade to play my favorites, I could just stay at home, save up all of those quarters and play my 5200. 

 

I still play her to this day, even though nowadays, I own a 2-port unit (with a 4-port BIOS, insuring full compatibility with all games) for the standard RF and VCS (2600) adapter capability.

[Keatah]

17 hours ago, Flyindrew said:

In some instances the 5200 port of the games were exact arcade clones or near perfect. 

I would say they were good ports considering the lesser capabilities of home systems compared against dedicated arcade hardware. They did capture the essence and smoothness however. Defender impressed me and I played it for hours on end.

 

I was surprised the 5200 ads never boasted about real arcade hardware though. POKEY and 6502 are, after all, used in arcade cabs.

 

17 hours ago, Flyindrew said:

What amazes me is how overlooked the 5200 was, at the time, of literally bringing an actual arcade experience home.

It would be nice to figure out why that happened. Was it getting close to crash time? And fatigue was setting in? Were too many distractions from home computers? Were there too many consoles and carts coming out - and the 5200 just got lost?

[Flyindrew]

5 hours ago, Keatah said:

I would say they were good ports considering the lesser capabilities of home systems compared against dedicated arcade hardware. They did capture the essence and smoothness however. Defender impressed me and I played it for hours on end.

 

I was surprised the 5200 ads never boasted about real arcade hardware though. POKEY and 6502 are, after all, used in arcade cabs.

 

It would be nice to figure out why that happened. Was it getting close to crash time? And fatigue was setting in? Were too many distractions from home computers? Were there too many consoles and carts coming out - and the 5200 just got lost?

What happened is that Coleco ran circles around Atari as far as marketing is concerned. For example, the boxes the game came in. Coleco displayed their games in boxes that contained pictures of the actual arcade cabinets on them. Back in 1982/83 when the consumer walked into the store and saw the box, they put 1 + 1 together. Also the fact that Coleco had a very successful arcade port as a pack in gave it a boost.

 

While not knocking the Colecovision at all (its a damn good console), I personally find (as an owner of both systems), the 5200 did a better job of capturing the arcade experience at home. Sadly, this was poorly communicated by Atari at the time.

[Flyindrew]

20 hours ago, cjherr said:

While I enjoy exploring all older consoles, there’s something about the 5200 that brings be back time and again. It’s just a feel that epitomizes the joy of the times. 

Exactly!!

 

I don’t know what it is but the 5200 (more than any other system), is a perfect representation of the year 1982 with its design, arcade game play and sound. It brings you back to the era of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, Pat Benetar and “The A Team”. To make an analogy, its like sitting inside a 1964 Ford Thunderbird and hearing The Beatles or the Dave Clark 5 from the AM radio.

[phuzaxeman]

5 hours ago, Keatah said:

I would say they were good ports considering the lesser capabilities of home systems compared against dedicated arcade hardware. They did capture the essence and smoothness however. Defender impressed me and I played it for hours on end.

 

I was surprised the 5200 ads never boasted about real arcade hardware though. POKEY and 6502 are, after all, used in arcade cabs.

 

It would be nice to figure out why that happened. Was it getting close to crash time? And fatigue was setting in? Were too many distractions from home computers? Were there too many consoles and carts coming out - and the 5200 just got lost?

I remember seeing 5200 PacMan intermissions for the first time. It was so amazing. Atari was able to get very detailed in their gaming.

 

Defender, Moon Patrol, Berzerk, and Centipede sounds were spot on close to the arcade. Graphics were so good.

 

What happened, imo, was Atari was still highly invested in the 2600. Advertising marketed both systems at the same time. Ads would literally show both systems.

 

Imagine Sony PS5 ads sharing with the PS4? 

That wouldn't work.

 

If Atari released the 5200 in the summer of 82, and had the 5200 Pacman edition for Xmas, it would have been a hit. Or included the 2600 adapter in a 5200 combo, that would have also sold.

