kool kitty89

I think I'll have to disagree on that point - Although the jaguar ii chipset was better than the first it would still barely match the PSX or even the Saturn. Bilinear filtering was there but it ran at 1/4 the rate of normal texturing , and there was no perspective correct texturing in hardware. It would have been fun to program though It certainly maintained and extended the flexibility advantages of the original Jaguar, but by "higher cost bracket" I mean building it out into a high-end configuration with no concern for backwards compatibility and with 33 MHz EDO DRAM (assuming the chips were bumped to 33 MHz) and Oberon on a dedicated bus (say 2 MB of 33 MHz 64-bit EDO DRAM) and a separate bus for the CPU (either shared with audio or keeping a separate slow bus for audio as well). That, and goign a step further and just talking about Oberon as the graphics ASIC, you could configure it in a REAL high-end arcade system or console and drop in a high performance off the shelf CPU on a dedicated bus. (forget the likes of an R3000 or SH2, more like an R4300, R3900, PPC 602, SH3, or maybe a fast 486 -or going further and dropping in a full PPC 603, R4600, Pentium/K-5/6x86, etc -technically the 603 and 4600 WERE intended for embedded markets and were designed to be lower cost, but really were lower cost in the high-end bracket) And have any of those on equally fast EDO DRAM. In the case of the high-powered CPU, no need to finish the design for TOM II/puck either, just the old TOM (probably with a fixed UART and maybe a couple other tweaks) on a dedicated slow DRAM bus. Still, even on a dedicated bus, at 33 (or 33.33) MHz at 64-bits, that's still only 266 MB/s peak bandwidth (about 1/2 that of the N64) though perhaps with advantages over the latency issues of the N64's RDRAM. (I'm not sure on the details of that though and some things I've read indicate more of an issue with the CPU's DMA connection having high latency -like the DSP in the Jag- and possibly not being directly related to the use of RDRAM and not affecting the RSP in the same way as the CPU) Though if you talk about pure performance potential as such, you'd want to consider the N64's RSP also configured on a dedicated bus. (hmm, actually, I wonder if it actually could have been more cost effective in some respects if they'd used only 2 MB of RDRAM for the RSP on a dedicated bus and 2 MB of commodity EDO DRAM for the CPU/IO/sound side of things at 1/3 the CPU's clock speed -more cost from the dual bus design, but savings on component costs and performance gains of separate buses -especially savings after 512kx32-bit EDO DRAM chips became available) Then again, it WAS SGI developed/licensed, so they'd have had a better deal on RDRAM in general than on the mass market. (and the RSP was specifically designed -or at least configured- around using the 9-bit RDRAM) The PSX already has a dedicated video bus clocked as fast as the GPU (I think it may be VRAM too, but maybe just EDO DRAM -a lot of references to "VRAM" are actually just talking about video memory regardless of it being DRAM, SRAM, etc), and the Saturn is using multiple video buses and separate source and destination to get reasonable performance out of the unbuffered VDP1. (they also oddly used SDRAM rather than EDO even though nothing in the system is faster than 28.7 MHz -presumably done to cut R&D costs and time to develop a fully asynchronous interface, seems like a pretty bad move in hindsight -and oddly they DID have both FMP DRAM and SDRAM interfaced to CPUs and audio though, so they had some asynchronous interfacing) Then again, it's the same thing with the Jaguar I. Take Jerry and give it a decent MB of EDO DRAM with 2 banks (1 256kx16 and 4 64kx16 chips) of EDO DRAM running as fast as TOM and allowing double the bandwidth for all buffered operations and roughly 4.66x faster texture mapping (26.6 MHz, separate source and destination) and a 2nd bus with Jerry and a decent 32-bit CPU using FPM or EDO DRAM (possibly faster JERRY accesses since it doesn't have to deal with TOM handshaking) or maybe a dedicated sound bus for Jerry. (and whatever capacity of RAM you wanted depending on the exact cost parameters) Hell, it still probably would have been cheaper to manufacture (at similar volumes) than the 3DO even with 3 MB of EDO DRAM and a SH2, R3000, or ARM610 (let alone lower performing/cheaper options), or at very least significantly cheaper to manufacture than the Saturn. (possibly not the PSX unless you remove the context of Sony's vertical integration, in-house licenses and patents, etc) But that's not really surprising once you realize how high the cost to performance ratio is for the base Jaguar chipset is. (actually, it makes me wonder why TWI/Atari Games stopped at the only moderately enhanced CoJag -still a single bus, main block of FMP DRAM, added 1 MB of 32-bit VRAM and an '020 or R3000 when they could have pushed it much further in the context of an arcade budget -even for a relatively lower-cost arcade system, then again they hardly pushed the CoJag as it was -it doesn't really look like they did anything the stock Jag couldn't if hooked up to a HDD) Well, except with the Jaguar's blitter, you don't have any support for 16 color textures, so RAM use is a bit tighter than the Saturn's VDP1. (hell, it might have actually been faster than the Saturn at a true triangle rasterizer using the blitter+GPU as such vs using an SH2+VDP1 with line filling or "pinched" quads with 50% overdraw -and there's quite a few Saturn games using pinched quads or software assisted triangle rasterizers . . . maybe the SCU DSP in the Saturn could have been more competitive with the Jag's GPU at assisting line by line rasterization on VDP1) Hmm, actually I wonder how cost effective it would have been for Atari to configure the Jag with pure EDO DRAM if they cut total RAM to just 1 MB (512k 16-bit bank and 512k 64-bit bank). Less RAM is limiting, but the sheer bandwidth advantages would have been extremely substantial for the time and the price of EDO DRAM would have been dropping significantly at a time when common low-end FPM DRAM prices were stagnating (so that 1 MB of EDO DRAM would have been getting cheaper and cheaper while the historical Jag's FPM DRAM was barely changing in price). Keeping JERRY and the 68k in that 16-bit bank all the time would also reduce performance hits a good bit (especially if they could have implemented Amiga-like interleaving but in fast page mode for the separate bank). Maybe they could even have switched to a 386SX on top of that, or even a Cyrix 486SLC. (both would use a similar number of traces as the 68k -more pins, but just redundant VCC/gnd/NC lines- and a 386SX, or maybe even the SLC may have been cheaper on the mass market than an EC020 due to the higher demand/volume for x86 CPUs and more competitive market -vs 68k which only had the original 68000 being produced competitively by multiple manufacturers, then there's the surge of high profile PC games being developed in x86 assembly language in the early 90s before the switch to mainly high-level programming; that and there were no 26.6 or 39.9 MHz 68000s available in mass production from those competitive licensed manufacturers -technically a fast 286 would have had better performance than a 68k too, but then you don't get the flat 32-bit address model of 386 protected mode and 286 production was declining in the early/mid 90s -had Atari corp kept pushing their PC line, they might have already had a high volume supplier for 386SXs and stockpiles -maybe even Cyrix SLCs in use: that 1k cache and the added 486 instructions are pretty nice) And, of course, Atari had many more problems than hardware or even software difficulties with the state they were in in 1993. (management, cash flow/funding, marketing, etc) Though at least with more foolproof hardware they'd have had more of a chance to get enough momentum to dig into a niche on the market and have a better chance of rectifying their various management/marketing/etc problems. (but as Kskunk said, they were pretty much doomed after 1991 -not having any new home console from the 7800 to Jag was a big part of that, but screw ups with the computers and other things certainly were major factors as well -more so for their European market than the US- and even having the sub-par Panther out in 1990 probably would have been a lot better than what they did -which was nothing until the Jag and the Lynx and ST had failed to make anywhere near the impression in the US as in Europe)

You must not have played Sonic Adventure 2. Whistling for the Chao AND for the mystic melody secrets. (I forget if Sonic Advneture has chao whistling too) But back on this issue: That is correct. The reason games like double dragon where are multiple systems is because if a Arcade developer licensed there games to other companies the contracts only counted for the developers that signed up for it not the company that had originally created the game, which is what companies like Sega and the ones that owned Double Dragon did, a little loop hole that was hardly used. OK, but how would that loophole differing from just having differing publishers regardless of the developer? It wasn't the developers who signed up with Nintendo contracts, it was the publishers (regardless of whether said publishers were using in-house development divisions or outsourcing). Take Atari Corp for instance: pretty much no games on the 7800 were Atari produced but almost 100% were Atari published. How would Nintendo's contracts differentiate from a developer publishing through multiple 3rd parties and through a mix of 3rd and 1st parties? What about 1st party proxies? (wholely owned subsidiary labels like Konami's Ultra and Acclaim's LJN -such proxies were almost exclusively used to get around the 5 game/year limit and not for publishing to competing consoles) What if a developer published/licensed a game for a non-nintendo console before the Nintendo console release? Again, the developer shouldn't matter (only the publisher), thus an Arcade company could pay a 3rd party to program a console conversion of an arcade game and then publish it through the arcade company's label and be just as limited as if they'd programmed it in-house. There's also a good chunk of NES games that had completely different publishers in the west than in Japan. And again, even with JP/US developers largely locked-in with Nintendo, Atari had a wealth of European developers and publishers to look towards. (often with more competitive console-like games than much of what's on the 7800 -and many of which were never released on the NES either, so would have been defacto 7800 exclusives in the US -in some cases with US computer versions, others not even then) Having those games on the 7800 also would have made it more marketable in Europe. (and even with the price disadvantages of the carts, the low margins pushed with the 7800 would have made it a lot closer to computer game pricing than competing consoles in Europe -except the 2600, obviously)

Sega had managed to get some great momentum in the US, but Sega of Japan felt it wasn't going to be enough to be profitable. The DC had failed to gain significant market share in Japan or Europe (Japan mainly due to crushing competition and Europe more due to poor management iirc). Sega of Japan wasn't willing to whittle things down to cater mainly to the successful North American market of the DC, and even in NA things had been pretty tight with the margins Sega of America had been pushing. (the losses over Saturn, general debt, and low DC prices -let alone other special deals- made that tighter) In hindsight, they may have been able to manage a stable market in the US if they'd tempered things a bit more. (the modem was cool, but putting it pack-in standard along with the browser for free made them lose even more money on each console sold and meant it would take much longer to start selling consoles above cost, the rebate with Seganet made that worse, as did the price drop on the DC in late 2000 -they should have kept the $200 price, it was already $100 cheaper than the PS2 and had a large software library) The only thing they shouldn't have cut back on was advertising. Strong advertising is absolutely critical in the US market, more than any other factor for such products. Strong marketing and hype will drive sales and boost 3rd party developer interest and confidence. DVD, PS2 hype, piracy, and lack of EA support are things people like to throw around, but only some of those were definitive issues, and some only really mattered due to Sega's tight position after the Saturn. (Sega had awesome sports games for the time with NFL2k, etc, so losing Madden was less of an issue, the piracy issue was a hit to PR with developers for sure and one Sega could ill afford at the time -though piracy on the DC never reached the levels it had on the PSX, DVD was a biggest issue in Japan but in the US was just one more thing to add to Sony's hype) They obviously weren't ever going to match the PS2, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have hung in there alongside Sony and Microsoft, if not coming out ahead of them in market share. (with the exception of the PS2, all the new consoles on the market and contemporary PCs also favored relatively efficient cross-platform development, making it even more likely to get long-term 3rd party support -and Sega could/should have been pushing most hot 1st party games onto the PC shortly following their native console releases -they should have pushed that much more with the Saturn, especially from 1997 onward) Hell, in hindsight, you could argue that Sega STILL made the wrong decision to cancel the DC like they did in January of 2001 given the repercussions it had in the short run for their stock prices, PR, and general financial position. (they definitely would have needed to cut things back to remain stable, but may have been better off carefully managing the DC with plans to stay for the long haul -or at least up to 2002 to see how they'd stack up after the GC and Xbox launches: hell, depriving Nintendo and MS the Sega releases would have weakened their software lineups as well) No, the DC was no more "128 bit" than the PS2. Both had 128-bit coprocessors (both embedded in the same chip as the CPUs iirc), but neither were 128-bit systems in the formal sense. (ie CPU "bitness" as even the 360 and PS3 are 64-bit systems in that sense, the PS2 was 64-bit in that sense as well, the Xbox, DC, GC, and Wii are 32-bit in that sense) The PS2 has mainly 16-bit buses (very fast RDRAM, but 16-bits wide like the N64's 9-bits) while the DC uses 64-bit wide main and video buses with SDRAM and the Xbox uses 128-bit wide dual-channel DDR on a shared bus for the CPU and GPU. (GC is mostly 64-bits wide iirc, but with a mix of different RAM types) Bitness really doesn't matter though, it's really a useless metric as such and just a marketing gimmick. (even more than MIPS ratings or clock speeds) Hell, the dreamcast's CPU used a fully 16-bit instruction set, but that was beneficial to performance. (higher code density, more efficient caching, etc) What matters is peak and real world performance, and that's determined by a number of things. In the DC vs PS2, the DC was far more programmable (more like contemporary PCs, CG, and Xbox) with very powerful high-level tools to match that (taking what Sony did with the PSX a step further with even cleaner hardware and better tools). The PS2 was the polar opposite with low-level optimized hardware and a general lack of high-level tools provided by Sony (odd given the programmability and high-level libraries of the PSX had been one of its strong points for developers -some programmers complained about lack of comprehensive low-level documentation, but I highly doubt that any wanted to do away with the nice libraries). That meant that the DC would be much easier to push close to peak performance than the PS2 (sort of like PSX vs Jag or Saturn), but in terms of peak performance: the PS2 had much more polygon pushing power but the DC had more dedicated video RAM and more capable texture/effects/AA/etc supported in hardware (one of the reasons you see more desaturated textures and dithered highcolor rendering rather than predominantly truecolor rendering as on the PS2's contemporaries), so the PS2 could push many more polygons but the DC could push nicer looking polygons. (and the DC's real world performance was much closer to theoretical performance than the PS2's real-world performance -let alone its average performance) Yep, and Wii, and GC, and Xbox all going by the metric used for PCs (CPU/ALU), though the N64's CPU is 32-bit external 64-bit internal (sort of like the 386 SX, 65816, 8088, etc -not like the 68k's 16/32-bit since that has a 16-bit ALU in spite of the 32-bit addressing and 32-bit registers). By that metric, the Jaguar's RISC processors are also 32-bit (64-bit bus -16 bit for JERRY- 64-bit internal registers but 32-bit ALU -I think the ISA is also 16-bit fixed length sort of like Hitachi's SH1/2/3/4/etc), though the OPL and Blitter can be considered 64-bit processors. (though that's technically debatable as well) In any case, that really doesn't matter as the "bittness" used to label consoles and generations is/was pure gimmick. (hence things like the 24-bit Neo Geo ) I for one am glad they dropped that BS last gen. I meant that the GPU was 128 bit. Also yes the PS2 did have a DVD drive but looking at it from a pure gaming perspective should that have mattered. Even know it still is not common to have your game system in your living room. Heck Wii's are more common in family rooms and they still do not allow people to watch DVD's plus Blue ray did not take off like people had that plus now there is streaming. Actually DVD did matter for gaming. It meant fewer discs, potentially faster load times, and more/better multimedia content. (though in the last case, that's mainly due to the fewer discs since the GC and DC both should have been capable of similar bitrate and video compression as the PS2 -or not too far off with the DC at least, it had MPEG2 acceleration iirc and most cutscenes certainly look MPEG2 quality, like lower bitrate DVD) The PS2's DVD feature (especially being competitive or cheaper than standalone players) definitely made for a compelling selling point and induced many non-gamers to buy it and eventually get games for it as well. (of course, Sony had many advantages for pushing such that the competition couldn't match -and had added interest in pushing the DVD standard) Even MS opted to pass the overhead of a DVD license to an add-on rather than adding that to the already significant loss on each console sold. The Wii not being able to play DVD video is rather ridiculous IMO given how cheap DVD licensing is now, but oh well... Yes, bitness is stupid to push as such. (even by the 4th generation you had a lot of different internal and external bit depths as well, and of course, you can have 8-bit CPUs that are more powerful than 16-bit or even 32-bit CPUs, etc) However, I thought it wasn't the full GPU, but just one part of the graphics chipset that's on-die with the CPU in the DC (the vector unit). Sort of like the GTE on-chip with the R3000 in the PSX or coprocessing logic on-die with the EE in the PS2. (of course the GC and Xbox CPUs have FPUs on-chip, but that's been relatively common since the 486 came on the scene) That and the bus widths of the DC are 64-bit for video and CPU (32-bit for sound iirc) while the PS2 uses mostly (or entirely?) 16-bit RDRAM. (and the Xbox dual channel 128-bit DDR, GC a mix of SDRAM and 1T-SRAM -DC is all SDRAM)

