I got the FB1, Why do people trash it?

[Shawn]

Hey All,

 

My sister just got back from NYC and got me the "wrong" flashback. She got me the FB1 cause she doesn't know anything about video games, And you know what? It's great!! The games are good, not exact ATARI flavors, but very good. The controllers are fine even with my HUGE hands and over all I give it a 7.5/10.

 

This thing has got alot more heat than it deserved. I'm still gonna go and get the FB2 but I'm a pround owner of the FB1 none the less. The FB1 is OK and I stand to that, nice mix of games for sure. I totally enjoy it and for the $20 bucks it cost, well worth it.

 

Just My 2 Cents,

 

Shawn Sr.

[diggs130]

I got mine at a goodwill for 6.99,but thats not really the point.

 

 

 

 

With three kids and a wife,I just hope to get er plug in someday!

 

 

 

And thats cool your sis picked it up for you

 

 

 

 

HAPPY GAMEING TO YOU SIR~

[sidcrowe]

It's not authentic.

 

But...I think we've already had our stabs at this thing already

[jaybird3rd]

I think it's already gotten more than its fair share of criticism. Given the rushed nature of its design, I think it was a fairly impressive effort, and I especially like the controllers. They're a 100% improvement over Atari's original 7800 sticks, mostly because they're small enough to fit comfortably in your hand. I'm in the process of using them and a Sega Team Player adapter to build a four-joystick hub to connect to my emulation box for MAME and other emulators.

[Shawn]

I think the controllers are good yes. I was very surprised to see Planet Smashers on it also. With all the bashing the FB1 got I never even gave it a chance before it was gifted to me. My loss for waiting I can tell you that, NES on a chip be damned, this little thing is cool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still gonna go get a FB2 ASAP though....

[Feralstorm]

My problem with it is not the hardware/authenticity, but the surprisingly bad porting for several of the games.

 

super-flickery Desert Falcon

Physics-free Asteroids and Gravitar

Food Fight and Crystal Castles, where control and collision detection vary wildly

Battlezone, which comes close to unplayable.

 

Maybe the games improved a bit in later revisions (like they are apparently working on for FB2) and my Fb1 is just 'too early', but tht's what turned me off to the system (after I bought one)

[+remowilliams]

The hardware itself is fine, the sticks are pretty decent too.

 

It's the games that are a steaming pile of

[HP Atari King of Michigan]

My problem with it is not the hardware/authenticity, but the surprisingly bad porting for several of the games.

 

super-flickery Desert Falcon

Physics-free Asteroids and Gravitar

Food Fight and Crystal Castles, where control and collision detection vary wildly

Battlezone, which comes close to unplayable.

 

Maybe the games improved a bit in later revisions (like they are apparently working on for FB2) and my Fb1 is just 'too early', but tht's what turned me off to the system (after I bought one)

963609[/snapback]

 

You forgot to mention the fade in/out of some games like Breakout, which never happened on the cart. And the horrible port of Solaris (a personel favorite). Haunted House just looked cartoony at best. And Yars' Revenge? The FB1 didn't do it justice. I will agree that the hardware wasn't to blame, it was the NES-on-a-chip porting emulation.

[Shawn]

The asteroids I find to be a neat difference. Kinda cool where you go is where you stop.

[Pipercub]

I bought one just to pave the way for the FB2, let's face it, if the FB1 failed then there would be no FB2.

[Feralstorm]

The asteroids I find to be a neat difference. Kinda cool where you go is where you stop.

963735[/snapback]

Perhaps, but that's not Asteroids. That's ... ... Suicide Mission.

[Pipercub]

To see why the FB1 is trashed by many you need only to play the same game side by side or immediatly before. Take Solaris for example. When you fire the gun in the original you get a deep whooshing rumble, when you fire it in the FB1 you get a perky little tingling sound. The "problem" with the FB1 is that it uses a Nintendo NES on a chip and the NEW uses higher pitched cartoony sounds and not deep throaty sounds like the 2600. It also uses "tile sets" to assemble the image which is very diffrent than the 2600. The end result is that you have an NES with a cart full of hastlily coded games for emulation. IF you judge the FB1 by OEM Atari standards it comes out poorly. If you judge it for what it is the FB1 is really a nice little unit. I knew what it was and I bought it with that in mind and I was not dissapointed. It is what it is. I also bought it on the promise that it was a baseline product to pay the bills for a future 2600 legacy hardware compatable product. I was skeptical because when most companies float that claim the product you want never comes to be. But true to their word Atari did produce the real flashback unit using legacy compatable hardware and that is a very signifigant thing. I have bought over a half dozen FB2s for myself and gifts. I have one NIB that will stay that way, one I moded, one I play and one to make some sort of portable hack out of.

 

So look the FB1 is a nice little unit in my opinion when judged for what it is.

[jaybird3rd]

So look the FB1 is a nice little unit in my opinion when judged for what it is.

964599[/snapback]

I agree ... the FB1 team had a HUGE task on their hands when they were given the job of building a console in such a short period of time, and because this was Atari's first attempt at marketing such a device, they had to choose a hardware platform that they could use and sell at a competitive price. I personally liked the console's small form factor (which made it easy to carry around), and as I've said, the joysticks fixed a lot of the problems with the original 7800 ProLine controllers and gave you the added convenience of Pause/Select buttons on the controller.

 

The fact that it uses a NOAC chipset inside wasn't necessarily the problem for me, as it apparently was for so many others. If more time was available to do proper ports of the games, based on the original source code, the result could have been outstanding even if nothing else was changed about the system. In my opinion, the Jakks Atari Paddle unit is a great example of a NOAC-based system done right. It does not use Atari hardware, but the games inside it were painstakingly ported from the original source code. Both characteristics were obvious to me from the moment I first plugged it in. When I played Circus Atari, for example, I sensed that the sound effects were a little bit off in places, but I also recognized some of the strange little quirks in the movement of the jumping men and a few other glitches that told me the developers at Digital Eclipse worked off of the original source code. They could never have gotten it that close otherwise. I also thought the port of Arcade Warlords was outstanding.