2600 in Japan

[MetalSlime23]

Does anyone here know if the Atari 2600 was ever launched in Japan?

 

I'm wondering if it had the same type of sucess the NES did when it launched in the US.

[CPUWIZ]

Does anyone here know if the Atari 2600 was ever launched in Japan?

 

I'm wondering if it had the same type of sucess the NES did when it launched in the US.

1031985[/snapback]

 

Yep, this is the Japanese version, didn't have much success.

 

[ATARIPITBULL]

Here is a picture of Yars' Revenge game box.

 

[HP Atari King of Michigan]

It was called the Atari 2800. This version was released stateside also as the Sears Video Arcade II

[Curt Vendel]

It had little success in Japan, however in the US, Sear had a lot of success with selling it:

 

 

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/cons...2800/A2800.html

 

 

 

 

Curt

 

Does anyone here know if the Atari 2600 was ever launched in Japan?

 

I'm wondering if it had the same type of sucess the NES did when it launched in the US.

[Atarimania]

Hi,

 

Japanese Atari 2800 flyer

[ATARIPITBULL]

Hi,

 

Japanese Atari 2800 flyer

 

Hey, didn't you get that flyer from me!!

 

:!:

[Atariboy2600]

By the look of the release date the 2800 came out in 83, same time as Nintendo Famicom came out. Hummmmmm wonder why the 2800 never stand a chance

 

[Foxsolo2000]

Does anyone know why it was released so late in Japan? Seems strange that it took so long to be offered there when it was already a massive seller everywhere else?

[spacecadet]

Does anyone know why it was released so late in Japan? Seems strange that it took so long to be offered there when it was already a massive seller everywhere else?

 

You may as well ask why the Coleco Vision, Intellivision and practically every other American console was never offered in Japan (edit: yeah, I know, the Intellivision was eventually sold by Bandai. I'm actually not sure about the CV, now that I think about it). This was a different era. American consoles were sold in America (and sometimes Europe), Japanese consoles were sold in Japan. If American consoles were ever brought to Japan, it was always very late and they were always niche products.

 

I couldn't give you the minutes from every meeting Atari had about a potential Japanese release, but just generally speaking, they really had no reason to even consider Japan as a potential market until they'd basically conquered the US, and to a lesser extent, Europe (which was a much smaller market then). My understanding is they actually released the 2800 in Japan after the Famicom had started to gain traction, specifically to try to tap into what they saw as a burgeoning market. From what I've read, they thought the success of the Famicom meant there was a market for all things video game related, but they were wrong. Japan has specific tastes; they don't just buy anything that's out there. Microsoft is learning this lesson again with the Xbox and Xbox 360.

Edited March 13, 2006 by spacecadet

[Foxsolo2000]

So what was the system of choice before the Famicom or was Japan slow to embrace home consoles as a whole?

[MetalSlime23]

From what I know about Japan, the Famicom was the first real home system released. Before then Nintendo teamed up with Mistubishi and made games systems called the Color TV Game 6 and Color TV Game 15. These were released around the same time the 2600 was an onsession in the US.

 

http://nindb.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ctv/g6.shtml

 

http://nindb.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ctv/g15.shtml

 

These are pictures and some info about the systems.

[Atarimania]

Hey, didn't you get that flyer from me!!

 

:!:

 

Yes

[Marc Oberhäuser]

You may also check my small data base: Atari 2800

[froggger2]

Atarimania and Marc, Thanks for sharing your pictures of Atari 2800 items.

[Rom Hunter]

Here's an interesting one:

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...VERSION_ID=8389

 

[+SpiceWare]

So can read 4 seperate joysticks, or are the 4 ports just to support 4 paddle games like Warlords?

[Spirantho]

So can read 4 seperate joysticks, or are the 4 ports just to support 4 paddle games like Warlords?

 

See in the picture above? You've got a button labeled "Joystick" and a button labeled "Paddle". What you can't see is the're a red light under the red stripe above the buttons. When the console is turned on, one of these lights is already lit. If it's in joystick mode, the controller acts as a joystick, so if you turn the paddle (on these controllers the handle _is_ a paddle) you get paddle movement but you need to move the stick right to fire. When you have it set to paddle, the fire button acts as fire instead. The four controller ports are so you can use the 2800's controllers for games like Warlords. I believe the second port is just a limited port which maps the controller's paddle to the wires the second paddle uses on normal controllers. Of course you can also use normal paddles.

