intvgene Posted January 30, 2004 Share Posted January 30, 2004 I just re-claimed a Supercharger finally. I had one when I was a kid, and I loved it. Now, that I have got one again, I am just loving it. I don't plan on modding it, but I think that there are some really awesome Starpath games for it. I love Dragonstomper, Phaser Patrol and the real Frogger for sure. I just keep wondering what might have happened if this thing was released by Atari, or a bigger company and really had a big marketing push behind it. Who knows what kind of market penetration it might have gotten, and what might have come of some of the later releases, even if by other companies. Any thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjk7382 Posted January 30, 2004 Share Posted January 30, 2004 I got my modified one playing Frostbite right now. And I love playing Thomas's 1k mini games thru it. I like it because I can play nearly 300 games thru it I would say getting it modified is something to look into. You can still play all the normal games. It would have been nice to seen more games come out for it, but I enjoy the ones that did come out. We can't change histroy now.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Why would Atari release a 2600 ehnancement when they can just repackage their 400 PC without a keyboard, give it shitty joysticks, and sell a whole new system? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveW Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Because they could release one Supercharger cartridge, and then charge a lot of money for cheaply manufactured cassette games for the 2600. They'd sell games for a little less than what they normally retailed for, and instead of an expensive cart, just put it on a cheap $.49 tape. People get cool multi-load games, and Atari rakes in the cash. Plus making games with more stuff to do and deeper gameplay means more kids would stick with the 2600 instead of going to a competitor. Or worse, a competitor's computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 That's some bad logic. SC games were selling for $15 or so, not the $40 that real carts could get. Unlike the PC market, the home console market is full of idiot kids who will inevitably destroy their cassettes so parents ain't paying full price for them. By the time the SC came out, the Colecovision was already hitting the market. The SC can't compete with that. It is still just a 2600 with all the limitations thereof. The days of the 4K systems were over and done with by 1982. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JB Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Why would Atari release a 2600 ehnancement when they can just repackage their 400 PC without a keyboard, give it shitty joysticks, and sell a whole new system?Or they could do the same thing, only give it otherwise nice controllers with a reliability problem and sell it as a new system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 How the 5200 could have been saved is a topic all its own, I really want to know who blew it at Atari. Were the marketing guys idiots for demanding rehashed games or were the programmers just not coming up with anything else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 How the 5200 could have been saved is a topic all its own, I really want to know who blew it at Atari. Were the marketing guys idiots for demanding rehashed games or were the programmers just not coming up with anything else? Were the what doing who Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 You shot who in the what now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JB Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 How the 5200 could have been saved is a topic all its own, I really want to know who blew it at Atari. Were the marketing guys idiots for demanding rehashed games or were the programmers just not coming up with anything else?IT can all be somed up in onec ase study...Missile Command. 17 buttons, one missile base. Enough said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Oh the laziness, the laziness. Atari failed to respect the existence of video game geeks (us oldsters were the very first). They thought their 400/800 rehashes would impress people, but the kids who really liked games already knew what was up and bought Colecovisions or C-64s. Atari would have been better off just dropping the price of the 400 and making that a mass consumer item if the had nothing better to offer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 You shot who in the what now? I find your avatar offensive. Please remove that offensive grey image, kay, thanks I Hope you know I'm just kidding around with my last few posts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 You should have seen the image I wanted to post! A scandalous shade of magenta. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindog Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 By the time the SC came out, the Colecovision was already hitting the market. The SC can't compete with that. It is still just a 2600 with all the limitations thereof. Well, RAM on cartridges wasn't really a common thing when the SC came out, so providing 6K of RAM (even if only 2K was realistically usable) arguably lifted some of those limitations. Besides, I had the Colecovision version of Frogger, for example, and like the Supercharger version a lot better (it's the only game I can directly compare.) The Parker version was okay, but not like this: (Starpath on left, CV on right...) They're implemented differently, but I don't think you could really say the Supercharger version is "worse". It certainly is more fun (for me, anyway.) Add to that the fact that 2600 coders had learned more tricks in 5 