kool kitty89
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Posts posted by kool kitty89
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Pretty much. Tramiel was always messing around with his distribution network and didn't seem to care too much about the smaller computer dealers. The dealers got real upset with him when he dropped the Vic-20 on the mass merchants. For a short while the dealers breathed a sigh of relief when the c64 came out as they were told it was only going to be sold through them. That was until he dropped the price in the $400 range and handed it to the mass merchants.
A shame they couldn't balance things better with distributors as such, though it seems he managed better with Atari Corp. (though pushing ST stock off to Europe at the expense of US shortages probably frustrated US dealers -though it was a smart business move given Europe was the definitive market for the ST)
Ignoring mass merchants would have been stupid of course, so they would have needed to balance things better with the dedicated dealers rather than focusing on one or the other.
At least they didn't have the distribution problems that Atari Inc did (especially with the game market), and CBM managed to catch onto the specific demands of the European market much faster than Atari Inc. (I'm not sure Atari Inc ever got a good handle on understanding the Euro market before it was liquidated)
As for Atari, I am pretty sure they had mass merchant distribution early on. I remember seeing the 400/800 (or at least the 400) in Zayre. The reason I can remember it is because of the utterly horrible way it was displayed. While all the software for the C64 was displayed in a glass case that you could actually see, the Atari software was tossed on shelves behind the counter. Those big boxes were just too damn big. And then there was an issue with the pricing - $50 was a lot of cash for a game.I'll bet Sears was a better example for store displays and such, but I haven't seen any actual examples of such for Atari Computers.
Was the $50 for cart games (obviously more expensive than disk, let alone tape), though I'd assume that would also be in the early 80s. (ROM prices dropped substantially in the mid 80s, especially making the -relatively- smaller cart games cheaper -more so with inflation taken into account)
A8 carts should have been close to the same prices of 5200 or Colecovision games. (or the larger 2600/Intellivision games -though I don't think either was commonly pushing 16k or more in the early 80s)
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Re: Pricing
Tramiel had a love-hate relationship with his dealers and royally pissed many of them off. Once he brought in the mass merchants the price many dealers paid from a distributor was more than what the dealer could have paid at his local Kmart etc. That was before the rebate.
Ah, OK, so it was more of an issue with the middle man (distributors) inflating the prices and CBM not offering direct sales/shipments to smaller distributors. (I assume the mass merchants were being supplied direct from Commodore)
How did that work out for Atari or others who were pushing things through mass merchants as well as dedicated dealers? (Atari namely with Sears with the computers, and I don't think they expanded that to many other retail chain department or even toy stores as such, at least prior to Atari Corp -though the 400/600XL had dropped to a price range in '82/83 where it was practical to be put into the Toy store entry level computer category and expand the market -the more widely available, the better you can market/sell it, especially since the 400 was originally supposed to be the entry level/gaming oriented model)
I wonder if pushing more for mass merchants would have given Atari more competitive prices as well. (it would depend how distribution was managed, of course)
Lack of wider distribution was part of what hurt Tandy's computer lines: neither offering them at proper dealers (especially for the "serious" computers) or at mass market retailers (department stores, toy stores, etc -especially Tory Stores for the CoCo). They exclusively offered those machines through Radio Shack iirc, maybe with mail order options as well.
Did the TI99 even have any RAM upgrade options?
The TI was a very expandable computer once your forked over the cash for the expansion bay...
They also had a lot of plug-in/piggyback sidecar expansion modules. There was a 32k expansion card (DRAM?) option, though I'm not sure if there was any more than that. Was that RAM only for storage (in place of ROM -for tape/disks to load into), or could it be directly accessed by the CPU at full speed like the scratchpad? (or at least accessed directly with wait states rather than having to go through I/O ports as with the VDP DRAM)
They really should have offered higher-end models with more built-in RAM, probably from the start with the TI-99/4A (ie the re-launch after the original TI-99/4). (or at very least they should have expanded scratchpad RAM to 2 kB -assuming it's SRAM, that would be 4 1kx4-bit chips- and especially do that on top of other expanded RAM if the latter had to be slow with wait states -let aloen accessed via I/O ports)
On top of having 16/32k internal memory console models and offering the bulky expansion box, they really should have offered a true desktop/tower model with the motherboard encased within a unit similar to the expansion bay along with expansion slots and a separate keyboard. (more like IBM)
Of course, the closed software model also cripple TI, otherwise doing the above could have meant serious competition with Apple and IBM as well as the likes of Commodore. (just need an 80 column text card, and you're close to directly competitive with the PC -with various advantages as well, obviously with the color graphics modes though only available though composite video -unless the YCbCr output was used with dedicated monitors or an RGB transcoder)
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Seeing as how they already test-marketed the console (7800) to some success, and the 5200 was not such a great success, I think they made the right move going with 7800. It was the product with more consumer interest at the time they announced it and test marketed it.
