Was the 5200 worthy of it's Super System label ?

[JPF997]

 Personally I think it was,  spec wise it was able to compete with the ColecoVision, it had arcade perfect ports of Berzerk, Missile Command, Space Invaders, Pac-Man and others, it had a great soundchip capable of producing music and sound effects of much higher quality than the 2600, it had great exclusives, excellent ports of Atari 800 games, it even had a storage area for you to put anything you wanted, controllers, games, drinks etc.

Overall I think it was the best console of the early 80s and was  really only surpassed when the NES came out.

[bigfriendly]

The kids I was friends with next door got a 5200 for Christmas in 1982 and I got a Colecovision. So I was able to experience both systems to the max. The 5200 definitely had some cool arcade ports that looked top notch but I'll never understand why Atari included Breakout as the pack in game with the system. Donkey Kong came with the Colecovision and that was HUGE at the time. Atari should have included Pac-Man with the 5200. Star Raiders was one of the coolest games I ever played back then. Both systems had bad controllers but the Colecovisions held up way better than the 5200's did. If I had it to do over again I would still take the Colecovision but it's a pretty close race.

[RB5200]

Yes, yes it was !

[GameGirl420]

Thing seems like the  NeoGeo AES of the early 80s,sure it was! ❤️

[+GoldLeader]

I think the SUPER system of the time was mos def ColecoVision!  It had all kinds of Amazing and obscure, and even hidden gem Arcade games,   But don't get me wrong Jack,  The 5200 was still a Pretty Good System.

 

 

COLECO Super system

 

ATARI 5200 Pretty Good System

 

 

 

 

 

(There we go  (hah))

 

 

Your Vision is Our Vision - COLECOVISION!!

 

[GameGirl420]

10 minutes ago, GoldLeader said:

I think the SUPER system of the time was mos def ColecoVision!  It had all kinds of Amazing and obscure, and even hidden gem Arcade games,   But don't get me wrong Jack,  The 5200 was still a Pretty Good System.

 

 

COLECO Super system

 

ATARI 5200 Pretty Good System

 

 

 

 

 

(There we go  (hah))

 

 

Your Vision is Our Vision - COLECOVISION!!

 

 

Interesting opinion,but Colecovision's version of Centipede can't even compare to the near perfect port of the 5200's.. It's very close to the arcade and can imagine it musta blown alot of people away in the 80s. 

 

Then again I guess Coleco had some games which were better than the 5200's. Both totally awesum systems lol. I been hooked on Frogger 5200 lately.

[johannesmutlu]

The mistake atari did made was put in break out as a pack in game,while i do understand that it did had a 4 player option and that atari trought to be wise to showcase it’s multiplayer advantage over it’s competition,BUT the graphics of that game weren’t any much better then the 2600,what atari should,ve done was pack in pacman because that game really showcased the benefits of that 5200 over the 2600,i wondet if atari eventually did decided to pack in pacman with later runs of the 5200 and did they do that never at sll???

now about the specs, the 5200 definitely blew the colecovision out of the water with a better soundchip,better graphics and more ram and rom to work with, heck even the nes didn’t had that much ram or such high colorpallet compared to the 5200 and with that said,i think atari just gave up too fast on the 5200,eventrough the atari xe was a consolized atari 800 wich has more ram then the 5200 but it was hardwarewise the same as the 5200 except that the cartride port,the bios and memory locations were different,actually atari should/could have come with the atari xe in 1982 instead because then it would,ve sold much much better then both the colecovision and the 5200 system because of it’s extra games and backwards compatibility sith atari accessoireses.

[r_chase]

Considering that it had technically superior hardware to even the 7800, it probably could've deserved this name. Hell, if they marketed it as the console equivalent to the A8 line rather than have XEGS attempt to take the spotlight with its direct compatibility, it would've overtaken the NES. Maybe even have a primitive equivalent to the Xbox 360 controller as well.

But as much as I would like the 5200 to be given a look more, I think I'd rather just emulate the entire A8 line instead of just, well, the 5200, because in the end, one of the things that killed it was that it didn't have direct compatibility with anything else, unlike the XEGS and the 7800.

[Giles N]

Answer: ‘Yes’

But the in-box joysticks should’ve come with an equally honest label: ‘torture-stick’, ‘pain-stick’,’cripple-stick’

, ‘wrist-wrench-stick’ Yeah, that - the Super WWS-sticks.

