would the A8 had been more successful if Atari had done an Apple IIGS clone

[would the A8 had been more successful if Atari had done an Apple IIGS clone]

I think the ST was the right thing to do, anything else would have been a nightmare for Atari. Don't forget whilst Jack got Atari for next to nothing he also inherited the debts too. The IIGS was very expensive to build and Apple only got away with it because their customers were happy to pay more. I like the IIgs, nice sound and graphics and it is much more than a cpu upgrade of the older Apple II machines.

 

My first 16bit computer was the 520STM and it was a lovely machine. Had they put a better sound chip like the Yamaha MSX's FM chip in there and hardware scrolling it would have been fine as far as Vs Amiga scenario. But Jack needed a machine to sell to people QUICK! The Lorraine chipset eluded him and he had to make something from that disaster. All things considered though the 520ST was a nice looking machine and I prefer GEM to the original Mac OS.

 

Even with the way things turned out, I was very happy to be playing Gauntlet 1, The Pawn and Starglider on my 520STM. Those games showed every other 8bit the door instantly and nothing on the IIgs could compare to those 3 games so it was definitely the right choice.

[NES vs 7800]

I think the clever company (ie the one who would have escaped the crash) would have released the 7800 as a home computer.

 

For computing purposes, how would the 7800 be better than the Atari 8-bits? I suppose if one could have afforded the RAM, a 320x200x4-color screen mode might have been nice, but MARIA really seems better suited for gaming than computing.

 

Well the Atari and Commodore with the exotic custom chips weren't really the norm, competitors had to make do with just programmable character sets and attribute colour control like MSX with no hardware pixel scroll etc. A colourful 7800 based machine with a basic rom and some extra ram would have made more colourful games of the style popular at the time, in terms of on screen colour resolution available and sprite flexibility. The best home computers in terms of sales were always the games machines disguised as home computers (Amiga 500/C64 etc etc).

 

So the 7800 system's technology would have been a good choice I think given that it was probably cheaper to produce than the Atari 800 motherboard say. Add a pokey and ram and some Atari basic and away you go. I don't want to open up another pros/cons debate on the A8 though. And I don't know how much the 7800 would have cost to build in that form in 1983 either so hard to say for sure. But for classic 80s arcade games having 16 colours in 160x200 with a much more flexible sprite system would have served Atari well for porting classic games.

 

Think of it as if the Atari 800 was Americas version of the UK's Acorn BBC Micro then the 7800 system would be the US equivalent of the Acorn Electron (cut down/ half the price/ not 100% compatible without some effort by the software houses)

[NES vs 7800]

I guess all the arcade conversions of the SMS library gave it a slightly less childlike atmosphere as arcades were really populated by teens and adults not young kids in he 70s/early 80s, Marketing was also a part of it sure. The Genesis/Megadrive took that one stage further in it's UK advertising, purposefully distancing itself from the SNES cutesy games.

 

The C64 was artificially cheap because MOS made the custom chips they designed and Commodore owned MOS. You can add $200-300 to the price of a C64 if say Atari wanted to build it. That was Jack's genius at work. The C64 was selling well right into the late 80s too. The cracks started to appear in the early 90s when they were still trying to sell it. Not much choice though as the Commodore 16/Plus4 were disasters waiting to happen and the Commodore 128 and disk drive combination was perilously close to the price of an Amiga 500 in the 80s so 8bit games didn't have a massive choice really.

 

Also Commodore were very respected by the business world with the PET series in the very early days of computing. I totally agree with you on compatibility though, the Amiga should have shipped with a DOS emulator to atleast run Word Perfect/Dbase/Lotus 1-2-3/MS-Dos etc. Even I thought that when it was launched. Most people who bought a 'multimedia' PC around the time of the Falcon/Amiga 1200 had no choice. Universities and businesses were using Microsoft Office etc and so they needed to be able to work on such files at home hence they plumped for a PC (the massive advantage of the PCs byte per pixel 256 colour VGA meant 8 times less work was required to run games like Doom which helped a lot). As for build quality the Amiga 1000 was beyond reproach, I still have my original 1986 Amiga 1000 to this day which has never ever let me down once. Most A500s I have had problems with were down to cheap internal drives.