Not necessarily. 68K usage does not automagically equal shit capabilities or performance. You'd be amazed at what you can accomplish with just the 68K driving the custom chips... The 68k is certainly a bottleneck that limits the potential of the hardware, but using it for most/all of the game logic/AI/etc still doesn't render the system useless. (and even games supposedly using the crappy GPU compiler like Club Drive look far better) The Flare engineers certainly intended it to be used heavily, just like they'd intended the Z80 in the Flare 1 or 8088 in the Slipstream. (granted, there were no other options in that chipset whereas in the Jaguar, Flare made the GPU's RISC core flexible enough to be pressed into the role of a real CPU) The slow bus accesses is the worst hit to the system; it was those slow accesses that older/slow systems like the Amiga or Megadrive took advantage of to allow interleaved accesses on the 68k bus, but with the Jaguar, the bus is much faster and more efficient using fast page mode and thus serial bus accesses are most efficient to avoid page beaks. (plus a 13.3 MHz 68k is too fast to interleave DRAM accesses with anyway) Though if they'd added a separate 16-bit (or wider) bank of RAM in the Jag, they could have used the 2-bank interleaving feature that could keep both banks in fast page mode with concurrent accesses, even better if they implemented Amiga-like interleaving in conjunction with the dual banks. (with fast page mode interleaving, you should have fast enough accesses to allow the 68k to run full bore and still allow 50% fast page bandwidth for TOM working in the 64-bit bank -having a 2nd bank also would have meant JERRY could spend more time in that 16-bit bank with the 68k and put much less of a hit on TOM -texture mapping speed would also be more than doubled as the blitter could use the 2 banks for source and destination and keep in fast page mode) It's a shame there weren't 26.6 MHz rated 68ks on the mass market, let alone 40 MHz. A faster 68k would have been a big help too. (and should still have been cheaper than most other options, at least if it was a commodity mass-market product -68EC020s were not openly licensed and only produced by Motorola, plus used a lot more silicon and a higher pin count, lower-end ARM CPUs probably would have been more expensive too though the ARM2as may have been a viable option, 386SXs would have been more expensive to manufacture than 68EC020s due to the larger amount of silicon but maybe the more competitive/higher volume market would have made those more favorable -Cyrix's 486SLC also added a 1k cache, so much better still for the Jaguar, IBM's 386SLC had 8k but with restricted production contracts and would have been more expensive to manufacture than Cyrix's CPU core anyway) It would be cool to find some mass market pricing information on lower-end CPUs of the time to see what sort of options Atari had. Of course, they also could have added a 2nd bus for the CPU (probably better to have JERRY in that too), but that was contrary to the single-bus design emphasis of the Jaguar. Yeah, that's what I noted earlier. It's almost like they didn't use the GPU (RISC) at all and just had the 68k do all the 3D math as well. (probably at least used the blitter for line filling) And, on top of that, used less than tight code to manage all of that. (ie tight code on a 13.3 MHz 68k should have given better results)

Yeah from looking at the specs it would have been alot more powerful than the PS1 but not as powerful as the PS2. Not THESE specs I hope: http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/jaguar/jag2specs.html As those are completely wrong and probably derived from magazine/rumor mill sources. (they most definitely are not close to the actual hardware specs detailed in the final Jaguar II manual) That's one of many articles/pages that is in need of an update on curt's site. (probably not deletion, but being tagged as not real specs -it's still interesting to see from the pure rumor/exaggerated tech side of things though) The Jag II/Midsummer manual is the best source for tech info iirc. (not sure if it's on Curt's site, but it's been posted on AA a few times and I downloaded the pdf a while back) See this segment of discussion in this thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/119048-its-1993-youre-in-charge-of-the-jag-what-do-you-do/page__st__875__p__1966161#entry1966161 As Crazyzce mentioned and from what I've seen from the Jag II's actual documents, it would have still had some disadvantages over the PSX, but also other advantages. It still would have been critically bandwidth limited by a single bus at ~106 MB/s or 133 MB/s if they'd gotten the new chips up to 33 MHz and the DRAM up to 16.6 MHz. (they could have jumped to EDO DRAM -which was getting cheaper and much less expensive than the SDRAM Sega was using- but that would have been tougher to maintain 100% compatibility with as per the goals of the Jag II). The fundamental chipset (namely Oberon/Tom II) totalyl kicked the PSX's ass (specifically the GPU) and had advantages over the N64's RSP as well, but like the orignal Jag, it would have had to switch to a higher cost bracket (like Sony or Sega pushed) and dropped backwards compatibility to truly meet those goals. I think the RISC GPU was about the same, texture mapping was now fully buffered and more flexible with a texture cache added and blinear filtering support. (not sure about perspective correction) The blitter also added polygon rasterization in hardware. I forget if there was a cache for the GPU or not, but I know there was supposed to be a unified cache added to the 3rd RISC core that was to be the game logic/AI processor (basically the CPU) which was to be part of the Puck/Tom II ASIC. (the prototypes all used the old Tom chip though) There was also to be a slow sound bus to remove any overhead/contention issues related to bus accesses for the sound subsystem. (a separate 16-bit bus would have been a godsend for the Jag I -allowing Jerry and the 68k to work off the main bus and in parallel with TOM, then again, a CPU with a cache also would have been a godsend ) Hardware is only one side of things though and Atari had been in no position to properly launch/manage the Jaguar I in 1993, let alone in 1996. (in 1988-1991 they were probably in a good enough situation financially to fund such a mass market product with internal funds and credit -2 things that they did not have in 1993)

I think the longest any company has gone before jumping onboard for the next generation (for a home console, not a handheld) is Nintendo with the Famicom in 1983 to the Super Famicom in 1990. If you discount the add-ons, the Genesis/MD was on the market for 6 years as well. (the Sega CD is a substantial enough add-on to put it into a separate system category -unlike the Famicom Disk system which had most/all games ported to the NES and added almost nothing beyond RAM to allow magnetic media to be used) The PS2 also went for close to 6 years before a replacement. However, you could argue that this is the longest the international market has gone without at least one company jumping into a new generation. (even if it's a newcomer or weakened competitor willing to jump the gun to compete) People seem more willing to be content with aging hardware this generation than past ones and the recession has had an impact on that as well. The very fact that the Wii came on the market with roughly 2002 class hardware (ie lower power/consolidated derivatives of hardware barely beyond the Game Cube and still inferior in several aspects to the original Xbox) and has been so successful is a testament to consumers being satisfied with much lower quality tech (and resulting limits in graphics/content) demonstrates the difference in the market as such. (albeit you could argue that no major company tried that approach -low cost hardware with a gimmick- prior to the Wii, or at least not for several generations and never with critical success -the Jaguar and the 32x had really been the last mass market attempts at pushing the low-cost angle and had failed, though not primarily due to targeting the lower end market either -and thus there was really a lack of historical examples of a company even properly designing AND organizing/supporting such a platform in the past) I'm largely guessing here, but it seems like Nintendo saw a trend in popularity and recognition of certain character and ran with it. (you mentioned Donkey Kong, but DK really wasn't a major element of NES mascot type marketing -and you saw quite a few non Nintendo characters/franchises becoming associated primarily with Nintendo, at least in the US -sort of like you saw with Space Invaders and Pac Man in association with Atari)

Previous consoles had had identifiable/original characters too, but never pushed as proper mascots as a marketing gimmick. (that came after the fact for Nintendo too) Hell, some games even had full comic books that went with them. (like with Yar's revenge, both an original character and a cool backstory and comic to go with it) I'm all one for giving credit where credit is due (like Nintendo's marketing that catered to a broader spectrum than ever before and accelerated the expansion of the market), but Nintendo obviously gets far more credit than they deserve. (things like reviving the US market when it was clearly on the rebound before the NES test marketed, etc) They also deserve credit for managing a company well when it was growing so rapidly. (Sega and Atari both had serious problems during or just after periods of rapid expansion) One of the biggest advantages Nintendo had in marketing in the US was that they'd been trying to get into the market for almost 3 full years by the time of the NES's 1986 launch, so they probably knew their way around the consumer market a lot better than the likes of Sega. (albeit Sega obviously could have invested in partnering with a prominent US distributor/retailer that knew the market well -Tonka wasn't perfect, but if Sega had had them at launch, the SMS almost certainly would have done much better from the start -Sega got that right in Europe at least, though it wasn't until late 1989 that Mike Katz took the reigns and SoA got the management to drive them to success -one big thing was investing in building up SoA's staff in general) Sega's failings with the SMS pale in comparison to NEC with the TG-16 . . . NEC, a megacorp of a similar variety to Sony with a strong following in Japan, a highly cost/performance efficient hardware platform on top of vertical integration, and massive funding/lines of credit at their disposal. They could have slashed the price of the PCE's hardware, invested massively in advertising, put down tons of cash on software development and expansion in the west, etc, etc (ie everything that Sony did half a decade later), but they did none of that. The TG-16 launched with a mediocre-pack in, price no better than the Genesis (newer, much less consolidated, and no vertical integration), bulkier size but still only 1 controller port, and (most significantly) totally mismatched and underwhelming marketing. (and no European release at all) It's interesting to note that in many cases, it's more of a case of who doesn't screw up than who does things well. (then you have perfect storm situations like the original PSX: Sony managed things almost perfectly, had almost perfect hardware for the market at the time, had excellent tools for the hardware, had excellent marketing, had tons of funding, and all the major competition seriously screwing up -albeit in some cases, Sony's shock to the market exacerbated the problems of competitors like Sega, 3DO, and NEC -and Atari, but they had so many problems already it's not remotely funny- Nintendo OTOH just seemed to screw themselves over by being stubborn with their decision to scrap optical media -cancel the SNES CD that they'd been string media/users along with for 4 years and then announce the '64 would be cart based as well- Nintendo very well may have swept the market with a CD/proprietary optical media based N64, or at least be neck and neck with Sony worldwide) It's a relatively accurate account of Nintendo's history iirc, but not much more. (ie it has a narrow scope) Kent's book (Ultimate History of Video Games) has a nice broad scope, but is unfortunately heavily plagued with inaccuracies due to a lack of prudent fact checking and cross-referencing. (it's really only good for direct quotes -which are very well cited- and even then, you need to check the sources to get an idea of the accuracy -one obvious example is all the myths propagated/perpetuated by Nolan Bushnell) Kent recognizes that flaw, but he neither has the interest nor the ability to revise the book. (he sold the rights) It had a lot more to do with SoA's (Sega of America) management at the time than the technical capabilities of the Genesis. The master system was generally ahead of the NES (had they brought the FM add-on over, it would have been almost completely superior to the NES -even with mappers), but Sega mismanaged it pretty badly in the US. (Tonka did a decent job, but not exceptional -especially considering they took charge in '88, when Nintendo was almost at its peak and Sega had sustained nearly 2 years of mismanagement and sub-par marketing with the SMS in the US -one of the most obvious changes for the better was Tonka's decent to good quality packaging art compared to the horrible '86/87 examples) If the Master System had been managed properly, it would have been folly for Sega to launch the MD so soon and SoJ should have seriously considered holding back the MD until '89 at least (later in the west) and sacrifice the Japanese market somewhat to cater to the SMS's success in the west. (they could simply have held back the MD's release in the west, but keeping it in develop a year longer could have paid off big time in the western markets with a cleaner piece of hardware with more features at similar or lower cost) I disagree. Atari Corp. sued Nintendo on antitrust grounds because the publishers could not only not publish on other consoles if they were already licensees to the NES but they also couldn't license those games to other platforms for others to publish. That didn't loosen up until 1988/89 because of the Atari Corp./Atari Games lawsuits and the threats of Federal intervention and lawsuits from other companies. Almost all the titles that appeared on the NES were exclusive to the NES until Nintendo got scared. Then explain how there are many examples that contradict that going back to 1987/88 if not earlier. (several of Sega's own games were licensed and released on Nintendo platforms as well and within 2 years of their release on the SMS/Mk.III) Double Dragon is certainly the most obvious example though. Besides, saying "I disagree" seems a bit odd, like you're posing an opinion: if you have facts regarding the specifics of Nintendo's contracts, then say so, opinions do matter in this context. I haven't seen a really comprehensive outline of their policies, so I'm not positive myself. (going by what's available to me on the subject and interpreting it as best as possible) Yes, I am saying that, and NEC screwed up in so many other ways, it's not really surprising that they'd have missed out on that. (after all, localizing all of those games would have required NEC to invest more, and lack of investment was their biggest fault: not spending enough for marketing, not willing to sell their hardware at or below cost, not willing to invest in US/EU software development, not willing to build up a US division to manage the PCE, etc, etc) Besides, there were a lot of PCE games that were not multiplatform with the Famicom and still didn't make it over, so that makes the issue even more clear. It wasn't so much about the userbase, and it really wasn't until after the 1987 holiday season that Nintendo became the definitive/entrenched market leader as such. (they didn't become a national household name until after 1987 -in some regions they certainly were in '87, but not in many others per the nature of the US market) It was more about Nintendo's aggression in the market and their hype/marketing that netted them the support of western 3rd parties on top of the existing Japanese support. Hell, if it worked for the Jaguar with Atari in such a horrible position in '93, it should work for anybody. (that is, using hype to get general investor/developer/media interest even if you have very little to market by yourself -of course the jag fell apart later on, but it had enough hype to seriously shake up the market -the 32x/Mars project was in part a direct response to the Jaguar- and the Jag also had a very long list of sign-ons for licensed publishers) That's also what some people seem to fail to realize with the 7800: even without Atari investing in 1st party games, strong marketing/hype would have been extremely influential in the marketplace. (both for generating sales and for getting 3rd party publisher interest) It's actually quite ironic that the Jaguar actually had a lot more 1st and 3rd party software support than the 7800, in spite of Atari Corp's horrible position at the time of the Jag and the absolutely terrible hardware sales of the system. (as far as mass market game systems go -the 7800 sold more in 1986 in the US alone than there were Jaguars manufactured) Also, a few US developers had already started developing for the Famicom before the NES had even materialized. Oh, and after all that, Atari still had near 100% of European developers to commission/license games from (or attempt to court them to publish independently on the 7800). That included codemasters, perhaps the best unlicensed NES developer. (and a major player in the Euro software market who gradually transitioned from the budget side to general mass market publisher in the late 80s) And another comment on "spend money to make money" "Spending" doesn't have to come out of poket, and in most cases it doesn't, but comes from loans/investors instead. The problem would have been that Atari Corp's credit was probably not very good at all in 1884-86 and they already had a major creditor with Warner's massive loans. However, my '88, things had turned around and Atari Corp was near there peak. It was then that they were in a position to push hard for expansion assisted by investment/loans. (deficit spending can also be quite useful for a competitive edge, but is risky and would require careful planning to avoid serious problems -one of Sega's problems in the early 90s was sustained defict spending from constant investment and expansion rather than shifting to profits, not only did the rapid growth contribute to some bloat in the company and instability, but the sustained deficits/investing in capital put Sega in a weaker position when the mid 90s slump hit and when they fell into a rut of their own management problems -and thus were stuck with investment capital rather than reserves of liquid assets as Nintendo had accrued -that's also one reason Katz may have been a better President than Kalinske, Katz seems to be a bit more level headed from what I know of his business practices, willing to take risks, but also willing to temper them and meet a budget) I'm a bit ignorant of business law, but maybe Tramiel could have even invested his private funds as loans to Atari Corp and acted as a creditor rather than sinking money in directly as such. (or is it illegal to be both a shareholder and creditor of a firm?) Using private funds is definitely reserved as a last-ditch effort for most large corporations, and often an act of desperation. (ie what Okawa did for Sega by supplementing massive funds to Sega out of pocket -and then leaving even more after he died along with forgiving all debt owed to CSK) Hmm, that would imply that it IS legal to be both an investor/employee and a creditor to a corporation, at least in Japan. (though their business laws are less strict than the US iirc)

