7800 vs. XEGS: which would you prefer?

[RevEng]

[...]

Re light guns

I was wondering if the NES Zapper could be converted to work as an XG1 light gun. I suspect it could, if anyone cared enough. I found some simple instructions for adapting a Sega Master System light gun for use with the XEGS and 7800.

[...]

The NES Zapper is a Sequential Targets style light gun while the Sega and Atari guns are Cathode Ray Timing style light guns. Conversion would consist of mostly gutting the original ST gun and rebuilding a CRT one inside the case. IMO not worth the effort.

[+jeremiahjt]

This is an easy one for me since I made the choice back then. I bought the 7800 with Birthday money in February of 1987 or 1988. Of course if it was 1987 then that would have probably been before the XE was on the market.

 

I remember driving to Odessa (Texas, not Russia) and going to the Kay Bee Toys in the mall to get my new game system. The 7800 and the NES were both on display there. I am sure the 2600 was there and maybe even the Master System and the XE, but I do not recall for sure. My sister and the salesman were pushing me towards the NES, but it was my money and I was steadfast. I have never once regretted the decision of the 7800 over the NES. It did help that I got the NES either that Christmas or the next.

 

I remember seeing XE stuff at Toys "R" Us and wanting one, but there was no way I was getting a third system that close together.

[zetastrike]

It's hard for me to put myself in those shoes. I was born in 1991, so I've only ever looked at old consoles as just that, old. I've always found the 7800 to be pretty unappealing and I love the 8bit line, but a kid in 1987 would likely want the newest thing and not consider the huge backlog of games you can play on the XEGS, so zetastrike the 10 year old in 1978 would pick the 7800 if those were his only two choices. In a real world scenario, I would have been so assaulted by NES advertisements and my NES owning peers that I would have gone with that.

[haightc]

You know when I was a kid I didn't even consider the computer aspect of the XE-GS. I had already had a Tandy 1000 at the time for awhile, which played way more advanced games than the XE could. Thinking backed it was actually probably one of my longest used "game" machines, we had got it when it was relatively new and by the time the NES and Atari XEGS came around it had two floppy drives, a 20MB hard drive and 640k. Although I seems to recall playing only Mickey's Space Adventure and Ghostbusters so many times though that I think I killed the floppies. So in hindsight I do think it's a little funny I wanted the XEGS so much, especially when I already had a NES and Tandy. I didn't come around to ever playing and seeing a SMS until probably the time I got a a Sega Genesis.

[Flojomojo]

It's hard for me to put myself in those shoes. I was born in 1991, so I've only ever looked at old consoles as just that, old. I've always found the 7800 to be pretty unappealing and I love the 8bit line, but a kid in 1987 would likely want the newest thing and not consider the huge backlog of games you can play on the XEGS, so zetastrike the 10 year old in 1978 would pick the 7800 if those were his only two choices. In a real world scenario, I would have been so assaulted by NES advertisements and my NES owning peers that I would have gone with that.

 

I want to hear more about you and why you find these ancient games interesting! To you, "old systems" would be things like the Sony Playstation, the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64.

 

When you and I were the same age: the ColecoVision, Vectrex, and Atari 5200 were new to me, and Playstation 2, GameCube, and the Xbox were new to you.

 

I promise to try and not call attention to the supposed differences between GenX and millennials. You were born later, that's all.

[Gentlegamer]

zetastrike is my bro from Sega-16.

[phoenixdownita]

...

I found some simple instructions for adapting a Sega Master System light gun for use with the XEGS and 7800.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/133fsb.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/sega-light-phaser-to-atari-xg-1-adapter/amp/

 

...

I built one of those adapter and I confirm it works decently enough. It's not the same as the XE light gun, if I remember correctly my XE light gun offsets to the left while the SMS light gun did to the right.

Other than that it seems that XE light gun was a tad more precise, meaning with the converted SMS light gun I thought I pressed and yet I missed a little more often than with the XE light gun. The difference was negligible and the more annoying part was the different offset to be fair, pretty evident when you hold the gun attached to the CRT .... all told though that CRT I was using wasn't the brightest (old crappy 13") so your mileage may vary.

