How did the 7800 hold up???

[Joey Kay]

Oops...

 

Yeah... the "Slam-Pam" was the other way around.

 

And speaking of goodies planned for the 7800, from my understanding, the original batch of "Robotron 2084" carts were manufactured in 1984 and ready for shipment, and apparently relabelled by Atari in 1986. (I have one of these carts - it has the circa 1984 springload mechanism covering the rom connectors)

 

Atari also promised a dual controller holder for the game (according to the 84 Atari catalogue)- I wonder if any of these are in existance today?

 

Cheers!

[Gunstar]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jet Boot Jack:

NES Ballblazer shot...

 

sTeVE

---

 

What the h*ll is that!?!? is that an actual in-game shot? If it is, that is absolutely HORRID. The game has been destroyed. Like Sheryl Crow's remake of Guns-n-Roses sweet child!!!

[Jetboot Jack]

Isuspect the NES shot is NOT ingame, but a wrapper screen of some type, I could find no in-game shots, nor a ROM that would work on my emulators to get one from

 

sTeVE

[King Atari]

That's the thing with NES ROMS, it always takes me an hour to find one that will actually download. And if it won't work, by then I just give up. What's up with this?

[ubersaurus]

You don't want to see the NES ballblazer. It's choppy, horrible, and just not worth it.

[King Atari]

Okay, I thought this topic was dead, and I don't want to read through 6 pages again, so instead of giving me technical info, tell me, if the 7800 was used to its limits, would it have surpassed both the NES and SMS? Or, would it have the same power as an SMS?

[Viso]

It sounds like the SMS had the greatest CPU performance, but with graphics intensive (for the time) games, that doesn't mean much by itself. It also looks like the 7800 should be able to compete very well with the NES on graphics, but it was sufficiently odd to prevent this from being obvious.

[Lastblade]

Hehe, very interesting read.

 

Just looking at the games, the NES seems to be more "powerful", maybe not in terms of raw processing power, but the thing is, some of the games are just phenomenal and makes me think of 7800 can handle it (like Super Mario 3).

 

Not saying 7800 sux, b/c I bought that OVER a NES/SMS so many years ago. I have been an Atari fan so I thought they would come out with some great games... Xevious really wowed me and was worth the wait (I bought Joust and Food Fight with the system). Still, the NES version later on seems to be alittle cleaner and crisper.

 

In any case, I am still amazed by the a little 2600 game called Solaris... Anyone else?

[DracIsBack]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lastblade:

Hehe, very interesting read.

 

Just looking at the games, the NES seems to be more "powerful", maybe not in terms of raw processing power, but the thing is, some of the games are just phenomenal and makes me think of 7800 can handle it (like Super Mario 3).

 

Not saying 7800 sux, b/c I bought that OVER a NES/SMS so many years ago. I have been an Atari fan so I thought they would come out with some great games... Xevious really wowed me and was worth the wait (I bought Joust and Food Fight with the system). Still, the NES version later on seems to be alittle cleaner and crisper.

 

In any case, I am still amazed by the a little 2600 game called Solaris... Anyone else?

---

 

 

People place too much emphasis on "processing power". The NES and 7800 both use 6502 chips so there isn't much difference. The 7800 has more colours, the NES has better sound.

 

What the NES had that the 7800 had over the 7800 is something that makes technical specs meaningless:

 

* Big-time developers.

* Developers who stuck with the system and figured how to push the system more and more with fifth, sixth, seventh generations games.

* Big-name licenses.

* The support of manufacturers who weren't cheap (like the Tramiels) and willing to invest in game development, cartridge enhancements (ie. MMC3 chips) and memory for the games themvelves.

 

People like to say that Atari screwed themselves over by not taking on the NES when they had the chance. I have a feeling they would have screwed the NES almost as badly as they wrecked the 7800.

 

Technical specs have little to do with it. The 7800 could play NES style games. When the Tramiels clicked in to the fact that they had to PAY FOR THESE TYPES OF GAMES TO BE CREATED, all was lost already. SCRAPYARD dog might have made a difference in 1986, but by 1990 it was too late.

[KAZ]

So if the "tramiels" let programmers make cartridges bigger (ram, rom, whatever)...

 

what was the biggest game then? It terms of ram size.

 

And if you take the biggest made Atari 7800 cartridge, would any Nintendo cartridges still be bigger than that?

 

Thanks, it will be important to me once I start collecting for the Atari 7800 to know what the bigger carts are.

[DracIsBack]

quote:

---

Originally posted by KAZ:

So if the "tramiels" let programmers make cartridges bigger (ram, rom, whatever)...

 

what was the biggest game then? It terms of ram size.

 

And if you take the biggest made Atari 7800 cartridge, would any Nintendo cartridges still be bigger than that?