Nintendo was where the money was for publishers. It goes even a little bit deeper than that despite being one of the reasons. Big Name Japanese third parties were signing with Nintendo back around 1984 or early 1985. The Atari 7800 or the Sms was not one the market yet. The big name companies I am referring to was Capcom,Enix,Hudson, Irem, Konami, Namco, Sunsoft, and Taito. To add what I mentioned before: The SMS may not have been on the market yet, but there WAS competition in Japan, just not very effective competition. The SG-1000 was the most capable, but it was still just (more or less) a colecovision (granted, thus roughly as capable as the MSX) and Sega didn't manage a compeitive/lower price point of competitive marketing iirc. (don't know a lot about the history of that market though) Nintendo also had been one of the biggest seller of Pong clones and other dedicated consoles earlier on with their TV Game systems. (plus the Game and Watch line of handhelds) Atari failed to market the 2600 in Japan early enough or license it to an effective 3rd party Japanese distributor. (it seems the VCS's price was abnormally high in Japan as well) The same was true for localizations of the Intellivision and such. (and some JP exclusive systems) Thus, there was no strong console market in Japan prior to the NES, it was niche for the cart based machines along with a moderate market for dedicated game systems (Pong and such), somewhat like the US in 1977. (though Nintendo pushed for a tighter market model than Warner/Atari -high volumes and selling at cost with licensed 3rd party publishers- and took off more rapidly than the VCS -they accomplished more or less what Atari did from '77-80 in '83-85 -the smaller/denser JP marker also greatly facilitated that spread -the US market is massive and unwieldy by comparison, much harder and riskier: hence why almost all Japanese products were/are tested first in Japan before even considering an international release -Europe is not quite as good, but also more favorable than the US, putting US companies at a disadvantage for such risks or forcing them to start with a smaller region of the US alone)

No need, you just have to use the special CD expansion. Yeah, except that duct taping a CD-X/Multimega/Sega CD/X'Eye/etc would give much better results. (except for the argubly weaker replaced music -good music and excellent use of the synth hardware -except the intro's red book track- but I like the feel of the original tracks better myself -both are good, so it's hard to complain)

It's a good bit more primitive than either some of the early, relatively poor examples of 3D on the Jag (I think Gorf mentioned that Checkered Flag or Club Drive may actually have been relying on Atari's poor GPU compiler). Actually, it almost looks like they used the 68k to calculate the 3D with no use of the GPU at all... (just the 68k and blitter, I mean it's not really that far from stuff you might see on a 16 MHz Amiga or STe, or a 286 PC for that matter -probably not that different from Alone in the Dark running on fast 286 without wait states) It wouldn't have been too out of place on the CD32 either. Well lets say that it gets much better when that kind of game is 3D and either FPS or TPS You mean 1st and 3rd person POV, right? Shooters are a different genre entirely from action/adventure type games. (you have some horror themed shooters too, but that's not what most the classic RE games are, or some others like the Silent Hill series) It's closer to a game like Grimm Fandango with more of an action theme and less puzzles. (Silent Hill is more in between with a pretty heavy emphasis on exploration and puzzles) Like how Tomb Raider isn't a 3rd person shooter either, but an action-adventure game more comparable to the 3D zelda games and such. (also some platforming elements -but Zelda has a lot of that too) Or why the metroid prime games aren't FPSs either. (they're action-adventure/puzzle games) Many, many genres had a fair amount of prerendered still BG areas (including the N64 zelda games) up through most of last generation and occasionally in this generation as well. (and sometimes full realtime renderers with limited PoV more like prerendered games) The likes of Resident Evil and Grimm Fandango really go back to Kings's quest with the same sort of still/animated BGs and moving a player a round the 2D environment. (then you had various 1st person graphic adventures as well, like later Zork games and the Myst series) And you still have examples of that today with what Telltale is putting out among a few others. That's one thing I like about the survival horror genre: many games focusing on the action-adventure and puzzle solving side of things. (I don't care much for the early RE games given the general lack of polish and weaker story -iirc not many good puzzles either- but that's what makes the better Silent Hill games so great and some others of the genre -even some of the FPS-oriented derivatives of the horror genre kept that going like with Bioshock -though that draws some elements from the classic System Shock games too, an earlier example of a 1st person game making good use of the adventure and puzzle elements, more like what Metroid Prime did too -action adventure/puzzle with added FPS elements and 1st person PoV)

Get a mod-chipped PS1/PS2 system, then, and get back at "the man" with your broadband connection and disc burner, playing those great games all the while without enrichening "the man." <I do not condone this activity; just presenting it as an option to those who may have a beef with Sony.> Heh, or just emulate in the case of the plain PS1 especially. (tons of flexibility, etc) I did finally get a real PS1 (SCPH-100x, luckily no reliability issues) thanks to Apolloboy. I haven't chipped it yet either and haven't started downloading any games, but I've got a good idea of which ones I'd want. (oddly, the PSX's video seems to have problems on late 80s Zenith TVs, even more strangely, it's only in 240p mode -odd vertical jiggling problem- and it's fine in 480i -of course very few games used that res on the PSX) OTOH, I've already got so many other platforms/games to divide my interest. (I've got a list of classic DOS/windows PC games to go through as well -though largely waiting to build a good 98SE machine for that purpose -except any really old/timing sensitive DOS games which I'll do in DOSBox instead, or maybe VDMSound) I'll stop there as I'll keep rambling otherwise. Nintendo had the best product (at a competitive price) and the best management/marketing for such in Japan and had also taken some serious risks to establish that (like a 3 million unit contract with Ricoh to produce Famicom chips) especially for such a small company (as they were in 1983), things that could have ruined Nintendo if the FC had failed. (ie betting the farm, so to speak) Thus they already had dominance in Japan by 1985 with strong developer support and a strong/influential position on the region. (sort of like Atari Inc in 1980) So when they launched in the US, they had all that success and support driving them with a platform that was already almost 3 years old (NES launched in September of 1986) and on top of that, they had good enough marketing/management and budget in the US market to dig in rather quickly. (Sega had a bigger budget at launch and strong enough 1st party support to make for a competitive lineup, plus they had a larger marketing budget too, but they had weak management/distribution in the US -in Europe, Nintendo botched their management -especially in the UK with a very late release- and Sega got it pretty decent with some powerful distributors in the region -plus the highly competitive low-end home computer market inducing better competition in general) Atari had reasonable management under Tramiel and Katz, but a very small marketing budget compared to Nintendo or Sega (almost an order of magnitude smaller iirc -in 1986, Nintendo was pushing 6 million and Sega 9 million iirc, and that obviously would have gotten bigger with Nintendo expanding -and then 3rd parties pushing their own software). Katz manged things well enough that, in spite of the cripling marketing and software development budget, and with some help of the Atari brand name, Atari Corp managed to remain the 2nd highest market share through the late 80s. (albeit a distant second to Nintendo, but more than double the market share of Sega/Tonka with better software and a much larger marketing budget -it might have shifted in favor of Sega in 1989, but I'm not sure, definitely by 1990 with the Genesis sales -the 1st quarter of the 1990 fiscal year starting in october 1989) Once the NES dug-in with the 1986 holiday season, things just got worse for the competitions as Nintendo then had the full attention of US software developers as well and ever growing influence over them. (they'd want to publish for the NES and thus Nintendo could impose restrictions as such) On top of that, the NES was relatively well suited to game development of the time and highly programmable. (relatively programmer friendly for the types of games pushed at the time and the other platforms -arcade and computer- that were popular at the time) The Master System was reasonably similar in that respect (some trade-offs and nominal advantages in graphics -definitely weaker sound with that old SN76489 and the YM2413 module never released in the west), but the 7800 was a very different beast that did not mesh well with the mass market at the time. (if it had launched in '84, it would have been OK since you'd have lots of developers going straight off the likes of the VCS and thus not "spoiled" by the "standard" tilemap+XYsprite based systems -the C64, CV and other TI9918 platforms were the only ones pushing both of those features; so if the 7800 has started building a strong development base in '84, it very well may have been strong enough by '86 to deflect the hardware advantages of the competition -let alone the impact on the consumer end with a 2 year lead and the added revenue it would have meant for Atari) That's sort of the issue that favors going back to the 5200 or releasing a directly compatible XL console in 1984/85 (like the XEGS, but early enough to matter), a platform with existing development base and fairly well understood architecture, plus one less distinct platform for Atari to support. (and in some ways, easier to program for than the 7800) Heh, and if they went the computer route, Nintendo would have been screwed with their licensing contracts since those didn't bar publishing for "computers". Developers DID eventually get fed up with that BS and due to a combination of that, mounting litigation (and threats of more), and mounting competition, Nintendo was lightening those restrictions by the early 90s. (Sega was still far more attractive to publish for though, with far fewer restrictions and greater flexibility: more favorable licensing contracts, more flexibility over the contracts, full freedom of 3rd parties to manufacture and distribute their own games or opt to have Sega manage production -EA, Acclaim, Accolade, and several Japanese developers -Namco, Sunsoft, and a couple others iirc- produced their own carts -the Japanese ones used carts almost identical to Sega's) Nintendo was where the money was for publishers. It goes even a little bit deeper than that despite being one of the reasons. Big Name Japanese third parties were signing with Nintendo back around 1984 or early 1985. The Atari 7800 or the Sms was not one the market yet. The big name companies I am referring to was Capcom,Enix,Hudson, Irem, Konami, Namco, Sunsoft, and Taito. Yep, and somehow Nintendo managed to even establish similar licensing agreements in Japan in spite of there being no more security/lockout on the hardware than the VCS, Intellivision, Colecovision, A8, VIC, C64, etc. (makes you wonder if Atari Inc could have pushed that with the VCS instead of trying to block 3rd parties and then failing with Activision's suit ending up launching open 3rd party publishing -at very least they could have used an Atari licensed seal or such on the games and had that marketing edge to attract 3rd party developers to go licensed) That and with the NES's lockout disabled with a simple voltage spike circuit, there wasn't much (legally) barring 3rd parties in the west from going unlicensed. (of course, they'd lose the official Nintendo seal and could become victims of Nintendo's unofficial and more illegal tactics -like threatening to cut-off retailers who stocked unlicensed games)

Actually, like several other games of the time, it was Amstrad first (4 color mode 1), then a simple Speccy port, then the C64 in 320x200 mode. (hence the poor colors, even for the speccy -both the speccy and C64 could have looked much better in high res . . . far too many Amstrad games used mode 1 instead of 160x200 mode 0 with 16 colors ) Some of the later Dizzy games had the C64 version based on the Amiga/ST versions though. Like those ports, the NES version of Treasure Island Dizzy go taken from the ST/Miggy game with some graphical/color modifications to cater to the NES's graphics. (it also got the music of the Amstrad/Speccy versions rather than the somewhat different arrangement used in the ST/Amiga/C64) That's not the same game. That's Fantastic Dizzy. The game being ported to A800 is Treasure Island Dizzy, telling by the look of it and the "Dizzy II". The NES Treasure Island Dizzy is in the Quattro Adventure cart and lacks scrolling. Here is a video of the NES version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3NBgZgBGW8 Yes indeed, it's also one of the non-scrolling games in the series (hence being highly competitive on ST and Amiga) and thus doesn't show-off the A8's scrolling capabilities. (or NES) From what I understand, it's usually considered one of the worst games in the series in terms of overall gameplay. (my biggest problem was the total lack of saves/continues and only having 1 life with 1 hit deaths -lots of PC adventure games with sudden deaths too, but most/all with saves or continues -the latter would be more practical for a system lacking a disk drive) Still a nice show of the A8's capabilities though. It would also look a bit less stretched out on an NTSC TV. (emulators use pure double wide pixels on a 320x240 window, so very close to what you get in PAL, but much wider -or shorter rather- pixels than in NTSC) You'd need 640x576 to reasonably approximate A8 (or 7800, or VCS) pixels in NTSC aspect ratio. (using 4x3 bloxks of square pixels) Or use scaling/interpolation at lower resolutions at the expensive of losing a pixel-perfect display. It's totally the opposite for NES emulators and such (CV, MSX, SNES, etc) since those tend to use square pixels when they'd be a bit wide in NTSC and much wider (or shorter) in PAL.

