IGN ranks the Atari 7800 over the Sega Master System! Do you agree?

[Lord_of_Sipan]

13 hours ago, GoldenWheels said:

 

 

But IMO even if released on time the 7800 backwards compatibility would have been meh as a selling feature, a big "who cares?". Released as late as it was? Almost seems comical to point to this as a real plus.

This makes a lot of sense. I think continuing to make 2600 games in the late 1980s was even dumber than the backwards compatibility of the 7800, which was a good idea if the system had come out in 1984 and an even better idea in 1983 when the idea came about so as to compete with the Coleco 2600 addon and the lack of backwards compatibility of the base 5200.

 

Imagine if rather than program stuff like Secret Quest on last gen hardware Tramel Atari had bothered properly supporting the 7800 before 1990? The system actually did not sell badly through 1986-1988. It outsold the Master System in the US during that period with a fairly negligible advertising budget.

 

I’m not some whacko who thinks the 7800 would have outsold the NES or anything but I think it could have been “second place” with something more like a 20% market share in the US when the 1990s dawned rather than what it really had.

 

As to the thread topic of whether I would rank it above the Master System I’d say I would do so as an American, but I wouldn’t do so as a historian. Then again I would probably put the RCA studio ii in the top 10 because of how many “video game firsts” it can claim in terms of more esoteric behind-the-scenes stuff.

[CapitanClassic]

2 hours ago, Lord_of_Sipan said:

I think continuing to make 2600 games in the late 1980s was even dumber than the backwards compatibility of the 7800

I am always surprised at the number of people who don't like money. I suppose if you don't like collecting $4 million+ in sales  each year from 1986-1990, for a likely one time investment of $50k fof software engineering time, you do you 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 02:40 AM by CapitanClassic

[Lord_of_Sipan]

4 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

I am always surprised at the number of people who don't like money. I suppose if you don't like collecting $4 million+ in sales  each year from 1986-1990, for a likely one time investment of $50k fof software engineering time, you do you 

 

 

I know the internal sales data, but how much were those sales hurting sales of 7800 games and more importantly 7800 hardware? The 2600 had a place as a budget console in the late 80s but that is the same market segment Atari was trying to position the 7800 in. If they had been releasing 7800 games with memory mappers and more sophisticated gameplay and graphics or if they had dropped the 7800 to go all-in on supporting the XEGS it wouldn’t have mattered but they were cannibalizing their own sales with those games at a cost to their reputation and long term success.

[+Defender_2600]

To think that the 2600 has cannabalized the sales of the 7800 would be like saying that NES cannabalized the sales of SNES and N64.

 

 

"In the early 1990s, gamers predicted that competition from technologically superior systems such as the 16-bit Sega Genesis would mean the immediate end of the NES's dominance. Instead, during the first year of Nintendo's successor console the Super Famicom (named Super Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan), the Famicom remained the second highest-selling video game in Japan, outselling the newer and more powerful NEC PC Engine and Sega Mega Drive by a wide margin.^[163] The console remained popular in Japan and North America until late 1993, when the demand for new NES software abruptly plummeted.^[163] The final licensed Famicom game released in Japan is Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV (Adventure Island IV), in North America is Wario's Woods, and in Europe is The Lion King in 1995.^[164] In the wake of ever decreasing sales and the lack of new games, Nintendo of America officially discontinued the NES by 1995.^[5][165] Nintendo produced new Famicom units in Japan until September 25, 2003,^[166] "

 

[MrBeefy]

I'm not a SMS fan, but I don't agree the 7800 is better. The only reason IMO to put it higher is if you weigh the 2600 backward compatability high.

[CapitanClassic]

@Lord_of_Sipan I was going to mention the fact that NES was still selling well into the SNES release, but @Defender_2600 already beat me to it. The same thing happens at the end of each console generation, games are still made and sold for the older console a couple years into the release of the new console. This is usually accompanied by a cheaper MSRP model by consolidating components (or dropping them) for the old console; PSOne, PS2 Slim, Xbox 360 E, Wii Mini Red.

 

These sales barely affect the sales of the new system / games (except that entertainment dollars aren’t infinite), because the people buying the older games are unlikely to be the same people who are early adopters of the new system.

That is why new console releases need a killer app. Without it, you don’t get the pragmatists to buy your product.

