Atari's Biggest Mistake

[dark willow]

I think there were two major probolems. Firstly, and overwhelmingly marketing. Atari never got ir gihts from the mid 80's onwards. The launh of the Jagur, Lynx and Falcon were all pathetic. The Jaguar was technically great, but the competition didn't even have to bat an eyelid.

 

Secondly was the handling of the Falcon. Reyling the ST's case was stupid. by that time everyone wanting expandable systems. Their attempt to address that with the 040 Falcon wqs good, but was cancelled, when it was practcially ready to ship.

[Goochman]

Mindfield,

 

Though on paper the Atari was faster than the C64, you only got that speed difference when Antic was turned off - Otherwise the machines were close in real world speed - As for bitmapping the Atari excelled, but generally was not throwing as much graphics data as the C64(lower rez with color on the Atari).

 

Though only 16 colors the average person would tell you the C64 had more colors than the Atari since all 16 could be on the screen at once easily.

 

Personally I was never impressed with the SID outside of it sounding like the Casio keyboards at Sears - I liked engine noises from the Pokey

[www.atarimania.com]

Actually, the C64 was far more limited in many areas than the 8-bit Atari.

 

Graphically, for example, the 8-bit Atari had more colours (128 vs. 16), a faster processor (1.79Mhz vs. 1.02MHz), much faster stock speed disk drives (19,200 baud vs. 2400 baud), and various other bits that were just generally superior technologically.  Where the C64 had it over Atari was its famous SID chip which, while having only 3 voices, could utilize realtime ADSR envelopes, and in the fact that it had hardware sprites.  (The Atari had player/missile graphics, but players and missiles could only be one colour, which is where the biggest graphical differences can be seen in many games.)

 

If you want an example of where the Atari excelled in pure bitmap graphics, compare Alternate Reality on both machines.  You'll see where the advantages of having a fully programmable display list come in very handy.

As much as I love the A8 line, it just isn't true to say the C64 has inferior hardware.

 

If you want to compare games, you should choose real arcade-like titles from the 1990-1994 era, not 1984 software with still graphics. Unfortunately, there is nothing like Mayhem in Monsterland, Turrican, Enforcer... on the A8 because of the limitations of the hardware and that's a fact. Of course, when there is no market, you can't push a machine to the limits but I have seen very few killer games on the Atari while they are plentiful on the C64.

 

I also think the powerful BASIC (at time of release) of the A8 line was a problem. It took something like three years to eventually discover what the Atari could do and that coincides with the release of the C64, which got very good games about a year later (ironically, a lot were Atari ports!). From 1979 to 1982, most of what was sold was written in BASIC and pretty bad quality! Maybe it has to do with developers not wanting to take risks or the 400-800 being released TOO early on (1980-1 could have been a wiser choice).

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[kisrael]

I had an Atari 800XL...and I begged and begged 'til finally I got a C=64. More important than what a system can theoretically do is what the developoers actually do with it, and C=64 had it all over the Atari...I remember seeing that in the retail stores. After a while, the only Atari stuff was the B side of flippy disks!

 

I remember playing Mail Order Monsters on C=64, then seeing it on Atari, and it seemed very sluggish.

 

Plus, I NEVER saw anything on the Atari that was as polished as C=64 Skate or Die...I thought that game looked like it was on an Amiga! And the NES version blew chunks too (but again, going back to the idea that it's what developers DO with it, C=64 didn't have Metroid...)

 

The BASIC issue was interesting. Atari let you get into a lot of graphics and sound programming (anyone ever see the Dr. C. Wacko's guides? Brilliaint) but the variable and string handline was miserable. I finall got Simon's Basic for C=64 which made up for it. But neither machine was as hacking friendly as the Apple II...sometimes I wonder if I would be a better developer if I had had an Apple rather than the other 2 8-bits...