That depends on who you ask. If asking me I say no and that I am greatful for that this game was newer released on the Jaguar. I mostly hate games with those weird cameraangles that makes the gameplay rather lousy and besides, zombies just makes me depressed. Combine zombies with lousy cameraangles and you get a really shitty game, thats my opinion about Resident Evil You mean total lack of camera angles, right? It's a 2D game with some added polygon models and sprites. (just prerendered BGs) In that respect it's like Alone in the Dark and the Jag CD's Highlander. (highlander probably should have had more empahssis on sprites/2D objects given how primitive the polygonal stuff ended up -it mostly looks sub alone in the dark)

Another note on the hardware side of things: sort of a shame that Atari Corp had already had the ST blitter in 1987 since the Lynx blitter was far more powerful and it would have been smart for Atari to try to push cross development for console/computer hardware wherever possible. (for cost savings and better cross platform development for software) Instead of the blitter earlier on, they could have simply focused on adding scrolling to the SHIFTER and pushing for faster CPUs and maybe adding DMA sound sooner (and/or a YM2203). Then they could have converted the Lynx blitter for use in '88/89 on MEGAs and the STe and modify the SHIFTER to support packed pixels (perhaps chained bitplanes like VGA did). I think the TT SHIFTER may have used true packed pixel modes, so maybe that's more what it should have been coupled with the lynx blitter. (that, and obviously offered in lower-end and mid-range models rather than just the high-end TT) I'm not sure if the Lynx blitter was well-suited to working with 8bpp graphics (256 colors), but adding a 256 color packed/chunky pixel mode at the same time would have been great. (that would have made the STe a very really competitor for the time and a proper successor to the ST with very real advantages over the Amiga -especially with a fastRAM bus, or at least a separate bank for better fast page performance and fewer page breaks for the CPU and blitter) Hardware was a huge problem in general: cost effectiveness, ease of programming, etc are all factors for both 1st and 3rd party development and quantity/quality of games, marketing etc. (the cleaner the hardware is the more options you have for marketing and getting developer interest) The Lynx was nearly ideal for that with a friendly architecture and excellent development tools. That was one of the problems with the 7800: it was a fairly powerful design, but rather contradictory for the defacto standards of hardware in the mid-late 80s. (character mode and sprite graphics using simple x/y positions -the C64 did it, NES did it, Master System did it- and it also clashed with the other main method of the time: frambuffer based graphics on computers, so it didn't even match up there) The panther would have had the same problem, though been much more powerful and potentially competitive with the SNES and Genesis. Yes and no, and I mentioned how hardware matters across the board above. 3rd party support is critical and there's no system that didn't rely on it (and few that didn't rely on it more than 1st party games). 1st party support is one facet of it, but lack of strong 3rd party support will kill your platform. (it's better to have competitive 3rd party support with weak 1st party support than the other way around, though if you're a massive software developer -like Sega- you might get away with it -as they did in Europe with the SMS) EA's support on the Genesis (among many other critical 3rd parties -and some less critical ones) made it what it was. Sports games (1st and 3rd party) were just as big a killer app on the Genesis as the Sonic games back in the day, if not more so in some regions. NEC thrived off 3rd party support with the PC Engine, and most of the PS1 and PS2 big games were from 3rd parties. (NEC could have been dominant with the TG-16 in the west if they had management remotely close to what Sony had some 4/5 years later -and if they'd actually released it in Europe) 3rd party exclusives (even if only exclusive for a couple weeks) can be as significant (or more significant) than 1st party games in some cases. (one of the PS1's first big killer apps was Tomb Raider, a game that was released before or just days after on the Saturn and PC -depending on region) But there's very real potential for fully exclusive 3rd party games or defacto exclusives of computer games that no other consoles had. (especially in the US where the computer game market was much more niche relative to consoles) With enough funding and a good developer to outsource, maybe, but probably not given they couldn't match the compeition's resources directly for 1st party games. They weren't going to be dominant as such, but could have been a reasonable competitor. Albeit, management and marketing is also critical and withotu good marketing, Sega would have been weak as well (even with the same software -though without that management in the US, they would have lost EA, never had STI, marketed the Japanese games differently, etc). How do you think Atari managed to stay well ahead of Sega with the 7800 and 2600 vs the SMS (more than 2:1 in sales), it was good marketing and brand recognition in spite of very limited funds and limited new software. (in large part thanks to Michael Katz, just as the Genesis's success was largely built on Katz's efforts followed by Kalinske -some would argue that Katz tempered spending better and could have had Sega healthier, perhaps even avoiding some conflicts in the mid 90s) I definitely think that if Sega hadn't gotten Katz (or someone similar) and Katz had stayed at Atari (along with Jack rather than Sam and at least decent hardware to work with), they could have been more successful than Sega by a good margin, at least in the US if not Europe. (the SMS was strong, but the ST had been very strong as well in Europe, so both had a good brand name and Atari had more links to 3rd party software houses) In hindsight, Atari obviously should have taken the offer from Sega to distribute the Mega Drive (offered in late 1988), but at the time it wouldn't have been so straightforward. The only definitive advantage would have been Sega's software support with arcade games and a few console exclusives (SMS was mostly arcade ports), and Atari had a much stronger market share in the US than Sega at that time. (so the haggling between Tramiel and Rosen is understandable) If it would have meant Sega of Japan subsidizing Atari's marketing budget, that would have been more favorable, but I don't know the specifics. (I do know that Katz favored the offer, but Rosen and Trameil couldn't agree on the terms) ??? "their" who? Atari Inc or Atari Corp? And under whose management? Same for the Master system and even the NES had a massive number of arcade conversions or remakes (or spinoffs of arcade games) in their libraries. (the fact that many people had no idea they were arcade games has more to do with the state of the US arcade market of the time) The 2600 had massive numbers of original games or computer conversions, the CV and 5200 had a fair amount of computer conversions (especially the 5200) though were on the market for too short of a time to really show anything. The 7800 had some arcade ports, but a lot of original games fill its library as well. (it just had too few games in general and no 3rd party support -or almost none) The NES would have been a much smaller player without all that 3rd party support with arcade games, arcade-like games (talking late 80s, so not like early 80s arcade games, but sidescrolling platformers/beat-em-ups/etc, shmups, among others) A lot of Atari original stuff as well. (and computer conversions) Of course, many of those original games were clones of arcade games and most paralleled the style of arcade games of the time. (some were really innovative though like early platformers with Pitfall and Smurf -the latter being much more complex and more like later platformers, though less popular and less playable, especially on the CV) Tons of arcade clones though and clones of competitor's console/computer games. I agree about getting developers onboard, but simply having the platform out there was part of that. What they did with the Jaguar was probably fairly "right" in that respect though: 3rd party sign-ons and lots of 1st party published games (lots of invesments on Atari's part). Of course, Atari was simply in a terrible financial/management/marketing position with the Jaguar to pull that off. (they were many times better off around the time they released the Lynx -and as above, one could argue that it should have become a home console instead and only later converted to a handheld) Of course, Atari Corp wasn't a software developer and thus outsourced almost everything (including all the Atari Corp published 7800 games), so it would depend on which 3rd parties they contracted and how much bang for the buck they could get. (especially since they didn't have the funding resources to invest like the competition, though 1988/89 was the time to act with the ST and 7800 booming or just past their peaks) They didn't necessarily need exclusives, but they'd probably have to shell out for some of the early games until 3rd party publishers really got onboard. (the easier to develop for and the better the tools, the better the support, the better quality the games -1st and 3rd party, lower development costs, easier marketing, etc) Umm, Atari didn't have any game programmers from mid 1984 onward (or very few), almost 100% of software (even much of the ST's later OS work iirc) was outsourced as I addressed above. (lots of trade-offs with that method, but still a good option, especially if you got strong relationships with 3rd parties and they became de facto 2nd parties of sorts -Sega had many examples of that, especially with smaller start-ups) As for David Crane, maybe, maybe not. I don't know the details, but it seems like he may have been breaking the trend of larger development teams and continued to go it alone with game development. (ie do most/all himself rather than having a mix of programmers, art designers, music composers, sometimes dedicated sound programmers, etc -depending on the flexibility of the development staff and the budget) Hell, even a fair amount of the budget Euro software was done by more than 1 person. (siblings or relatives in many cases interestingly enough) Yes, many big arcade platform games of the time, many of which got conversions or remakes for the NES. (and some NES platformers got remakes for the arcade -not talking about playchoice) A fair amount of adventure and action/adventure arcade games of the time too, scrolling SHMUPS were pretty big, etc. (oh, and racing/driving games of course, yet another genre Atari was weak in with the 7800 -Nintendo and Sega had a lot of games, as did computers -including Nintendo's blatant clone of Out Run: Rad Racer) The SMS and NES (and to large extent Genesis and SNES) thrived on arcade conversions and remakes as well as exclusive/original games. (some of which were clones of arcade games) The problem was that Atari didn't have the funding or 3rd party interest to really compete with all those games. (and 3rd party support was heavily blocked by Nintendo -only starting to change at the very end of the 80s) One very good reason to push for computer and European developers especially. (can you imagine if Atari had managed to get a favorable deal with EA like Katz did at Sega in mid 1990) Sega had the software right (in spite of lack of 3rd party support), though still somewhat weaker than Nintendo due to 3rd parties, and they had the budget for powerful advertising too. However, they apparently had poor to mediocre management up until Katz came onboard in late 1989 after the Genesis's launch. (Tonka was better with the SMS than Sega had been in '86/87, but not even close to what Katz managed with "Genesis Does" among other things) Atari OTOH had some pretty good management under Katz, but lacked the resources to push out the likes of Sega's 1st party stuff, had weaker/difficult to work with hardware (especially for the context of the late 80s), blocked 3rd party support, and less resources for marketing. This is really more for these discussions though, and I've spend much of my time just rehashing what was already addressed: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/164639-i-think-now-i-understand-why-the-nes-beat-the-7800/page__st__175 http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/176524-7800-what-did-atari-wrong/page__st__200

It would send the exact same message that Sega sent to 3rd parties I guess. Again, a totally different situation since the 7800 had no 3rd party support anyway and peaked in 1988. Not releasing the XEGS would have been a good move though. (a gaming bundle for the 65XE wouldn't have been such a bad idea though, but should have been pushed back in '85) As for Sega, that's an extremely complex situation that I don't want to get into here (I've spent enough time arguing it on Sega-16), but that situation was somewhat more comparable to how CBM released all those overlapping and incompatible computers in the mid 80s than Atari would have done. (albeit releasing the 7800 after the 5200 also confused things -arguably making the best of the 5200 could have been a healthier move, even more so in hindsight with the mess Warner made with he split in '84) Unless you mean what Sega did in the 80s by releasing platform after platform to stay competitive: then it was like the 7800 under Atari corp, no 3rd party support anyway so the only probablem was confusing consumers. (and at the time, Sega was struggling to compete and went the new hardware route to counter that -and had it not been for NEC's PC Engine in '87, they may have kept pushing the Mk.III and Master System rather than abandoning it in 1988) Sega launched the (colecovision-like) SG-1000 in mid 1983 and the compatible SC-3000 computer the same year, they released the revised SG-1000 Mk.II in 1984 with expansion support to SC-3000 spec, they released the SG-1000 Mk.III in 1985 (same as master system with a different case and SG-1000 cart slot), released the Master System with YM2413 FM sound in 1987 (had a simple add-on for the Mk.III), released the Mega Drive in late 1988 (still compatible with Mk.III, but required an adapter which almost noonw bought given how small the Mk.III's market share was -a fraction of what it was even in the US), the Mega CD in late 1991 (really too late to jump in with NEC's fast growing CD-ROM market and hindered by feature creep -especially since few games took advantage of that coprocessing hardware). However, all of that made sense and it wasn't until the Saturn and Mars/32x that things got confusing. (and a huge mess of management conflicts and many complex issues -some with too few details for a reasonably accurate account- and marketing/software problems all mounding up) The 32x and Saturn were no more the cause of Sega's problems than ET or the 5200 had been for Atari Inc: they were symptoms of the real problems much deeper in the company. (and you had bigger issues like mismanagement of Genesis software and marketing in 1995/96, missing out on a strong late gen market, and a slough of other things too numerous and complex to begin to address here -biggest problems with the Saturn were lack of sonic games, lack of strong sports games and other Genesis staples, lack of strong marketing when really needed in mid/late 1996, and poor cost/performance ratio -heavily exacerbated by Sony's price dumping and vertical integration: sound familiar? -cough- Commodore price war -cough-)

