Better arcade versions?

[joeybastard]

After trying out Nukey's SI Deluxe(it's great. BTW), I got to wondering...

 

Why didn't Atari(and others for that matter) spend a little more time on getting these VCS versions closer to the arcade? Something as simple as making the SI bad guys look like the arcade would have added credibilty to our humble little VCS. Looking at all of the other arcade hacks AA members have done and I can't help but feel some of these original Atari guys were just lazy.

 

Thoughts?

[Lord Helmet]

I agree. I don't quite know what the deal is. Was it laziness, or just the programer trying to do their own thing. At the time there was no such thing as an arcade port, so no precident had been set.

 

Most of Atari's text and Pic label era arcade conversions look nothing like their arcade counterparts. Maybe Atari didn't think that arcade quality graphics were important if the game was fun.

 

IIRC it was third party's making games like Parker Bros. Frogger that started the trend towards arcade like graphics.

 

BTW Nukeys hacks really are pretty special. And they are way more fun than the original releases (take a look at 8K Pac-Man, Hack-Em, and the aformentioned SI Deluxe if you haven't yet) :wink:

[kisrael]

It really depends...sometimes there are ROM-size limitations, I'm not positive if they had access to the real hardware, I'm sure there were the usual time and budget constraints...

 

"GCC" did a bunch of kick-ass ports though. Stuff like Pole Position and Battlezone look pretty amazing, all things considered. (I think Battlezone is especially clever, giving up the vector look and sacrificing random playfield obstacles but making it 2 enemies at once)

[vdub_bobby]

I agree. I don't quite know what the deal is. Was it laziness, or just the programer trying to do their own thing. At the time there was no such thing as an arcade port, so no precident had been set.

 

Most of Atari's text and Pic label era arcade conversions look nothing like their arcade counterparts. Maybe Atari didn't think that arcade quality graphics were important if the game was fun.

 

IIRC it was third party's making games like Parker Bros. Frogger that started the trend towards arcade like graphics.

 

BTW Nukeys hacks really are pretty special. And they are way more fun than the original releases (take a look at 8K Pac-Man, Hack-Em, and the aformentioned SI Deluxe if you haven't yet) :wink:

In defense of the original coders:

a) 25 years worth of code, tricks, and examples to build on is a big advantage that those guys didn't have.

b) We have the Stella list (w/ archives), AtariAge forums, and countless tutorials/resources/etc easily available to anyone with internet access.

c) We have a large community of folks who will gladly take the time to improve/test/criticize your code.

d) We don't have a lot of time constraints. Or anybody telling us what to code. We can code whatever we want; leave a project for a year to work on something else, or nothing, then come back to it.

 

On the other hand....25 years ago, those guys had little or no code base to build on, time constraints, little community, few tools, and little documentation.

 

Of course, some of that stuff is just dreck, but in some cases you gotta cut them some slack.

[NovaXpress]

Since it would have been very easy to make more accurate versions for many early games (such as making the Space Invaders objects look anything like the original) we have to assume that this was done on purpose. Also notice that late era 2600 games did attempt to be accuarte as possible while translations of Atari arcade games were usually on target all along.

 

There are three possible reasons for this. . .

 

#1: Artistic vanity of the programmer. If they were stuck doing translations instead of their original ideas, they may have wanted to throw some of their own personality into the mix.

 

#2: Frustration of the programmer. "I can't figure out how to make a good Pac Man on this machine so screw it! I might as well make it look different too."

 

#3: (likely the real reason) From the first days, companies were free to rip off other games. Atari couldn't trademark the Space Invaders game mechanic, but they would have control over any original characters which they put into their translation of said game. So they could now sue over any unauthorized hacks or any competitors who copied their original graphics. There would be no need to alter the visuals for Atari games because they already owned those graphics.

 

You notice that in Xmas 82 this all changed. Competition from the Colecovision forced Atari to demand accurate translations, since that's what the customers had now come to expect. Even the early 5200 games repeated the inaccuracies of their PC parents. Atari's victory in the KC Munchkin suit may have also given them more confidence to protect their arcade licenses as strongly as they proctected their own properties.

[sku_u]

These early programmers also didn't have high speed Internet and powerful computers to work with. Back then, 4K of memory was a big deal. Now, it's a small word document.

[NovaXpress]

That doesn't explain why the look of the Space Invaders was changed or why the PacMan background was blue, or the Defender aliens looked totally different . . .

[Great Hierophant]

Back then, 4K of memory was a big deal. Now, it's a small word document.

 

A small Word document? Try a small plain Text document.

[Flack]

Back then, 4K of memory was a big deal. Now, it's a small word document.

 

A small Word document? Try a small plain Text document.

 

It's amazing to think those original games were smaller in size than most of our avatars.

