Wasted space in some Atari 7800 games?

[DracIsBack]

It's well known that one of the reasons the 7800 tanked (besides the biggie of Atari doing a gawd-awful marketing job ... possibly the worst of any Atari system0 was the fact that the initial batch of 7800 games were old, short games that were taken out of the early 1980s arcades and off of systems like the Atari computers, the commodore 64 and the Apple II.

 

Early games were small, compared to NES titles: 16K, 32K, sometime 48K. Meanwhile, Nintendo was putting out side-scrolling titles like Super Mario. The Tramiels were cheap and didn't want to invest the money in the extra RAM or in developing memory management chips like Nintendo did to enhance NES games.

 

Around 1988, they began to release larger games, perhaps finally seeing the light after Nintendo had dominated the market. The ability to download ROMs has shown the sizes of many 7800 games. Some of the 128K and 144K titles aren't surprising: SCRAPYARD DOG, MIDNIGHT MUTANTS, COMMANDO, IKARI WARRIORS, BASKETBRAWL, FATAL RUN, DARK CHAMBERS, ALIEN BRIGADE, JINKS, MAT MANIA CHALLENGE, MEAN 18 GOLF and XENOPHOBE, all made good use of the space and exhibited the qualities found in games on other systems of the day: decent graphics, side-scrolling levels, passwords, intermissions, multiple levels, bonus screens and even voice synthesis. Those games seemed to make decent use of the space.

 

But then there are the other 7800 titles that leave you wondering if Atari was on crack and where the memory went?

 

These are 128K titles too:

* Barnyard Blaster

* Crack'ed

* Touchdown Football

* Real Sports Baseball

 

The last left me blown away. Where did the memory get used? The graphics are horrid and look like they walked off the Intellevision. There's only one screen with one view of the field. There's no scrolling whatsover. The sprites are tiny. Pete Rose Baseball is a quarter of the size and has much more to it!

 

The biggest shocker for me is CROSSBOW. It is one of the largest 7800 titles at 144K. It has only static screens, no music and some blocky looking backgrounds. I thought initially the gun code might have something to do with it but then I realized ALIEN BRIGADE is also 144K.

 

Let's compare:

 

ALIEN BRIGADE: 5 scrolling levels

CROSSBOW: static playfields

ALIEN BRIGADE: decent music (for the 78000

CROSSBOW: No music.

ALIEN BRIGADE: large, detailed characters

CROSSBOW: large, crappily designed characters

ALIEN BRIGADE: multiple ending screens

CROSSBOW: repeats forever

 

Where did the memory go?

[+Mitch]

quote:

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Real Sports Baseball

The last left me blown away. Where did the memory get used?

---

 

RS Baseball is actually only 64k. The emulator ROM size is doubled to make it work with the MESS emulator.

 

Mitch

 

http:/atari7800.atari.org

[moycon]

Ummm I dunno. Never thought about it. Why would Crossbow have scrolling screens on the 7800 when the arcade didn't and it was based on the arcade game? I actually kinda like the job the 7800 does in translating the game Crossbow.

[Inky]

Having played both 26 and 78 Crossbow (On an emulator) I far prefer the 26 version. The 78 seemed to be too crowded for my tastes.

[DracIsBack]

quote:

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Originally posted by moycon:

Ummm I dunno. Never thought about it. Why would Crossbow have scrolling screens on the 7800 when the arcade didn't and it was based on the arcade game? I actually kinda like the job the 7800 does in translating the game Crossbow.

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My question was more: why does Crossbow take up so much space? There seems to be little to it compared to other 7800 titles.

[+Propane13]

Barnyard Blaster, Crossbow, and Cracked essentially Bitmap the whole screen, instead of in chunks. These bitmaps are stored as full screen images, and are what take up the majority of the memory space.

 

-John K. Harvey