Sort of (it wasn't that simple), but as I mentioned in my response to that same post earlier, it was an issue with 3rd party support rather than Atari paying for games. (Nintendo was PAID by the publishers for having the games on the system) The money was important, but mainly in terms of pushing massive marketing/ad campaigns to build the system up to such popularity. (as well as virtually risking bankruptsy back in '83 to secure a sufficiently low cost for the Famicom with a 3 million unit minimum contract with Ricoh to boost economies of scale -ie it would have ruined Nintendo had it not taken off and been properly managed given how small the company was at the time -by 1986, they weren't that same small company and got much bigger still with their US market) As for the licenses: it only applied to publishing iirc, not license of a specific game, thus the same title could be licensed/published under a different label, just not by the publisher licensed for the game by Nintendo. (there were lots of other restrictions for licensees like the 2 games per year per publisher without Nintendo's express permission, etc) For example, Sega licensed Double Dragon for the SMS and released it about the same time (or slightly earlier) than the NES conversion iirc. (the Activision published Atari games came a year later iirc) That's why I said earlier that Atari would have been good to offer a loophole license agreement whereby 3rd parties could publish their games through Atari's label but otherwise be independent. (no commissions by Atari, not necessarily having Atari doing any manufacturing, perhaps not even royalties to Atari -at least once Atari was in such a bad position and having more games even without royalties would have been attractive) And none of that should have stopped Atari from tapping the many European 3rd parties who had nothing to do with Nintendo platforms at the time. (lots of nice Euro computer games that could have been pushed on the 7800) However, Nintendo certainly could have gone the extra mile and shelled out the money for exclusive licenses for some games (they definitely had that for Tetris, not sure what others though), but that's totally separate from normal 3rd party publishing license contracts. Also, Tengen/Atari Games began development for the Famicom even before Warner even sold them for planned Japanese releases well before the NES was even test marketed iirc. What's also interesting is that after Tengen got fed up and went unlicensed, they STILL were getting a number of Namco licenses and publishing them in the Rabbit chipped carts. (like Rolling Thunder) That's really interesting since Namco was supposedly one of the tightest associated Nintendo licensed publishers. (then again, I seem to recall them becoming more and more disgruntled over Nintendo's policies)

You mean techncially right? (sheer capabilities) You gave me the impression that the Panther would have been much tougher to work with (or at least an alien architecture) for common PC/console/arcade developers of the time used to formal bitmap/framebuffer (blitter/CPU/DSP rendered) and/or character mode and/or sprite based system. Besides, the SNES's mode 7 hardly was its defining feature; it was a neat gimmick with usefulness, but hardly the real "meat" of the system. (the sound and color capabilities -and BG/sprite to some extent- are what made it definitive, granted the sound system was pretty wasteful and cost ineffective in hindsight -a glorified interpolated 8 channel MOD player with reverb and compression; Nintendo probably could have used Ricoh's much simpler/cheaper 8 channel 8-bit PCM synth chip without much difference overall, let alone other options like simpler Amiga-like DMA sound possibly backed up by a nice yamaha FM chip) Yes, though I personally don't think backwards compatibility would have been paramount. (undesirable if it compromised cost effectiveness -by the time the 7800 finally launched, its backwards compatibility probably hurt more than it helped -given what MARIA could have been used for on its own in a new system) It was still an unnecessary detriment to the SNES at the time and seems to have been due to poor planing and trade-offs made by Nintendo. (from what I understand, with 120 ns FPM DRAM -like the lynx- and a proper DMA interface catering to the 650x, it should have been reasonable to run the SNES's CPU at 7.16 MHz with no wait states in DRAM -aside from page breaks- vs the 2.68 MHz it does now and possibly double the ROM bandwidth of what it had -or maybe the slow DRAM is due to lack of fast page support in the interface used and ROM would have been the same 2.68/3.58 MHz -NEC had been using 7.16 MHz/140 ns glob top ROMs from the start 1987 with zero wait states -allowing code to be run from ROM with no performance hits and making the 8k of work RAM that much less of a limit -granted, the SNES's RAM was so slow that using ROM was never a detriment either and actually a boost for the many late gen 3.58 MHz ROMs) Hmm, can you imagine a Jaguar with 140 ns ROMs? (especially if the cart ROM space was treated as a separate bank in memory: 68k reading data and running code from ROM with no wait states and no page breaks to DRAM for TOM, separate source and destination for blitter texture mapping -not as fast as dual 75 ns DRAM banks, but still ~60% faster, Jerry pulling data from ROM with no wait states or page breaks, etc) I wouldn't really say they surpassed the Genesis other than the scaling effects. The master palette was better, but the 16 color bitmap display is a pretty hefty trade-off against character+sprite graphics with 4 subpalettes. (and that's ignoring the resolution that made it totally outclassed even by the Master system -without modification, obviously) It's like the STe in terms of color limitations. The SNES's color capabilities really take it a step further, even beating the PC-Engine in most respects (much better master palette generally makes up for only having 16 palettes vs 32 -both far better than the MD's 4) I agree that 256x224 (or a bit higher) would have brought the lynx into a reasonably competitive range, but it would have been massively short from the SNES with only 16 colors (even with palette swapping -which the SNES also used occasionally). If you boosted the lynx to an 8bpp framebuffer, THAT would have totally outclassed the SNES, Genesis, and Amiga in color/graphics capabilities in general though. (it would have used double the RAM and made texture date 2x as big too without indexing with CLUTs -so having enough RAM to unpack compressed/indexed graphics from ROM would be critical without hardware to do that on the fly -depending on the price point and release date, 256-512k of DRAM might have been feasible -an optional 16 color mode would make it more flexible too) Again, there was the possibility for the Slipstream as well, but of course that's 256 color mode would have the same limitations without hardware CLUT support. (and a 16 color only, high res lynx derivative would have been OK in any case, especially for 1989) Aside from separate source and destination to reduce page breaks, perhaps they could have boosted the CPU to 8 MHz. (switching to a 68k would have been nice, but aside from interfacing issues -not too bad since the 68k supports 680x/650x buses, there's the cost disadvantages over 650x) Sound hardware would also need to be upgraded: perhaps a derivative of the STe's DMA sound and an off the shelf FM synth chip (perhaps retaining the Lynx's sound, especially if it's already embedded in the chipset and if they wanted to support playing lynx games natively), or if you had a good amount of CPU time with an 8 MHz 650x, you could use the STe DMA alone with software mixing. (FM synth gives a lot more potential for cutting back on ROM/RAM hungry sample data though -even the lynx PSG would help a bit there, and capable composers/programmers can make some awesome sounding stuff with FM -especially if they went with a 4-op chip like the YM2612 or 2151, though the lower-end YM3812/OPL2 a la PC would have been fairly decent too -though often heavily underutilized on PC games, let alone lack of PCM+FM use with SB cards) Or both: they could have made a parallel console/handheld Lynx for 1989. (albeit, given the fundamental disadvantages of the Lynx hardware for a handheld at the time, it probably would have been much better to focus only on a home console and later -like 1994 or later- adapt it into a handheld with a reflective screen and maybe a high-end model with backlighting -and short battery life) In hindsight we can see that that hardly mattered at all since the 7800 got virtually no 3rd party support at all. (almost 100% of its games were Atari Published) A 1989 release wouldn't have been bad either, perfect timing with the 7800's peak in '88 and a sharp decline in '89 (and under 100k 7800s sold in 1990 in the US). Sega also wouldn't have been a real threat if they hadn't gotten such good management (a la Katz -Atari Corp's former president of entertainment ) and NEC clearly managed to screw up very badly in spite of massive advantages over Sega (and potentially Nintendo -could have been the Sony of the 4th generation with the right management). Indeed, while Sega of America seemed to be somewhat better, they were still foolishly focusing mainly on "arcade at home" marketing for the Genesis's launch, something that Katz quickly set about changing with the establishment of the "Genesis Does" campaign. (he also set about expanding Sega's influence in the western software development field, managed to turn EA's threat of going unlicensed into a favorable business relationship, pushed for celebrity endorsements to combat Nintendo's many exclusive franchises, and more) Of course, as Sega's managment skyrocketed with Katz and later Kalinske (vs the mediocre mid 80s management -even Tonka was miles better than SoA had been in '86/87) Atari Corp management was going to the dogs with Sam replacing Jack and Mike Katz leaving. (apparently an odd interval of shifting management in the Entertainment division too prior to) That and Atari had a substantially higher market share in the US than Sega up into 1989 (maybe not changing until the 1st quarter of 1990 -ie from fall 1989 when the Genesis's launch would have an impact). That market share is almost certainly why Sega offered Atari Corp distribution rights of the Mega Drive in the US in late 1988, but that fell apart with Rosen and Jack Trameil being unable to agree on terms. (part of it being Tramiel wanting an interest -or full control- over European distribution -makes particular sense due to Atari's position in Europe- and Atari's own console plans and market position well ahead of Sega in the US would have been major mitigating factors -again, without management from the likes of Katz setting the groundwork for the Genesis's success, Sega very well may have failed -or been much weaker- in the US; they really got lucky with NEC's terrible management in spite of massive resources of such a mega corp that Sony certainly had no problems throwing around some 5 years later) I agree, though they definitely needed SOMETHING on the market, but given the A8 and 5200 (recently cancelled) already on the market, they could have either pushed for the A8 as the primary game platform or Atari Corp could have repealed Warner Atari's cancellation of the 5200. There's a lot of finer points on that issue I addressed here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/176524-7800-what-did-atari-wrong/page__view__findpost__p__2231240 Yes, but as above, having nothing at all was worse. They had better options than the Panther for sure, but even that even it would have been better than having nothing at all. (a system that pulls a net profit even with mediocre popularity is infinitely better than virtually vanishing from the market for 3 years and then trying to come back after things took a turn for the wost financially -ie done at least as well as the 7800, probably better due to funding and Nintendo's blocking tactics withering) Had the Panther been more like the Jag's object processor, it would have been a much more attractive option in general with significant advantages in 2D (and fast scaling) over Lynx or Slipstream based hardware. (a blitter based system still might have been more programmer friendly, especially for home computer ports) Had the 7800 been a smash hit with tons of support, programmers would have been much more accustomed to the likes of the Panther, but given that was not the case, it was a bad idea to even push forward with the Panther. (one could argue Flare shouldn't have even bothered with the OPL in the jag, but instead focused on a much higher performance blitter with line buffers, word buffers, and more flexible CLUT support -at least 4bpp textures, which would also mean much better 3D texture peformance )

This is a really neat thread. I realize it's been dormant for quite a while, but it's very much in line with a topic I've been wanting to bring up on the forums. (I missed it last year, but ended up finding it in a related search by chance ) It probably could have been done, but it wouldn't be particularly cost effective. It would have made more sense to not bother with compatibility and use either the old VCS chipset alone or re-use MARIA in a new design aimed at a handheld system. Even then, if you used the existing MARIA or 2600 on a chip ASIC, you're talking old NMOS process chips that use a fairly significant amount of power for a handheld. (re-implementing in CMOS would likely mean significant R&D investment) They probably could have had a reasonably cost effective design that actually was 7800 compatible internally, but doing that along with a total CMOS redesign and integrating MARIA+TIA+RIOT+SALLY into a single, new CMOS ASIC would, again, mean a significant amount of R&D overhead. (and given the 7800's fast declining consumer interest in 1989, that investment would not be realized in late model 7800s either -the lack of significant consolidation in the existing 7800 design is a fair sign that production volumes weren't meriting such investment -same for the lack of embedded bank switching or embedded sound chips on carts) Hmm, maybe it wouldn't have been too expensive to implement if commodity ULAs of the time had the performance and gate count necessary to implement all that hardware. (ULAs would probably be the cheapest ASIC options on the market -in term of R&D overhead) That would also only make sense if they didn't invest in the Handy/Lynx at all. (which itself had a lot of potential for more than it was used as) And honestly, a color handheld in 1989 (or any time before reflective color LCD screens at least had contrast levels capable of approximating 6-bit RGB) was a bit of a lost cause since backlighting was absolutely necessary and would thus render battery life unacceptable for most users and limit it to a niche market. (it would also add to cost and size, further detracting from it -and then there's the non tech issues of marketing/funding/management/brand recognition/software support) The Game Gear had marketing, management, and software support close to that of the Game Boy, but was more expensive, bulkier, and (most critical by far for any portable device) the battery life was as dismal as the Lynx. (of course NEC went totally crazy and decided to not only offer only backlit models of the Turbo Express, but to only use high-end active matrix LCD screens -actually, such high end screens may have had adequate performance in reflective implementations to be worthwhile, at an obvious expense) Deluxe backlit modes would have been nice (something Nintendo missed out on), but the unlit models would undoubtedly be the defacto standard due to the batter life. (and less so sue to size and cost) Of course, both Atari and Sega could have finally met Nintendo with revised models with reflective screens (as well as generally consolidated hardware) in the mid 90s, but Atari was near collapse by then and pulling the lynx back while Sega simply (oddly) chose not to push any such radical revisions on the GG in 1994-96 and heavily pulled back support in 1996. (with almost no games released in 1997) So they both left Nintendo alone with the aging game boy as they took their sweet time to finally release the GBC in late 1998. (which was still inferior in many respects to the Lynx and Game Gear -superior to the GG's sound just as the GB had been, of course) Yes and no: the lack of a real 4th gen console was a very real problem, but the biggest problems with the Jaguar was a severe lack of funding and problematic management exacerbated by said funding issues as well as weak market position and brand name (less so in Europe). (all of which would have been greatly alliviated by a successful -even moderately- 4th gen game console on the market) Or Lynx based console as it was more developer friendly and/or better performing (and more cost effective) than either of the above options. (STe cut down to a console would have been weak for the time, though a hack that doubled the SHIFTER -2 hardware bitmap scroll planes- would have probably been enough to make it a realistic contender -especially with 2 separate palettes, like Dual Playfields of the amiga but 4bpp and no hardware sprites) The Panther was radically different than any consoles or computers on the market other than the 7800 and while potentially powerful (with trade-offs in capability), it probably would have been relatively unfriendly to developers. (the Jaguar's object processor added features -especially framebuffer support facilitated by buffering allowign efficient operation in cheap DRAM rather than the Panther's SRAM- that made it far more programmer friendly; maybe if Atari/Flare engineers could have reworked the Panther OPL to be reasonably more like the Jaguar in a short amount of time, it would have been ready in time to meet the 4th gen market in 1991 -still a bit late though) One other extremely interesting option that wasn't mentioned at all is the Konix Multisystem's Slipstream ASIC. Konix could not afford to license it exclusively and thus Flare had been left with full IP rights and the ability to sell it to anyone else they wanted. As such, when Martin Brennan had been consulting on the final Panther chip design and began convincing Atari management to ditch the panther and push for a new system (which became the jaguar), it would have been very sensible to suggest the Slipstream in place of the Panther for the short run. (much better for the market than the Panther and better than the lynx in some areas -256 color support, a DSP for audio and 3D coprocessing, and I think the multiplyer unit might have been faster -the Lynx's blitter might have been a bit better though, definitely in 16 color mode since it was aimed at that while Flare's was 2x as fast in 256 color mode) One issue is that the Flare design only supported Z80 and x86 based CPU architectures, so without glue logic, they'd have to use one of those CPU types. (Atari had been buying x86 CPUs for their PC lines -8088s, 286s, 386SXs, and 386DXs iirc, so they would have had an existing supply line) An 8088 would obviously have been the cheapest option outside of a Z80. (and you did have the growing PC game market and wealth of x86 assembly programmers catering to that -the 256 color bitmap support would also facilitate VGA ports, so interesting potential for games that never got console versions historically) I don't think there was too much they could do about Nintendo's comeptition. At best (with the funding and marketing) they could have beaten the GG in popularity (which they did in parts of Europe), but it wouldn't have been until the mid 90s with models using unlit reflective screens and with double digit battery lives (probably fewer batteries and a smaller form factor at that) that they'd have had any chance of going beyond a niche market with the Lynx. (it's a really cool machine though and stil would have been really competitive as a mid/late 90s system) I agree, even once they were set on withdrawing from the computers, they should have pushed ahead with the Lynx alongside the Jaguar. (especially since the Lynx should have been genuinely profitable vs the Jag which was boarderline -though useful for hype and resulting investment capital, just not enough to build up to anything remotely close to critical mass) In hindsight, you could argue Atari could have even been healthier if they'd not invested in the Jaguar at all and kept focusing on the Lynx. (no matter how you slice it, Atari was pretty screwed after 1991 though -management problems across the board, no new home console, declining computer market, etc) They just weren't in a position to properly market or support the Jaguar when they released it. (albeit they were in sorry shape to continue with the Lynx as well)