 

In the end given I found cheaper SMS light guns it was OK I guess. I think I mostly tested it with the 7800 and not with the XEGS, but I expect to be behaving around the same (not that BugHunt requires that much precision anyway).

[+jeremiahjt]

How many light gun games were made for the XE? Are there any non-XE 8-bit light gun games? I know the 2600 had one (Sentinel) and the 7800 had five (Sentinel, Alien Brigade, Crossbow, Barnyard Blaster, and Meltdown).

[+jeremiahjt]

Double post.

Edited January 6, 2017 by jeremiahjt

[doctorclu]

Here was my experience having been a kid during that time:

 

It's the late 80's in around Dallas, Texas. I am at Toys R' Us. I literally bought a 2600 Supercharger for I want to say $5. Everything is cheap. While things are cheap I have no steady job, being a kid, so money is not that abundant either.

 

I pick up a box for the 7800 game "Desert Falcon" and I see this picture:

 

This blows me away. But I already have an Atari 400 computer upgraded to 48K. It literally comes a bit late for me because I have learned that I can download games to floppy and the age of picking up another game system has passed. The Atari VCS is old by now. I pick up the Supercharger and the remote control joystick (for like $10) as a curiosity more than anything.

 

And XEGS? Well I know of the XE computer line, kinda. I tried a XL computer but got turned off to the need for a special boot disk to play Atari computer software. So an XEGS? Probably wouldn't have gone for that even if I knew about it, which I wouldn't know of a XEGS till 1999.

 

On the Atari BBSs it was all about warez with minimal discussion. What discussion that was going on were those talking about selling their Atari Computer setup to get the new Atari ST. They would selling their setup, get the Atari 520, and seemed actually unhappy with the "upgrade" most of the time.

 

No internet or wiki at that time. CompuServe was a by the minute, or was it by the hour, service. And stopped going to the Atari User Group meetings, mainly since my Dad stopped going and I wouldn't have a car till years later.

 

So which did I get? Since I had the Atari 400 already from years before and actively used it during the 80's (1982-1989, replaced by a Macintosh 128K) I guess I went the way of the XEGS basically.

 

And now that I no longer have a Cuttle Cart 2 (selling that was a dumb move) or rom loader for the 7800, the 7800 has faded back into obscurity for me.

Edited January 6, 2017 by doctorclu

[BydoEmpire]

I bought a 7800 around 1990 or so, thoughI already had an NES. I never really thought twice about an XEGS because I had a C64 for many years at that point, and I felt I had already played a lot of the same games on a similar system. I didn't need another 8-bit computer. I did get an XEGS much later and it's great, but the 7800 had 2-player Asteroids & Centipede, Food Fight, and other really good arcade ports. There were games on the 7800 I couldn't really get elsewhere (and they were cheap).

[+darryl1970]

Here was my experience having been a kid during that time:

 

It's the late 80's in around Dallas, Texas. I am at Toys R' Us. I literally bought a 2600 Supercharger for I want to say $5. Everything is cheap. While things are cheap I have no steady job, being a kid, so money is not that abundant either.

 

I pick up a box for the 7800 game "Desert Falcon" and I see this picture:

Desert_Falcon_Gameplay.png

 

This blows me away. But I already have an Atari 400 computer upgraded to 48K. It literally comes a bit late for me because I have learned that I can download games to floppy and the age of picking up another game system has passed. The Atari VCS is old by now. I pick up the Supercharger and the remote control joystick (for like $10) as a curiosity more than anything.

 

And XEGS? Well I know of the XE computer line, kinda. I tried a XL computer but got turned off to the need for a special boot disk to play Atari computer software. So an XEGS? Probably wouldn't have gone for that even if I knew about it, which I wouldn't know of a XEGS till 1999.