 

Or just more plainly: the no-joy controller.

 

- - -

 

If it had come with more RAM or RAM expansion, it would’ve been the Hyper System. Yes, it could’ve used some more RAM. 

 

Edited March 14 by Giles N

[Giles N]

9 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

ATARI 5200 Pretty Good System

We need box-art and retro-Ads for this new, honest label…😄

[zzip]

At first it seemed to live up to that label, but it died too soon,  The library is too limited compared to what could have been ported to it from the a8 library alone

 

17 hours ago, JPF997 said:

Overall I think it was the best console of the early 80s and was  really only surpassed when the NES came out.

And spec-wise, the NES wasn't even that much better,  it was itself a 1983 design that didn't become popular until several years later.  Atari would have been in a better place if they rode out the 5200, then replaced it with a "super 8-bit" based on what was possible with maybe 1986 tech,  instead of the "two steps forward/two steps back" that was the 7800.

[zzip]

I think another thing that hurt the 5200 was when Atari released the 600XL and 800XL shortly after.   The 600XL was as powerful as a 5200 but half the price and a full Atari computer to boot!

[bigfriendly]

I know I'm beating a dead horse but they should have done something about those joysticks. I remember the neighbors having to buy replacements and they weren't cheap back then. Even if everything else would have worked out those controllers were such a detriment to the system as a whole. 

[ledzep]

1 hour ago, bigfriendly said:

I know I'm beating a dead horse but they should have done something about those joysticks. I remember the neighbors having to buy replacements and they weren't cheap back then. Even if everything else would have worked out those controllers were such a detriment to the system as a whole. 

 

Ya, it is a bit of beating a dead horse because they're not that bad.  Any normal gamer could adapt to the non-centering aspect in about 5 minutes.  Any decent gamer could switch from Tron to Centipede to Defender in the arcades no problem so an analog stick that doesn't center should be trivial.  My friends and I never had an issue with the 5200 joysticks, we just used our thumb on top and centered them ourselves.  I will agree that the mushy fire buttons weren't great but that could be fixed if Atari had cared, as evidenced by the Trak-ball's fire buttons.

 

I'm sure it's known and obvious & I simply haven't run across it yet, but not even addressing the different cartridge size, what was the need for 5200 games to have a different memory layout from 8-bit cartridge games?  Everyone talks about, when converting 8-bit games to the 5200, having to move parts of the code to new locations.  I don't get why the locations couldn't stay the same.  What advantage did having a different memory layout or whatever give the 5200 that it could not have if it used the same scheme as the 8-bit computers?

[Giles N]

1 hour ago, ledzep said:

Any normal gamer could adapt to the non-centering aspect in about 5 minutes. (…)

mushy fire buttons weren't great 

(…)that could be fixed

if  Atari  had  cared,

… that’s the point,

 

 

Sincerely yours,

The Abnormal Gamer

Edited March 14 by Giles N

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, ledzep said:

What advantage did having a different memory layout or whatever give the 5200 that it could not have if it used the same scheme as the 8-bit computers?

The better question is what advantage of having both was there at all?  It was a stupid move all around.  The 400 was intended to be, and should have been, the "gaming" system, while the 800 was the "serious computing" system.  Releasing the 5200 at all made zero sense.

[Giles N]

1 hour ago, ledzep said:

Everyone talks about, when converting 8-bit games to the 5200, having to move parts of the code to new locations.

…one thing thats been specifically pointed out to me, is re-programming 8-bit digital joystick input to 5200 analogue input.

 

(not sure I’m using the right terminology, but thats the drift)

[BassGuitari]

Yes. 😁

 

19 hours ago, JPF997 said:

 Overall I think it was the best console of the early 80s and was  really only surpassed when the NES came out.

Even as an Atari fanboy, I have to say there's a stronger argument for that title going to the Coleco. But only slightly. 😉

 

12 hours ago, GameGirl420 said:

Thing seems like the  NeoGeo AES of the early 80s,sure it was! ❤️

I think of the Xbox. A suped-up console derived from PC hardware.

 

11 hours ago, GameGirl420 said:

Interesting opinion,but Colecovision's version of Centipede can't even compare to the near perfect port of the 5200's.. 