It's technically impressive hardware for the time, but given they had 2 years not only to compile advanced hardware, but to (potentially) focus on producing a well-balanced design that bested the PCE and Megadrive in most/all aspects while adding more and aiming at being highly cost effective, the SNES's design is certainly disappointing and filled with bad trade-offs, especially in hindsight. --The costly sound system was almost certainly the most wasteful -very advanced and powerful, but extremely wasteful in how it was actually used where the likes of Ricoh's much simpler 8 channel PCM synth chip would have done about as well overall or a mix of FM synth and PCM chips -maybe even simple amiga-like DMA sound on top of an off the shelf yamaha chip, especialy given how much of the SNES's samples ended up being FM stuff. (and often lower quality due to being sampled) Configuring the memory interface as they did and limiting the CPU to 2.68 MHz was pretty obviously the worst cost cutting trade-off in the system, a slow ROM interface (at least optional) would have made sense, but locking DRAM interface to the CPU at 2.68 MHz was a major bottleneck (so much so that late gen games had to avoid using RAM to boost performance once 3.58 MHz carts were in use). It seems like bad planning since Nintendo really should have been able to run the CPU at 7.16 MHz in RAM of the same variety of the Lynx's DRAM and thus smoke the PCE's CPU (similar instruction set, but slower logic) and beat the 68000 in the MD for many things too, at least with decent programmers. (as it is, the PCE's CPU has an advantage over the MD in a number of cases) Hell, proper memory interfacing probably would have doubled performance when working in ROM too (ie 2.68 MHz early gen games would be 5.37 MHz and later 7.16 MHz); I'm not positive, but I think the main issue was the 650x's 1/2 cycle memory timing and lack of added external/internal logic to facilitate full single cycle accesses as NEC/Hudson did and some other 650x platforms. (I think the Lynx and perhaps some older 8-bit computers did that -though I think the old NMOS 650x had accesses natively closer to a full cycle already with the CMOS models changing things) --- Not just the 1st party stuff either, but the massive amounts of 3rd party games available on the system. (sometimes you had better versions of games on the Genesis, sometimes worse, but the real reason is for all the 1st and 3rd party exclusives or conversions with so many modifications that they're distinct games) The same for the Genesis for those who only had an SNES back then, or the TG-16 for that matter (much more so as a collector for all the japanese -especially CD- games that didn't come over). Or many other platforms, but the PCE is a neat one since it got massive support but was obscure outside of Japan. It undoubtedly had technical advantages over the competition, but the point is that it truly was/is technically unimpressive as a total design for a system Nintendo had 2 years (or 3 over the PC Engine) advantage over, not just for new technology, but for general optimization for a clean design. (especially given how outstanding the Famicom's hardware was for 1983) The Master System was more impressive for a 2 year leap in that regard, though still critically weaker in some areas. (granted it was more cost effective in some areas -single bus cart design- and had to cater to backwards compatibility -the only really disappointing aspect was the weak onboard sound, the same bare bones SN97489 of the TI/99 or Colecovision compared to the NES's onboard hardware with arguable superiority over the SID and more so if you included all the Japanese sound expansions -though, aside from Nintendo's DPCM, those were all gnerally less powerful than the YM2413 Sega offered as a one-time add-on . . . odd that they didn't release the add-on or the upgraded SMS in the US or Europe in spite of both regions having much greater success in Japan -much more for Europe) The color and art design are the things the SNES made easiest (something also easier on the PCE than the MD and somewhat easier than the SNES in regards to sheer subpalette flexibility). The inflexibility of the sprite engine (128 sprites and up to 64x64 pixels, but only allowing 2 sizes on screen and having many fewer selections of sizes than the Genesis's 8/16/24/32 high/wide options though I think close to the PCE's selection -but the PCE didn't have the limits of only 2 sizes), and that's why you didn't usually see the SNES pushing sprites more than the MD even though it had more on screen and per scanline and larger max sizes. (it was better than the X68000's engine which was basically like the SNES if you only used 16x16 sprites -32 per scanline or 512 pixels, 128 on screen)

Of course, Tengen had totally defined Nintendo's licensing soon after they started publishing (went with the Rabbit chip). That led to legal problems with Nintendo, but should still have meant Tengen was open to publishing on Atari and Sega consoles. (again, ironic that AGames went the costly route of reverse engineering when others opted for the simpler/cheaper and legally foolproof voltage spiking) That and Nintendo's normal licensing contracts didn't prevent developers/publishers from licensing their games to other 3rd party publishers (ie you could publish under a different label) and the only thing limiting that would have been Nintendo's unofficial underhanded tactics. (and general funding or interest from Atari Corp or other 3rd parties to invest in licensing those games) Cases where Nintendo had actually arranged for full exclusive rights to be on their console (like Tetris) would be quite different from simple 3rd party licensing agreements. (AFIK, officially, all Nintendo licensees were free to license their games to other publishers, but couldn't publish themselves for cross-platform games) Atari Games ended up licensing several of its games to other 3rd party publishers too as with Gauntlet II. (in some cases with Tengen label versions as well as with Indiana Jones) We usually bought everything used too with the exception of the NES back in 1990 (might have been a gift) and some of those games, a couple N64 games, and a few CG/handheld/wii games here and there. (the Wii we got new too for a variety of reasons I won't go into right now -though in hindsight we definitely shouldn't have upgraded the Twilight Princess preorder to Wii) Albeit it wasn't all budget stuff given we were buying used in the active life (or at least late gen life) of those systems. (SNES in late '96, GB in 1997 iirc, N64 late '99, GC in late '03 I think) Disliking actions of a company and disliking a platform in general (or their games) are different things. I don't like some things many companies have done, but that doesn't stop me from at least considering their games. (especially in hindsight) If you really want to enjoy any system's library from the likes of the VCS/NES/SNES/Genesis/PSX/N64/PS2/etc where they're hundreds (if not thousands) of games to go through, you really need to dig past the most obvious games to those that were either niche and less popular or simply forgotten in general (even if they were fairly common). At home, we had a rather odd collection less than a dozen games in the early 90s, but many are games that you didn't hear of often then or now outside of collectors or retro fans while we had rather few of the common ones other than the pack-in mario multicart and Zelda. (back then we had the likes of Air Fortress -one of my Dad's favorites, Quattro Adventure, Xexyz, Top Gun the 2nd mission, Ghostbudters 2, and a few others that ranged from less popular or forgotten to truly obscure -need to look through the collection again) No Mega Man games, no Mario sequels, no Castlevania, no Contra, etc. For any platform with a huge library (as I mentioned above), you need to actually try to look through the wealth of games available. With systems with limited libraries (especially the likes of the 5200, 7800, Jaguar, 32x or such with under 100 games each), you can get an idea pretty quickly whether there's at least one game that makes it worth owning to play on (depending on the amount you're willing to spend or other collector value). I for one can say there's games that I like on all of those above, but I may not end up collecting for all of those for other reasons. (Jag mainly because of how expensive its getting -understandable given the very low production run) How hard have you tried? Have you talked to people (or had friends) savvy in the wide breadth of games available on the NES? I've always had a bias against the PSX and PS2 (for a variety of reasons -more so after I learned more about Sony), but I can't deny that there's a lot of great games (exclusives at that) that I like on those systems. (though I can't say that I'd have enjoyed either more than what we got out -and are still getting out- of our N64 and Gamecube from those generations -being late gen adapters we also never had to deal with software shortages, especially for used games which were tended towards) If you want people to blame most it would have to be Warner for screwing up the sale/split and Nintendo for their illegal policies (official and unofficial) that they ended up getting away with. Atari Corp made some of their own mistakes, but on the whole, managed things pretty well under the circumstances. (at least up until Sam Tramiel took over and Michael Katz left) To some extent that's true, but it's also a case where barriers to entry are extremely high due to all the major competition being massive corporations that are bigger than ever and willing to take substantial losses to stay competitive. (smaller companies would have gone bankrupt with the huge mistakes made with the 360 early on and all the cache MS was bleeding -the original Xbox had some of those problems too with the margins MS was pushing, but not as extreme as the 360's hardware issues as well as selling at a loss for the first few years) You also have a lot of exclusive games still and temporary exclusive games that still make the systems selling points. (even for used buyers, a game that's released earlier and sells better will thus show up more readily on the used market) NEC was the first megacorp to enter the consoel market, but luckily for Nintendo and (especially) Sega, they had no idea what they were doing when they brought it to the west. (had they managed things more like Sony some 5 years later, NEC very well may have dominated the US and possibly European markets in the 4th/16-bit generation) Likewise the 3DO could have been really huge if a tight/exclusive partnership had been made with Panasonic and a normal licensing/market model had been used with hardware configured as low-cost as possible and sold at cost (or a loss as Sony pushed) with profits made through software licensing. (barring assembly language low-level software optimization and forcing developers to only use 3DO's tools also hurt the quality of games -the high level support was great, but limiting developer to that alone was a bad move) Sony came in as an even bigger company with even bigger advantages and good management/marketing (with willingness to dump tons of cash up front) and swept the market in a perfect storm where all the competition had also made some major mistakes. (those mistakes normally could have been recoverable, but Sony left no room for error -and induced some of those mistakes too by the sheer upset they made on the market) With Sega and Nintendo, you had a ton of crossover though. Granted, you had trends where certain developers had better versions on one than the other (EA's stuff was usually better on the Genesis than SNES), but in spite of the general perception differences and differences in 1st party software (to some extent), both Sega and Nintendo platforms have a huge range of crossover in terms of genres and content with some stronger on one than the other. (SHMUPs and sports games were usually better on the Genesis, RPGs and adventure games were somewhat more prevalent on the SNES -unless you were in Europe where Nintendo and most JP 3rd parties refused to release them but Sega released pretty much all of them as they had in the US) Sega had lots of "kiddie" games, or family friendly games in general and some of the best Disney games of the generation (or ever) which was a huge selling point for some gamers back then. (Castle of Illusion was also one of the most promoted games of 1990) And a lot of those were 1st party games too. Sega even developed/published the likes of Crystal Pony Tales. (Sega of America at that) Nintendo DID have the censorship issues in the west and that had been established as a marketing tool in the early days of the NES (resulting from complains on the likes of Pro Wrestling), but in spite of their resistance to adding ratings and removing censorship, they eventually conceded and all the late gen SNES games had ratings with potential to be far from "kid friendly". (yet Nintendo still managed to retain that family friendly image to this day, even when one of their bestselling games was a FPS -Goldeneye on the N64- or when Zelda -oot- actually had blood in it -more so on the early western revisions- they actually managed to get the mass market impression of being even more kiddie than previously ) Of course, Sega (more so the 3rd parties) had a fair amount of censorship on the Genesis as well, but it wasn't mandated by Sega themselves as such. (mostly common sense, or playing it safe for political correctness -like Capcom's "whitwashed" SFII SCE intro compared to the arcade and Japanese Megadrive version) I for one don't care if a game is serious or kiddie or whatever, as long as it has good gameplay that I like and decent to good art design (for any of a variety of styles) and decent sound/music, I'm quite welling to sit down and play it. (the actual genre and style of gameplay matters more to me in general) That's an issue even with today's games (though as hardware gets more similar and the same programmers/developers handle the same games -rather than licensing them to others- they get more and more equal, but there's tons of exceptions even today). There's a lot of factors from the benefits of strong competition to quality/capabilities of developers to hardware capabilities to 1st vs 3rd party publishers, etc. (the Wii is obviously a big gap as such given it's basically a last generation console -hardware wise- but otherwise, last generation had a much wider range of differences from Dreamcast to PS2 to GC to Xbox -let alone PC games- for a variety of reasons -the most fundamental being ease of programming and technical limitations, or the PS2's sheer popularity if you go by number of games and exclusives) The issue with the Data East games you mention would almost certainly be nothing more than programming skill (albeit the C64 has obvious limitations compared to the NES, but should have been capable of reasonably competitive versions of most -if not all- NES games, at least if the disks weren't limited to single loads -64k is pretty small compared to most NES games) With the SNES, Genesis, and even TG-16/PCE, you had hardware that was close enough that many games could have transitioned pretty well between the 3 with trade-offs. (with good sound/graphics optimization in each case, all 3 would be pretty competitive though -even with the PCE/TG's single hardware BG layer and more limited sound generation it had advantages even over the SNES with a more powerful CPU, more flexible updates to VRAM, more subpalettes and thus more flexible color use -but a much smaller master palette- etc) It's not like the massive range of technical differences the NES/SMS/7800 had (1983/85/84 released hardware), but as always, it was most heavily a matter of development support (1st and 3rd party), marketing/management, and consumer interest. (the PCE was huge in Japan, especially the CD format, far bigger than Sega's Megadrive though the Super Famicom still had some 60% of the market share for the generation) If it hadn't been for the numerous 2nd/3rd party favoritism seen in the 4th gen, it would have been even more even: as it is, you saw a lot of similar genres cross-platform (even more if you include games that weren't released internationally), but you simply didn't see versions of the exact same games cross-platform as such due to developers focusing on one platform more than the other. (you saw a lot of that too though) Sometimes you had games of the same name that were totally different (Sparkster on the SNES is a totally different game than the Genesis one) or games developed by totally different companies like Batman and Robbin or Aladdin (Virgin vs Capcom -the virgin game was on the Genesis, Amiga, PC and a couple others iirc, Capcom was an SNES exclusive). Some companies did push cross-platform stuff, but favored one company more than the other. (Capcom had a lot on the Genesis -some licensed and developed by Sega, others published by Capcom- but they favored Nintendo overall as with Konami) Capcom even released a compilation of MegaMan 1, 2, and 3 with enhanced graphics and sound on the Genesis, albeit rather late in its life. (and for whatever reason it ended up as a Segachannel exclusive in the US) I think the Mega Man game on the Game Gear is a fair bit more common though. (that was licensed by Freestyle though) It's up to the 3rd parties to make those decisions on how to develop and publish as such with varying motivation. (good relationships with the console companies being factors in that too) But in any case, what I was getting at is that Nintendo prevented that freedom of independent management with 3rd parties. Sony later managed to make the PSX very attractive to developers and occasionally used their corporate funding to buy up exclusivity out buy out 3rd parties, and while that was pushing resources that the competition really couldn't match, Sony wasn't preventing competition in general. (interesting to note that they had quite a few in-house games -especiallg from Psygnosis- that actually got released on competing systems -though they always got early releases on Sony platforms, but were sometimes better on competing systems like some of the Wipeout games on the Saturn or N64 playing better, looking better, or having more features -like Wipeout 64's 4 player splitscreen mode) Sony pushed a lot of anticompetitive tactics too, but more relying on their massive funding and avoiding actual illegal operations. (though the price dumping came close to that, they couldn't really be attacked on international grounds since they were dumping the Japanese units well below cost as well -that hurt Sega the most since they chose to match the prices with their somewhat more expensive hardware -that was even more costly to manufacture since they lacked the vertical integration of Sony- while Nintendo consistently managed to push out cheaper hardware that could be sold at or above cost and still be competitive -plus Nintendo had been generating surpluses for years and had substantial savings in reserve to work with while Sega's assets were mainly invested in non liquid capital)