 

On the Atari BBSs it was all about warez with minimal discussion. What discussion that was going on were those talking about selling their Atari Computer setup to get the new Atari ST. They would selling their setup, get the Atari 520, and seemed actually unhappy with the "upgrade" most of the time.

 

No internet or wiki at that time. CompuServe was a by the minute, or was it by the hour, service. And stopped going to the Atari User Group meetings, mainly since my Dad stopped going and I wouldn't have a car till years later.

 

So which did I get? Since I had the Atari 400 already from years before and actively used it during the 80's (1982-1989, replaced by a Macintosh 128K) I guess I went the way of the XEGS basically.

 

And now that I no longer have a Cuttle Cart 2 (selling that was a dumb move) or rom loader for the 7800, the 7800 has faded back into obscurity for me.

XE Desert Falcon. Some differences, but not NES to GENESIS difference.

For some reason, they used the same horrible noise channel "MUSIC"

[zetastrike]

 

I want to hear more about you and why you find these ancient games interesting! To you, "old systems" would be things like the Sony Playstation, the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64.

 

When you and I were the same age: the ColecoVision, Vectrex, and Atari 5200 were new to me, and Playstation 2, GameCube, and the Xbox were new to you.

 

I promise to try and not call attention to the supposed differences between GenX and millennials. You were born later, that's all.

 

I don't really know why I love these ancient games. My friends all play things like Assassin's Creed, Fallout, and Gears of War. To me, those look as exciting and entertaining as C-SPAN. I grew up mostly playing the SNES and PS1.

 

There's just a simplistic purity to games on the "pre-NES" *gag* systems. Pick up and play, doesn't matter if it's to kill a half hour or an entire afternoon. Compared to a game on the Genesis or Famicom, I feel like I'm ad-libbing when I'm playing an Atari or Intellivision game. There's usually not as much structure to the games, you aren't supposed to do this first, then progress to that, choose a path, collect this to use for that, 3-act structure thing like you find in late 80s-now games and I appreciate that. You just play the game and have fun, risk vs reward gameplay.

[Flojomojo]

Zetastrike gets it!!

[BassGuitari]

 

I don't really know why I love these ancient games. My friends all play things like Assassin's Creed, Fallout, and Gears of War. To me, those look as exciting and entertaining as C-SPAN. I grew up mostly playing the SNES and PS1.

Same here. I've always liked old games. During the Bit Wars, they were an alternative to the monolithic Sega and Nintendo. Finding out about old systems that came before was like discovering lost treasure. And I've just kind of stuck with them ever since.

 

As a more or less responsible adult, I definitely appreciate the arcadey style of most of the games, that I don't have to sink hours into (which I sometimes end up doing anyway once I start playing a couple of games ).

 

My 24-year-old coworker wants me to get an Xbone so he can play me online. I'm just not interested.

Edited January 8, 2017 by BassGuitari

[ubersaurus]

I don't follow; the XEGS library was released in and after '87. Isn't that late '80s? Notably, most titles available for both systems are pretty much comparable in quality despite the noted defeciencies in A8 gfx by that date, so I can't agree that a strict comparison reveals a 'winner' (Jinks, a terrible game on any system, is 'better' on the XE; Mean 18 is unplayable on it). Almost all of the XEGS library is excellent -- I'd suggest giving it a go if you haven't.

Late 80s stuff = the *late* 80s. Ninja Golf, Scrapyard Dog, Commando, Rampage, that sort of thing. The 90s releases like Midnight Mutants and Ikari Warriors were generally pretty solid, too. There's just not that many XE-era exclusive releases that make me think "oh yes, this was worth sucking up resources from the 7800."

[BassGuitari]

Late 80s stuff = the *late* 80s. Ninja Golf, Scrapyard Dog, Commando, Rampage, that sort of thing. The 90s releases like Midnight Mutants and Ikari Warriors were generally pretty solid, too. There's just not that many XE-era exclusive releases that make me think "oh yes, this was worth sucking up resources from the 7800."