 

It's all water under the bridge now though really.

[2600 games that aren't better on 5200, 7800, Colecovision, or Intellivision]

Vanguard. The VCS version is beautifully coloured where as the 5200 version is like the arcade and a bit monochrome looking. Sound great and plays great too.

[Comparing the NES and 7800 on a technical level]

Hey thanks for the reply. I trawled through everything and got the impression the screen of 25 colours is built up in a similar way to A8 display list and Amiga Copper list yes?

 

How many unique colours per line then, 7 or 25? That's the bit I was confused with.

 

And what is the resolution (hires/lores/total colours available) for the player missile/sprites/moveable objects that the Maria (?) chip can produce and the total unique number per line if it works like the A8/C64 equivalent?

 

I'm just trying to get a feel for the system from some expert knowledge here. (NES specs are probably all over the net so not too worried about them really)

[NES vs 7800]

You and I simply disagree on what constitutes good games.

 

My Personal Opinion is that the NES has terrible, poorly colored and flickery graphics, even in the so-called "good games". and simply not enough games that I like to play.

 

And I'd argue that the Sega Master System is better than either of them.

 

I think it's safe to say that your opinion is very much in the minority. Just the number of A+ titles for the NES was probably about the same size as the entire 7800's library. The SMS had plenty of good games as well, but saying it had a better library of games than the NES is ridiculous.

 

I can't stand Zelda or Mario games...now tell me the NES had better games? I'd rather play Gauntlet Hang-On and R-type than most NES games. In fact I only have 2 NES games..Galaxian+Galaga Cart and Donkey Kong because they are both arcade perfect...(but then again so was Donkey Kong by Ocean software on the C64 for 1/6 the price)

 

If the Famicom is a 1983 machine though the fact the SMS is technically better doesn't mean anything, the Amiga was only 3 years later than the C64 to put that into perspective.

[NES vs 7800]

Probably because no one at the time thought that Nintendo was going to revive the dead American video game market (and interest in video games) back around the mid-1980s until they saw NESes and games really selling in the late 1980s?

 

Frankly, I'm not sure how well the Atari 7800 would have sold if it had been released back in 1984, given the state of both Atari and the video game market at that point. It could have wound up as another Vectrex, leaving Nintendo and Sega as the only real contenders for the "king of the market" throne with the following generation.

 

I have to agree with you on this for the crash knocked out three of the four gaming systems of the time and shops in the Uk couldn't offload the stuff fast enough. Had the 7800 been released in 84 I doubt many places would have stocked it and aside from die hard Atari fans I question whether anyone else would have bought it?

 

I think the clever company (ie the one who would have escaped the crash) would have released the 7800 as a home computer. What killed off the consoles was the £30 cartridge games weren't better than the best of the £6-£8 cassette games or even £12 discs for more affluent buyers. Congo Bongo on the Colecovision was 3x as much as the enhanced Sega developed C64 disk version in price and looked like it was running on hardware technically a generation apart!

 

I would rather die than be forced to play the childish NES games only as my only source of 8bit gaming entertainment. It was too childish and toy like, certainly I have no idea how such games became cool, but then there is no accounting for taste in some markets is there

[NES vs 7800]

Can you imagine if Jack was working for FOX studios when George Lucas came in with a script for a movie called STAR WARS? He probably would have said: "Hey, we don't need your movie, we'll just colorize some old b&w Flash Gordon serials!"

That's basically what a bunch of studios did. He shopped Star Wars around to numerous studios and they all declined. Until George met Alan Ladd Jr. at 20th Century Fox.

 

 

It's amazing some of the morons that get to run companies they have NO business running.

 

I have to give the Tramiel's a big fat red FU for the most

idiotic decisions a company exec could possibly make.

 

How do you buy a game company and abandon the games?

 

Horses toots! All of them!

 

I think that's unfair. You have to remember at the time he bought Atari the technology that came with it was practically worth sweet FA. From this he got millions of people buying the ST (which again had to be made from scratch). Jack was an exemplary, but particular, type of cut-throat business man. He inherited the debts of Atari as well as the deeds to the company. He inherited outdated technology (2600, A8) when better things were already getting ready to be released on the market.