 

[zzip]

47 minutes ago, Flyindrew said:

What happened is that Coleco ran circles around Atari as far as marketing is concerned. For example, the boxes the game came in. Coleco displayed their games in boxes that contained pictures of the actual arcade cabinets on them. Back in 1982/83 when the consumer walked into the store and saw the box, they put 1 + 1 together. Also the fact that Coleco had a very successful arcade port as a pack in gave it a boost.

 

While not knocking the Colecovision at all (its a damn good console), I personally find (as an owner of both systems), the 5200 did a better job of capturing the arcade experience at home. Sadly, this was poorly communicated by Atari at the time.

Whether or not Atari communicated it well,  I remember that us kids who were into games thought of both the CV and 5200 as being arcade-like

 

But yeah Coleco seemed to do a much better job on marketing at the time.

 

7 hours ago, Keatah said:

It would be nice to figure out why that happened. Was it getting close to crash time? And fatigue was setting in? Were too many distractions from home computers? Were there too many consoles and carts coming out - and the 5200 just got lost?

The problems were that it was expensive-   $269.99. or almost $840 in today's dollars!   Also the 5200 was mostly the same games released on the 2600.  It didn't really have a killer/app game that defined it.   As much as kids may have wanted the better graphics,  I could easily imagine parents saying "I'm not paying that much for a system that plays the same games you already have"

 

2 hours ago, phuzaxeman said:

I remember seeing 5200 PacMan intermissions for the first time. It was so amazing. Atari was able to get very detailed in their gaming.

 

Defender, Moon Patrol, Berzerk, and Centipede sounds were spot on close to the arcade. Graphics were so good.

Back then we'd see both Colecovision ads and 5200 ads and be amazed at how much they looked like the arcade.   

 

These days when you can compare the games side-by-side with MAME, you'll find that the CV/5200  ports are actually quite a bit off, but back then we couldn't do a side by side comparison easily.

 

[phuzaxeman]

49 minutes ago, zzip said:

Whether or not Atari communicated it well,  I remember that us kids who were into games thought of both the CV and 5200 as being arcade-like

 

But yeah Coleco seemed to do a much better job on marketing at the time.

 

The problems were that it was expensive-   $269.99. or almost $840 in today's dollars!   Also the 5200 was mostly the same games released on the 2600.  It didn't really have a killer/app game that defined it.   As much as kids may have wanted the better graphics,  I could easily imagine parents saying "I'm not paying that much for a system that plays the same games you already have"

 

Back then we'd see both Colecovision ads and 5200 ads and be amazed at how much they looked like the arcade.   

 

These days when you can compare the games side-by-side with MAME, you'll find that the CV/5200  ports are actually quite a bit off, but back then we couldn't do a side by side comparison easily.

 

Like what I said in my post, the sounds were very close. 

I knew the differences graphically to the arcade even as a kid but you have to remember that prior to the 5200 and Colecovision, the 2600 and Intellivision were the standard. The 5200 was so ahead of its time in 82.

Edited March 8, 2023 by phuzaxeman

[Keatah]

4 hours ago, Flyindrew said:

What happened is that Coleco ran circles around Atari as far as marketing is concerned. For example, the boxes the game came in. Coleco displayed their games in boxes that contained pictures of the actual arcade cabinets on them. Back in 1982/83 when the consumer walked into the store and saw the box, they put 1 + 1 together.

This was not lost on us kids. To see an arcade cab on a box meant the game had to be good and that was that. Buy it. Little 2nd thought. The marketing thing that I latched on to was the games were like 24K or 32K in size. And I was still full-on with my infantile thinking that more K is more better.

 

4 hours ago, Flyindrew said:

While not knocking the Colecovision at all (its a damn good console), I personally find (as an owner of both systems), the 5200 did a better job of capturing the arcade experience at home. Sadly, this was poorly communicated by Atari at the time.

I loved the CV as a 3rd generation machine. Make no mistake. The Atari 400/800 architecture that came out in 1979 had much smoother per-pixel scrolling. I was always annoyed by CV's jerky tile scrolling.

 

Or to say it another way, CV had used 3rd party video chip. The TMSsomething. Atari's was designed in-house to exactly what it was meant to do.