• Atari 2600 had Space Invaders
• NES had Super Mario Brothers
• Genesis had Sonic the Hedgehog
• PSX had Crash Bandicoot 
• Xbox had Halo

[RevEng]

1 hour ago, MrBeefy said:

I'm not a SMS fan, but I don't agree the 7800 is better. The only reason IMO to put it higher is if you weigh the 2600 backward compatability high.

That's really the heart of it though. There's no console in the same generation that's objectively "better" if you don't qualify exactly what you mean by "better". That's why these Vs. threads always devolve into two groups of people talking past each other, each engaged in their own mutual circle jerk.

[phoenixdownita]

21 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

@Lord_of_Sipan I was going to mention the fact that NES was still selling well into the SNES release, but @Defender_2600 already beat me to it. The same thing happens at the end of each console generation, games are still made and sold for the older console a couple years into the release of the new console. This is usually accompanied by a cheaper MSRP model by consolidating components (or dropping them) for the old console; PSOne, PS2 Slim, Xbox 360 E, Wii Mini Red.

 

These sales barely affect the sales of the new system / games (except that entertainment dollars aren’t infinite), because the people buying the older games are unlikely to be the same people who are early adopters of the new system.

That is why new console releases need a killer app. Without it, you don’t get the pragmatists to buy your product.

• Atari 2600 had Space Invaders
• NES had Super Mario Brothers
• Genesis had Sonic the Hedgehog
• PSX had Crash Bandicoot 
• Xbox had Halo

Are we sure Crash Bandicoot was the PSX killer app?

I remember wanting Ridge Racer, Tekken and Toshinden because Daytona and Virua Fighter were only on Saturn … thankfully those games were lots of fun.

I did enjoy Crash a lot, and remember Sony trying very hard to have it as their mascot but I can’t remember noticing if that was the system seller.

Edited Wednesday at 03:09 PM by phoenixdownita

[phoenixdownita]

[double post]

Edited Wednesday at 03:10 PM by phoenixdownita

[MrBeefy]

11 minutes ago, RevEng said:

That's really the heart of it though. There's no console in the same generation that's objectively "better" if you don't qualify exactly what you mean by "better". That's why these Vs. threads always devolve into two groups of people talking past each other, each engaged in their own mutual circle jerk.

Haha I went and watched the video and literally the only thing said about it was it's backwards compatibility. Their notable games listed were Ballblazer, Devious, and Joust. So I take all that to mean they rated higher from a hardware perspective of having two game libraries. Which IMO makes sense as the SMS has a better library.

7 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

Are we sure Crash Bandicoot was the PSX killer app?

I remember wanting Ridge Racer, Tekken and Toshinden because Daytona and Virua Fighter were only on Saturn … thankfully those games were lots of fun.

I did enjoy Crash a lot, and remember Sony trying very hard to have it as their mascot but I can’t remember noticing if that was the system seller.

I liked the Crash games a lot. I don't know if I would consider it a killer app, but it wasn't bad. I think that Gen benefited some just by being early 3d games. I think the Crash games do still hold up much better than most PS1 era.

[CapitanClassic]

15 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

Are we sure Crash Bandicoot ‘‘twas the PSX killer app?

I remember wanting Ridge Racer, Tekken and Toshinden because Daytona and Virua Fighter were only on Saturn … thankfully those games were lots of fun.

I did enjoy Crash a lot, and remember Sony trying very hard to have it as their mascot but I can’t remember noticing if that was the system seller.

You are likely correct. I was trying to think about pack-in games and when systems started selling really well. But my examples didn’t always match (Ie Halo wasn’t a packin…or was it with the Green Halo edition console (Halo 2?), SMB was a pack-in, but it wasn’t until Zelda, Mike Tyson’s PunchOut, Castlevania, Metroid releases that the NES sold well, etc). For PSX, I just went to Wikipedia for the best selling games and saw Crash sold the most copies, and it was exclusive to PSX.

 

The killer app for PSX was probably games that released in 1996, Tekken 2, Resident Evil, Twisted Metal 2. At launch Ridge Racer and Battle Arena Tonshinden likely sold a considerable amount of systems, (Air Combat too a week or so later), but the console didn’t take off in sales until a couple years in.

Edited Wednesday at 03:23 PM by CapitanClassic

[+GoldenWheels]

17 hours ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

I bought the 7800 in 1987 with paper route money specifically because it had backwards compatibility for my 30ish 2600 games. 

Nice! NES didn't attract/excite you at that point? Or the Atari love was just that strong?

 

(I am not even sure they were at comparable prices...that was my parents problem...but maybe the 7800 was far cheaper, too?)

