Retro Rogue
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Posts posted by Retro Rogue
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Ah yes, we know this now (I read Atari Inc) but way back when we only had EG and 'the big video game shake-out' happened in 1984 (EG March 1984, pages 6, 23, 24, 26).
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Well that and newspapers and other magazines.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952210-2,00.html
Here's one for the video coin-op crash, which was already in full swing by the time the consumer one hit. Mind you, coin is a completely separate industry. There was no "video game industry" at the time, rather several different industries that had video games.
And the computer industry crash thanks to Jack and company:
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953968,00.html
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And to complete the informations : Atari never got to licence the NES or Famicom.
Nintendo approched them in 1982 to create a video game system, which was a mix of Nintendo arcade chips and Atari chips; mostly, Nintendo provided the CPU and sound, and Atari provided the Maria video chip.
After some development, Atari cancelled all the project, nagging at Nintendo "we don't need a small Japanase arcade maker to make a game system." and Nintendo made the Famicom from the "remains" of the project, using their own GPU.
What on earth are you smoking? It's like you mixed three different stories together to come up with one really messed up fantasy.
crash was in 1984
You're both wrong, it started in '82 and continued through to '84. It was not an asteroid like sudden extinction event.
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Interesting, appears this thread is a duplicate thread (started 12 minutes after this one: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/216444-bushnell-reckons-nintendo-faces-path-to-irrelevance)
In my view the comparison is not a close one. When atari released the Jaguar, things were hitting the skids well and truly. And there were no other major revenue streams for Atari to survive with anything short of sucess. A lot was riding on the Jag.
The comparison to the Jaguar that's been showing up in these articles and above makes zero sense. That was a completely different company, Atari Corp. Bushnell's was Atari Inc. If you want to compare Nintendo to something that fell that Bushnell had actually been involved with, stick with Atari Inc.
What also doesn't make any sense - his claim on the 8-bit line being around at the same time as the VCS and it was the VCS that took off instead. Completely fabricated. The 8-bit line grew out the VCS.
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I think you are confused as to what "video game market" means.
Maybe you ment "video game hardware production" when you typed "video game market"?
I've found that most people are confused. They usually lop coin-ops into the crash and market (and other consumer devices like computers and handheld electronic games - think 70s/80s LED/LCD games) when they're completely different industries and markets. The idea of a "video game industry" is a mythical unicorn. Coin video games were (and are) part of the coin industry, a completely separate industry with it's own development models, resources, and distribution. The computer industry is also it's own completely separate industry. The "crash" was specifically in the Consumer industry and even then only the consumer game console industry, and even then only in North America.
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And I'm sure I'm going to piss off some people here (after all its an Atari site) but this seems very high and mighty from a company/guy who literally made ONE successful console. The 5200, 7800, Jaguar, and even their handheld bombed.
No, just having people wondering if you realize those are two separate companies. 2600 and 5200 are Atari Inc., 7800, Jaguar and Lynx are Atari Corp. Likewise, the PONG consoles were very successful for Atari Inc. as well.
If Nolan hadn't allowed the destruction of the North American market
Huh? Nolan left Atari in January '79, long before any sort of crash or market problems.
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The dump wasnt the source for the stories, there was suppose to be a a separate landfill they were put in. At least years ago when i lived there the dump wasnt where they were suppose to be. If you ever saw the town, the only place that appears to be on a fill is walmart. My bet is nothing will be pulled from the dump. Sounds like false intel to get anyone remotely interested in alamo.
Who said anything about a dump to you? I stated landfill in your quote of me. It was the other later response to someone else I mistakenly said dump when quickly typing that out. They were dumped in a landfill, crushed and then had concrete and dirt piled over them. Both landfills and dumps are run by the government (usually local), i.e. they know where they are. Landfills more so, since they have to be monitored through the whole process (and for some time afterwords). The difference being a dump is wide open and a landfill is built up in layers (with the bottom most layer usually a clay or other sealant of some sort to keep hazardous drainage from getting into the water supply), and a continuous crushing of materials and layering of dirt as each layers fills with what needs to be disposed of. Again, the government knows where the landfill is, as do the people originally involved with it. The question is simply where in the landfill it is, and what's still actually there. Likewise, the dumping is not "stories." It happened. What it's not is an E.T. dump, rather a wide assortment of games and console/computer hardware from the El Passo plant.
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There is a road between the Papa Johns and the Checkers auto parts, that goes back behind the businesses to the right, follow road left at the gas tanks (propane I think?) to the entrance to the old dump. Where in the old dump is the question. I need to go back and look at the videos I posted. Don't know if they are still on here from years ago. I have a dvd with the videos somewhere around here.
Yes, that's what the garbage guy meant when he stated he thinks he knows where they are - he was referring to where in the dump itself. The location of the city dump itself is not under question. That's why they gave these guys 6 months to go through the dump to find the location.