 

4 hours ago, phuzaxeman said:

If Atari released the 5200 in the summer of 82, and had the 5200 Pacman edition for Xmas, it would have been a hit. Or included the 2600 adapter in a 5200 combo, that would have also sold.

Yes.

 

As a kid I wanted to see the 5200 have either a dual-cartridge slot or two separate cart slots so it could play both 2600 and 5200 in the same console. I wrote a letter to Atari but never heard back.

 

4 hours ago, phuzaxeman said:

Defender, Moon Patrol, Berzerk, and Centipede sounds were spot on close to the arcade. Graphics were so good.

What was important was the playability. Defender was in my top 5 games on the 400/800.

 

4 hours ago, phuzaxeman said:

What happened, imo, was Atari was still highly invested in the 2600. Advertising marketed both systems at the same time. Ads would literally show both systems.

I was totally ok with that. It didn't confuse me or anything. The 2600 vs (8-bit comps and 5200) were quite different in their sophistication. But I never entirely switched to 8-bit gaming exclusively. Meant giving up too many 2600 games that I enjoyed since fall of 1977.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Whether or not Atari communicated it well,  I remember that us kids who were into games thought of both the CV and 5200 as being arcade-like

Yes. But I thought CV was more arcade-like, maybe it was the marketing. Maybe it was because the games were not all entirely that "mainstream" and thus they were new to me. Whereas Atari's IP was getting long in the tooth.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

The problems were that it was expensive-   $269.99. or almost $840 in today's dollars!   Also the 5200 was mostly the same games released on the 2600.  It didn't really have a killer/app game that defined it. As much as kids may have wanted the better graphics,  I could easily imagine parents saying "I'm not paying that much for a system that plays the same games you already have"

By the time the 5200 was in full-swing I had already experienced the "upgraded" versions of the hit 2600 & arcade games on the 400/800 (said it a billion times before, but it still sticks in my head). So yes the 5200 didn't have a killer title whatsoever in my mind.

 

At first I thought Countermeasure would have been it. But whatever, guess it wasn't a different enough game or something or other. I also gave Star Raiders and a few other games multiple chances to wow me with some added levels or spiffed up graphics or something. But it never happened. Kept saying to myself, "I already got this on the 800! Same thing!"

 

Ultimately I depleted my gaming funds too much by buying the 5200 rehashes of 400/800 games. And then ended up with a huge system with a pile of carts that I didn't know what to do with - because the controllers wouldn't work.

 

I don't recall the final disposition of my 5200. Was it sold? Was it put out curbside? Was it given away? Was it torn down for parts? Did it end up in a moving/garage sale? Did I smash it up like they do on youtube? I honestly can't remember and don't think I have any photos to lend clues.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

These days when you can compare the games side-by-side with MAME, you'll find that the CV/5200  ports are actually quite a bit off, but back then we couldn't do a side by side comparison easily.

I caught myself doing that just yesterday in fact. I was doing Centipede and Defender. Having had a MAME console back in the day would have been something straight out of sci-fi.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Back then we'd see both Colecovision ads and 5200 ads and be amazed at how much they looked like the arcade.   

I tend to think that those ads add something to the nostalgic experience of playing those ancient games today. It's not just the games but all the stuff immediately surrounding them.

 

1 hour ago, phuzaxeman said:

Like what I said in my post, the sounds were very close.

Surprisingly sounds were something we never payed much attention to. An arcade game, console game, computer game, made no difference and we didn't spend $$$ chasing after it.

 

1 hour ago, phuzaxeman said:

I knew the differences graphically to the arcade even as a kid but you have to remember that prior to the 5200 and Colecovision, the 2600 and Intellivision were the standard. The 5200 was so ahead of its time in 82.

And the 400/800 even more so in 1979. Essentially Atari waited 3 years to release the 5200. I suspect it was a marketing-induced hastiness to make more use of ANTIC/GTIA/POKEY/SALLY.

[MrMaddog]

Well although the 5200 did have a TrakBall (tm) controller that was very arcade like, the non-centering, non-standard and non-working joystick controller didn't do any favors.