[Classic Pac]

I lived through Atari's era of mistake after mistake after mistake, there is any old saying a day late and a dollar short. That was Atari in a nutshell. I personally believe some of the rumours that came out of Atari at the time. That drugs were a big issue or how do you explain Atari's biggest blunder and it has nothing to do with any of their systems. It has to do with Tetris, you see at the time the arcade machines, the PC versions and the NES cart Atari only owned the US rights. You know I read an article about Tetris' creator and I will not even attempt to type his name here. He actually is quoted as saying "I can not still help but wonder why Atari corp. never went after the world wide rights to my game as Nintendo latter did. Atari never made even 1 offer. I am sure I would of sold it for less, than Nintendo finally paid for it" I maybe paraprasing here. But that is the exact quote as I remember it.

[mos6507]

The biggest mistake was Nolan selling to Time Warner. He has since said he'd wished he'd taken some time off instead to deal with his burnout, rather than selling.

 

Atari never would have been able to do consumer electronics without the sale. They were starting from a just in time business model. They didn't have the cash reserves to mass produce and market consumer hardware.

 

It was a necessary evil.

 

Given the sale, it would have been nice if Nolan could have somehow influenced the company more as chairman rather than being a disgruntled figurehead but he was not able to work with the powers that be, hence his exit, which led to the critical brain-drain of the activision guys and Jay Miner's team.

[mos6507]

Tramiel makes it quite clear to the Amiga staff, he wants Amiga and the chipset, but not the staff, the deal is rejected...

 

 

Curt

 

This is so sad. The opportunity to bring Jay and crew back should have been seen as a huge coup.

 

If there is one thing Atari needed at that time it was hardware engineers.

[mos6507]

 

As much as I love the A8 line, it just isn't true to say the C64 has inferior hardware.

 

If you want to compare games, you should choose real arcade-like titles from the 1990-1994 era, not 1984 software with still graphics. Unfortunately, there is nothing like Mayhem in Monsterland, Turrican, Enforcer... on the A8 because of the limitations of the hardware and that's a fact. Of course, when there is no market, you can't push a machine to the limits but I have seen very few killer games on the Atari while they are plentiful on the C64.

 

 

You also can't do a game like Archon on the C64 without using cheap dithering for the greyscale gradations because the C64 has only a few levels of grey vs. the 8-bit having 8 (normally).

 

Ballblazer is another example where the 8-bit is better. And you'll never see anything like a rainbow background on a C=64. It just doesn't have the palette. The C=64 has that day-glo fixed palette that other platforms like the Apple II had which to my eyes is annoying.

 

Each platform has its strengths. Depending on what is important to you, that will determine the better platform.

 

 

I also think the powerful BASIC (at time of release) of the A8 line was a problem.

 

Only if you look at it from a game perspective rather than an overall platform. People did interface with computers through BASIC quite a bit in those days. Having to do all sound and gfx through pokes and peeks was a pain on the C=64.

 

What the A8 lacked was a good floating point ROM, which is why math is so slow.

[zenassem]

I know this is the 2600 board, so I appoligize for spending so much time here discussing the A8 computer line. But I have some questions? (IF someone would prefer to PM me the answer rather than tying up this discussion, that would be fine)

 

"The Reason For My Conusion"

================================

Ok, I know about:

 

1) All the modes and GTIA/Antic detaills

2) Familiar with much of the DL, and DLI capabilities (ie. mixed modes, Horiz. & Vert. Scrolling.

3) The color pallette

 

-Even C64 titlescreens always looked better than Atari if the game was released on both systems . I think that the ease of putting all 16 colors on the screen at once had alot to do with it.

 

-Max colors can be misleading. I would rather have 16 good colors that I can "EASILY" place on the same screen at a decent resolution, than to have a choice of 256 but only 5 on the screen at the same time (ie. Antic #4). Now I also know about the GTIA mode that allows 16 colors 1 luminance, but can anyone tell me how the resolution compares to the 64 graphics mode?