Yes, but that's in the context of Atari not even really trying to fix the 5200. A properly redesigned/remodeled 5200 would have been cheaper, similarly compact, etc, etc not only compared to the original 5200, but potentially with the 7800 as well.
With CGIA, a consolidated DRAM interface IC, removed expansion port, consolidated motherboard in general (optimized around 2 ports and lack of the expansion port), redesigned compact casing to go along with that, corrected controllers, and marketing to match all of that you'd have something to actually compare with the 7800.
That's in the context of not dropping the 5200 at all, of course. (and as it was, Atari didn't even make a decent effort to correct the major 5200 issues in the short run -switching to simple pull-up resistor based joysicks and a 5100/5200 Jr type layout ASAP would have been the short-term hack option prior to actual consolidation and such -of course, you would be stuck with the less efficient VCS adapter as that's really something they needed to add provisions in the original design)
In the XEGS-like example, that would have been best if pushed in place of the 5200 in the first place, though not a bad "after the fact" option as well. Of course, the 3200 (with embedded compatibility and a high degree of cost efficiency) or a derivative of the 5200 with much greater cost emphasis and design facilitating a lower cost/simpler adapter module (and more fool proof controllers) would have some arguable advantages over the pure 3200 concept. (which the 7800 was rather close to in general concept)
There's various trade-offs in any case in regards to splitting the market further (vs a fully compatible computer), a very close design facilitating simple ports to/from the A8 and sharing many components for ease of production/consolidation (and provisions for a low-cost VCS adapter -more efficient and user friendly than the 5200's actual adapter), and integral compatibility with the VCS as with the 3200.
Though technically, you could even have parallels in production/development with the 3200 (or similar alternatives) depending just how similar it was to the A8. (one time saving hack could have been to scrap STIA in favor of plain ANTIC+GTIA used rather like MARIA in the 7800 -though you also have 8 I/O ports to optionally use with GTIA -once they switched to CGIA it would be even more like the 7800- and there would be possibilities for the design to use SRAM a la 3200/7800 or push for DRAM instead, push for the full 1.79 MHz SALLY speed vs the 1.19 MHz planned for the 3200 -or maybe implement interleaved DMA at 1.19 MHz- and there was the RIOT IRQ line that could be enabled for 3200/5200 mode and the 1-bit GTIA CPU driven sound channel to also take advantage of -so somewhat better off for sound than the 7800 -especially when a little CPU resource could be spared for IRQ driven modulations- AND much earlier on top of that)
But I can see what you're saying, kool kitty. Obviously the change over had a lot to do with the issues surrounding Atari's competitive nature at the time in the home console market. Maybe in that regard a 400/800 console revision (ala the later XEGS) would've been the better move in '85, with the 7800 shelved, what with the lower financial support available for such projects.
That's part of it, but as I said above, there's plenty of other areas where it would have been attractive under Atari Inc alone.