 

Sorry to keep harping on this but it's true regardless if they can be repaired by a local Atari Service Center or you get the kits from Best Electronics...

[zzip]

58 minutes ago, Keatah said:

This was not lost on us kids. To see an arcade cab on a box meant the game had to be good and that was that. Buy it. Little 2nd thought. The marketing thing that I latched on to was the games were like 24K or 32K in size. And I was still full-on with my infantile thinking that more K is more better.

The intellivision and 2600 ports of the Coleco games had the arcade cabinets on them too, and some of those ports were stinkers.   So the presence of arcade machine on Colecovision boxes didn't sway me at all.

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

Yes. But I thought CV was more arcade-like, maybe it was the marketing. Maybe it was because the games were not all entirely that "mainstream" and thus they were new to me. Whereas Atari's IP was getting long in the tooth.

I had the impression that the two systems were pretty equally matched.   Don't know why I thought that,  perhaps because both seemed to do a good job reproducing arcade graphics.   Mostly I was looking at screenshots in magazines rather than the systems in action, so I had no idea about if the games had fine or coarse scrolling, flickering sprites, or bad sound.

 

Now that I know more about the specs,  I know they aren't perfectly matched, but each system has strengths and weaknesses that make each system more suited for certain games and less suited for others.

 

Also at the time I thought both companies had equally strong arcade game portfolios,   but now looking at CVs game list, I see it has a lot fewer popular arcade games than Atari had, outside of a few heavy hitters like Donkey Kong / Jr and Zaxxon

 

1 hour ago, Keatah said:

I caught myself doing that just yesterday in fact. I was doing Centipede and Defender. Having had a MAME console back in the day would have been something straight out of sci-fi.

Hell even when MAME first appeared only playing a handful of arcade games, the idea that it would someday play nearly every arcade machine seemed like Sci-fi!

 

[Keatah]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

The intellivision and 2600 ports of the Coleco games had the arcade cabinets on them too, and some of those ports were stinkers.   So the presence of arcade machine on Colecovision boxes didn't sway me at all.

Yes. I knew they were "re-makes" of the original Colecovision cartridge, for other systems like 2600/Inty. Somehow that seemed to cement the 2600 (in my mind) as inferior. But I never got the idea Coleco made them lesser for want of making their console look better. The ports to 2600/Inty seemed just enough to get by. A quick effort to get their games on all systems. Dare I say hastily done?

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

I had the impression that the two systems were pretty equally matched.   Don't know why I thought that,  perhaps because both seemed to do a good job reproducing arcade graphics.   Mostly I was looking at screenshots in magazines rather than the systems in action, so I had no idea about if the games had fine or coarse scrolling, flickering sprites, or bad sound.

I never cared about flickering or single/multi colored sprites, or having 10,000 sprites onscreen at once. I was just big on smooth scrolling. Eventually at the 16-bit computers came about, I would begin paying attention to color depth and so many other aspects of a display and it's associated circuitry.

 

Still recall some hi-school buddies saying Apple II didn't have any sprites and trying to make a big deal of it. For whatever reason it flew right over my head. I'd always reply there spaceships and bombs and objects moving around, so it has sprites and that was that. I didn't know what they were anyways.

 

I still have, today, to fully accept that Doom doesn't use any hardware sprites or anything. (!) Just bit-mapped graphics and that's it.

 

What a fun hobby this can be when discussing finer points. Especially compared to something like cars - where there are only so many ways to screw in a spark plug or bolt-on carburetors.

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Now that I know more about the specs,  I know they aren't perfectly matched, but each system has strengths and weaknesses that make each system more suited for certain games and less suited for others.

Yes.  I used to keep a sheet (along with my hi-scores) of which system was better for which game. And why we thought that was the case. More memory, bigger CPU, better controllers, more colors, more sound. Stupid stuff like that.

 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Also at the time I thought both companies had equally strong arcade game portfolios,   but now looking at CVs game list, I see it has a lot fewer popular arcade games than Atari had, outside of a few heavy hitters like Donkey Kong / Jr and Zaxxon

I felt CV was complimentary to 5200 when it came to the titles. It's like it picked up stuff the 400/800/5200 didn't have. And I liked it that way. It gave me validation for having yet another console in my burgeoning Arcade-At-Home setup cum library.