 

- I also know that there are techniques that can be pulled of to display more colors (I actually have a Compute! program that displays all 256) but (to me) it's very complex, unintuitive, and difficult to pull off. And there's the Artifacting techniques. But these are much to cumbersome to utilize fo a bitmap title screen.

===========

 

So here are my questions:

A) Which computer "can" display the best quality (quality = acceptable resoultion + ammount of colors)?

 

If the answer is Atari...

B) Then was it just that is wasn't "easy" for programmers to puill off? Why do all the bitmap graphics look better on C64 (both title Screens and In-Game)?

 

Last Question

C) Can the Atari (Regardless of how hard it is too pull off) produce the (SAME or BETTER) graphics that we see on the C64?

[mos6507]

I think that I will disagree with you here. The A8 machines had an exceedingly long period of market viability (1979-1992,

 

I stopped seeing Atari 8-bit disk software in the stores around 1985-86 or so. I don't even think the 130XE got a lot of retail distribution when it came out either. I got mine via mail-order.

 

Aside from carts on the shelves during the XEGS era, the 8-bit was largely lost to retail after the crash.

 

Meanwhile, you still continued to see C=64 software in the stores, or even Apple II stuff.

 

People kept using Ataris and bought and sold product via mailorder for many years, enough for Atari to continue "support" until 1992, but it was at a very low level and not visible to the mainstream.

 

Also, the A8 magazines were shifting focus to the ST or dropping out entirely by the late 80s.

 

If not for BBSs, local user groups, or being on snail mailing lists from vendors like B&C Computervision you'd never know the A8 was still a live platform in the last few years of its official "support".

[MegaManFan]

The single biggest mistake has to be that Atari could have owned distribution of the Famicom in the United States. Hell for all we know if they had taken the deal Atari would still be #1 today. Instead they pissed it all away in a petty squabble over Donkey Kong, Nintendo decided they could launch it on their own, and the rest is history.

[www.atarimania.com]

You also can't do a game like Archon on the C64 without using cheap dithering for the greyscale gradations because the C64 has only a few levels of grey vs. the 8-bit having 8 (normally).

 

Ballblazer is another example where the 8-bit is better. And you'll never see anything like a rainbow background on a C=64. It just doesn't have the palette. The C=64 has that day-glo fixed palette that other platforms like the Apple II had which to my eyes is annoying.

True, when it comes to hues, you can't beat the A8 but games were evolving from simple single-screen contests to programs with scrolling and more use of sprites. The A8 can handle that but the C64 is clearly superior and, with a dwindling market share, the Atari didn't have a chance as there were no more developers willing to push the hardware anyway.

 

Ballblazer was to be an Atari exclusive using a lot of the A8's strengths. The C64 game was just a port (programmed by K-Byte) so, clearly, the A8 version is better. Unfortunately, nobody was being innovative on the A8 after the C64 took the #1 spot. That leaves us with few programs which really took advantage of what the A8 could really do.

 

Only if you look at it from a game perspective rather than an overall platform. People did interface with computers through BASIC quite a bit in those days. Having to do all sound and gfx through pokes and peeks was a pain on the C=64.

That's why a lot more people coded in assembler on the C64 without using BASIC. You have A LOT of better-looking games on the C64 (not all innovative but that's not necessarily what sells) than on the Atari. Also, while the techniques were gradually improving on the C64, most Atari developers were still developing crappy games, often in BASIC! In the end, games are what count the most.

 

If not for BBSs, local user groups, or being on snail mailing lists from vendors like B&C Computervision you'd never know the A8 was still a live platform in the last few years of its official "support".

The A8 lasted longer in Europe, though it was always a distant fourth or fifth in the UK arena. Still, for one game on the Atari, you had about 30-40 on the C64 or Spectrum. The A8 line sold great in Germany and the Netherlands but there wasn't a software boom like in the UK (mostly initiated by the Spectrum). User groups were very popular though.

 

What really saved the A8 was the huge success in Poland. Thanks to the growing demand and rising demo scene, there was a huge technological leap in software development! Support is everything!

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[www.atarimania.com]

I hate to be a downer but...