The 7800 was really more of a fix after the fact and while nice in some respects, it was far from ideal in others including some ways compared to fixing the 5200 itself after the fact. (especially with a couple million units already sold, etc, etc)
Of course, Atari didn't really have a say (or any input in general over the design) on the 7800 since it was all Warner/GCC and would be forced on Atari Inc regardless. (at very least, they probably should have pushed for some healthy collaboration -maybe they could have gotten better onboard sound or some other changes)
Though Atari's own problems in general were far greater than just the 5200, or even mistakes made with the computers (a huge number of compounding problems -one of the biggest being with distribution), so even focusing on these issue alone would be trivial in some respects. (in fact, the management issues were a major factor in the cause of many other problems from the computers to the 5200 to ET to distribution, etc)
Though going back to the point about the XEGS-a-like in 1982 (not just 1984/85, so more like the 600 or a true successor to the 400 as such), they could have positioned it as a low-end gaming oriented computer at a competitive price point but also kept it as a interim option with the 3200 development continuing as the "main" successor to the 2600. (or possibly considering sticking with the computers alone if they manged to get popular enough -of course, they'd made mistakes prior to 1982 that missed potential in pushing the computer more -especially in terms of marketing iirc, but '82 was the bigger jump in mistakes as such)
And back to the Context of Tramiel (or Atari Inc later on with more say on the matter of GCC), you could argue that the 7800 should have been halted overall (be it in favor of the corrected 5200 or computers in general), but GCC's work not abandoned. Rather, they could have pushed for MARIA to be implemented in a more comprehensive new system that better tok advantage of its capabilities (and maybe keep MARIA's design open a bit longer to add more features/flexibilities -more resolution options, maybe onboard sound, perhaps DRAM interface logic, etc). As it was, GCC was working on a 68000 interfaced version of MARIA, but they probably could have goen beyond that in general. (Atari Inc would have had to weigh the merits of such against the existing Advanced technologies designs and the relative merits -not just choosing one over the other but also reserving the possibility for using both in different roles -MARIA needed some significant added tweaks to be useful for a next gen computer, so that would decide whether it would be desirable for that vs console/arcade stuff specifically)
That said, I'm operating on the imaginary scenario that Tramiel would've sunk more money into Atari during the initial "purchase". In that light, going with 7800, extending a contract with GCC, and getting Atari's arcade division along with the consumer division would've made for a much more competitive 7800. Yes, I know the reality of the situation was not enough money to do those things, and in that regard the completely ass backward bungling change over from Warner to Tramiel was a big part of the problem (if not THE problem), but in my scenario whatever Warner screwed up would've been negated by more money thrown at the problem by Tramiel.
Money wasn't the only issue, the bigger issue (that led to a sustained lack of funds and ongoing problems early on) was due to the sloppy management of the split and to some extent due to Tramiel's shift in priorities over Morgan.
A properly managed split would have meant MUCH less problems and much better organization across the board with a reasonably smooth transition and a healthier company off the bat. (and better potential use of exiting Atari Inc staff and resources -including possible utilization of ATG hardware and software for the planned 16-bit systems) The Amiga deal/lawsuit could have been combated and won faster as well.
So many of the same things of Morgan's Atari could potentially have been done under Tramiel with good management of the split. (not as good in some areas, but maybe even better than Morgan+Warner could have managed as such -in part due to ongoing bureaucratic problems from Warner)
A smooth transition would have meant increased efficiency and accelerated recovery/development across the board, and with the 7800 pushed sooner as such (moving forward with the already established 1994 plans), that could have meant pushing for the likes of Katz sooner as well. (and possibly jumping on Japanese licenses before Nintendo really had it locked up as it was in mid/late 1985)
Bad relationship between Atari Corp. and Atari Games due to the change over?
Due in large part to Warner's sloppy and confusing management of the split and transition.
Even if the companies were made separate, a proper transition could have meant a good working relationship from day 1 of Atari Corp's establishment (or TTL's renaming).
Part of that could also be sharing of technology for consoles/computer/arcade stuff (and probably better than what finally happened with the CoJag in the mid 90s).
"Solved" with Tramiel buying the arcade division along with the consumer division.
Yes, but there's more to it than that, and that may not even have been preferable. (having the arcade division spun-off as a separate entity could even have been beneficial in general, especially on top of a healthy working relationship with Atari Corp -you could argue similar under NATCO, though I don't think that was ever part of the plans)
There's a reason TTL and several others declined to take on Warner's terms to sell Atari Inc as a whole. I don't know the details, but it was obviously less favorable than the later example. (I wonder if they ever offered the IOU/loan option for selling Atari Inc as they did with selling the consumer division -that's the main reason they were even able to pull off the sale with TTL as they did since Tramiel had already made substantial investments with private funds to create TTL in the first place and taking on Atari Inc in general was a rather big risk -much more so after what Warner did to it with the split)
Issue regarding the late release of 7800 due to the GCC contract dispute with Warner?