 

Donkey Kong Jr. was one of the last big CV hits my parents got me. For some reason or other they and my grandparents started calling videogames baby games. And anybody playing them should be ashamed of themselves for not growing up! Heh.. Not long after I had my sights set on the 16-bit computing world.
 

3 hours ago, zzip said:

Hell even when MAME first appeared only playing a handful of arcade games, the idea that it would someday play nearly every arcade machine seemed like Sci-fi!

When I talked with technically-minded folks in the mid-80's about a small box the size of a suitcase that could play every game ever made I was essentially thrown out of the room! Never in a hundred years! Ever ever ever. IMMMPOSSSSIBLE!

 

And 10 years later the basis of the software that would make it happen had started. As early as 1999 MAME on a laptop was doable though limited. In 2004 I had about 30 arcade favs going on such a setup.

[+Cafeman]

I went to an arcade, saw Zaxxon. Hadn’t played it for years so I was looking forward to it, but quickly realized the joystick was busted.  I thought huh, reminds me of my 5200. 

[zzip]

12 hours ago, Keatah said:

Yes. I knew they were "re-makes" of the original Colecovision cartridge, for other systems like 2600/Inty. Somehow that seemed to cement the 2600 (in my mind) as inferior. But I never got the idea Coleco made them lesser for want of making their console look better.

I remember a lot of people assumed Coleco made DK terrible on INTV and 2600 to make CV look good.   On the other have Coleco released games like Venture and Carnival that had nothing apparent wrong with them.    Games like DK and Zaxxon were always going to be tough on 2600 hardware no matter who ported them.

 

12 hours ago, Keatah said:

I never cared about flickering or single/multi colored sprites, or having 10,000 sprites onscreen at once. I was just big on smooth scrolling. Eventually at the 16-bit computers came about, I would begin paying attention to color depth and so many other aspects of a display and it's associated circuitry.

 

Still recall some hi-school buddies saying Apple II didn't have any sprites and trying to make a big deal of it. For whatever reason it flew right over my head. I'd always reply there spaceships and bombs and objects moving around, so it has sprites and that was that. I didn't know what they were anyways.

As an aspiring game developer, I didn't like the idea of sprite limitations or color limitations.   I didn't care about smooth scrolling, I was just obsessed with maximizing color placement on Atari 8 hardware--  use a sprite overlay for extra color here, some DLIs there.   Wasn't opposed to using "software sprites" because there were times they were needed to get around the limits of hardware sprites.   So I tried to work out the most efficient, non-destructive (of the background) software sprite routines in assembly.  You couldn't just google such things then to get the best answer.

 

At any rate, hardware sprites are an advantage if you have them since you can move them around the screen with a minimal amount of code.  Software sprites require more code to not just move the bytes in the object, but also to preserve the background behind them (unless it's blank space like Space Invaders or something).   But until the Atari 7800 came along, hardware sprites on home systems were limited in size, number of colors and number of sprites.   Sprite flicker was unavoidable if you needed to multiplex a large number of hardware sprites.

 

12 hours ago, Keatah said:

I still have, today, to fully accept that Doom doesn't use any hardware sprites or anything. (!) Just bit-mapped graphics and that's it.

But when you have VGA 256 color mode (or better) suddenly all your color placement headaches from the 8-bit and 16-bit days are gone!  Even writing software sprites routines are much easier because every pixel is now a single byte (as opposed to some fraction of a byte on 8 and 16-bit systems)  that's very easy to manipulate and maybe color 0 is your transparent color that you never draw

 

The DOS video cards often had hardware acceleration too, but it was not convenient to access from DOS games, so I suspect many didn't use them.

Edited March 9, 2023 by zzip

[Keatah]

I remember Applesoft BASIC having "shape tables" A form of software sprite if you will. It was painfully slow and I rarely used it in any of my recreational graphics programming exercises. That would have been my introduction to sprites and any programming related to them.