[RevEng]

33 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

Haha I went and watched the video and literally the only thing said about it was it's backwards compatibility. Their notable games listed were Ballblazer, Devious, and Joust. So I take all that to mean they rated higher from a hardware perspective of having two game libraries. Which IMO makes sense as the SMS has a better library.

Your quote didn't reference the original article at all. You just said you didn't agree that that the 7800 was better, unless one takes backward compatibility into it. If you think the comments in this thread are keeping strictly to the points made in the video, I don't think we've been reading the same thread. It quickly devolved into another circle-jerk Vs. thread.

 

[phoenixdownita]

2 hours ago, RevEng said:

Your quote didn't reference the original article at all. You just said you didn't agree that that the 7800 was better, unless one takes backward compatibility into it. If you think the comments in this thread are keeping strictly to the points made in the video, I don't think we've been reading the same thread. It quickly devolved into another circle-jerk Vs. thread.

 

Why circle jerk?

By vote 7 out of 10 people chose the sms and that for sure meant including the sales numbers and the og library back then, first and foremost.

 

From the og library the sms looks superior in hw but we're told that's not true because we need to judge that only via modern homebrews and when that is in the picture thanks to a genius developer (his words not mine)  the 7800 can push hundreds of sprites and we have a rtype demo showing that. Fair on the hw side, maybe the sms has already shown its best.

 

I hope that kind of results is not for genius only, and in my opinion unless this wave of games with hundred of sprites materializes in the next decade, I can't honestly say to a fellow retro enthusiast "look these are the games you can play" by pointing to demos.

There's excellent homebrews on 7800, that was never questioned.

 

Finally on the back compat aspect it's... complex. Nintendo up to the Wii couldn't care less ... and dropped it again on the Switch.

Sony did care with the PS2, but the PS3 had a very early reversal and the PS4 was not back compat with PS3.

Sega had back compat Megadrive with Sms, but after that they also didn't care (Saturn, Dreamcast have no back compat).

Microsoft is a very different story, the 360 did not ship with back compat but was added later, same thing with the One and then Series, and it's somewhat fair for them to strive for it given their Windows OS back compat story stretches decades, it's in their DNA so to speak.

 

I personally think a 7800 without TIA/Riot but with Pokey or PSG or small FM chip would have been great, how much back compat helped sales I don't know ... from the home computer side back compat spelled bad for the SW dev side (c128 vs c64 with SW targeting the lower spec) but did wonder for business (IBM PC, but also Apple II).

 

I honestly have a 7800 so I don't have to have a 2600, but I only bought it a decade ago, I grew up with a 2600 but moved onto home computers (a c64) as that was the path in Europe... got back into consoles with the PlayStation, an Amiga (and then 486+svga+sb) served me very well until then.

Edited Wednesday at 06:23 PM by phoenixdownita

[RevEng]

1 hour ago, phoenixdownita said:

Why circle jerk?

By vote 7 out of 10 people chose the sms and that for sure meant including the sales numbers and the og library back then, first and foremost.

It's a circle jerk because "best" (or "superior" as the poll puts it) is a subjective thing. People pick a side to argue and point to things that support their supposition. Your positing that sales numbers and library being the primary metric is the same sort of subjective choice. If everybody agreed, these threads wouldn't go on forever, covering the same old ground ad nauseum.

 

Just so it's plainly clear, I'm not in-fact arguing the 7800 is the best or superior, from any perspective. All of these machines that are more or less from the same years have technical dimensions that they beat each other in.

[phoenixdownita]

1 hour ago, RevEng said:

It's a circle jerk because "best" (or "superior" as the poll puts it) is a subjective thing. People pick a side to argue point to things that support their supposition. Your positing that sales numbers and library being the primary metric is the same sort of subjective choice. If everybody agreed, these threads wouldn't go on forever, covering the same ground ad nauseum.

 

Just so it's plainly clear, I'm not in-fact arguing the 7800 is the best or superior, from any perspective. All of these machines that are more or less from the same years have technical dimensions that they beat the others in.

Given the IGN ranking, some mix of sales, of library and perceived industry impact has to be part of the conversation.

By sales alone the PS2 is clearly the winner, no contest, and yet NES is on top followed by 2600, the colecovision is before either sms and 7800, etc.. etc..

 

The op asked if we agreed on the relative placement of the 7800 vs sms, 70% disagrees.