 

The C64 is his successful legacy, and only happened because he bought MOS Technologies...and from that day on it was game over. The reason the C64 was cheaper than the Atari 800/Apple II is NOT because it is inferior (there are things the C64 does the A8 can never do as well and vice versa but please no fanboys replying to this bit!) but because he didn't have to pay a middle man for the technology and got it at cost as he owned MOS. The C64 started life as a development project for a traditional early 80s arcade board NOT a home computer (which probably explains the crappy basic and overly complex sound and graphics chips compared to most other 8 bit micros)

 

What happened when Jack took over Atari was he didn't have available the advantages his business strategy relied upon. There was no easy way to make something both better AND cheaper to produce than the Amiga simple as that. The ST was a compromise, still better than the shitty mono MAC so history could not repeat its self a la C64 business model AND he didn't have Irving Gould's deep pockets to finance such strategies. I think Jack did the best he could with what he had. People forget Commodore was Irving Gould's financial resources AND Jack Tramiel's business acumen. Look what Commodore pissed away with the Amiga A1000's technical advantage in 1985 for god's sake, never had there been such a huge gap between the established systems and the new kid on the block in technical terms. You think Jack would have marketed it as a $1500 machine for rich clueless people. It was a games machine, only an idiot at post Tramiel Commodore would market the Amiga as anything else!

 

Please don't get me wrong, I would rather I walk into a shop and my only two choices of computer were still Commodore or Atari not the pieces of shit running Windows or piece of shit over priced Apple rubbish. How the hell we ended up with the two most pathetic designs as our only choice is just beyond me and is why computing is just zzzzzzzzzzzz

 

Edit: Don't forget the price didn't include the Atari arcade division, that was way out of his price range.

[Comparing the NES and 7800 on a technical level]

Ok I don't understand why anyone would use 160x200 mode IF the 7800 could indeed display 25 unrestricted colours at 320x200?

 

That would make 7800 graphics look as good as Amiga graphics and better than ST but they don't! The games look more like C64 games than ST games in static terms.

 

Can someone please post the exact specifications AND restrictions of the 7800? I've searched for the mythical 'done to death' NES vs 7800 threads and haven't found one that covers things technically. If it has been done can someone point me to the thread that discusses my above questions with technical answers?

 

Thanks

 

(maybe games are more important but no programmer can make a Falcon game look identical on an ST and this is the bit I want to know about in this case, software quality is a different question to hardware capability)

[Bushnell: Today's Atari struggling because it has not stood for anything.]

Simple fact is Atari under Tramiel and Bushnell were hardware companies. Atari now is just a friggin logo on a game box. It doesn't mean anything, it's like the 3000 dollar Commodore gaming PCs with the 'FREE' 50 C64 games installed.

 

When Microsoft themselves couldn't beat the PS2 with unlimited funds and had to go forward very quickly to the xbox360 to get some sales going against the PS2 what chance have ANY other companies that want to get into the console market? Hell even SEGA hasn't even hinted at getting back into the console game.

 

As for home computers well that market is gone too, you can have a PC or a MAC (which is just a PC with a different OS anyway) and that's it! Besides Atari sat on the LYNX for years until the Gameboy came out and they hit it with a 'me too' strategy. And the Jaguar killed them off if you ask me!

 

So the games..... well I can't think of any specific Atari 2600/5200/arcade game that would be gold dust to a PS3/360 developer beyond nostalgia and retro novelty value. Pole Position 2008? Joust 2010? nah it's ok the catalogue is just too old to mean anything really let's face it.

 

I have no idea what Phil Harrison expects to achieve but Atari/Commodore/Acorn/Amstrad/Sinclair are all *DEAD* and he would be better off investing in building a time machine to make sure that prik Steve Jobs NEVER gives that a$$wipe Bill Gates a MAC to 'develop Microsoft Office' for *wink wink* because in 1984 that's when ALL other machines were doomed and turkeys worldwide decided to buy a PC to play DOOM and bin their home computers in the skip outside for a 'superior' machine.