 

5 hours ago, zzip said:

The DOS video cards often had hardware acceleration too, but it was not convenient to access from DOS games, so I suspect many didn't use them.

I could see DOS games using acceleration features that were present in the IBM VGA specification - as all chips would have them. If a certain ATI, CL, S3, or ET chipset had specific DOS acceleration commands I can't imagine programmers optimizing for 1 chip only.

[ledzep]

On 3/8/2023 at 10:00 AM, zzip said:

The problems were that it was expensive-   $269.99. or almost $840 in today's dollars!   Also the 5200 was mostly the same games released on the 2600.  It didn't really have a killer/app game that defined it.   As much as kids may have wanted the better graphics,  I could easily imagine parents saying "I'm not paying that much for a system that plays the same games you already have"

 

I think I ran into that with my parents.  Or I assumed it would happen since I already had the Atari 800 and 2600 and my best friend had the 5200 (and Intellivision).  So I stuck with the Atari 800.  But I didn't end up getting too many games for it because I knew that all the 5200 versions were as good or better and since I was at my friend's house a lot, I figured I didn't need them.  Except for Star Raiders which is way harder on the Atari 800 because it's not the same game, those analog 5200 controllers made it almost a new game.  Only in the last 10 years or so did I even find out the Atari 800 Robotron: 2084 came with that cool game box that included a dual 2600 joystick holder!  I bought one off eBay immediately, hahaaha.  I was so used to the 5200 version with the controller holder and I just assumed the computer version used one joystick.

 

On 3/8/2023 at 10:00 AM, zzip said:

These days when you can compare the games side-by-side with MAME, you'll find that the CV/5200  ports are actually quite a bit off, but back then we couldn't do a side by side comparison easily.

 

I knew they weren't the same (I went to the arcades a lot) but I appreciated how close the various consoles could get using the "wrong" hardware and software.  I liked seeing the various versions, how they were the same/different.  Like watching a favorite band cover a great song from a different band, loved them both (unless they sucked, hahaaha).

 

On 3/8/2023 at 1:37 PM, Keatah said:

I was totally ok with that. It didn't confuse me or anything. The 2600 vs (8-bit comps and 5200) were quite different in their sophistication. But I never entirely switched to 8-bit gaming exclusively. Meant giving up too many 2600 games that I enjoyed since fall of 1977.

 

Ya, the 2600 had so many games!  A lot of clunkers but also I loved how the simple 2600 was the perfect console to preserve the primitive '70s games like Tank & Jet Fighter (Combat), Basketball, Starship, Steeplechase, Sprint (Indy 500), Breakout, Canyon Bomber, Gunslinger (Outlaw), Pong, Night Driver, etc.  Activision had some of them, too, like Dragster (Drag Race), Avalanche (Kaboom!).  No other console would have bothered because everything after the 2600 was too sophisticated but the 2600 was perfect for those LEGO block looking games.  Surround, too.  And who could forget the space chess perfection of Stellar Track?  What other console except the Fairchild Channel F or Odyssey 2 would even consider such a game?

 

Side note: Anybody know where I might find the source code for Stellar Track?

 

I couldn't abandon the 2600 especially since many games, to make up for simple graphics, would have dozens of options that never appeared in the arcades (Space Invaders, Asteroids).  I really wish the 5200 had done more of that with their versions.

 

Hahahaa, for some reason that made me think of a some insane company attempting to create home versions of even older electromechanical games (Sea Wolf, S.A.M.I.), how fucking impossible that would have been, but if it had been possible, how amazing!

 

On 3/8/2023 at 2:28 PM, MrMaddog said:

Well although the 5200 did have a TrakBall (tm) controller that was very arcade like, the non-centering, non-standard and non-working joystick controller didn't do any favors.

 

Sorry to keep harping on this but it's true regardless if they can be repaired by a local Atari Service Center or you get the kits from Best Electronics...