 

A) Which computer "can" display the best quality (quality = acceptable resoultion + ammount of colors)?

Are we talking games or demos? For quality arcade games, the C64 wins IMO (better sprites, less memory usage for good use of color...). For pictures, I have to say C64 as well. As for demos, it's another story but it depends what you want to do :wink:

 

B) Then was it just that is wasn't "easy" for programmers to puill off? Why do all the bitmap graphics look better on C64 (both title Screens and In-Game)?

A combination of all this I believe... Also laziness, lack of experienced techniques, no motivation or support, deadlines...

 

C) Can the Atari (Regardless of how hard it is too pull off) produce the (SAME or BETTER) graphics that we see on the C64?

Maybe but the A8 doesn't have the same strengths so it's difficult to say. Don't expect to see Mayhem in Monsterland on the Atari though...

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[Atari Charles]

"Bringing computers to the masses, not to the classes" Jack Tramiel

 

He made some bug mistakes at Atari, but all in all he was and still is a pretty colourful character. I think I read once that he got royally pissed of at Nintendo for something(at a trade show) and lost out at being the sole distributor for Nintendo. Or something along those lines.

 

Atari's biggest mistake is what it is doing today. By alienating part of their consumer base with cease and dessist letter, they alienate the people who are going to buy their new Atari gear.

[sidcrowe]

Atari's biggest mistake is what it is doing today

 

That would be assuming it had a viable future. Personally, I consider its current conduct "the final insult."

[Shannon]

If M$ sticks with PC based architecture for the XBox you may see Nintendo following Segas path - creating proprietary consoles costs big $$$$ - I would presume Sony will have to move in that same direction in the future cause once the PC and consoles are sharing the same codebase it will cost too much $$$ to justify ports across multiple proprietary systems.  Just my $0.02 of course

 

I'm not sure I see evidence of that. The X-Box is significantly more expensive than the Gamecube. In any case, all 3 companies - Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, have announced they'll be using IBM chips next time around - x86 is out. It does seem like the shared code base helped Microsoft get lots of games, but the XBox was not a practical machine and really was only designed to get Microsoft's foot in the door. In fact, I think the X-Box is the modern day 5200. The difference is Microsoft can afford to lose the money and they engineered it properly.

 

I don't think Sony can match Microsoft on the shared code base even if they wanted to. The PC code base is inherently written for WinAPI - something only microsoft can provide. I do expect all the game companies will be using standard graphics chips from now on. The only difference is they probably will get low-wattage chips and the low-level programming specs for it.

 

This just makes me wonder if the tactic of losing money on the hardware and making money on the software was such a good idea to begin with. Being that creating a new console is so cost consuming to the point where companies start using similar technology.

[8BIT 1337]

I've always thought the fact that they kept releasing the same games on each platform (as has been mentioned before) was a *huge* mistake.

 

When the Compact Disc Player was introduced, I didn't run out and replace all my existing cassette's with CDs - so why would I spend *more* money (games costing more than CDs) replacing games like Asteroids that offer nothing extra in terms of game play (using two buttons instead of one and 'down' isn't 'extra' IMO).

[kisrael]

I've always thought the fact that they kept releasing the same games on each platform (as has been mentioned before) was a *huge* mistake.

Though if the alternative was stuff like "Ninja Golf"....

 

(I know some people like it, but it's more of a wacky premise than a good game.)

[nester]

Wow, I wasn't expecting such a big response. I think one of the things that makes Atari so interesting is everything that went wrong. I think that's one of the reasons atari seems to be the most popular with collectors. It it was any other system that had such a high percentage of crap nobody would pay much attention, but they are the giants who fell in classic Citizen Kane style. I would definatly say that hubris was a major part in their demise. They said that the developers weren't important and wanted to carry the entire empire on the brand name itself. Of course, they still managed to keep the 2600 alive untill 1990, and that is impressive. Only the original Playstation and Game Boy can compete with that.