 

Don't get me wrong there is nothing more in this world I would like to see but a future that didn't turn out full of just two options for a 'home computer' and for both Commodore AND Atari to push each other for great new designs year after year. But Infogrammes sticking the Atari logo on game cases for some shit games is nothing to do with what Atari used to stand for or do as a business. In that respect Bushnell is 100% right because Atari means sod all other than a tacky label for some crap garlic munching games makers! I don't care what rights Infogrammes own, the truth is all they wanted was the Atari logo...which they bought from JTS hard disks or something no?

[Defender of the crown for the 8bit?]

a) just like the c64 picture in question. in fact it uses a built in mode.

 

That's the crux

 

a) G2F uses built in modes plus colour enhancements

 

b) G2F does not take usage of all "internal modes" ..

 

 

b) indeed is a conversion as faithful to the original as possible imho. bashing started when emkay started going how his version is "far" better.

 

Well C64 shows a picture with 11 colours where the A8 has 15 already (using 30% of the real capacity for that pic). You can jump in triangles , you can pull your hair off, and you may cry in your pillow at night, but this fact will never change.

 

It's your argumentation that more colours show a superior machine.

 

c) claiming c64 is only better regarding scrolling shooters and it does all other genre "incorrectly" is the same as claiming a8 is better

You just again implement that I was talking about "A8" is better than "C64" . But there was no comparision there.

I was thinking about ridiculous Stream on the C64 and even more ridiculous pictures of humans with a "fubar" colour usage.

 

d) mentioning that the a8 has more colors will not make the picture in question any better.

 

Not only the A8 has more colours. The A8 "Robin" picture has already more colours than the C64 can give to it.

 

OK emkay TYPING ON HERE WILL NOT MAKE YOU LOOK INTELLIGENT SO JUST SHUT UP AND THINK BEFORE YOU POST IDIOT!

 

I've had enough of this emkay and his pea brain. Stop being a dumb troll and maybe people with brains WHO UNDERSTAND BOTH A8 AND C64 TECHNOLOGY might listen to you and your A8 trolling comments. YOU ARE THE TROLL I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU FOOL!!!

 

This is especially for you emkay ok I am going to teach you some facts about C64 special screen modes ok? This is 2008 and you are using 2008 tricks for A8 screen modes to copy NORMAL 0% CPU time Commodore 64 graphics from 1986. You are looking very stupid my friend I think you can shut up now you making Atari fans look stupid. I hope other Atari fans not as stupid as this man, because he is the worst on here.

 

Do you not know that for every trick since 1982 you have tried to improve your inferior game screen capabilities on A8 wasting your player missiles making it no good for REAL GAMES we have been making revolutionary improvements too. You think C64s can only display 16 colours on screen YOU ARE WRONG. We can display more colours in 320x200 and more colours in 160x200 and even in character mode. You are just a baby learning about programming emkay so shut up. Listen while I teach you some sense idiot.

 

1. This C64 game you are copying does NOT use ANY tricks or hacks to make the pictures in Defender of the Crown from 1986 BUT you are using underlayed PMs and other crap to make it the same because the A8 graphics are LESS versatile for games.

 

2. The C64 can display ALL 16 colours on screen using 3 colours and 1 background colour per 4x8 character block on the 160x200 resolution multicolour screen just by changing the colour ram do you understand? This is a standard display on a 1986 game with 100% CPU and graphics processing still left. The best the A8 can do with 100% CPU free for game is 4 crappy colours in same resolution unless you waste your PMs to make more or make it lower resolution.

 

3. The C64 has many many screen modes like your APAC or GR9.11 mixed modes or under/overlaid PMs, do you understand MANY MIXED AND ADVANCED MODES WITH SPRITES OVERLAID/UNDERLAID CAN BE DONE ON THE C64 OK?

 

4. The C64 can show more than 16 colours, many more, have a look at some of my examples and then sit down and learn to talk to talented coders like me!