Fair enough, though under better circumstances Atari could have afforded to do more all around and still bring out a handful of new VCS games (selectively). Compilations definitely would have been nice, at least after they exhausted stockpiles of old games. And, of course, some of those VCS games weren't Atari Published either, but from 3rd parties. (like Activision) It's also rather mind boggling to think that the 5200 actually got some new releases as late as 1987, or at least 1 game that was finally brought to market. (Apolloboy mentioned that to be, though it may not have been a "new" game as such, but one that had been previously stockpiled and unreleased for whatever reason) That's a bad idea for cost reasons. It may have been OK for a deluxe system (wouldn't have been bad for '83 especially), but not as the mainstay design as it simply wasn't cost effective and not remotely worth it for the gimmick of internal compatibility. (which would quickly become less important as time went on) The JAN chip certainly would have made the VCS adapter cheaper to make though, so not bad there. The other issue is that (I'm pretty sure) that Atari had a ton of VCS chips (at least TIAs, probably STELLAs and RIOTS too) already stockpiled to use up before production of JAN even made sense. (that may have been the main issue to early 2600 Jrs using normal VCS chips rather than JAN being incomplete) It may have been the same issue that led to CGIA being unused: Atari Corp may have never exhausted Atari Inc's stockpile of ANTIC/GTIA chips, or A8 chips in general for that matter. (which would also explain the use of POKEY on Commando rather than a cheaper SN76489 or the 16 pin sound only version of the YM2149 that was on the market by '87) If that was really the case, that's even more reason that they should have kept the 5200 or pushed the A8 more. (potentially pushing the A8 as a game console in any of the various contexts I listed above in posts 211 and 213) Also some comments on that elsewhere, like my middle response (to your comment) here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/163658-7800-atari-corp-revival/page__st__200__p__2225079#entry2225079 (also made notes on possible advantages of retaining the existing XL case styling and motherboards -and how it probably would have been cheapest to re-use the 600XL motherboard and most of the case for an XLGS of sorts in 1984/85) Un-retiring the 5200 after the official discontinuation in early 1984 would have been a bit tricky so they'd have to weigh that with going with a pure XL based game system instead. (either case would use all the custom A8 chips -PIA was off the shelf- and both would benefit from most potential consolidation/cost reduction to the chipset) The main advantage of the 5200 was lower cost (potentially) due mainly to the lack of PIA and more so once they stripped out the expansion port and consolidated the board a bit more. (the PCB should have been smaller and cheaper than the 600XL in 1983 as it was and I think the 5100 hadn't even managed that) Given the circumstances of Atari Corp in '84/85, a direct XE derivative would probably have been most effective. (either drop the 7800 entirely or stay in negotiations and maybe move MARIA to another project) With the 5200 or all A8 route, you'd consolidate software development much more, rely on hardware that many developers had already been working on, and promote the A8 line more in general because of that. (using an older design rather than releasing the 7800 also could have meant pushing for a 16-bit/4th gen game system sooner -maybe by 1988) The XEGS was obviously too late (and oddly expensive given the $99 65XEs on the market prior to it, not to mention somewhat conflicting with the 7800), but '84/85 had many more possibilities. There's also tons of other possibilities Atari Inc could have done in place of the 5200 from the 3200 (or a hacked alternative with TIA and GTIA), to a consolized 600, to simply releasing the 600 in '82 and marketing it as a low-end computer with gaming capabilities (and no other new console), to something close to the 5200 but better thought out with a high emphasis on low cost (the existing 5200 design should have been cheaper to make than the Colecovision -or perhaps 7800) as well as addressing the controller issues (lots of options) and adding provisions to allow a low-cost and more convenient VCS adapter than the existing one. (ie piggyback on the 6502c, just RIOT and TIA in the adapter, use semi-compatible controller ports that could directly remap for VCS compatibility, a front-mounted expansion port more like the CV to avoid removing the adapter when playing 5200 games, etc) Yes, and again somewhat pointless. (better to just use JAN in later 2600 adapters and Jrs -if they indeed kept the 5200 going) As for wasting the 7800s in stock, you'd also have to weigh that against wasting stockpiled A8 chips that could have been put to use on 5200s or more A8s (or A8 consoles). They could have scavenged the CPUs for A8s/5200s, used the RIOTs and TIAs in 2600s, and some of the other ICs and SRAMs for something else. (and recycled the PCBs and any other useless parts) There were only 5000 produced up to then (and parts for a bit over 1000 more), so not that much to waste as such. (I'm not sure about games) Maybe they could have saved the cases (and tooling) for later revisions of the A8 based system or 5200 (the controller ports would be too small for the latter though), or maybe used it for the Jr instead and designed the Jr's motherboard around that case design. (hell, they could have rebranded the initial 7800s as 2600 Jrs and only used the backwards compatibility feature -and wasted the rest rather than scavenging it) Not remotely, the EJP interface was a 12-bit digital parallel interface (Jag has provisions for 1 pot input though). They also used different connectors (DE-15 -like VGA- vs DA-15 -like PC gameport or old ethernet cards). I think the XEGS's keyboard port used DA-15 too, but it was obviously different from the 5200 ports as well. See: http://pinouts.ru/Inputs/EnhancedJoystickAtari_pinout.shtml http://www.gamesx.com/controldata/ejp_faq.htm

Nope, you're talking like Nintendo made/commissioned/licensed all those games, they made 3rd parties PAY them for publishing on their system (except a few -like Tengen or Codemasters- who went unlicensed). Those 3rd parties not only had to take all the initiative to develop those games, but had to pay for cart production as well as royalties to Nintendo AND deal with the headaches of Nintendo's requirement for all production to be handled by themselves (Nintendo set the quantities and delivery dates regardless of the publishers needs and was known for playing favorites with certain developers) On top of that, in the NES era, Nintendo applied monopolistic contracts that prevented any publisher from releasing any game they published for the NES to any other game console (computers were OK) for 2 years after the NES game's release and further that any single publisher could not release more than 2 NES games in 1 year without Nintendo's express clearance for further releases. (both of those were gotten around by some large companies using proxy publishers like Konami's Ultra or Acclaim's LJN) That's how most console manufacturers (post crash) have made their money, some from 1st party software, but usually the bulk from royalties off 3rd parties. (of course, other than Nintendo, most console manufacturers aren't nearly as inflexible and have never pushed the monopolistic contracts after Nintendo was compelled to relinquish them in the early 90s due to litigation concerns and mounting competition) And how did Nintendo mange to get such support in spite of all the restrictions: similar to how Atari Inc managed it in the late 70s in the US, they were the first to successfully market/manage a cart based game console in their home country (the Famicom in 1983 was the first in Japan and took off somewhat like Atari's VCS in the late 70s but a bit faster and with Nintendo establishing licensing for 3rd parties with royalties to Nintendo bolstering profits). So Nintendo in Japan with the FC was in a similar position in 1986 as Atari with the 2600 in 1980 (SMB was sort of Nintendo's counterpart to Space Invaders too) except they already had strong 3rd party development and a functioning licensing infrastructure that more or less constrained Japanese console publishers to releasing for Nintendo while paying Nintendo for that privilege. Nintendo had the funding and position to push both strong software (which they had 3 years worth of to choose from) and powerful marketing in the US with their 1986 launch and following holiday sales season, and then followed that up by expanding that same licensing to US publishers and binding them to Nintendo as well. (so not only would Nintendo's popularity attract publishers, but those publishers would be prevented -or greatly restricted- from working on competing platforms and would all the while be paying Nintendo for the privilege!) The crash, weak market in the US with only Atari Corp really being active (Intev was even weaker and the CV was poorly managed after Coleco dumped it), it was open for new competition like never would have been possible up through 1983. Likewise, the home computer boom had settled down and people were again opening up to game consoles over computers. Sega was their main competition in Japan up to 1987 (with the PC Engine hitting big), but they were barely noticeable on the Japanese home market and in spite of initially stronger marketing funds and reasonably competitive software in the US, Sega failed to effectively manage the SMS in the US market, especially in the critical 1986/87 period. (mainly due to Nintendo's marketing/management) And even Sega had the advantage of having the SMS out in 1985 in Japan with existing software development and not aged titles like the 7800 had to work with at launch. So Nintendo had an initial advantage due to Japan and the hard times of the US game market and built on that, putting up more and more barriers to competition as then expanded.