To piggyback on this a little, IMO several of the 2600-exclusive games that came out at that time either should have also had 7800 versions or been 7800 exclusives. I mean, I'm glad we got those 2600 games, but was that system really worth differentiating at the expense of the 7800 (or even the XEGS)? The 2600's strength was that it was cheaper than all hell and there was tons of cheap software for it--why siphon development from their supposed flagship system to that old bargain bin machine?

 

Radar Lock, Solaris, Secret Quest, and River Raid II (among others) would have been slammin' 7800 games. Hell, they're already two-thirds of the way there; they've got the gameplay, and the audio is already as good as it's going to get (unless you go the onboard POKEY route)...all they need is a graphical update for the 7800.

[8th lutz]

BassGuitari, on 13 Jan 2017 - 11:52 AM, said:

To piggyback on this a little, IMO several of the 2600-exclusive games that came out at that time either should have also had 7800 versions or been 7800 exclusives. I mean, I'm glad we got those 2600 games, but was that system really worth differentiating at the expense of the 7800 (or even the XEGS)? The 2600's strength was that it was cheaper than all hell and there was tons of cheap software for it--why siphon development from their supposed flagship system to that old bargain bin machine?

 

Radar Lock, Solaris, Secret Quest, and River Raid II (among others) would have been slammin' 7800 games. Hell, they're already two-thirds of the way there; they've got the gameplay, and the audio is already as good as it's going to get (unless you go the onboard POKEY route)...all they need is a graphical update for the 7800.

I am going to a little farther. Atari made a mistake doing "The fun is back" Commercial. My younger brother and I remembered seeing that commercial either in 1987 or 1988.

 

When the commercial named dropped Space Invaders, there is a big problem considering the year of the commercial. Back in Fall of 1987, I was a 3rd grade student. Most kids that played video games in that grade were not interested in getting Space Invaders. They wanted games like Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda instead as examples.

 

Also looking back, I felt Atari and 3rd parties that died Atari 2600 games did some questionable releases or attempts for that system. Double Dragon the Atari 2600 was a bad game no matter how was looked upon and it shouldn't have been attempted at the time. I do think Double Dragon for the Atari 2600 would've been a better game if had the hardware and stuff Princess Rescue and Zippy the Porcupine had along with the cartridge. Princess Rescue and Zippy were 32k and 64k games. Those size of games were sizes that Tramiel didn't want for the 2600 in the late 1980's.

 

I also looked at the Atari 2600 rumor mill list and seeing Tower Toppler shows how big a problem Atari had. Just because Atari had the rights for the game, it doesn't mean it should be attempted on all systems. The Atari 2600 would've got a very bad port of Tower Toppler if that game was release.

[8th lutz]

Jin, on 04 Jan 2017 - 8:04 PM, said:Jin, on 04 Jan 2017 - 8:04 PM, said:

From the perspective of someone in the late 80's when these systems were current I would have gone with the 7800. It had better graphics therefore had the potential to have the same kind of new games that were becoming popular at the time on the NES and Master System. Platformers like Super Mario and Alex Kidd, action adventure games like Zelda and Golvellius, and RPGs like Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star. Those were the sort of games that most gamers wanted in the late 80's and the Atari 7800 had more potential to deliver them than the XEGS.

 

Of course now in 2017 we have the benefit of hindsight and know all the games that both the 7800 and XEGS ended up getting, and we know that the 7800 never lived up to the potential that buyers in the 80's were probably hoping for. That doesn't make it a a bad system though, as long as you're a fan of arcade games. The 7800 did fall woefully short in the platformer, action adventure, and RPG departments but it did have one of the best libraries of 8-bit home console ports of arcade games back then; and it still does to this day.

It is very unlikely the Atari 7800 was going to get a Final Fantasy or Phantasy Star type game for the system even if the system was released nationally in 1984 instead of 1986. If Atari 7800 was going to get an RPG, it was going to be a game like the Ultima series. The XEGS actually is capable of the Ultima series. The Atari 8 bit computer line actually had the Ultima series.