 

So no, you can't have four seperate joysticks plugged in, unless you're only using them as paddles.

[HP Atari King of Michigan]

Hi,

 

Japanese Atari 2800 flyer

 

Anyone have 15,000 Yen for a 2800?!?

Edited August 6, 2006 by HP Atari King of Michigan

[Bruce Tomlin]

So can read 4 seperate joysticks, or are the 4 ports just to support 4 paddle games like Warlords?

Presuming it's built like the Sears model, the paddle inputs were rewired to the four ports. The third and fourth ports are for paddle games only. If you plug in regular paddles, only one of each pair will work.

[spacecadet]

So what was the system of choice before the Famicom or was Japan slow to embrace home consoles as a whole?

 

It's not that they were slow to embrace home consoles. Nintendo had dedicated systems (that were pretty popular) going back to 1975. The Famicom was maybe the first really popular mass-market programmable home system, but it's not as if the Japanese as a whole were slow to embrace electronic gaming - they just seemed not to care as much about programmable systems as we did.

 

Also, Japan has historically been way more interested in handhelds than we are, for a variety of obvious reasons (more mass transportation, smaller living spaces, etc.). Nintendo's Game & Watches were extremely popular in Japan before the Famicom and I don't think those were the first handhelds there either.

 

But the two markets did form more or less independently of each other. Hiroshi Yamauchi was influenced by Atari and what he saw happening in the United States when he was designing the Famicom, but in terms of Japanese companies directly selling products in America or American companies selling products in Japan, there was very little of that before 1985. There was some licensing going on in the early 1980's (the Bandai Intellivision, Atari's versions of Pac-Man and Space Invaders, Coleco's Donkey Kong, etc.), but there wasn't this idea that these were the same market that would support the same products.

 

The two markets converged after the crash when Japanese companies (well, really Nintendo) saw that there was now a big gaping hole that they could fill after all the American companies pulled out of the American market. So the Japanese industry basically took over the American industry. So now when you look back, it's hard to remember that there was even a time when the two industries were pretty much totally separate, but they were. Like a lot of other things relating to the industry, the crash of 1983/1984 is the point in the timeline where things changed.

 

The interesting thing now is that they are starting to diverge again. I think that's more that our tastes are changing than theirs are, though. If you look at the games we're playing now vs. what we were playing in 1985-1986, there's a huge difference in tone and genre - not just graphics. They're still playing pretty much the same type of stuff they always have across the Pacific.

[Van Halbgott]

I read something about the 2600 already being distributed in Japan by a Japanese company called Epoch?

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600#Console_models
 

Wikipedia talks about it while discussing the Japanese 2800 model.

[harmonyFM]

Nolan Bushnell tried to start Atari Japan in the early 1970’s when Atari was not terribly well organized. It was another one of his boondoggles that was papered over by success elsewhere in the company. Atari Japan ended up being sold to Namco for less than a million dollars and they handled everything from there. I think it’s less that they were an American company and more so that Atari’s executives were too high to really follow through on a workable international business strategy.

[Verdant]

I'm in Japan, and I've only recently developed a real interest in the 2600. What little 2600/2800 material can be found here sells for heavily inflated prices. Unfortunately, eBay's inflated standard international shipping charges from the US/elsewhere also kills most eBay auctions for me. The console seems hardly to have made a blip on the radar here, back in the day. In Japanese game history books and websites, its entire coverage is often limited to one or two paragraphs and a single, small picture in the "also-ran" section.

 

On 3/14/2006 at 12:11 AM, Foxsolo2000 said:

So what was the system of choice before the Famicom or was Japan slow to embrace home consoles as a whole?

I don't think that Japan was particularly slow to embrace home consoles, but the initial market seems to have been very fractured and also still competing with fixed-game systems, much like the early North American market. From my research and secondhand shop tours, I get the impression that the Epoch Cassette Vision was perhaps the most prominent early true cartridge system here, and it was followed up by the Super Cassette Vision, which managed to gain a little traction even though it released about a year after the Famicom. Old Famicom stuff is available everywhere, but I do see bits and pieces of Super Cassette Vision stuff semi-regularly as well.