Thelen Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 I was thinking, why wasn't there released an atari 8 bit version of Impossible mission ? A bit strange, on almost all homecomputers it was released.......even later on the 7800, ST and Amiga.. Thelen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 By that time EA wasnt releasing games on the 'Pirate' Atari 800 series machines Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thelen Posted March 3, 2003 Author Share Posted March 3, 2003 That's very sad........Was pirating a big problem for the atari 8 bit ? and not for the other systems ? Thelen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callipygous Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 Trip Hawkins, head of EA, thought Atari was the worst. Really developed an attitude about it - if what I've heard is true. Refused to do alot of conversions. Whether the piracy thing was really true is a matter of debate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 This isn't a direct quote, but basically Trip had this to say: Atari Users are one of the most intelligent groups of computer users, because of this, they are also the group that has learned how to hack and have the highest rate of piracy among computer platforms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 you left out the last part: '....and my whanker is much to small to compete with this community' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 I remember reading an interview to that effect in one of the computer magazines to which I subscribed in the mid-'80s. It was clear to me at the time that EA simply allocated a certain amount of money to "Atari" machines, and when the pie grew, the funding did not -- and EA put all of its resources into the ST market. Hawkins' comments never did make much sense. If you applied his logic, you could assume that the C64 had the greatest problem with piracy, simply because its user base was so large (and well-linked). This was probably true, but you didn't see EA abandon the C64 until the early '90s. EA always was a little too cozy with certain platforms for my tastes. But wasn't "Impossible Mission" an Epyx release? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 Indeed - EA had NOTHING to do with Impossible mission - it was the chumps at EPYX. And lest we get into an EA bashing mood - for no good reason - sales don't lie, each 8bit Atari game sold tiny amounts compared with each C64 game EA released. So cozy or just good business sense, EA sold lots of games to a market that bought lots of games - seems a sensible plan to me... And before you ask, yes I do work for EA, but I always have and will feel that good business sense is what pursuaded EA and all the other publishers to abandon the 8bit - simply they sold so few copies of the games on that SKU compared with other 8bit SKU's... sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 Indeed - EA had NOTHING to do with Impossible mission - it was the chumps at EPYX I was wondering about that. For a sec I was like "EA did IM? What the hell?!?!" Of course I wouldn't go so far as to call the guys at EPYX "Chumps"... Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 Indeed - EA had NOTHING to do with Impossible mission - it was the chumps at EPYX. And lest we get into an EA bashing mood - for no good reason - sales don't lie, each 8bit Atari game sold tiny amounts compared with each C64 game EA released. So cozy or just good business sense, EA sold lots of games to a market that bought lots of games - seems a sensible plan to me... And before you ask, yes I do work for EA, but I always have and will feel that good business sense is what pursuaded EA and all the other publishers to abandon the 8bit - simply they sold so few copies of the games on that SKU compared with other 8bit SKU's... sTeVE My apologies for the unfounded EA-bashing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent57 Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 And before you ask, yes I do work for EA, but I always have and will feel that good business sense is what pursuaded EA and all the other publishers to abandon the 8bit - simply they sold so few copies of the games on that SKU compared with other 8bit SKU's... sTeVE I find that very hard to believe. There were a LOT of Atari 8-bit machines out there at that time. EA abandoned the Atari 8-bit fairly early in the game, at a time when plenty of other 'big' publishers were still producing product. I'll buy the fact that there was much more piracy on the Atari platform than any other at the time, however. I do remember reading that One on One was delayed for over a year on the 8-bit so a new copy protection scheme could be devised for the disk. Trip always loved the C64 to death (I used to read his occasional babblings in EG back then), even though it was an inferior machine that happened to have a nice sound chip in it. Anyway, following your logic above, I'd love to hear why EA initially decided to not support the Atari ST 'back then.' The machines were flying off the shelves but Trip was adamant that EA would not support the machines and he always seemed to have an issue with Atari products. I personally received a great deal of personal satisfaction when the 3DO tanked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 I started to beginning of the post and thought "wow... Steve will come and hold the EA flag high... ;=)". no honestly.... as Steve said sales figures don't lie and if EA would so bad why are they still around??? and the market leaders? karolj "challenge everything" nadj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 Seems a bit lazy that the speech wasn't included in the 7800 port of IM?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 As to the ST - neither the Amiga or the ST were big sellers compared to the C64 and the PC in the US - tiny in fact... Yet EA ploughed into the Amiga gaining large sales in Europe and largely ignored the ST... It may have been a speculative decision - and it certainly paid off in Europe, it also allowed EA to get ahead of many competitors in terms of visual presentation and technology since the Amiga was very powerful (far more so than other platforms at the time) - something that paid off when the PC came up to speed and the 16bit consoles came along in the early 90's... Somewhere there is an answer, but I don't know what it is... sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callipygous Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 As to the ST - neither the Amiga or the ST were big sellers compared to the C64 and the PC in the US - tiny in fact... Yet EA ploughed into the Amiga gaining large sales in Europe and largely ignored the ST... It may have been a speculative decision - and it certainly paid off in Europe, it also allowed EA to get ahead of many competitors in terms of visual presentation and technology since the Amiga was very powerful (far more so than other platforms at the time) - something that paid off when the PC came up to speed and the 16bit consoles came along in the early 90's... Somewhere there is an answer, but I don't know what it is... sTeVE Spin City!