the 7800 vs nintendo nes (could the 7800 have done better?)

[8th lutz]

Yes. If the xe wasn't made and the 2600 game production was cut off sooner. The xe was released after the 7800 and hurt it sales and the 2600 should've been stopped by 1988. Rador lock would've been a great game on 7800 and would've been deeper then a 2600 game. It would've been like afterburner.

[frogstar_robot]

Perhaps bringing Nintendo into it clouds the issue and causes the wrong question to be asked. I think the right question is "Could the 7800 have done better?" No matter what the Tramiels did, Nintendo would have had the top spot in that round of the console wars.

 

It didn't have to mean the 7800 being the market failure that it was. With judicious marketing, letting developers use some things like extra memory or other enhancements on the carts, more aggressive licensing of franchises, the 7800 could have been a strong #2 or #3. Being a strong #3 hasn't exactly been bad for Nintendo these past few years.

 

Again without making it a fanboi vs. rant, the 7800 could have been pushed harder technically than it was and more exploration of various sorts of supercarts could have been done. More impressive games were possible and homebrewers have only begun to scratch the surface of how far a 7800 can be truly pushed.

 

Thing is the 7800 was just one of a long string of marketing failures. The 5200 as such should have never been. The XE Game System is what the 5200 should have been but it came 5 years too late; incidentally what became the A8 chipset was originally intended to be used in the follow on to the 2600 but those plans were changed to compete with Apple and Commodore the "home computer" market. The mishandling of the A8 family tree is another rant altogether. A "1982 XEGS" probably would have only had 32 or even 16 k of ram but that would have left it compatible with most of the 8-bit cartridge library. Some sort of built-in "Translator" could have taken care of those too. The ST and Falcon as well as the Jaguar were also handled badly. The Tramiels Just Didn't Get It on a number of levels so the 7800 was doomed too.

[ZylonBane]

History says that repackaging a home computer as a game console pretty much never works. Ironically, the 5200 seems to have been the most successful instance of this tactic. Shame about the controllers. And the launch titles. And the absurdly oversized case. And the freaky RF switch that needed its own power supply.

 

But hey, thanks to Glenn the 5200 man I've had ample opportunity to play the best the 5200 library has to offer without having to suffer its idiosyncracies.

[jbanes]

History says that repackaging a home computer as a game console pretty much never works.

Case in point: Microsoft sunk billions into the XBox, and the unit never actually became profitable. The latest generation of the unit (the XBox 360) appears to be doing much better, but it's all custom hardware under the hood.

 

The 7800 was the best bet, but Frogstar is right. The best the 7800 could have hoped for was a delaying action while Atari got a different system under way. Of course, if Atari had remained a household name, the Jaguar might have done better in the market. Not to say that it wasn't also poorly positioned...

[frogstar_robot]

History says that repackaging a home computer as a game console pretty much never works.

 

The A8 hardware was originally intended for a successor console to the 2600. The 400/800 was not what Jay Miner's team was originally told the chipset was for (Antic, xTIA, POKEY). The chipset was well suited for either purpose. Atari just didn't make up their minds what it was supposed to be. POKEY at least had a quite a career in arcade hardware as well with as many as four of them in some designs as well as the only real hardware enhancement for 7800s.

[EricBall]

Why a port of SMB?

I think that many owners of the 7800 have an unconcious need to learn exactly what their system was capable of. Since Nintendo was the king of the hill at the time, most attempts at defining system power revolve around comparisons with the Nintendo. The Nintendo had a lot of games, but its specialty was platformers. Platformers, of course, are the very genre that are so amazingly under-represented on the 7800. Taking the situation to its natural conclusion, these owners look for a comparison between the de-facto platformer (SMB) and the 7800 titles.

I'm just saying, is SMB the ultimate NES game? The paragon of what is possible using NES hardware (baring extreme hardware assist cartridges).

 

(Did you know that the cart has a line to halt the CPU? Looking at the specs, they actually suggest disabling the Sally chip to run a processor in the cart! Perhaps the 7800 might had the FX chip of the 80's.)

