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JJohnson

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  1. You're probably right about that. Nintendo was great at making new ideas, and Atari at least, was living on arcade ports far too long. That's why I included something in the speculation on them breaking Nintendo's exclusivity contracts. Perhaps porting any Nintendo game to any Atari system would be a licensing deal that could have happened. If the 7800 had better tile support, better scrolling, better audio, and could handle more colors at higher resolutions (a lot of asking), it could've competed better. If Sega had had a stronger mascot earlier, I think their 8-bit system might've fared better, along with a few big franchises. Alex the Kidd never really did much for me. It seemed like a generic platformer to me without innovation, but I'll give it a try some time.
  2. I saw a video comparing a number of versions of Lode Runner for various consoles, and I was wondering if this has been done for the 2600 yet. It looks like it's simple enough for the 2600, 5400, or 7800 to do. I think it could be fun!
  3. That's awesome! I have quite a few cartridges whose stickers have seen better days.
  4. Would it be possible to get this on a cartridge?
  5. I kind of wish we could get more mazes. The same maze over and over gets old.
  6. Most recently, Pitfall II and Othello (2600 versions). And Space Invaders (red box) if you count the Father-in-Law gift I got my father-in-law.
  7. Looking back, there are certainly multiple things Atari did that were missed opportunities. If they had made one or two changes here and there, perhaps the computer division could've stayed around longer as could the console. If they could have used the computer cartridges straight over to the 5200 without any changes other than perhaps repackaging, that might've been helpful on that console as well. Any alt-timeline can be wishful thinking, of course. Thanks for the recommendation for the Alt-Hist site. I'll check it out. Have a good one.
  8. 1. The act of being published for my own enjoyment. 2. No. I would be proud that I got it published. 3. No, that would be weird.
  9. That first sentence is an assumption. No one has to care about anything I do; and if not, they can choose to scroll past and ignore the post, rather than leave something non-constructive. I've already written about 350 pages-worth so far, including random obscurities like 'free silver' from the late 19th century, so it is also not attempting to sound pompous, which is also an assumption, rather than assuming someone means well until proven otherwise. Tone can be difficult to gather in the written word, but I generally tend to give the benefit of the doubt rather than have a nihilistic and negative assumption when reading posts until the text shows otherwise. I've not read or searched for any other possible 'what if' threads, which is why I posted attempting to get some helpful responses, rather than sarcastic or snarky or dismissive responses. A few posters here were quite helpful, which is appreciated. I have fond memories of Atari growing up which is why I was trying to write it into my story, and I assumed other people on this forum were also nostalgic and would be helpful and respectful. That could be the mistake I made, especially with a few people I saw.
  10. Spot on. Hope you have a great day.
  11. Considering you brought in 'ASSTR', you brought in snark first. Your comment was neither helpful nor kind.
  12. Of course, with emulation, we could theoretically alter the Stella emulator to allow 256 bytes, and so on to see what we could get away with. Is there a technical breakdown of the 5200 and 7800 like the 2600?
  13. I wasn't suggesting 2010-level games in 1970s at all, or making an Atari Neo Geo (equivalent in comparison to Intellivision and Colecovision). I understand why they used 2K and 4K ROMs in the 1970s, and according to this, why they made a lot of the limitations they did. But if you've ever seen alternatehistory.com or any speculative fiction book, many people like asking 'what if?' and trying to posit the ramifications of different choices. In this instance, knowing the limits of the 2600, I posited, what if the 2600 had used the full 16-pin chip, rather than the 13-pin chip, had 256 bytes rather than 128, and the read/write pin were present (at a minimum), and if possible, more sprites in one line without flicker or 2-color sprites? What would be different with that? What if they'd done 4K or 8K Pac-Man instead of that prototype weird version we got? So, then going from that, what if the 5200 had been done slightly better? Such as: smaller case without controller storage; lower price; perhaps slightly better graphics/memory and including backward compatibility; better joystick. Make it worth it and make games better enough that people want to buy it rather than pass it over, so that in comparison to Colecovision and Intellivision, the 5200 is the better choice. I saw the 'Realsports' comparison between the 2600 and its competitors, and their Baseball commercial showed how lacking the 2600 was graphically. So, what if the 5200 were slightly better is my question there. My brother has one, but doesn't play it, and when I compared games online, they don't look better enough for the 5200 to be worth it. As for the 7800, it can come out later, sure, but it most certainly needs tilemaps, better sprites, smooth scrolling horizontally, diagonally, and vertically, the full better sound (not 1977 sound, geez), and a way to get more third party support. Your post did stomp on my parade, but not as badly as others (RJ, toiletunes, Billy Beans, x=usr(1536)) who didn't even take the time or courtesy to either consider my post seriously rather than snarkily/sarcastically reply, or just scroll past it to avoid being rude. There is a lot of alternate history on alternatehistory.com, Harry Turtledove's novels, the Man in the High Castle, etc, so I do enjoy speculating on what might have been. It's an interesting thought experiment.
  14. Interesting. What was Coleco doing? The Adam computer? My original thought was the 2600 was released in 1977, so a new console in 1981/1982 would be enough time to have a better-designed system to compete better with the Intellivision and Colecovision, both seemed to have some better games in them when comparing to the 2600. that's why I still had the 5200 exist, so that it would keep Atari competitive, hopefully make their games a bit better, maybe easier to program for (ball sprite and missile sprites?), rather than designed for Pong and Combat. Have it be backward compatible without an adapter to the 2600, and you can upgrade without worry, I would think. I've been watching the post-mortems on games like Pitfall and the Atari 2600 itself, which I found out doesn't have a resolution more than 40 pixels, according to that video (all that 'racing the beam' stuff). The 7800, yeah, it can come out a little later, sure. But it definitely needs better sprites, tilemaps, and better scrolling. Comparing the same games between the NES and 7800 shows the NES looked better at the time, but I don't know if that were due to programmers not knowing how to program to the 7800's strengths, or if it were really that weak in comparison. The 5200 if it came out in an altered timeline definitely needs to fix the controller issue, size, price, but I think the tech inside it needs a little improvement for it to be worth the upgrade. I just don't know what Atari could have reasonably done to make an upgrade. Resolution? Colors? What would have been reasonable at the time, had Atari made better choices? As for the 7800, I remember Atari did get the chance to bring the Famicom over, so I think that if they saw that, they would, rather than release the 7800 as-is, try to make it better than or equal to the NES like Sega's Master System. It had more colors, which is good, but it needed tilemaps, smooth scrolling, better sprites, slightly better resolution with more colors at once, and of course, games. Thanks for the meaningful response, I appreciate it.
  15. Or, if you're going to be a smart-aleck, you could just skip past the post if you had nothing useful to contribute. I'm writing a book, which I take seriously.
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