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 No apology for Trip bashing here The Atari machines were used as poster boys no doubt. Supporting the ST in Europe would've doubled their pleasure based upon ST sales other there - Then again Atari mgmt at the time wasnt very good at establishing friendships Id love to see EA's 3DO sales figures Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyranthraxus Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 Well the story I had read on some website was that in the very early days of EA around 1982. The company made the older Atari 400/800 computer the chief system to develop for and would then port to the others. But Atari lost out that year in the vital Christmas sales to the newer and cheaper Commodoer 64. Atari EA products of course sold very poorly since all the new buyers were getting mainly 64s. The few 64 games that they had ready sold very well and saved the company. So they quickly made the 64 their main system. Why they stopped supporting the computer later on I don't know but I'm sure Steve is right. The Atari 8-bit was a small market compared to the C-64, Apple II and IBM. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 Well, originally EA made a lot of great A8bit games, so I cant really complain. Mail Order Monsters, Racing Destruction Set and many others got excellent versions on the a8bit. Epyx were the ones really burned by the pir8in atari boys (behind jaggi lines) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 Well the story I had read on some website was that in the very earlydays of EA around 1982. The company made the older Atari 400/800 computer the chief system to develop for and would then port to the others. But Atari lost out that year in the vital Christmas sales to the newer and cheaper Commodoer 64. Atari EA products of course sold very poorly since all the new buyers were getting mainly 64s. The few 64 games that they had ready sold very well and saved the company. So they quickly made the 64 their main system. Why they stopped supporting the computer later on I don't know but I'm sure Steve is right. The Atari 8-bit was a small market compared to the C-64, Apple II and IBM. John I wouldn't call the Atari 8-bit market "small" in comparison to the other 8-bit computers -- especially in Canada. I believe that Atari eventually sold around 2 or 2.5 million 8-bit units in North America (approximately 1/3 of that of the C64). This would have made the 8-bits the second most-popular home computer of the early to mid 80s. I do believe that the market does drive software production in most cases, and there were an awful lot of "flippy" Atari/Commodore releases in the late '80s; there were, in comparison, relatively few Commodore/Apple and IBM/Commodore "flippies". I think this speaks to the fact that many small companies did make money off of the Atari 8-bit market in the late '80s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 and, since I'm going to get flak for that last post, I'm willing to say that Apple and IBM sold more computers...but not to the home market. Apple IIs were prohibitively expensive in Canada, as far as I can recall, until the Lazer clones started to appear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted March 5, 2003 Share Posted March 5, 2003 EA and 3DO - I hate to try and suggest a reason - for fear of being called a spin doctor again - but ya know the games they created for 3DO did push the platform and the genre's really well - Madden and Fifa came of age on the 3DO..... CD technology and powerful consoles that followed benefitted from the 3DO failure sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mudface Posted March 11, 2003 Share Posted March 11, 2003 Epyx were the ones really burned by the pir8in atari boys (behind jaggi lines) Wasn't this the original name for Rescue on Fractalus from Lucasarts? Anyway, does anyone have any idea of the sales figures for any Atari/ C64 games? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted March 12, 2003 Share Posted March 12, 2003 Epyx were the ones really burned by the pir8in atari boys (behind jaggi lines) Wasn't this the original name for Rescue on Fractalus from Lucasarts? Anyway, does anyone have any idea of the sales figures for any Atari/ C64 games? I don't you could ever really get an accurate figure after about 1986 or so, since many of the newer releases for the 8-bits after that point were put out on "flippies". And who really was diligent in sending back those reader reponse cards? I certainly wasn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avram Posted March 15, 2003 Share Posted March 15, 2003 The pirate release of Rescue on Fractalus was called Behind Jaggi lines. I found this quote explaining the two names at this website. http://www.dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/FOX.HTM "During the beta stage in the fall of 1983, we delivered floppy disks of "Rescue" and our other game, "Ballblazer," to Atari so their marketing department could take a look. We were a bit nervous about releasing diskettes with no copy protection, but were assured they would be kept under lock and key. About a week later, we began hearing that both games had been distributed to all the pirate bulletin boards across the country! We were all devastated. It felt like all of our hard work had gone to waste! Atari denied any responsibility for the leak, and we were never able to prove who did it" - David Fox Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariX Posted March 18, 2003 Share Posted March 18, 2003 Indeed - EA had NOTHING to do with Impossible mission - it was the chumps at EPYX. And lest we get into an EA bashing mood - for no good reason - sales don't lie, each 8bit Atari game sold tiny amounts compared with each C64 game EA released. So cozy or just good business sense, EA sold lots of games to a market that bought lots of games - seems a sensible plan to me... And before you ask, yes I do work for EA, but I always have and will feel that good business sense is what pursuaded EA and all the other publishers to abandon the 8bit - simply they sold so few copies of the games on that SKU compared with other 8bit SKU's... sTeVE Then how come EA still developes Nintendo GC games? J/K Almost everyone abandoned the Atari 8-bit in the mid eighties. Can you blam them? Atari almost went out of buisness in the great crash and they had new owners. The Tramiels put most of the focus on the Atari ST line, which EA, Microprose, Lucasarts, Activision, Epyx and most of the other big publishers out there supported from the mid to late 80's. If you were a hardcore Atari XE/XL gamer in the mid to late 80's, then your selection was pretty thin. Most of the games then were either the XE Atari cart releases and the budget flippie games(which let's be honest, most of those sucked compared to the good games of the day). I know I jumped ship back then and didn't miss out on some great gaming with the likes of Artic Fox, Skyfox, Gunship, Winter Games, Battlehawks 1942, Battletech, Pirates and many others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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