[kisrael]

They said that the developers weren't important and wanted to carry the entire empire on the brand name itself. Of course, they still managed to keep the 2600 alive untill 1990,

Hmmm...how "corporate" was Atari when the "no programmer recognition" rule was put into place? I know they were REALLY freewheeling in the 70s KEE games days, but that principle seems to reek of men in suits, and if so, that's really sad. But understandable; a lot of really smart clever talented people guess big trends wrong; if Raskin had his way the early Mac would be much different, basically a very spiffy and effecient word processor. Hell, even then the "information appliance" idea led them to resist memory upgrades...

 

Nice topic, btw, it's produced some nice discussion, both on topic, and then some great rambles on the side...

[Shannon]

Wow, I wasn't expecting such a big response.

 

 

I was... This topic has been covered so many times here I was sure it would take off..

[Mindfield]

Mindfield,

 

Though on paper the Atari was faster than the C64, you only got that speed difference when Antic was turned off - Otherwise the machines were close in real world speed - As for bitmapping the Atari excelled, but generally was not throwing as much graphics data as the C64(lower rez with color on the Atari).

 

True - 320x200 on the C64 in 16 colours was indeed nice, and while the 8-bit Atari couldn't achieve that (its best defense was mode 8 with artifacting, which changed between PAL and NTSC, was only possible due to the way television signals worked (artifacting didn't work on monitors), and was a fixed magenta-blue/magenta-green combination, though more were possible with odd line angles) it was still more capable in many other respects -- see below.

 

Though only 16 colors the average person would tell you the C64 had more colors than the Atari since all 16 could be on the screen at once easily.

 

True -- but then the Atari's display list made it very easy to create and mix custom graphics modes for some funky effects. Tie that in with display list interrupts and it was easily possible to create screens with as many as 128 colours at once. Even if it's in lower resolution, such effects were far more noticeable than simply having a higher resolution. For that matter, it's possible to use DLIs to alter the colour pallette at specific scan lines to create the effect of multiple colours in 320x192.

 

Personally I was never impressed with the SID outside of it sounding like the Casio keyboards at Sears - I liked engine noises from the Pokey

 

I liked SID only for its synthy sound -- which frankly is what it was all about. Pokey did have three advantages though: One more voice, pure tones, and noise generation. It was also possible to combine two voices to exponentially increase the range of tone (from 256 values to 65,536 values.)

[kisrael]

I liked SID only for its synthy sound -- which frankly is what it was all about.  Pokey did have three advantages though: One more voice, pure tones, and noise generation.  It was also possible to combine two voices to exponentially increase the range of tone (from 256 values to 65,536 values.)

You know, that makes me think...I still have no intution, really, how like any sound or set of sounds can be sampled as a single WAVeform...

[Curt Vendel]

Much more had to do with Atari's marketing... they spent far too much time pushing the game aspects of the systems over their power as a programming, telecom, business and more serious minded systems...

 

They never truly exploited the marketing of how the system was a true consumer device, with the universal SIO interface to allow all components to play right in, no worrying about ribbon cables, whick does "this" go into, is it in upside-down and so forth...

 

Their computer line just wasn't marketed properly and with the internal "sabotage" that most Atari Home Computer employee's have expressed towards the head of the Home Computer Division - Roger Baderscher over his decision to can almost all new and professional development of hardware for Atari Computers to further the line, all the while designing his Mindset Computer System within Atari and then leaving and starting Mindset Corp, many former Atari employee's say he purposely held the computer line back for nearly 2 years and the result was the 82' release of the 1200XL which was a complete disaster.

 

One thing Baderscher's team did do right, was the creation of the "Kits" such as the Programmer, Educator, Entertainer and Communicator... those were excellent idea's, just pick and choose what you wanted to do with your computer and it was all in one box... but again, this was never properly marketed.

 

 

 

Curt

[Mortal Kombat Fanboy]

E.T.http://pbskids.org/dontbuyit/buyingsmart/h...tvideogame.html