[Gregory DG]

I think 2600 Space Invaders looks better than the arcade. The arcade was monochrome for pete's sake. The 2600 was color! And naturally Atari would want to exploit the color capabilities. Hence the yellow invaders, red bases, green blaster and purple football.

[Big Player]

purple football

[NE146]

Something as simple as making the SI bad guys look like the arcade would have added credibilty to our humble little VCS.  

 

You know that was exactly what I thought when I did that first Space Invaders hack.. i.e. 'there's no reason why this can't have the sprites of the arcade invaders'.. and lo and behold I found out how easy it was! That led to "Vector Asteroids" and thus ended my illustrious dabbling as a 2600 hacker. (I'll admit a little satisfaction that I did it on my own with no other known 2600 hacks in existance that I had known of, nor any known online Atari "community" that we have now (six years ago).. which of course, makes me a visionary! =D *cough* but I digress... ;-P

 

Anyway.. point is, it just proved memory had nothing to do with it and as NovaXpress says, the Invaders were simply drawn differently. they could have drawn them just like the arcade if they wanted to, but simply didn't. I personally think it's a variation of his reason #1. This was the 70's.. it was still early in the biz... And if it wasn't vanity, then it was probably an attitude of not necessarily bringing home a perfect looking port, but a home version of the game to do with what they wanted... adding variations, and altering sprites etc. It really was no big deal. Heck, playing a game as advanced as space invaders in the home was in and of itself.. the whole big deal.

 

I think 2600 Space Invaders looks better than the arcade.

 

Man you gotta be kidding me Greg SI part 2 which had a color version (and yes, as well as b&w) was well out before the 2600 version of SI came out. And yes it's your opinion, but Space Invaders the b&w arcade game's looks have SO much more to it than simply the "colors" I'm a huge fan of the 2600 version which occupied a lot of my early childhood.. but there simply is no comparison to a full fledged Taito Space Invaders display

[Nukey Shay]

I agree. I don't quite know what the deal is. Was it laziness, or just the programer trying to do their own thing. At the time there was no such thing as an arcade port, so no precident had been set.

 

Most of Atari's text and Pic label era arcade conversions look nothing like their arcade counterparts. Maybe Atari didn't think that arcade quality graphics were important if the game was fun.

 

IIRC it was third party's making games like Parker Bros. Frogger that started the trend towards arcade like graphics.

 

BTW Nukeys hacks really are pretty special. And they are way more fun than the original releases (take a look at 8K Pac-Man, Hack-Em, and the aformentioned SI Deluxe if you haven't yet) :wink:

In defense of the original coders:

a) 25 years worth of code, tricks, and examples to build on is a big advantage that those guys didn't have.

b) We have the Stella list (w/ archives), AtariAge forums, and countless tutorials/resources/etc easily available to anyone with internet access.

c) We have a large community of folks who will gladly take the time to improve/test/criticize your code.

d) We don't have a lot of time constraints. Or anybody telling us what to code. We can code whatever we want; leave a project for a year to work on something else, or nothing, then come back to it.

 

On the other hand....25 years ago, those guys had little or no code base to build on, time constraints, little community, few tools, and little documentation.

 

Of course, some of that stuff is just dreck, but in some cases you gotta cut them some slack.

 

You nailed most of the reasons pretty good. Development time is really a biggie. Those guys were usually allowed a few weeks to hammer out a working game...nothing like the time periods that some of us take just to hack an existing work (all of my hacks are older than a year, and I'm still changing them!). I still can't imagine the effort that must go into building something worthwhile from scratch. But they'd still have the advantage of over 2 decades of examples to draw ideas and samples from.

Not to mention the excellent feedback from you guys. WIP's were all pretty secretive (or some other company would try to rush it out the door first).

 

You also need to take into account that memory was a pretty expensive component (design an 8k game that could have fit in 4k and the company loses a lotta profit). This was one of the reasons that Atari's Pac-Man was the way that it was. Tod wanted 8k, the company refused, so he had to try to get his ideas into 4k (sprite multiplexing was supposedly the first aspect to get axed).

BTW those 3 mentioned were all 8k hacks of 4k games

 

And NovaXpress makes a pretty good point of a company wanting to put their own unique spin on the game...at least that is concrete evidence that the look of the game is their own (but true, not more than the display kernal itself). Why colors were different was theorized in another thread. "Black background? NO! This machine is in color...give it some."

[NovaXpress]

Why colors were different was theorized in another thread. "Black background? NO! This machine is in color...give it some."

I read a very old interview in which Tim Skelly (Star Castle, Reactor, etc) opind that a big part of video game magic was that black background, which allowed the other graphics to look brighter and more interesting by comparison.

[kisrael]

Why colors were different was theorized in another thread. "Black background? NO! This machine is in color...give it some."

I read a very old interview in which Tim Skelly (Star Castle, Reactor, etc) opind that a big part of video game magic was that black background, which allowed the other graphics to look brighter and more interesting by comparison.