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Where do they think this landfill is located? The only places I could narrow down to a suspected location was either where the mall is, near the imax, or where walmart is located. Walmart looks like the only location that seems to be an obvious landfill. Goodluck digging there
Where are you getting these ideas from? The city knows where it is (hence the permit for that specific landfill) and the people who were involved with or at the dumping know as well (hence them being interviewed when all this broke back in May).
http://www.alamogordonews.com/news/ci_23342105/alamogordo-green-lights-search-buried-atari-game
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This isnt a new trend. If you were a kid inthe mid 80s, "Atari" was the 2600, "Nintendo" was the NES, and "Sega " was the master system. You didnt say to your freinds " hey, come over and play atari video computer system with me" You said lets play some atari. That shit just carried on with alot of people as adults. Thanks for the atari console trivia though
I was a kid in the early 80s, we said "2600" or "VCS" (especially when they came out with the 5200 and other friends got that), Colecovision, Intellivision, etc. not let's play "Atari", "Coleco," or "Mattel." Atari was used as a general slang term for all video games and technology (such as in Atari Democrats) as someone mentioned. It's a new trend in media though as stated, to refer to the 2600 as just "Atari," media at the time didn't make the mistake of referring to it like you're claiming. It's use by some of the current media shows accuracy has gone out the window. (No different than how some of the slang usage by some calling the 2600 "4-bit" is woefully wrong). Using just Nintendo and Sega in the later 80s for their respective consoles is an obvious thing, they only had the one console each at the time in the US. Not the case with the Atari brand, and certainly not the case anymore with Nintendo and Sega, where as stated the brand name conjures different consoles depending on what generation you're from. You can be as belligerent as you want, it doesn't change facts, nor does brushing off facts about Atari on an Atari forum as "trivia" come off as anything but silly.
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For the general population, Atari meant 2600. Id say most people are not even aware of the computer line.
I wasn't even discussing the computer line. Atari Inc. made 12 consoles (11 if we drop the 7800). I've been seeing this trend lately with people in media and other just referring to "the Atari" when that of course was never ever the name of a console. It's the name of the company. I'm also not sure I agree with Bill with "Nintendo" meaning NES. You're talking about a company that's been around for a long time and released many different platforms as well; it depends entirely on what generation a person is from. If I say "the Nintendo" to someone who grew up in the mid to late 90s they're more likely to think of the Nintendo 64 for instance. Same example for simply saying "the Sega."
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Hey all, just doing a formal introduction for Maddie Stevens so you know this is legit. She's the assistant to one of the producers of the upcoming dig of the Atari dump in Alamogordo, New Mexico. She's wanting to talk to Atari fanatics who are genuinely interested about the dig, to learn exactly WHY it interests you. Why do you care if something is found there or not? What are you hoping to see and why does it mean something to you? Would it genuinely disappoint you if nothing was found?
I'll let Maddie take it from here...
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So, Curt, I have a question about the book.
The section about the Vidcomm is really different than the entry on the Atari History Museum. The latter refers to "The Vidcom I (Video Communications Device) from Atari Healthcare Systems...." but the book (page 497-98) doesn't mention Atari Healthcare systems at all. Why the discrepancy? Is the information on the site out of date?
Thanks!
Curt can answer fully, but I'm going to go with the fact that yes - his site is very out of date and it hasn't been brought in line with the book yet. All those heart surgeries, all the time we needed on the book, the XM and continued health issues tend to leave little time for anything else.
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$60 is very reasonable for a boxed '78/'79 model with games.
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I hope you replied. I read you're book where you said the real loot was buried in California, but your answer as to the location was, "we'll never tell".
That is not what was said. There's a full two page explanation of what the Alamogordo dump really was, followed by a subtext paragraph mentioning that Atari's warehouses around the country were emptied of a lot of stock and shipped back to Sunnyvale for disposal, and that we're not telling where because we promised not to tell the location to avoid people trying to dig in the location. Not anything about "the real loot" (as in 3.5 million ET carts that the legend in this thread was discussing) and not simply "we'll never tell."
I also don't see what the dumping in Sunnyvale would have to do with their project, which is about digging up the Alamogordo dump to see what's there. We did talk to them about what's actually there and what they'll find, but nothing beyond that.
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I was contacted a few days ago by a person working for the producers of the upcoming documentary to see if I would do an audio or on camera interview and I said no thanks, but I could answer questions by e-mail if they want. That might be a sign that they are getting closer to digging time.
They contacted us as well.
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Arcade games in the beginning were custom "state machines" - no microprocessor, no graphics chip, etc. they generated pixels purely by manually generating pixels at specific timings (in a manner similar to the 2600's TIA) and used various discrete circuits to create those timings. The game was engineered, not programmed.
Then ROM chips for graphic element storage were introduced, upping the possibilities. Color was introduced early on as well (usually done again through special timing hoops they had to jump through).
The microprocessors came in and the game itself no longer had to be engineered, since it was separated as software. Hower the tradeoff was that every new game was essentially a new custom computer. One created just for that game and the needs of it graphically and sound wise, with custom graphics and sound circuitry (via discrete logic circuitry).