 

Here is a 320x200 resolution full colour hi-res mixed mode screen on the C64 each 4x1 pixel square can have ANY 2 colours. that is almost full colour for Atari A8 hires 2 colour full screen + some extra colours wasting ALL Player/Missiles. Colours are mixed using interlace to make more colours same as your Technicolor Dream does in 80x100 mode! This is two screens @ 60hz giving 30 frames per second steady using VIC-II chip AND NO SPRITES!

 

 

Here is a multicolour mixed mode screen but in 160x200 with subpixel shift making it 320x200 as 2nd screen swapped and moved 1/2 a pixel across to make mixed mode @ 30FPS (60hz mode)

 

 

The powerful C64 character screen mode can also be used in multicolour mode to give very good photorealistic effect but it is only 15FPS because it uses 4 screens @ 60Hz. It is still a good screen mode to get extra colours by mixing them.

 

 

And finally when we use our superior sprites to underlay these multicolour and multicolour hires modes we can get the following quality...all these images can be used instead of the existing ones in Defender of the Crown!

 

 

 

And here is one showing 7 greyscale levels hires picture when the C64 only has 3 greys in the palette of 16 colours!

 

 

 

There are more C64 cheat/special graphics modes than the A8 has, trust me. So emkay try harder and make some 64 colour 160x200 resolution images and maybe I will listen to you....until you can do this (because I can do this right now and make 64 colour remake of Defender of the Crown in 2008 for all cut-scenes and title scenes) then just shut up and get back to work trying to copy old 1982 graphics modes of C64 with your 30 years of hacking your A8 mixed graphics modes. You think you are a genius, you are just an idiot copying old old screen modes and nobody is impressed! When you can copy ALL pictures here EXACTLY THE SAME with your crappy A8 tools and coding then you may talk to me ok? Until then you are nothing my friend nothing at all. It is 2008 and we C64 demo coders can do much more than your crappy 16 colour blocky rubbish you are proud of on Atari A8!

 

 

The A8 is a wonderful machine and it has many merits but idiots like emkay are making me sick to come on here and read his trolling rubbish DAY AFTER DAY, when you understand the C64 special screen modes THEN reply to oswald and others...otherwise just SHUT UP YOU NOOB AND GO READ THE C64 HARDWARE REFERENCE MANUAL! YOU ARE THE ONE TALKING CRAP EMKAY

[Anyone interested in my 8-bit stuff?]

Would love the 400 if nobody else wants it in the posts above.

[Joypads: NES vs. SMS vs. Atari]

I find all three of the ones mentioned less than nice. Atleast the Atari uses standard 9 pin D connector so you can use another one.

 

Favourite pad of all time and forever on a 9 pin D plug for me is the Sega Megadrive/Genesis 6 button Street Fighter pads. The diagonals are perfect, the pad is perfect (about 33% smaller but same shape) and the buttons perfect. If you're going to play Gauntlet solidly for hours this is one hell of a pad

 

NES uses some stupid connector, you have no choice but to use their rubbish pads which is the worst part.

[Playing 2600 games on a 7800]

PAL 7800s give a horrible RF output (well the 6 that I have do!!)

 

 

Agree there! Have yet to own a PAL 7800 with a completely clean output.

[the excellence of Donkey Kong]

This seams like as good a first post to make as any

 

Hello everyone!!

 

Donkey Kong is one of the few Nintendo games I ever liked, I own it on a NES a Atari 7800 and 2 versions on the C64 (neither being the Atarisoft released cart) and ofcourse Colecovision.

 

Personally I have to rate the 7800 version as my favourite to play, can't say why but for me it just works Then the rip-off copy by a company called Anirog on the C64 (Ocean's version was very late to market but was ok too) and finally the NES but I hate the NES joypads atleast you can use a standard joystick on the 7800. Colecovision version I like due to nostalgia, I saved my pocket money for a year to get one so not really fair.

 

I will check out the A8 version of DK when I find a copy, emulators is not the way to decide these things I think.

 

I don't own it but looking on the internet the one that most impressed me was the Vic20 version, it doesn't look half bad for such a basic machine, no idea how it plays

 

/me runs to ebay to check for Vic and A8 versions of DK

 

 

Very nice DK site here by the way..... http://dkmegasite.vgfort.com/classic.php