Which is totally wrong as described above. (about as wrong as any claims that the 7800 was a response to the NES's release ) Only the 1984 launch games (released in 1986) fit in that category any more than Nintendo's game lineup. The issue was funding for internal development and interest/Nintendo's monopolistic licensing keeping 3rd parties off the system. That article misunderstands the 5200 as well. (as software variety was not one of its major problems at all -lacking Pac Man at launch was significant though) To be fair, by then, that wasn't what Atari was releasing. As we got towards that point, that's when the longer, larger NES like games were coming out. I'm not sure, but I recall an issue of Atarian that I found in a magazine rack back then (I was pretty amazed to find it, actually!) and the only games they were pushing were...old arcade titles, for the most part. You had other games that were pretty awful...Fatal Run, some Arkanoid clone...some Gauntlet clone. Again, totally up to 3rd party support and funding. It's not that they didn't have the right sort of games, but just didn't have the funding to invest in producing a competitive amount and quality of games in-house. (they'd have been hard pressed to come close to matching Nintendo's in-house software development, let alone the mass of 3rd parties that made the NES what it was in Japan and the west) By contrast, Sega's prominent position in the arcade and primary focus as a game software and hardware developer put it in a position where it had a fairly competitive lineup with almost no 3rd party publishers on the Master System, they also had decent marketing budgets too, but seem to have squandered their budget in '86/87 with poorly managed marketing in the US when they had a real chance at digging in as an equal to Nintendo. As such they fell well behind Atari Corp in market share -the 2600 and 7800 outsold the SMS in the US by a large margin from '86-89- in spite of Atari Corp's crippled software and marketing budgets, but very good management by Mike Katz for what he had to work with and a well-known brand name to work with. (so much so that it wasn't until after 1988 that Nintendo was known nationwide as well as Atari by the general public -obviously it varied by region and would have spread faster in some areas like the trendsetting east and west coast markets) Market analysts saw Atari Corp, Sega, and Nintendo as virtual equals in 1986 and it wasn't until after the 1986 holiday season that Nintendo had a notable advantage in the market. (which became truly massive in 1987) As I point out with an extensive explanation below, Atari Corp was in a very tight spot it had to work through and yes, its weaknesses put it at a considerable disadvantage (mainly not nearly as much money to throw around as Nintendo), but Nintendo had numerous other unfair advantages. Not only did they have a 3 year lead in Japan with considerable support and back library of games, but they had monopolistic policies already in place in Japan for 3rd party publishing as well as a hefty amount of licenses secured for Famicom exclusives (ie not even allowed to be published on other consoles by other labels). They didn't have hardware lockout as in the US, but apparently had some other contractual system that was significant enough to be effective even with no security on the hardware. (still made piracy easier) Thus, even with stronger funding, Atari was locked out from licensing almost any of the popular Japanese produced games at the time and blocked from 3rd party publishing (which Japanese developers would already have less incentive for). Nintendo had already started investing in the US market as well iirc, so by the time Mike Katz was setting up for the 7800 launch (making preparations in mid/late 1985), Nintendo was already building up in the US (though had not yet blocked any western publishers iirc). After the 1986 holiday season, Nitendo had the interest and clout in the US market to secure many US publishers under their rectrictive contracts and that only got worse as time went on and they got bigger. (and only declined in the early 90s as legal action was taken and as Sega's newly powerful and successful management tightened up real competition in the US) So, with fair licensing, Nintendo still would have had an ever growing advantage in funding, stronger Japanese support, etc, but Atari (and Sega) undoubtedly would have gotten FAR more 3rd party support. (both got almost zero 3rd party published games in the entire lifespans of their systems -Sega's powerful in-house and 2nd party software development funding and resources were the only thing that kept the SMS's library as good as it was -better hardware to some extent too) The competition (especially Nintendo since their console had been around in the heat of early 80s arcade games -in Japan) also had most of those older arcade games too (and a lot more), and often as good or better than the 7800 with a few exceptions. (again, funding, not enough of ANY genre or age games, lack of 3rd party support) The 7800 has some technical disadvantages and some advantages over the NES, but obviously the stronger supported system (by more than an order of magnitude) is goign to show it more. (rather like the C64 vs A8, A8 had advantages and disadvantages but the C64 got MUCH more and much longer and more widespread support) You could think of the 7800 as being capable of pretty much anything seen on the C64, but with more color and detail (and more programming effort), that and more animation or larger games than the single load C64 games. (with larger carts) Of course, the onboard sound was more limited, but obviously with better funding and higher volumes, you'd have seen a lot more on-cart sound chips, let alone other custom enhancement chips or more use of RAM expansion. Atari Corp did surprisingly well under the circumstances with some 3.77 million 7800 consoles sold from 1986 to 1990 (the vast majority sold in 1987 and 1988 wth a sharp decline in '89 and under 100k sold in 1990). Of course, Atari Inc would have been in a FAR better position than Atari Corp was across the board. (probably even for computers) Atari Inc in early 1984 had been in a great position to build up the 7800 (though one could argue they could have stuck with the 5200 or pushed the A8 computers more) and rebuild their market position in general. In late 1983, Atari Inc had gotten James Morgan as its new CEO, and by early 1994 he was making strides in turning the bloated and conflicted company around into a lean and efficient operation with his NATCO plans (New Atari COmpany). In early '84, after a hostile takeover attempt by Rupert Murdoch, Warner (parent of Atari Inc) was advised by a consulting firm to sell Atari Inc (heavily in debt due to the crash), and that alone wouldn't have halted Morgan's efforts. However, by mid 1984, Warner had failed to close any sales with prospective buyers and got desperate and made the radical decision to liquidate the company with an offer to Jack Tramiel (among the previous prospective buyers to turn Warner down) to split the company and sell him the consumer division (consoles, computers, and related assets, properties, and facilities) while Warner would keep the arcade division as the new Atari Games Corp and were thus willing to offer a much more favorable sale deal to Tramiel than the original offer for the whole company. (not sure what the original offer was, but the split involved Warner selling the company with promissory notes -IOUs or loans- which Tramiel would pay back over time; part of the deal also put Warner with a considerable stake in Atari Corp stock) So Tramiel's company (Trammel Technologies LTD) had the Atari consumer division folded into it and became renamed Atari Corp. (as part of the liquidation, Warner laid off all Atari consumer staff and left it up to Tramel and Co interview and sort through staff to hire for positions at TTL/Atari Corp) That transition alone wasn't the biggest problem in the least unfortunately; through the entire negotiations with TTL (which only lasted a couple days, if that), Warner had never made Atari Inc staff (even the CEO, Morgan) aware of the deal, let alone involved any of the upper management in negotiations. Morgan was literally brought-in at the last minute to sign over the company for liquidation, and to make all of that worse (perfect storm fashion), those negotiations took place over 4th of July weekend with hapless staff coming back to discover they soddenly had no longer had jobs. (usually without a remotely coherent explanation and a general air of chaos and anarchy) No negotiations or planning for a transition with Atari management, not proper notification to staff of layoffs, nothing. (and on top of that, a rather vague and sloppy definition of what Tramiel had actually bought -leading to quite a few conflicts) Thus, even under the best circumstances on Tramiel's end in handling the transition, he (and TTL management) was left in a horrible position with Atari's consumer division that totally destroyed Morgan's reorganization efforts and caused considerable delays for any work that was eventually continued from Atari Inc. On top of that, they ended up in legal disputes over Atari Games (Atari Corp had been given the rights to all Arcade games released by Atari Inc and Atari Games contended that issue) which ruined any possibility for good working relations with them until the early 90s. (even then it was purely business without any collaboration) And on top of all that, you had Warner contending ownership of the 7800 contract and requiring Atari Corp to pay after the fact for GCC's contractual R&D (MARIA and the launch game development). You also had the loss of critical staff related to ongoing advanced computer projects and apparently some documents and hardware "walking off" in the heat of the mess. (whatever the case, Atari Corp ended up not being able to use Atari Inc's extensive developments in a high-end 16-bit computer chipset and Unix based OS and GUI intended for that system or the Amiga based system planned) So you had tons of problems, some rectified later, some not at all, and all of which should have been addressed with proper negotiations and planning between Warner, Atari Inc, and TTL back at the beginning of July in 1984. (even if Tramiel had still opted to considerably downsize staff even beyond what Morgan planned and ended up losing all the console game programmers and much of the computer programmers, they still could have been much better off than they were at the time with a clean transition and no contention over the 7800 or Atari Games, little to no delay with the 7800, possibly moving forward with ST sooner and/or making use of the Atari Inc computer hardware/software developments, being more profitable and better funded earlier on with a stronger market position for both games and computers, etc, etc -and eventually enough funding to potentially rebuilt strong in-house software development) And there you go, that's pretty much the situation that Atari Corp was in and why, leaving out how/why Atari Inc got to their height and collapse and not addressing other decisions made after Atari Corp was established that could have changed things. (most of the latter has already been addressed in recent threads -this one and a couple others) I'm just a tech and history geek and a fast learner when I've got a strong interest. Most of the detailed Atari history stuff has come from Curt and Marty's post on Atariage. (if you want a book, keep a look out for when they publish their collection of Atari history books -and keep a look out for any history related threads posted by Curt Vendel or Marty -wgungfu- and updates on Atarimuseum -which is overdue for updates, unfortunately) The rest comes from various tech discussions and online articles and leaked documentation. (I'm not a programmer for any of these systems by any stretch -at least not yet- but have a decent enough understanding for many of them at the high-level hardware and software side of things) No because as already said about a million times here Atari Games (Tengen) and Atari Corp. (Tramiels) were seperate companies so they had to pay to license such games like they would with anyone else. Okay, so then they couldn't afford or they didn't think it was worthwhile to pay to license those games. Makes sense. Thanks. That, and as above, Atari Corp and Atari Games were at odds over the Atari Inc arcade game licenses and Atari name/logo that hurt relations considerably and many Atari games less likely to favorably license any games to Atari Corp. (let alone develop for them as a 2nd/3rd party) Had the split been managed properly, there would have been a very real chance for good relations between the two companies (incentives of PR/brand name, shared hardware and software both ways, etc), though it would have depended on cooperation of Atari Corp and Games management as well. (any realistic chance of that was ruined by the sloppy split)

To be fair, by then, that wasn't what Atari was releasing. As we got towards that point, that's when the longer, larger NES like games were coming out. Yep, the problem was the quantity and quality of games coming out, and that was mainly limited by budget. (and to some extent the management decisions to push predominantly for the lower budget market) Again, the lack of 3rd party support was the bigger problem, but even comparing the 1st party stuff, Nintendo obviously had a lot more to invest into it. (Atari had a lot of revenue coming from the computer division in the late 80s, of course, but you can't just divert that to the consoles without hefty trade-offs on the computer end of things -pushing for investment capital in some other way would have been extremely significant though, more risks involved for much of that, but in their position they were going to have to take risks to get big -tactful management and tempering of those risks would be crucial of course) I don't think that's fair. Nintendo has franchises (as do many, many, many other game companies) but most games are pretty different from each other. Very true, and even for the games that are remakes or direct ports (or compilations), they're sold because there's still a demand/interest: as Atari should have for any older console/arcade games that there was current interest for. (Lynxpro had a good point in mentioning compilations though, including for the 2600 -at least once stockpiles of the original carts ran low) If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Of the launch titles of the 7800, Ms Pac Man seems to have been the most enduring (and obviously the most popular at the time -the single bestselling Arcade game in North America ever iirc). It ended up as the bestselling 3rd party published Genesis game after all. A simple, but timeless, fun and addictive game that would have probably been the best pack-in for the 7800 at launch. (and probably a good time after that too) And one early 80s game that SHOULD have been on the 7800 is Tempest since it had no official home port at the time. (Sinistar wouldn't be a bad one either, though it wasn't as popular -would have been really neat to have some of the speech, at least for the intermissions when you die if not in-game)

The problem was they had one guy - one programmer, Tom Sloper, doing everything at that time. Writing the dev manual, trying to line up outside developers and farm out game projects and oversee any licenses they managed to get a hold of. Not much of a "creative department". Huh, I thought you mentioned that Atari Corp had hired most of Atari Inc's computer programming staff. (many of whom had developed games for the A8) No, I said they hired some of the computer engineers and coders. And by '86 a bunch of those people had left. Likewise that was for computers, not for a games division, games design, etc. Computer programmers and engineers != game designers. All the original people of those types were still with Coin at Atari Games or elsewhere in the industry by then. Tom was the only guy involved in the games during that time at Atari Corp. Did any of that computer staff cross over with games development? (ie staff who had worked on games but weren't used for such while at Atari Corp) Was there any consideration into retaining some of them for actual games development in-house (or recruiting others) or was Atari Corp management dead set on outsourcing? I'm a fan of a lot of different systems, though. So are you saying AA is only welcome to Atari hardcore fans (fanboy is a derogatory term)? I get the feeling it's not. I've seen members here on other "system" forums, so.. As expressed above, I totalyl agree; this is exactly the problem I have with some statements made in this discussion. Heh, even with the closest cases I can think of on Sega-16 with the Sony hate, it's not quite the same. (especially since the ones coming to mind tend to focus much more logical discussion -be it flawed logic or otherwise- and/or focusing more on Sega's actual internal issue or at least a broader view of the picture -except some obviously sarcastic or hyperbolic comments from Joe or such ) Though if you really want a well balanced retro forum, you'd probably want to look more towards the likes of Racketboy, though there's not a lot of tech oriented stuff there. I really don't see how it's unreasonable to want to discuss Atari related stuff and also expect at least a reasonable amount of balanced/respectable (or at least logical) understanding of other companies/platforms in the market. (of course, one could simply ignore those who make blatantly hateful or off the wall comments as such) And then again, if you want some REAL hatred and aggression, you wouldn't need to look any further than any of the heated computer discussions on these forums. (which I'm sure you're reasonably familiar with -wasn't the big C64 vs A8 one the longest thread ever on AA?) Again, you'd really need to take Gorf with a grain of salt, he's good (or excellent) for some technical discussions, but for some things (especially the NES), he just is off and has no real (AFIK) technical experience and relatively little experience even playing games on the system iirc. (might be wrong on the latter) From a thread I'm sure you'll remember: You mean "quality" as in "graphics capability" or the artefacts of the composite video output? What I mean is what my eyes see on the TV when I play. Actually, I see the jaguar get laughed at a LOT more than the 7800 as such. (not so much specific threads, but general digs at it) The 7800 was more than an order of magnitude more popular than the jaguar, but the Jag seems to get a lot more notice as such. Sure, in name they couldn't. But the actual development of original or 'cloneish' titles would have been perfectly doable, no? Or am I maybe missing some important piece of information here (I think I am)? Atari software development side was a separate company from Atari that handled the 7800, right? IIRC, it was that the same game couldn't come out on another system if it had already come out on the NES (and.. something about 2 year grace period and it could). If that's the case, why didn't the simply jump ship to support the 7800? Was there more money to be made on the NES system for the games? The big issue was that 3rd parties were blocked from publishing on the 7800 (same issue for the SMS), at least under their normal label. 1st party development was another issue entirely (be it outsourced or in-house -mainly outsourced) and almost completely limited by funding. (both total funds/revenue of the company and the amount management was willing to invest exclusively for games on software for the 7800) Atari Corp was in a rather bad position up to 1987 when things really started moving forward (not sure if that's when they came out of debt), but by then, the added funding still paled in comparison to what the rising Nintendo had to work with. (let alone the interest from 3rd parties and clout to prevent them -or heavily limit them- from releasing games on competing consoles) Sega had a different problem initially: just weak management and weak position in Japan. (they spent MORE marketing dollars early on than Nintendo and had pretty damn competitive 1st party software -and somewhat superior hardware- but lacked the management to back that up in the US market) It was a snowball effect: the NES had a much stronger launch with a killer pack in in 1986, Atari had what almost amounted to viral marketing for the launch in '86 (mainly print ads iirc) and nothing but the initial GCC developed games form 1984 at launch. (Nintendo had a considerably library to work with from Japan and to selectively localize) In 1986, the media saw Nintendo, Sega, and Atari Corp as virtal equals with the market as anyone's game, but after Christmas of '86, Nintendo already had a clear lead and '87 fully solidified that position. (Atari's brand name and Katz's excellent management under far from ideal circumstances still kept them well ahead of Sega in market share at the time -though part of that was due to 2600 sales rather than the 7800 specifically; if you go by the 2 million SMS figure in the US, the 7800 sold almost double, but I think the SMS figure may be flawed, especially given that Sega seems to have been only a little behind 1/2 of Atari's share and the market share would have included 2600 sales -which should have exceeded 7800 by a good margin, which implied the SMS may have sold more like 4+ million in the US) Oh, and as to the different Ataris: the coin-op division was spun off as Atari Games in 1984 while the res of the company (the consumer division) was liquidated with 100% layoffs and the divisions properties (products, facilities, patents, etc) were sold to Trammel Technologies Ltd (TTL) which was then renamed Atari Corp. Atari Corp had a huge mess to deal with due to Warnr botching the liquidation and transition (Atari Inc personnel had absolutely zero notice ahead of time -including CEO James Morgan, leading to utter chaos and a slew of problems -as well as many of the myths that have only recently been corrected). In spite of that, Atari Corp managed to interview a number of former Atari Inc staff members (mainly computer hardware/software guys) and took them on with Atari Corp staff. (that didn't end up including any of the console game programmers) Losing the coin-op guys mainly meant loss of exclusives on later Atari arcade games, but not any console programming prowess. (the arcade developers had little to nothing to do with console or computer programming iirc -aside from some who transitioned between the 2 divisions) And again, it was really money that was the issue: even after missing out on hiring Atari Inc console programmers (which they could hardly afford at the time), they COULD have built-up internal game development after the fact if they had the funds, or pushed more for outsourced software in general, but funding was always a bottleneck. (they mostly outsourced for the 7800 and got next to no 3rd party publishers for the platform -hence why almost every game was programmed by a 3rd party but published and financed by Atari Corp) They did seem to miss out on European software houses though, not sure if Katz ever commented on that issue to Marty or Curt in interviews.