That's a stretch. They're actually very comparable. I still give the 5200 version the edge because it has multi-color sprites and true analog Trak-Ball support (and even makes great use of the standard 5200 joystick!); the Coleco version looks cleaner but has mostly single-color sprites and IIRC the Roller Controller only works in joystick mode (which still beats the Coleco controller at least). Aside from that, the Coleco version is pretty great. 🙂 

 

3 hours ago, r_chase said:

...one of the things that killed it was that it didn't have direct compatibility with anything else, unlike the XEGS and the 7800.

It's always interesting to see that cited as a reason that the Atari 5200 didn't succeed. Not that it wasn't necessarily true; it does seem to have been a common criticism in its time. But fast forward a few years, and nobody cared that, for instance, the SNES wasn't backwards-compatible with the NES. Or that the Genesis couldn't play Master System games without an adapter. By the '90s it was expected/understood/accepted that the next generation of hardware would divorce itself from the last. Because why shouldn't it--it's supposed to be better than last-gen! And now we've kind of swung back the other way again, where next-gen systems need to be bleeding edge but also do everything else that came before them (which is a lot easier when it's no longer tethered to physical media).

 

2 hours ago, Giles N said:

Answer: ‘Yes’

But the in-box joysticks should’ve come with an equally honest label: ‘torture-stick’, ‘pain-stick’,’cripple-stick’

, ‘wrist-wrench-stick’ Yeah, that - the Super WWS-sticks.

 

Or just more plainly: the no-joy controller.

You're describing the ProLine joystick. 😜 Atari 5200 controllers are pretty comfortable IMO. Certainly compared to the Coleco (awkward joystick), Intellivision (uncomfortable fire buttons), and Atari ProLine (hello, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!).

 

14 minutes ago, zzip said:

I think another thing that hurt the 5200 was when Atari released the 600XL and 800XL shortly after.   The 600XL was as powerful as a 5200 but half the price and a full Atari computer to boot!

Eh, maybe, maybe not. If you were in the market for a computer, you wouldn't have bought the 5200 anyway. But if you just wanted something that played games, you could look at the 600XL and say "Close enough." 

 

[zzip]

2 minutes ago, BassGuitari said:

4 hours ago, zzip said:

I think another thing that hurt the 5200 was when Atari released the 600XL and 800XL shortly after.   The 600XL was as powerful as a 5200 but half the price and a full Atari computer to boot!

Eh, maybe, maybe not. If you were in the market for a computer, you wouldn't have bought the 5200 anyway. But if you just wanted something that played games, you could look at the 600XL and say "Close enough." 

In my case I was really interested in getting a 5200,  but was also interested in learning BASIC.   The 600XL came along at just the right time and I practically forgot the 5200 existed after that.

[Giles N]

10 minutes ago, BassGuitari said:

6 hours ago, Giles N said:

‘torture-stick’, ‘pain-stick’,’cripple-stick’

, ‘wrist-wrench-stick’ Yeah, that - the Super WWS-sticks.

 

Or just more plainly: the no-joy controller.

You're describing the ProLine joystick. 😜

…accurately…

[hwrd]

31 minutes ago, Stephen said:

The better question is what advantage of having both was there at all?  It was a stupid move all around.  The 400 was intended to be, and should have been, the "gaming" system, while the 800 was the "serious computing" system.  Releasing the 5200 at all made zero sense.

I always thought that they were applying "cereal marketing" to the video game industry.

With cereal, the practice was to have as many options as possible to get market share.

 

It didn't work, but looks like Sega repeated the practice unsuccessfully in the early/mid 90's with Game Gear, Master System, Genesis, Sega CD. 32X, Saturn, Pico.

[Giles N]

1 hour ago, hwrd said:

It didn't work, but looks like Sega repeated the practice unsuccessfully in the early/mid 90's with Game Gear, Master System, Genesis, Sega CD. 32X, Saturn, Pico.

There are some differences here:

 

Sega Master is a 80ies 3.gen 8-bit console, the competitor of NES and Atari 7800

 

Genesis is the 4.th gen. 16-bit follow up to the Sega Master and the Competitor of the SNES

 

The Saturn is a fully made 5th.gen console.

 

But the Sega-CD and Sega 32X are peripherals to Genesis, which were made in a landscape of indecision; an indecisiveness as to whether to move-on or to keep the Genesis the main-platform.