 

The reason of the 7800 not getting JRPGS is due to the fact they system was not going to be released in Japan. I am sure if the 7800 was released in Japan with a laser disc add-on, there might have been developers might have been interested in the 7800 if of RPGS and action RPGS like Y's as an example. It would've been possible to save those disc based RPGS by creating a cartridge used for saving games. That is not far off since Atari did create a High score cart on the Atari 7800 that was never released. The High cart was supposed to used for saving high scores.

 

Atari 7800 had a possibility of getting computer rpgs for the system if it was released in 1984 instead of 1986. The Atari 7800 back in 1984 was supposed have a keyboard. It also was supposed use Atari 8 bit peripherals like hard drives. The only catch is Atari 8 bit computer programs can't be used on the Atari 7800. Atari was planning getting the 7800 its own programs. Based on that information, the Atari 7800 would've attracted some computer game developer and publisher companies.

 

The other thing is there was research and development on the 7800 back in 1984 on a sound chip called gumby. The plan was putting in sound chips in Atari 7800 cartridges for better sound including gumby along with adding ram into cartridges. What I mentioned with the sound chip and adding ram is no different than the Famicom/Nes having mappers and sound chips in their cartridges.

 

I do think Atari back in 1984 did make a mistake by having an expansion slot on the Atari 7800 based on my own experience as a 32x owner no matter what I thought from discs being used for RPGS. It sounded like the expansion slot found on 1984 Atari 7800 models was going to be used for a laser disc add on. I have a bad that the disc part of the system wouldn't be on games a lot and I don't want to know the loading times or the cost.

Edited January 14, 2017 by 8th lutz

[mbd30]

The Atari 7800 controller was way behind the times as well. I remember how much it hurt to try to play Pole Position II with it.

[zzip]

I already owned an Atari 800Xl at that point, so had no use for the XEGS, so 7800 for me.

 

But even back then I saw this as Atari dumping old designs on the market instead of a proper competitive system. (Neither were great for side-scrollers which were all the rage on consoles at the time)

 

It would be interesting to wonder what would have happened if Atari had released the 7800 in 1984 as originally planned. Or if they had taken up Nintendo's offer to release the NES as an Atari product

[Master Phruby]

Back in the late 80's I had moved on from my Atari 2600 and Colecovision to my 130XE. Technically I already had the XEGS with my 130Xe. I even picked up the light gun from Federated Group. I was into hacking and writing my own games by then. I saw the 7800 there but wasn't interested because my siblings already had an NES. It looked like the same old thing but slightly better graphics. By the time I was in college, I needed a machine to play my old Atari 2600 games on. I picked up a 7800 via a newsgrazer connection and have played it since.

[Gentlegamer]

 

I don't really know why I love these ancient games. My friends all play things like Assassin's Creed, Fallout, and Gears of War. To me, those look as exciting and entertaining as C-SPAN. I grew up mostly playing the SNES and PS1.

 

There's just a simplistic purity to games on the "pre-NES" *gag* systems. Pick up and play, doesn't matter if it's to kill a half hour or an entire afternoon. Compared to a game on the Genesis or Famicom, I feel like I'm ad-libbing when I'm playing an Atari or Intellivision game. There's usually not as much structure to the games, you aren't supposed to do this first, then progress to that, choose a path, collect this to use for that, 3-act structure thing like you find in late 80s-now games and I appreciate that. You just play the game and have fun, risk vs reward gameplay.

 

Have you played Tank Pong? There was no reason to keep making video games after that.

[BassGuitari]

Have you played Tank Pong? There was no reason to keep making video games after that.

Truth.

[7800Lover]

I have my eyes on getting an Atari XE game system next. I own an Atari 7800 already, but the appeal of the XE to me is the same as the 7800 - just as the 7800 plays all 2600 games, the XE plays (almost) the entire Atari 800 cartridge library. That's also not counting the disk-based and cassette-based game should I choose to invest in those peripherals.