 

Ya, it was a bad design (the firing buttons, too) but the non-centering never affected me.  Way before the 5200 I got used to having my thumb on the top of the 2600 joystick so I was always directing where it went, even if that meant being centered.  I rarely let it go to center itself because then I might miss re-establishing my thumb on it the next time I needed to move something (my thumb slipped a few times that way anyway).  So I was used to making the 5200 joystick go where I wanted it (shorter, too, so that helped).  I think the only issue there was that the 5200 wasn't set right for some games, maybe.  I think the center dead area was too wide, the game should have read movement in one of the 8 directions (for the digital joystick games) a little sooner, have more of the middle equal to the outer edge or something.  Maybe it was, I don't know.

 

18 hours ago, zzip said:

I remember a lot of people assumed Coleco made DK terrible on INTV and 2600 to make CV look good.   On the other have Coleco released games like Venture and Carnival that had nothing apparent wrong with them.    Games like DK and Zaxxon were always going to be tough on 2600 hardware no matter who ported them.

 

That's what Venture Reloaded is for, hahaaha.

 

I always wished Activision (and other 3rd party vendors) had added more levels or game variations to their 5200 conversions.  I thought making the 5200 versions essentially identical to the 2600 versions + better graphics was really lazy.  I read that Activision felt that people would expect the same games that they knew from the 2600.  Fair enough, so do both, have the 2600 gameplay + new ideas/versions for the much better 5200.  I think that would have really helped 5200 sales.  I know that Kaboom didn't lend itself to more complexity but other games might have worked out better, like River Raid or The Dreadnaught Factor.

[+Cafeman]

The 5200/A8 version of River raid had the perfect upgrades from my point of view. You get two toned craggy river banks, the darker tone didn’t destroy your jet so you had a little more wiggle room;  the bridges are numbered, and you can start at different bridges, plus the extra tanks and enemies.  Even the analog flight control was easy to get used to.   An optional soundtrack would’ve been awesome to have though!  Hmmmm… good idea actually. Hack river raid, adding a two or three channel background soundtrack. 😀

[zzip]

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

I remember Applesoft BASIC having "shape tables" A form of software sprite if you will. It was painfully slow and I rarely used it in any of my recreational graphics programming exercises. That would have been my introduction to sprites and any programming related to them.

There wasn't even any direct sprite support in Atari BASIC.    I had to draw sprites on a piece of graph paper, convert the bits into decimal values, add that to DATA statements.   And then POKE a few registers to make the sprite magically appear.

 

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

I could see DOS games using acceleration features that were present in the IBM VGA specification - as all chips would have them. If a certain ATI, CL, S3, or ET chipset had specific DOS acceleration commands I can't imagine programmers optimizing for 1 chip only.

I'm not sure that vanilla VGA had any hardware acceleration.   Mostly graphics vendors advertised graphics acceleration as part of their proprietary "SVGA" chipsets.   DOS games  (at least before Scitech Display Doctor) mostly targeted vanilla VGA and 320x240 256 color mode for maximum compatibility.

 

[Keatah]

Regular VGA had to have had something in the way of acceleration, maybe some sort of shifter or scroll circuitry. Maybe memory copying for filling via register shifting. Something very simple. And nothing so advanced as Mac-like QuickDraw primitives. There are several VGA and SVGA programming books on my reading list. So maybe then it will become clear.

[zzip]

12 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Regular VGA had to have had something in the way of acceleration, maybe some sort of shifter or scroll circuitry. Maybe memory copying for filling via register shifting. Something very simple. And nothing so advanced as Mac-like QuickDraw primitives. There are several VGA and SVGA programming books on my reading list. So maybe then it will become clear.

Wikipedia says VGA had smooth scrolling and barrel shifter.    But no blitter or line drawing (which is what the SVGA cards marketed as 'Windows accelerators' were providing)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Graphics_Array

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_accelerator

[rra]

12 hours ago, ledzep said:

some insane company attempting to create home versions of even older electromechanical games (Sea Wolf, S.A.M.I.)

My local arcade had both of these games around 1978-1980.  S.A.M.I. was always broken!  The cool Missile Command and Asteroids players would always make fun of poor old S.A.M.I. and we would purposely guess outrageous meanings for the acronym.