 

I believe Sega could potentially been around with their own hardware consoles, if they’d cut through - said ‘we make a new full-on 32 bit console, with backwards-compatibility to Genesis built-in or easily available with adapter.

Essentially just skip the Sega-CD and 32X and go straigth to Saturn.

 

But generations of consoles is just a part of reality (I hope I referenced/counted them somewhat correctly) The SMS had its time, The Genesis had its time etc. 

Being stuck in an in-between landscape isn’t a easy place to be.

[hwrd]

Yeah, I wasn't focusing on the hardware differences, and should have spelt that out better, sorry.

 

In both cases, and Sega's example is more extreme, you had a variety of "one company's" platforms on which software could be bought for concurrently.

I see the "cereal marketing" analogy possibly being a reason for attempting this.

 

(I bought all of the Sega consoles, so "ha ha!" on me.  😆)

[bigfriendly]

18 hours ago, ledzep said:

Ya, it is a bit of beating a dead horse because they're not that bad.  Any normal gamer could adapt to the non-centering aspect in about 5 minutes.  Any decent gamer could switch from Tron to Centipede to Defender in the arcades no problem so an analog stick that doesn't center should be trivial.

Ledzep, I'll go along that on certain games the non centering wasn't a big deal. I remember playing Space Dungeon with the coupler and the joysticks worked very well on that game. They worked fine with one of my favorite Atari 5200 games Star Raiders. But on games where you needed short precise movements or to start or stop in small increments they were terrible. I remember them causing numerous deaths while playing Miner2049. I recently played Miner2049 on the Altirra emulator with a good ole CX-40 and it was awesome. It would have been cool if they could have come up with an adapter that would somehow let you use a CX-40 and maybe also have a keypad option kind of like a nicer version of the 2600 Star Raiders gamepad.

[ledzep]

14 hours ago, bigfriendly said:

Ledzep, I'll go along that on certain games the non centering wasn't a big deal. I remember playing Space Dungeon with the coupler and the joysticks worked very well on that game. They worked fine with one of my favorite Atari 5200 games Star Raiders. But on games where you needed short precise movements or to start or stop in small increments they were terrible. I remember them causing numerous deaths while playing Miner2049. I recently played Miner2049 on the Altirra emulator with a good ole CX-40 and it was awesome. It would have been cool if they could have come up with an adapter that would somehow let you use a CX-40 and maybe also have a keypad option kind of like a nicer version of the 2600 Star Raiders gamepad.

 

Oh I agree that certain controller options would have made playing some games easier.  Easier is always easier, but that's why I brought up those arcade games, because the controls weren't that easy to deal with.  Made the games more of a challenge.  I think many times that's on purpose, some games want to be "real", meaning pretending you're operating some future alien tech or military station or something, so the controls are very specific and a chore to get the hang of when you're used to Space Invaders and Pac-Man.  Defender is annoying to control, so is Star Trek: SOS, Tron, Missile Command, a few others.  But that's also the fun of those games, to be able to play without thinking about the controls anymore once you get good at them.  The ultimate was, of course, those BattleTech Centers with the immersive pods that you would sit in and have to deal with 40 different switches and buttons, hahaaha.  But it was cool!  I can't imagine how boring arcades would have been back then with nothing but digital joystick versions of all those games.

 

So, so what that the analog controller wasn't the easiest option, live with it.  It worked fine, you (we) just needed to figure out the limits and short cuts to get better play.  I will agree that when your home controller doesn't match the arcade original (many times) then the console can take the blame and some games, as you say, were designed with self-centering digital joysticks which the 5200 never had.  I don't understand why Atari never offered that option after the initial release in the same way the Trak-ball came out.  Sell a digital joystick (but make it affordable), free money because many gamers would want one, sell an all-buttons Asteroids/Space Invaders controller, more free money, why not?  Gamers back then loved collecting everything for their systems, I was a big fan of the driving controllers for the 2600 even though they only mattered for one game (wish they'd made more games for them).

 

I will also agree that a legitimately shit controller is a terrible way to have to play video games.  The 5200 was a pretty good controller, comfortable, it just had those mushy fire buttons and no self-centering but the analog play was really good and accurate.  Any games that could take advantage of that extra really felt "right", like Star Raiders, compared to digital controls.  The Intellivision controller caused my thumbs physical pain and also had mushy buttons, and they were uncomfortable in your hand, too rectangular.  Never tried the 7800 controllers.