That's an interesting thought. It certainly makes you focus on the objects.

 

Once backgrounds were doable, though, black backgrounds definately seemed a bit 2nd rate, like the programmer couldn't be bothered to make a real world to play around in.

[Lord Helmet]

Seems like on my Once Upon Atari DVD NB says something about producing carts for $2 and selling them for $40, which is a huge profit. If this is true, how much of a hit does Atari actually take by making the games 8k rather than 4? Of course, he could have been streaching the truth a bit.

[DEBRO]

Why didn't Atari(and others for that matter) spend a little more time on getting these VCS versions closer to the arcade?

On the Stella @ 20 video Rick Maurer stated he wanted the invaders to look more like the arcade. He wasn't an artist so he looked to the artists that were doing the box art for the games. No one ever came to help him so he did the best he could not being an artist.

 

Now I think Rob Fulop did the A8/5200 Space Invaders the way he did because he wanted to do that.

 

Marketing asked if he could make the invaders look more like the arcade and he made them that way to make marketing mad. I think I got this from Rob's site but I can't remember.

 

As vdub_bobby pointed out you have to remember these games were pretty much done by one person for a while. It wasn't until later they actually added graphic artists. Also if your boss is breathing down your neck to get something done...you concentrate on the meat or game play and do the art later. The consumer can play a game, they can only look at the graphics.

[kisrael]

I get the feeling most people never noticed the differences in the aliens. I certainly never thought about it 'til now.

[NE146]

I get the feeling most people never noticed the differences in the aliens. I certainly never thought about it  'til now.

 

Man that was my very first indellible impression of the game that the graphics were different (to the point I still remember that moment).. and I was what... 9 or 10?

 

...But then again I was a kid hopelessly addicted to the arcade game...begging my mom for quarters everywhere we went

[Stingray]

The arcade was monochrome for pete's sake. The 2600 was color!

 

I was actually unaware until much later that Space Invaders was monochrome until much later. Every one I saw as a kid had the color overlays.

 

-S

[Nukey Shay]

Seems like on my Once Upon Atari DVD NB says something about producing carts for $2 and selling them for $40, which is a huge profit. If this is true, how much of a hit does Atari actually take by making the games 8k rather than 4? Of course, he could have been streaching the truth a bit.

 

Take a penny, multiply it by the number of carts of Pac-Man produced (measured in millions of units), and you'll realise that even the smallest price difference has a huge effect on the bottom line. I dunno the unit cost difference between 4k and 8k roms back in 1981...but it's gotta be more than a penny

 

Not to mention the cost of the licence to produce a home version of the killer app of the year (that $2/unit production cost is nothing).

 

Besides all of that, Atari had just gotten into bankswitching (and Asteroids was already on the table)...so according to the story, an 8k Pac-Man was not possible without one of them being shelved for a while. And both had deadlines to meet due to advance sales (don't meet the deadline, and get socked from the vendors).

[neotokeo2001]

Why colors were different was theorized in another thread. "Black background? NO! This machine is in color...give it some."

I read a very old interview in which Tim Skelly (Star Castle, Reactor, etc) opind that a big part of video game magic was that black background, which allowed the other graphics to look brighter and more interesting by comparison.

 

It is amazing that games were released with some of the color schemes that were used. The games look much better with black backgrounds.

 

Case in point: Bowling

 

 

Hack (Cosmic Bowling) with Black Background:

 

 

And Boing!:

 

 

Hack (Boing 2004) with Black Background:

 

[Bryan]

These guys often didn't have much access to the real game unless it was an Atari title. I think since the industy was in its infancy, you didn't have many real expectations from the consumer either. If the game was remotely like the original, then people considered it to be the same.

 

When you're trying to assemble 6502 code on some obnoxious VAX mainframe or whatever, you don't tend to sweat the details either.

 

Atari finally pushed their "creative license" a bit too far when PacMan came out.

 

-Bry

[Stingray]

I think since the industy was in its infancy, you didn't have many real expectations from the consumer either. If the game was remotely like the original, then people considered it to be the same.

 

Speaking as someone who has been heavily into video games since the 70's I'd like to point out that we didn't consider it to be the same. It's not like we were morons and didn't notice the difference. Being able to play video games at home was such a novelty that close was good enough.

 

-S

[Bryan]

I think since the industy was in its infancy, you didn't have many real expectations from the consumer either. If the game was remotely like the original, then people considered it to be the same.

 

Speaking as someone who has been heavily into video games since the 70's I'd like to point out that we didn't consider it to be the same. It's not like we were morons and didn't notice the difference. Being able to play video games at home was such a novelty that close was good enough.

 

-S

 

I didn't say people were morons. But I remember people saying 2600 SI was just like the arcade version too. People also used to say that Edison's Wax Phonograph was indistinguishable from a live performance. It's all perspective.

 

-Bry