[Zolaerla]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

Regular VGA had to have had something in the way of acceleration, maybe some sort of shifter or scroll circuitry. Maybe memory copying for filling via register shifting. Something very simple. And nothing so advanced as Mac-like QuickDraw primitives. There are several VGA and SVGA programming books on my reading list. So maybe then it will become clear.

 

As someone who did a HELLUVA lot of coding for VGA back in the day on the ASM-level, I have to tell you that no, there really was no acceleration at all that was readily available. No sprites, no DMA transfers (except on very rare systems/cards), no anything. There weren't even hardware-based VSyncs (you had to bit poll on port 0x3DA to tell when a vsync happened). Switching palettes? Send 768 bytes to port 0x3C9. The x86 processors were very heavily used for absolutely everything. Thank goodness that 320x200 mode fit completely into the 64KB buffer at segment 0xA000. Don't even get me started on how stupidly, overly complicated the 16-color (4-bit) VGA bit planes were, or the ridiculously complicated weird modes like ModeX/ModeZ got. I wrote code for both, but I hated it.

 

There were multiple layers (8 if I recall correctly) that you could use for text modes, since they only used 4KB for 80x25 at... segment 0xB800 if I recall correctly, this gave you 32KB with 8 buffers of 4KB each. I didn't do a lot with text modes, which is why I don't know that's 100% off the top of my head.

 

When SVGA started showing up, it was a gigantic mess for a while until the VESA standards made everything make more sense, and yet still there was no reliable acceleration for anything. We were lucky in VESA 2.0 when they added a single giant flat address you could access with 32-bit addressing to access the entire screen at once without having to deal with bank switching (often mid-freakin'-pixel in the case of 24-bit modes on some devices!). What acceleration was around was very specific to certain cards, which I never got my hands on to play with before Windows 95 came along and basically threw all of that away. At least after that, DirectX started causing the weird disparate accelerators to start looking way better since you could code for them without having to write drivers for every individual card/vendor... but I never made the transition to Windows ASM since documentation for it was so bad back then (still isn't great).

Edited March 11, 2023 by Zolaerla

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, Zolaerla said:

 

As someone who did a HELLUVA lot of coding for VGA back in the day on the ASM-level, I have to tell you that no, there really was no acceleration at all that was readily available. No sprites, no DMA transfers (except on very rare systems/cards), no anything. There weren't even hardware-based VSyncs (you had to bit poll on port 0x3DA to tell when a vsync happened). Switching palettes? Send 768 bytes to port 0x3C9. The x86 processors were very heavily used for absolutely everything. Thank goodness that 320x200 mode fit completely into the 64KB buffer at segment 0xA000. Don't even get me started on how stupidly, overly complicated the 16-color (4-bit) VGA bit planes were, or the ridiculously complicated weird modes like ModeX/ModeZ got. I wrote code for both, but I hated it.

 

There were multiple layers (8 if I recall correctly) that you could use for text modes, since they only used 4KB for 80x25 at... segment 0xB800 if I recall correctly, this gave you 32KB with 8 buffers of 4KB each. I didn't do a lot with text modes, which is why I don't know that's 100% off the top of my head.

 

When SVGA started showing up, it was a gigantic mess for a while until the VESA standards made everything make more sense, and yet still there was no reliable acceleration for anything. We were lucky in VESA 2.0 when they added a single giant flat address you could access with 32-bit addressing to access the entire screen at once without having to deal with bank switching (often mid-freakin'-pixel in the case of 24-bit modes on some devices!). What acceleration was around was very specific to certain cards, which I never got my hands on to play with before Windows 95 came along and basically threw all of that away. At least after that, DirectX started causing the weird disparate accelerators to start looking way better since you could code for them without having to write drivers for every individual card/vendor... but I never made the transition to Windows ASM since documentation for it was so bad back then (still isn't great).

Agreed - VGA spec cards were in no way accelerated, nor offered much at all.  At least not good old mode 13h.  It was really cool to code for though - byte per pixel, easy addressing.