As I stated, if you look at the og library the 7800 showed very little if anything that an sms cannot do better, sales of the sms were 8-10x without Brazil sales, and the sms selling a tad better in EU than even the NES did more for Sega than the 7800 did for Atari.

 

Does the above sound reasonable?

 

From a European point of view the 7800 barely existed (I saw in the shelves side by side with the 2600jr but knew no one owning it), in US total sales point to the sms also winning here so not sure what impact the 7800 had States side that the sms didn't.

 

 

PS: if the OP meant "superior" as in "raw powa" vs ranking (superior as simply placing on top) then yes this whole thread is useless, but the first post seems to indicate stupor at the relative ranking.

Edited Wednesday at 08:10 PM by phoenixdownita

[MrBeefy]

3 hours ago, RevEng said:

Your quote didn't reference the original article at all. You just said you didn't agree that that the 7800 was better, unless one takes backward compatibility into it. If you think the comments in this thread are keeping strictly to the points made in the video, I don't think we've been reading the same thread. It quickly devolved into another circle-jerk Vs. thread.

 

I didn't read the entire thread .

 

[RevEng]

1 hour ago, phoenixdownita said:

Does the above sound reasonable?

I've never seen anybody from 7800 community claim the commercial library was competitive with Nintendo or Sega. The reason 30% disagree in the poll, is the polled question was "Which is the superior 8-bit system?", not "which system had the best commercial library?". Even if OP's poll was "IGN ranks the Atari 7800 over the Sega Master System! Do you agree?" it doesn't mean voters are voting for which commercial library is the best.

 

The subjectivity posing as objectivity is how these Vs. threads work, and why they continue for hundreds of pages.

 

BTW, we have demos written in basic that move over a hundred sprites on the 7800. It's not some advance guru level stuff. Maria is basically a compositing blitter, where you setup your object pointers and it does the rest.

 

[Not in reply] For those of you following along at home, here are your Vs thread bingo squares:

• "The lack of commercial success of the 7800 shows the tech was inferior"
• "The reason the 7800 library is small, is the 7800 tech is too difficult to program." [offered always by a non-programmer]
• "Game X is better on console y, so console Y is better than 7800"
• "A playable demo of X isn't good enough. We need to see a completely finished version of X before I believe the 7800 tech is capable. Yes, i'm fully aware that X was developed by a dozen people - why do you ask?"
• "Sure, those games look good, but you can't judge a system by it's best looking games"
• "The 7800 can't have carts with mappers" [it does]
• "The mappers on console Y don't actually do anything impressive. The base console could do the same without the mapper." [sure, corporations pay to put tech in carts that does nothing]
• "The 7800 is a slightly upgraded 2600."

[Bakasama]

I guess you also say the 7800 is bad for not having the Pokey built in.

[Zoyous]

Uhh, I mean, I've been clear that I prefer the Master System but that I also think the 7800 is cool. But it's also kind of weird how the 7800 contingent seems to be so focused on specifically wanting to take the SMS down a notch and trying to be like "we were the rightful #2 of the 8-bitters". Take some angst out on the NES instead for a while. The fact is, IGN's editorial staff through the years have all been a bunch of shameless Nintendo fanboys, so a lot of what they've done including this stupid list has been low-grade trolling of every other fanbase.

50 minutes ago, RevEng said:

• "A playable demo of X isn't good enough. We need to see a completely finished version of X before I believe the 7800 tech is capable. Yes, i'm fully aware that X was developed by a dozen people - why do you ask?"

Are you referring to R-Type here? Because there may not be a team of a dozen people available to develop it (I find that many staffers unlikely for a 1987-88 8-bit title, I would speculate closer to 4 or 5) but as a homebrew effort in 2024 there are the advantages of literally decades of no-deadline development time and modern toolsets. Also, the 7800 homebrew scene seems pretty robust from what I've seen, so where there's a will there's a way.

[John Stamos Mullet]

6 hours ago, GoldenWheels said:

Nice! NES didn't attract/excite you at that point? Or the Atari love was just that strong?

 

(I am not even sure they were at comparable prices...that was my parents problem...but maybe the 7800 was far cheaper, too?)

The NES looked like hot garbage to me at the time. I was mid-late teens at that point and all the NES launch games were kidsy cartoony stuff. 
 

I eventually bought an SMS when it was clear Atari’s ability to deliver was done. Mostly because to my personal liking the Arcade ports on the SMS were WAY better looking than the NES.