"Solved" with Tramiel just extending the contract with GCC.
Just shoving out more money after the fact would not be good business sense.
The point is that Warner should have had all those issues laid out BEFORE any sale went through at all, hence the greater problems after the fact across the board. (from the mess of Warner laying off the staff without notice, total lack of a proper manifest/inventory for the sale/split, etc, etc)
Not just Warner either, but Warner, Morgan/Atari, and Tramiel/TTL needed to work out comprehensive plans well ahead of time to manage a smooth transition. (that's of course, if Warner couldn't be persuaded to retain or spin off Atari Inc in some other manner, or revise the offer for total sale of Atari Inc that would retain it as a whole and continue the NATCO plans)
But what you're suggesting is Tramiel paying more after the fact, and that would still mean many of the same problems... Atari games was off the table under those circumstances anyway (that was the premise of Warner offering the new deal with the split/liquidation of the consumer division rather than the previously offered -and apparently inflexible- sale of Atari Inc as a whole that others -as well as Tramiel- had declined)
If you mean TTL buying Atari Inc outright with the earlier offer (or one of the other prospective buyers), that's a totally different context. (same for the context of Warner keeping that premise, but pushing the promisary note option with the sale as they did for Atari Corp -I assume the original offer was rather different, but I haven't seen any specifics -it would make sense for a more favorable offer for just the consumer division since that's where all the debt and problems were pooled that Warner wanted to purge)
It was an absolute mess, and virtually every single problem Atari Corp faced early on (and in many cases later on due to lasting impact) were tied to how the split had been managed. (some issues were tied to Tramiel's management, but that was a mixed bag in general vs the universally harmful management of the split and resulting chaos)
And don't forget that this would not only benefit the game side of Atari, but the 8 and 16-bit computer management/plans for hardware and software as well. THAT could have been even more substantial than the games in some respects. (granted Atari Inc had already screwed up a good deal with the A8 line up through 1983 -in the US and Europe in different ways)
Issues regarding software library?
"Solved" with the purchase of the arcade division and extension of GCC's contract, the latter of which would've meant an earlier release due to that extension and better 3rd party support due to that earlier release on market (strike while the iron is still hot, and NES isn't on market yet).
Not really. GCC and the Arcade division had relatively little to do with that overall. In-house development with computer and console developers (the latter they had, the former they shouldn't have lost with a properly managed split) would have been enough, especially on top of a healthy relationship with Atari games. (again, facilitated by the split)
The earlier release of the 7800 would have been facilitated by better management of the split as well.
Everything "solved" in my scenario by Tramiel paying more money from he get-go.
Hardly, most of the problems wouldn't have been solved at all, and again it would never have been about paying more, but getting more loans/IOUs from Warner as they had negotiated for Atari Consumer.
All those issues were tied to Warner not giving a proper account of what TTL was getting and how it was to be distributed, and not putting Atari Inc/Morgan in the loop from the start and pulling off proper management from start to finish.
Even if Tramiel had *paid* more, that wouldn't have solved all the many, many hidden problems that were created. Except with the case of Warner being willing to make a more favorable deal for Atari Inc to sell as a whole with no funny business over the split as they did. (again, no one would take on Atari Inc under the terms Warner was offering -not just TTL, but others too, Marty or Curt should have specifics- so they'd have to change the game there as such)
If they were keeping Atari Inc whole and going ahead with Morgan/NATCO, there was really no need to sell the company either, and there should have been various other options for spinning off Atari Inc to separate it from Warner and get the debt off the books to keep Warner shareholders/board members happy.
Atari arcade game IPs would only be ported to Atari consumer hardware, thereby "solving" the issue regarding exclusives. The contract extension with GCC would make them a very close 2nd party software house exclusive to Tramiel's Atari thereby throwing another "solution" at the exclusive problem, and they would also a valuable asset in regards to 3rd party relations due to assistance they could provide with 7800 dev tools thereby ensuring better 3rd party offerings.
Only to a modest extent, since that could have been solved regardless of what you mentioned with or without GCC and Atari Games retained. Of course, the relationship with both would have been better WITH the split if it was managed properly.
