ROM size... why so small in the 80s?

[LatchKeyKid]

Since getting into the retro Atari scene in the past couple of years and seeing what homebrew coders can do in ROM sizes larger than the typical 2-16k Atari used, I've wondered why in the last couple of years when the 2600 was directly competing with the Nintendo that companies didn't routinely use larger ROMs.   What was the usual price of Atari games during the various points of the life cycle?  If my hazy memory of taking my birthday and Christmas money to Toys'r'us to buy Nintendo games isn't wrong, most early to mid NES games were $30 USD with a price bump to $40 for SMB3 iirc.   With NES games routinely 40kb+ (Zelda was 128k!) and only a handful at 16-17kb (the usual Atari max late in the life cycle though obviously a handful of 32k came out), it doesn't seem like hardware costs for the manufacturer was as big of an issue by the mid 80's as compared with the late 70's unless there was a huge disparity in the retail prices of the cartridges.  On the programming side, obviously techniques for bank switching existed by then as they were used for anything above 4k so I'm not sure if there is a software element to this.

Edited April 30 by LatchKeyKid

[Keatah]

Many forces at work. Cost of development time. Cost of ROM. Desire to actually make bigger games on an aged system. The 2600 was old, but it wasn't retro-old or retro-cool yet.

[+rbairos]

Just a guess but I'd assume they considered the 2600 was approaching the end of its life-cycle and focused more on the 5200 and 7800 versions which had much larger cart sizes, if I recall.

[LatchKeyKid]

2 hours ago, Keatah said:

Many forces at work. Cost of development time. Cost of ROM. Desire to actually make bigger games on an aged system. The 2600 was old, but it wasn't retro-old or retro-cool yet.

Very true though I'd say the cost of development might be mitigated by the simplicity of the games inherent to the Atari compared with later 8-bit consoles (even at the larger ROM sizes).  I do agree that it's position at that time as the budget option wouldn't encourage extra spending.

[LatchKeyKid]

16 minutes ago, rbairos said:

Just a guess but I'd assume they considered the 2600 was approaching the end of its life-cycle and focused more on the 5200 and 7800 versions which had much larger cart sizes, if I recall.

How big were 5200 and 7800 cartridges and what did they charge for them at retail out of curiosity?  As mentioned above, I'm not sure as to how much Atari and other publishers were charging for 2600 games late in the console's life.

[KevKelley]

I think part is cost of chip. Part is cost of labor to make the larger game. And part is the return on investment. 
 

I had read how some games, like Fatal Run at 32k was larger than some NES games but as we see with those systems and games, size doesn’t always matter. 

 

I think what makes the Atari special with all the homebrews is that programmers have figured out how to leverage the Atari’s strengths and utilize newer technology to make amazing games… but had this technology existed 30 years ago those games probably would have been ridiculously expensive. That didn’t work for systems like the Neo Geo so I doubt Atari would have been able to swing it. 

[LatchKeyKid]

I did a search first before posting and found a list of NES titles with one coming in at 12k and then another dozen very early titles (like Tennis) coming in at 16-17k but the average was obviously higher especially as the console generation went on. 

 

Not every game needed the extra size but I do think that some styles/genres of games could have benefited from it as the 8-bit generation evolved.

 

[+splendidnut]

@LatchKeyKid

I wouldn't trust that list from Reddit; the filesizes on that list are misleading.  Comments in the post also bring up that point.  Ex: the claim of SMB being 31kb is completely wrong.... that game pretty much uses every single byte of it's 40kb filesize (32kb PRG ROM + 8k CHR ROM).

 

 

[zzip]

13 hours ago, LatchKeyKid said:

I've wondered why in the last couple of years when the 2600 was directly competing with the Nintendo that companies didn't routinely use larger ROMs. 

The 2600 wasn't really directly competing with the NES,   that was the 7800 and/or XEGS.

 

By that point the 2600 had become popular in the developing world.   That's what extended its life so long,  the cost of the carts needed to be kept down to sell in those markets.    NES carts were known to have extra hardware stuffed in them to extend the system capabilities, and such carts could be expensive.  $60 for a new NES game was not unheard of, and that was more than the 2600 itself cost in the late 80s.    Also alot of what drove rom sizes was graphics data, and since the 2600 graphics were very limited compared to NES,  its games wouldn't need as much graphic data.

[Mr SQL]

 

The memory algorithm is weighted in favor of the 2600.

The Atari 2600's flexible architecture racing the beam combined with (then) innovative sound and graphics acceleration hardware was harder to program but more efficient requiring less program space. Games that took 16K to program on home Computers could be implemented in 4K.

 

The 80's memory curve is also part of it. Home Computers saw an obvious curve during the 80's, systems that started as 4K became 16K, then 32K or more. Atari 2600 software releases followed a similar curve.