 

Thanks, it will be important to me once I start collecting for the Atari 7800 to know what the bigger carts are.

---

 

The initial Atari 7800 games were 16k and 32K. Atari's releases in 1987 featured a few 48K games. In 1988, they began released 128K titles. IIRC, Dark Chambers, Impossible Mission, Summer Games and Winter Games were the first 128K games. Other titles that Atari made in that size were Scrapyard Dog, Midnight Mutants, Fatal Run, Commando, Ikari Warriors, Xenophobe, Jinks, Ninja Golf and Basketbrawl. These are what I call the NES-Style titles. While they don't match the best NES games in terms of "fun factor", they do look similar to games found on the NES and SMS. They (in some cases) feature scrolling levels, cut scenes, music, bosses etc. There are also a lot of 7800 titles that are apparently 128K but you wonder what they did with the space. RealSports Baseball is a good example. The graphics walked off the 2600, there's only a couple of screens in the game and it sucks. The 32K Pete Rose Baseball has much more to it.

 

The largest 7800 games are Alien Brigade and Crossbow. Both are 144K, through Crossbow kinda wastes the space on memory intensive graphics screens that - well - suck.

 

As for Nintendo, they released 128K games early in the NES's life and should be credited for redefining gaming with the titles they introduced. Around 1987, they released the MMC2 which allowed them to squeeze 256K into their carts. Super Mario 3 had 384K, thanks to the MMC 3 chip. IIRC, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game was 640K and there were Japanese releases when the NES was finally disappearing that topped 1 megabit.

 

I have no doubt in my mind that the 7800 suffered because the Tramiels were cheap and Warner was short-sighted. Warner assumed that people would want to play Pac-Man and low-memory Commodore 64 games forever and made an initial 7800 library out of "better Pac-Man" and computer ports. Nintendo kicked them in the ass.

 

That was problem number one.

 

Problem number two was that the Tramiels dusted off the 7800 and assumed that games developed around 1984 would hold up against these new Japanese super-games. By the time they clued in and freed the coffers enough to develop games that looked like what Nintendo had when they *FIRST* hit the market, Nintendo owned the market.

 

Like I said, had the Tramiels started with something like SCRAPYARD DOG when they relaunched the 7800 and then developed their own equivilant of the MMC, things may have been better for the 7800. Of course, that would also assume that the Tramiels were willing to shell out the bucks to develop complex games that made use of the MMC chips!

 

in the 7800 tech docs from 1987, they flat out say that using onboard RAM in cartridges was really expensive and generally not acceptable.

 

Cheap, cheap, cheap!

[Gunstar]

I pretty much agree with what you've said, but we have to remember WHY they handled it half-ass like they did; When they bought Atari, it was during the video game crash and they bought Atari to turn it into another Commodore or Apple-a COMPUTER company. They had NO intentions of EVER releasing any more consoles until they did see Nintendo making money hand over fist and decided (very half-heartedly I might add) to get back into the video game business and get the crumbs, hence, 2 year old technology and games, re-releasing the old 2600 and then the XEGS fiasco to try and get some life back into the 8-bit, but this was all OLD technology and they barely advertised and any 3rd party developers or even in-house developers were given like two cents to rub together as far as budgets go...Everything centered around their 16-bit computer line as far as real budgets and development and they were even CHEAP with that...The first NEW technology was in '89 with the LYNX and Atari finally started putting out cutting edge stuff, both console and computer, but it was all far too late and the Jaguar was the last ditch effort of a family of screw-ups with a half-hearted dream of succeeding...they spread themselves TOO thin over the years trying to support a bunch of computer and console platforms without really focusing on any one and excelling with it. They tried to be a BIG electronics company with a bunch of product lines on a shoe-string budget. If they had first of all either decided to stay only computer or console (either would have been fine) and then devoted ALL resources to ONE product line, like Nintendo did at first, they may have succeeded. Or at least wait until ONE product line was actually a hit and then pour resources into research and development of another, i.e. go with just the ST line, make it a hit, then release the LYNX with the proper funding it needed-same with the Jag. Or, gamble and resurrect the video game industry themselves by releasing the 7800 as originally scheduled, with tons of support and research&development off the bat, they could have wiped Nintendo off the map before they even got started because Atari WAS, at one time, a house hold name second only to Coca-Cola. Nintendo was a small software company at that time that was no where near as well known (by a million miles). By the time the Jaguar was released, it was the exact opposite, the younger generations didn't know Atari, they knew Nintendo, and Nintendo became the house hold name as Atari was forgotten and at best when remembered, mocked. Only us thirty somethings (for the most part) remembered Atari and bought their new products (and even most of us had moved on).