They could have had good in-house development and 2nd/3rd party licensed/commissioned development with or without Atari Games or GCC directly linked. I'll give you that better dev tools may have helped, but that could have been commissioned regardless and still wouldn't have helped in many areas. (there's a limited extent you can do with such a radically different architecture and the main issue is getting it established on the mass market early on before other defacto standards push it out entirely)
I've already addressed the other issues (including how exclusive games are only one small part and multiplatform games can be MORE important in quantity -and every multiplatform game is one less exclusive for competition
), so I'll stop there.Yes, the change over being bungled by Warner was the biggest problem. The solution you're proposing is Warner not bungling it in the first place. The solution I'm proposing is Tramiel spending more cash and buying the whole thing outright which would've completely negated Warner's silliness. Both are really pie-in-the-sky fantasies, tbqh. Tramiel wasn't going to spend more cash, and Warner was (and still is) infamous for messing even the simplest things up completely. Sure, there was a better plan in place at Warner, and all they had to do was follow it. But by that same token Tramiel had more money to spend, but didn't spend it. Both weren't going to happen, because Warner was run by idiots and Tramiel wasn't going to spend one red cent more than he felt he had to.Tramiel spending more was not necessary and didn't/doesn't make sense. He should have had what was to be buying laid out in the first place, which is not what happened.
The biggest single fault of the whole split was not keeping Atari in the loop in the slightest (GCC was also left out of the loop), and that's part of why there was so much misinformation on the subject until Curt and Marty really dug deeper: it was an absolute mess that could have been largely avoided by having Atari at the negotiating table rather than totally caught off-guard from upper management to general staff.
Tramiel wouldn't have been expected to keep jumping through hoops just to correct Warner's mistakes like that, especially after the huge mess he/his staff had to clean up with Atari consumer as it was. (with the NATCO lawsuits as part of that)
As Marty mentioned before, Morgan knew of Warner's interest in selling Atari, but he wasn't worried since the premise was selling the company as a whole (and thus having a general replacement to Warner -which could indeed have been better than the mes of Warner's bureaucracy). Thus, he also wasn't pushing Warner management to be kept in the loop for such dealings, but that was critical to do once they switched to the split/liquidation plans for Atari Inc (which Morgan -and the rest of Atari- was obviously totally ignorant of and even Tramiel had been caught off guard with Warner contacting him out of the blue -I think the call may have even been made at an odd hour in the early morning).
Warner didn't rush into selling Atari Inc, but they most certainly rushed into the deal over the split/liquidation of Atari consumer and rushed that sale itself.
I wonder what would have happened if Morgan had refused to sign the contract for the split until he had fully read over it and commented on the plans and curtailing the major problems with it as best he could. Would Warner have simply forced his hand and/or fired him over such, would it have created enough friction with Tramiel to make the situation worse in other ways, or would it have actually paid off with a better transition?
And after all that, I still don't see how Nintendo would have had any greater sway over the Japanese market/3rd parties with the Famicom than Atari Inc/Warner had had with the VCS/7800. The only difference is that Nintendo actually offered 3rd party licensing and development tools while Atari didn't (their 3rd party market was based on leaked/reverse engineered development documentation). Neither had any form of lockout to prevent 3rd parties from going unlicensed (indeed, there was a lot of unlicensed development on the Famicom as such), and there's no reason initially licensed developers couldn't later jump ship as such. (they did it in the west to a small extent and only got successfully sued in the case of Tengen's copyright infringement with the code used in the RABBIT chip -vs the totally legal voltage spike glitch used by contemporaries)
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Woah, now...don't dis the SID. That was some great sound. If there's games on C64 that didn't sound good, it's because whoever did the sound sucked at it.
The computer itself had a great sound chip. Hell, there are C64 games out there remembered solely for their soundtracks even though the games themselves were crap.
Yes, but at least the SID was used well a lot more often than the (nominally quite capable) YM3812 of Adlib/SB... Though some people don't like the style of sound/music pushed on the SID in many cases, though that often carries over to many European chiptunes in general. (I know several people who find the fast arps in particular REALLY annoying in most cases, though others where they don't like some of the sounds of the C64 instruments used in general -presumably some of the "buzzy" pulse and saw stuff, but the arpeggio complaint is far more common)
There's mediocre and poor examples of sound on all platforms (even ones with very capable and user friendly sound), but some got it more than others. (and those that had popularity/support focused on one region were limited as well -those with worldwide popularity saw a lot more diversity and, more often than not, those with strong Japanese and European support ended up with better music -and better utilization of sound hardware in general- on average -for arcade computer and consoles)
There was actually something worse than the 7800 soundwise
anything on ZX Spectrum actually.