Based on the schematics, the HALT pin is output only and is used to indicate whether the (SALLY) 6502 or MARIA is driving the bus.

 

Personally, I've got an itching to port Xero to the 7800. The heavy sprite capabilities of the hardware would make a shoot 'em up like this a perfect match.

Exactly. No / limitted background & large amount of sprites.

[jbanes]

I'm just saying, is SMB the ultimate NES game? The paragon of what is possible using NES hardware (baring extreme hardware assist cartridges).

 

That's a difficult question to answer without hashing out all kinds of technical details. Thankfully, it doesn't matter. As I was saying, it's all about perception. SMB is the de-facto platformer. That means that all other platformers will be compared to it.

 

Based on the schematics, the HALT pin is output only and is used to indicate whether the (SALLY) 6502 or MARIA is driving the bus.

 

It seems you're right. Digging through the documentation bit more:

 

The cartridge slot is larger for 7800 mode cartridges. The

additional lines are: three (3) address lines (now all 16 address

lines appear on the cartridge connector); the READ/WRITE line, so

that RAM may be added to any cartridge very simply; the phase 2

clock line in order to add another microprocessor on the cartridge

and have it synchronized with the existing Sally chip; an audio

line so that one may mix in audio signals generated on the

cartridge; a composite video line, so that external video signals

may be included; and the HALT line, to enable the cartridge to

distinguish MARIA ROM accesses from SALLY ROM accesses.

 

So Atari/GCC were obviously expecting expansion processors to always work with the Sally rather than replace it. Still, it's pretty cool that Atari/GCC were thinking about these things.

 

Personally, I've got an itching to port Xero to the 7800. The heavy sprite capabilities of the hardware would make a shoot 'em up like this a perfect match.

Exactly. No / limitted background & large amount of sprites.

 

BTW, good work on your Ball Demo. It proves almost the exact case I need to do a port of Xero.

Edited March 28, 2006 by jbanes

[Godzilla]

I really don't feel that anything out, to this day, has moved beyond first generation 7800 software. zylon: I have the complete 7800 game library, and was well aware of those titles. I consider them just as first-generation as the launch titles. Heck, I consider the 7800s launch titles to be it's strongest. The later stuff doesn't really show any growth to me. which is why I maintain the system probably has more untapped potential than any other system out there (except for entirely still-born consoles, like the pippin/playdia/etc.)

[okto]

The keyboard addition would have furthered the console's home gaming abilities. More complex games like EGA Trek and Zork could have been produced.

I miss EGA Trek. Anyone know if it's available on the Intraglobal Web-o-tron anywhere?

Personally, I've got an itching to port Xero to the 7800. The heavy sprite capabilities of the hardware would make a shoot 'em up like this a perfect match.

Oooo. Do it. That game is incredibly fun. Check out this one, too, it's a game type I haven't seen on any Atari consoles (or any consoles at all, really): Clash N Slash.

[vdub_bobby]

Oooo. Do it. That game is incredibly fun. Check out this one, too, it's a game type I haven't seen on any Atari consoles (or any consoles at all, really): Clash N Slash.

There is a similar game for the A8; can't remember the name. I'll try to dig it up.

[ZylonBane]

Planetary Defense.

[vdub_bobby]

Planetary Defense.

Thank you!

[jbanes]

I miss EGA Trek. Anyone know if it's available on the Intraglobal Web-o-tron anywhere?

The developer has released it for free on their website. It should work on a modern Windows machine. If it doesn't (or you're using another OS), grab a copy of DOSBox.

[theoakwoody]

Is that the lightest blue the 7800 can produce? I've heard that the atari pallete is quite a bit darker but wow. I'm referring to the mockup drawing that was done earlier in this thread.

[jbanes]

Is that the lightest blue the 7800 can produce?

Difficult to say. In theory, the 7800 can do a much lighter blue. In reality, it seems to depend upon the system. I just reduced the shade of the blue for the mockup, to simulate the darker look of the 7800. Actual results may vary.*

 

* Past results are not indicitive of future returns.

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