[DracIsBack]

Gunstar:

 

I agree with your points. Hindsight is always 20 20. The 7800 wasn't really old technology. The 7800 was developed in 1983-4. So was the NES (in Japan) and the SMS (as the Mark 3).Nintendo released the system in Japan first, Tramiel left the 7800 on the shelf.

 

I do think the Tramiels bunged themselved up by not quickly adapting. They released the 7800 in 1986. It wasn't until 1988 when they started using 1 megabit cartridges and until 1989/90 when they started really releasing NES style games. As soon as they saw Nintendo making all that cash in 1986, I think they should have focused on making games like that for the 7800 rather than telling developers to be cheap until 1988-9.

[Nukey Shay]

re: largest NES game--

Aside from the multicarts (which top out at 3mb), Yong Zhe Dou E Long-Dragon Quest 7, Metal Slader Glory, Fong Shen Bang-Zhu Lu Zhi Zhan, and Dragon Warrior 4 are the 1mb ones.

 

BTW I have both versions of the Ballblazer rom, and it appears that the earlier one had a dirty header (but the emulator can be set to ignore this). The game is definately not as smooth as the Atari computer version.

[AtariKen64]

i see it as this

 

 

 

there are clear lines that divide the history of videogames such as the time before and after pac-man and before and after cd games

 

and of course before and after the market crash of 1984 of course one millimeter to the to the right of that would be the magical marker of before and after super mario brothers, which at one ponit or another everyone has been caught saying it was "the best game ever" or something to that extent. it was hard to escape this juggurnaut from 1985-1990. it IS an awesome game and back then it was like how we look at some of those ps 2 and x box games when they were first revealed.

 

to me atari could've had a dozen of these style of games in the pipeline , i doubt it would have mattered. many people bought the NES just for this game, and unless you had a 7800 first you probably didnt get to own both.

 

I had neighbors kids who were much younger than me and around 1990 they said they hoped they got a nintendo for xmas or b-day (who cares!) . i said. hey what about a sega or turbo grafx, those are 16 bit mindblowing games.

 

all they could say was it didnt have super mario 1!!! a game thats 5 years old at that point. and i think that the nes selling for 90$ until 1993 is proof people just kept buying it basically for one game (at leats at first)

 

so unless atari bought out the nes thered have been no chance...... you say atari would have fudged it up? i say no. like most deals i heard of atari would have likely only retained home gaming rights leaving nintendo free to release "VS super mario bros" in 1985. the clamor for a home game would have smacked some sense in to the late 80s atari and it would have come out, though with the focus on computers at that time, maybe on that!

 

 

also, lets not forget nintendos propaganda machine! everythign from fruit snacks to underwear had mario on it! (hmm fuji boxers..? ah another thread!) plus the kid down the street whos dad would only let him play nintedo 1 hour aday and you had to pray hed mess up so youd get a nice long turn , just made everyone itch for nintendo. even i did, i wanted SMB 3 like a mo-fo and did get it in 2/90 when i first came out. while nintendo would mail you catologues (i even got DRAGON WARRIOR for free once!) where you would give them MORE money to it, i cant remeber one atari commercial from 1987-1990 and not again until 93. true word of mouth is good for true gamers but wont convince legions of youngsters with rich parents.

 

the brainwashing went down to the cartridge, how many times has someone told you nes games were "better" because the "game paks" were huge and atari's were small? youll try and rebut by saying 89%

of the game is just space the chip is only an inch big. then they will say " ya but its got more pins so its got 'better graphics' " i swear nintendo must have subliminaly flashed idiotic phrase of "better graphics" that into EVERYTHING on tv. im just glad when genesis screamed across america that argument was a plentiful as a hover board.

 

and yes after 84 atari was mocked. it was a that was then this is now mentality. and its true in a way it is dumb to have 1976 technology in a 1987 market price breaks and budget models work in the PC world not the 'box on top 'the tv " world! alot of times people woudl argue that atari's (2600, but to an uneducated mine 2600 was all that existed) games were just "all squares" while NES had smooth (?) graphics. when the lynx came out , i took it to school to show it superiority over the B/W game boy. the shock when i heard people say " ya its in color but game boy is better because it has an actual cartridge and not a card! WHAT THE *&^%@ !! that actually happened!! :shock: :shock: :shock: and then the jaguar, when i brought mine home i showed my brother the 64 bit superiority and when he saw cybermorph all he coudl say was honest to god! "it still a bunch of squares!"

 

so conclusion any processor is capable , just depends how you use it, if you use it and how far you take it the specs are just an on paper idea , its more about the whole experience even beyond the games at times. just my take at an angle i dont think was fully touched yet...

 

sigh im tired now, tune in tomorrow for my predictions of the future (for real. its gona be in off topic!)

 

ak64

 

 

ps after this anychance i can write for someone (free of course! )