C64 has some awful cat-strangling squeaking sounds too.
Well, anything in-game at least. There's plenty of neat title demos, especially PWM stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz46pCROkjM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz46pCROkjM
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I got this for my birthday one year because I loved Castlevania. It was for my mom's IBM XT which had a basic PC speaker. This is how the game sounded.
The TIA sounded like a symphony in comparison to that 1-voice bleep chip.
And yet the majority of us use computers descended from that horrible platform...
Granted, the sound hardware (for better or worse) had little to no impact on such, and it was better than many contemporaries. (Apple II, TRS-80, Spectrum, etc -the PC at least had the use of an interval timer to drive the square wave rather than pure software driven clicks -like those platforms it had no sound chip to speak of and less sound hardware than the CoCo as such in terms of DAC ability, but with the added hardware timing/wave generation -a shame IBM didn't include a cheap/rudimentary 8-bit DAC port for the PC to work with)
And, of course, like the Apple II you had flexible expansion as well . . . though oddly no sound cards appeared until the late 80s (not counting the improved onboard sound of the PCJr/Tandy 1000), not until Adlib was there any consumer or professional sound accessories for the PC other than the Covox type DACs for the parallel pot. (the Apple II got the mockingboard in the early 80s, odd that the PC didn't get similar accessories early on -especially since the AY8910 could have provided atari style digital joystick ports -which covox did do in 1989 with the AY8930- at a time when the IBM analog ports had hardly become popular -Creative's use on the Soundblaster really cemented that and definitively blocked any other defacto standards -atari type digital ports could have been generally cheaper and less resource intensive to implement than the CPU intensive polling mechanisms used for the analog port, let alone calibration headaches and the many games where analog was less necessary or totally unnecessary)
The Open nature of the likes of the Apple II and PC were things that some major competition lacked. (Atari engineers wanted to push it with the A8 and finally did -more or less- with PBI, but it never really got taken advantage of and the ST was a step back again with a closed box architecture -the Amiga 1000 was only moderately better in that regard -other than the video expansion slot- and largely had to rely on hack upgrades piggybacking on the CPU socket)
But back to the topic at hand: Adlib was alread becoming a widely accepted standard by the time Castlevania was ported to DOS and thus the PC speaker was just the lowest common denominator to support. (not sure if there was a Tandy Specific version -obviously better than TIA, save for some SFX abilities just as the SMS/Colecovision/TI99/etc are vs TIA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq9uchXRRPc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq9uchXRRPc
(pretty medocre use of Adlib though, but that's a developer issue, not a hardware one -the C64 version's sound was a bit weak too, but not as disappointing as Adlib given how much more capable than SID it is, or NES sound system for that matter -that was a pretty common problem for DOS games though, mediocre use of the FM synth hardware, though there were exceptions)
Though you've also got some weak examples of the AY and SN PSGs that sound little better than the PC speaker.
(Monkey Island didn't support either very well -Tandy or Atari ST)That and in a few areas the PC speker's use of the onboard 16-bit interval timers means higher pitch resolution than TIA in hardware.
(so a few cases where you could do things TIA can't)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NJuEzHuKuQ
(oddly they did rather well with the game blaster)
And to the main topic . . . that's rather obvious in general, LOTS of systems had worse sound hardware than the 7800, but that just means those system were EVEN WORSE off rather than making TIA any more acceptably/competitive for the time. (again, it's rather ridiculous that the PC didn't have a common sound chip add-on by 1984, let alone that it would be until 1987 before that happened . . . you'd think some third party would have offered one of the 2 common PSGs -AY-3-891x or the cheaper/less capable SN76489- fairly early on, but no)
Obviously one didn't by an IBM PC mainly for gaming in the early/mid 80s given the much more cost effective alternatives, and not until the late 80s and early 90s did it really be come an attractive platform with notable exclusives and with the hardware getting more game capable (especially with VGA and sound blaster) and clones getting cheaper/more common in general. (had the Tandy-1000 caught on as a defacto mid-80s standard of sorts, that might have shifted things a bit sooner though)
You probably wouldn't buy an Apple II or TRS-80 mainly for games either, though in Europe you very well may have for a Spectrum 48k (definitely weaker sound than the 2600/7800) but as the lower-end option as such.