In the late 70s/erly 80s you had groups of games sometimes using a single specific custom board, giving these games similarities in graphics and sound much the same way you can tell a specific vintage console or computer immediately by it's graphics and sound. An example would be Williams games such as Defender, Robotron, Joust, and Sinistar which all run on the same Williams 6809 Rev 1 hardware. This is also the period you had sound sound co-processor chips appear, such as the early AY series or Atari's own custome POKEY chip. Sound chips were actually in use far before and graphics chips.
I'm not sure where Osgeld got the idea that they used off the shelf chips for graphics at this time, they did not. Coin monitor resolutions were far higher than the television resolutions those parts were designed for.
Likewise, Tempest shouldn't really be included in any of this (same with Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, etc.) That's a vector game. A vector display is completely different, and the graphics are done via the game hardware directly controlling the CRT's beam like an etch-a-sketch. The game coder literally maps out the vector points to tell the beam where to go, and the mathematical translations for scaling, rotations, etc. vector hardware, be ause of it's polygonal nature, is where we find the first graphics co-processors in use. Such as the custom math-boxes created for Battlezone and Tempest to aid in complex vector calculations, using 2901 bit-slice processors.
2901s are also used as the graphics co-processor for the very first filled polygon 3d game, Atari's I Robot. Around this time you also had raster based games using standard CPUs to aid in graphics calculations. Galaga, for instance, uses 3 z80s. One for the main CPU, one for a sound processor, and one on the custom graphics board.
As 3d games and hardware became popular in the 90s, you still saw a lot of custom 3d and 2d processors being developed, until the mid-90s when GPU manufacturers started appearing and getting popular, such as ATI, SGICKS, 3DFX, etc., coinciding with their rising popularity in personal computers.
If you're really interested in learning a bit more about coin-op gaming hardware, feel free to look through system16.com. It's a great reference source. Also try reading through the original manuals for various coin-op games. They usually cover their hardware's theory of operation, and specific parts.
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Ed "Too Tall" Jones says you're both wrong, RealSports Football is better than both:Well, George Plimpton said so:
Maybe I should run and hide now.
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Pac-man wasn't released until March '82, that'd be out of your timeframe.The games released from 1977 to 1981 are the earliest games on the system (everything before the silver label period). My picks for best: "Superman" and "Night Driver". Worst: "Pac-Man" for sure. Post your picks here.
Edit..
Lol, just saw high voltage's post above.
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My Atari and NES get the honor of the most frequent use right now.
Atari what?
There's not a console called "the Atari."
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The SMS did not have better sound than the NES. NES sound and controllers were better. Other than that, the SMS was probably technically superior.
Also, NES came out the same day as the SG-1000 in Japan. Mark III (SMS) only came out like 2 years later. So it has about 2 more years of technological development behind it.
The Famicom came out the same day as the SG-1000 in Japan, not the NES. The NES came out 2 years later as well, it was Nintendo's choice not to up the specs during that time.
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The Atari Games book sounds great. I was never the biggest Mattel Intellivision or Mattel handheld fan but such a book would be interesting as well. Guess I'm hoping for a history of Coleco book after that one.
Someone else in the forums already mentioned they were involved in a Coleco one, so I'm staying away from doing one.
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I thought about getting the model 3 which according to wikipedia looks like the model 2 but is really more akin to the Atari Flashback line. Well I don't know if it's emulation or not,
The Flashback 1, 2, and 2+ do not use emulation.
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i think the jaguar would've struggled even worse had it been released earlier. i suspect that a factor that played a big hand in the flux of games late in the jaguar's life was probably the $90 million atari got from a lawsuit settlement with sega in September of 1994.
Yes, that was a big part of the reverse merger. When Sam had the heart attack and Jack came back to run things, with how bad things were (they had maybe two years left at best) it made more fiscal sense to him at the time to have that money invested elsewhere and the JTS reverse merger was conducted as Pete mentioned. It was a reverse merger, not just a merger though. JTS and Atari Corp. combined under a JTS banner, with Jack and company joining the management and Atari Corp. existing as a division within the new corporation. That division was eventually whittled down to just John Skrutch at a desk until JTS burned through all the money and began selling things off - starting with the Atari name and IP.
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Was PacMan really a "flop"
in Atari 2600
Posted
Not a problem. That's just a few online links, I have an archive of a good couple 100 newspaper articles from December '82 through July '84 detailing the industry crash. Jetset is of course mistaken, those few articles I shared actually do concretely document the beginnings of the crash (at least the public awareness of it) and specifically the stock market problems that heralded it (including their surprise it started with juggernaut Atari). Future articles over the next two weeks chronicle the stock crash across all the then public trading consumer companies (Atari, Mattel, Magnavox, etc.) and it's major financial effects on the industry, and then starting immediately in January '83 start the layoffs and closings across the industry. These continue throughout the year. By the end of '83 most of the large third party game and peripheral industry that sprang up over '81 through '82 was gone, and the major companies were either severely chopping themselves or making plans to exit by early '84.
People confuse a market crash vs. an industry crash - this was an industry crash. Product (the market) was still being actively sold through '85 (even if a lot of the companies behind the product were no longer there), so the consumer's didn't necessarily see the full effects of what had happened other than cheap games and consoles and few places carrying that product.