years than any Colecovision programmer would until opcode came along and I think a "super 2600" with more RAM (and hey, maybe just a few extra players in the TIA somehow) would have been a lot better an idea than the 5200, whether tape-based or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Could the Supercharger have managed Smurf? Colecovision had problems too, pretty backgrounds but typically solid-color sprites. The 5200 was a better system, but Coleco knew how to market it (for the first year). Donkey Kong and titles like Smurf would have made an impact bigger than the SC. But seeing as it turned out, Atari would have been just as well off to have done so, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolt Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 I read the topic post and immediately started daydreaming about a Gemini-like clone machine with a tape recorder built in for the Starpath games. Given that Coleco made Gemini and that KidVid tape system for the Berenstein Bears/Smurf games, if anyone could have done it, it'd be Coleco. Come to think of it, since they knocked off so many products (Mattel Football, the 2600, etc), I'm almost surprised that they didn't go ahead and make one. It would be a terrible business decision, but that too would be right up their alley. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 since they knocked off so many products (Mattel Football, the 2600, etc), I'm almost surprised that they didn't go ahead and make one. Have you met ADAM? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liveinabin Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 As anyone who owned a home computer in the 80s will know, the big problem when releasing games on tape is piracy. I can't even begin to think of what the bought copy to pirated copy ratio was but, for instance - the biggest game on the ZX Spectrum was the great 'Jetset Willy'. Now, everyone I knew had a Spectrum and everyone had that game, but I've only ever seen ONE original copy. Now that's at least a 200-1 ratio, possibly more. Atari were wise to stick with cartridges (wow, I said 'Atari' and 'wise' in the same sentence! Novel ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Player Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 How the 5200 could have been saved is a topic all its own, I really want to know who blew it at Atari. Were the marketing guys idiots for demanding rehashed games or were the programmers just not coming up with anything else? You could put 7800 in place of 5200 and the above sentences would still hold true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Damn straight, there was something wrong with Atari's way of thinking and we've never figured out whose fault it really is. It's tempting to blame the marketers because so many Atari programmers did much better for themselves after switching companies. Although it seems to me that Atari released whatever they bad, good or bad, so the programmers themselves could have had the foresight to prepare more original games for tyhe new systems. Perhaps they were told exactly what to make though, who knows about this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 If Atari never released the 5200, I wouldn't be visiting this site right now, so I guess I have to disagree with your line of reasoning. Atari's biggest mistake was continuing to market the 2600 AFTER the 5200 was released. Had they concentrated on the 5200 more than they did, the system would have done much better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 The 2600 never would have had such a long lifespan had Atari handled the 400/800 properly. The 400/800 was supposed to be the upgrade path from the 2600, but Warner Atari bungled it. If you take concepts from the Supercharger and David Crane's DPC chip and add them together you pretty much come up with the Atari 400. The 400 design "solved" the main limitations of the 2600 by adding more RAM and the Antic chip to automate screen and sprite maintenance. For Atari to release a Supercharger-like device in-house would invalidate their heir-apparent, the 400. As it worked out, they nearly DID release such a beast in the form of the Graduate computer add-on. The Supercharger is a wonderful piece of hardware and it really does open the doors for types of game kernels that just can't be done with ROM alone. But it came out because of the 2600's dominance in the marketplace and the lack of a viable upgrade path from Atari itself. As it turned out, Atari did come up with the Superchip design to add at least SOME RAM to certain games. Overall, the Superchip (and Cuttle Cart) are more useful devices today than they might have seemed back then because of their ability to load ROM images from a computer. Had Starpath published the encoding specifications for the Supercharger in an effort to "open source" the system, it might have created an interesting early homebrew scene. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hanglyman Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 If Atari never released the 5200, I wouldn't be visiting this site right now, so I guess I have to disagree with your line of reasoning. Atari's biggest mistake was continuing to market the 2600 AFTER the 5200 was released. Had they concentrated on the 5200 more than they did, the system would have done much better. Agreed, even better if they had the 7800 a year earlier and dropped the 2600 they may have been able to give the NES a run for it's money, as it was nintendo's success spelled the end of Atari's reign as king of the consoles. They definately dropped the ball on more than one occasion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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