 

to this day, I still don’t understand how the NES won on anything other than a ridiculous marketing budget and strong-arming 3rd party development companies into legally questionable exclusivity contracts. But then, I’m not really a fan of Anime themed anything, or RPGs. 

Edited Wednesday at 10:06 PM by John Stamos Mullet

[RevEng]

1 hour ago, Zoyous said:

Are you referring to R-Type here?

I guess it fits there but for the dev team size, but I was thinking about the time someone insisted the 7800 wasn't technically capable of running a Zelda type game engine. Then a demo was produced, at which point the goalposts moved to the tech proof needing to be a fully functional released clone... because sprites, collision detection, and enemy ai are unproven tech on the 7800. /s 

 

1 hour ago, Zoyous said:

But it's also kind of weird how the 7800 contingent seems to be so focused on specifically wanting to take the SMS down a notch and trying to be like "we were the rightful #2 of the 8-bitters".

Genuinely asking, which replies here do you think represent the 7800 contingent being focused on trying to take the SMS down a notch?

Going through the thread I'm seeing an awful lot of 7800 owners saying the SMS should have ranked ahead of it. Given IGN is a "news for gamers" type site, I'd have done the same.

[+Defender_2600]

51 minutes ago, Zoyous said:

Are you referring to R-Type here?

Not R-Type, but you can read about that on page 2. But please don't comment about it.

 

[Zoyous]

47 minutes ago, RevEng said:

I guess it fits there but for the dev team size, but I was thinking about the time someone insisted the 7800 wasn't technically capable of running a Zelda type game engine. Then a demo was produced, at which point the goalposts moved to the tech proof needing to be a fully functional released clone... because sprites, collision detection, and enemy ai are unproven tech on the 7800. /s 

 

Genuinely asking, which replies here do you think represent the 7800 contingent being focused on trying to take the SMS down a notch?

Going through the thread I'm seeing an awful lot of 7800 owners saying the SMS should have ranked ahead of it. Given IGN is a "news for gamers" type site, I'd have done the same.

47 minutes ago, Defender_2600 said:

Not R-Type, but you can read about that on page 2. But please don't comment about it.

 

Ah, okay, I see. Well admittedly my coding experience is only in high-level scripting, but from what I've seen I have no doubt that the 7800 could certainly handle a Zelda-type game. I do think that there are some technical considerations that sometimes only come to light when tackling the entire game, however a proof-of-concept demo is not something to merely be disregarded in absence of a completed game. It could very well lay important groundwork in the coming years now that there is a new commercial product that supports 7800 software. If the opportunity does arise, I hope it's in the form of a new IP though (to avoid a legal issue shutting it down).

As for the impression that I got, I must say it's because this isn't the first thread I've seen here that has pitted 7800 vs. SMS specifically... I think this is about the third time I've encountered such a discussion thread, however I haven't bookmarked them. One was specifically in regards to whether a Road Rash-style game could run on the 7800, and the other had to do with gathering old press quotes from Atari sales reps to assert that the 7800 actually outsold the SMS in North America.

 

What was done on both these systems in the past was achieved within the context of commercial pressures, the internal management philosophies and budgeting of that era (which we can judge with the benefit of hindsight), and the unlawful third party market manipulation of that other console manufacturer.

[RevEng]

3 hours ago, Zoyous said:

As for the impression that I got, I must say it's because this isn't the first thread I've seen here that has pitted 7800 vs. SMS specifically... I think this is about the third time I've encountered such a discussion thread, however I haven't bookmarked them. One was specifically in regards to whether a Road Rash-style game could run on the 7800, and the other had to do with gathering old press quotes from Atari sales reps to assert that the 7800 actually outsold the SMS in North America.

Yeah, I just don't see it personally. The Road Rash one is just asking if RoadRash can be done on the 7800, since the thread creator discovered that RR on the SMS existed. If anything, the 7800 gets unfairly bad-mouthed in that thread, not the SMS. (also the group doubt that the 7800 can deal with pre-scaled sprites for pseudo-3d is an incredibly bad take)

 

If you have a look generally at google search for "sms 7800" on atariage, there are a handful of unhinged Vs. threads spread over a few decades. Those are started mostly from people who are new to the community and they don't tend to stick around. I'd agree that we'd do better without having any of these posts, but they're not really representative of the active 7800 community either.

 

Your NA Sales thread is in those search results too, and the guy appears to have gotten roasted in the thread, and at some later date he appears to have been banned.