Did your mom's computer have EGA or did you also have to endure the horrors of three color CGA in addition to the crap PC speaker sounds?
I think that's wrong: many emulators (and indeed many semi-CGA compatible cards) have issues with proper CGA emulation. In this case, I'm almost certain they used the red/brown/black/green palette, but the emulation errors pushed the cyan/magenta/white/black one instead. (you see some contra videos like that as well -the real version is still rather ugly, but not nearly as bad
)That, or they were just crap/lazy developers to not even used the other default palette. (CGA is limited, but it's not THAT limited -you get 2 default palettes, each with bright and dark versions and both the 1 selectable color as an alternate to black)
Given it was a 1990 game that still wasn't supporting VGA, it would definitely be in the lower-end/budget category where they really weren't pushing it. (at least it had adlib, but that's still not saying that much -a few odd games support VGA but not anything but PC speaker sound: I think Stormlord does that, it's also oddly one of the few games to push PWM synth for the title screen -like some Speccy games and Digger on PC in 1982)
Golden Axe got a reasonable representation for a 1990 PC port. (looks better than the Genesis game in VGA, though the adlib sound is a bit medeocre and they seem to use PWM based PC speaker samples rather than Sound blaster DMA PCM -it doesn't halt music for PCM playback though -not to mention some of the mediocre conversions on other computers/consoles of the time)
Well, unless you didn't have a sound card enabled:
vs
(the same is also CPU timing sensitive, so emulators with the cycles turned up too high will get screwy -presumably newer DOS-compatible PCs would do the same natively)Though it's actually a pretty decent example of PC speaker music. (would be one of those cases where "Music or SFX" options would have been significant
) -
You know things are bad for a show's prospects when the only clear time the show is consistently on in NYC (THE major media market) is late night on Saturday. During the normal prime time schedule, Fringe is pre-empted left and right. And that's when there aren't any local sports on Fox 5 here in the city. If there are games on during prime time hours, the show will either do an episode after the news (not usually likely), a double billing on Saturday late night, or not get shown at all (which has, in fact, happened).
It's too bad, too. It's really gotten interesting, IMHO, more so than the first season.
Huh, on the west coast (at least the SF bay area), it's Friday nights at prime time (used to be Thursday prime time). They also stopped pushing the limited 60/90 second commercials this season that had been a staple of the series previously. (not just shorter breaks, but longer than average duration -as far as modern TV shows go)
It's also no longer back to back with another major/popular Fox series (used to be with Bones -now after Kitchen Nightmares). That's one issue that I think heavily contributed to The Good Guys getting canceled. (not only moving it from the Monday Night time slot it had been in the Summer, but not pairing it with a popular/established series to piggyback on viewership, and putting it in direct competition with hugely popular shows on other networks -I think it was in the same slot as CSI) If they wanted it to have a real chance of getting established, they probably should have kept the Monday Night slot and put it back to back (before or after) HOUSE or something. (like in the slot Lie To Me got instead)
A shame, I really liked that one too. (one of the few comedies that really made me laugh out loud consistently, a good, original, fun show)
Oh, and I don't care if they got it accurate. They had Atari on the show rather than NES. That gives them points in my book. Not that I have anything against the NES, but I gotta dig the Atari love.
Having an NES in '85 would have been pretty inaccurate too though. (especially if it was supposed to be in Boston -the NYC test market was the only place you could find NESs at retail in 1985 -and only late that year)
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That and the various examples of single programmer based games much later on.
That wasn't really my point. Of course there are examples of that later on, just as there are examples of multi-team member development pre-crash. But I do find that it's more common (at least in the console world) to find single-programmer games pre-crash and team-effort games post-crash.
Yes, just as you find massive development teams and multimillion dollars games today as well as in the early/mid 90s (especially with inflation taken into account), but obviously much more common today. (though, on the other side of things, there's actually a bit of a resurgence of low-budget/independent games due to the downloadable market in some respects not seen since the heyday of tape games in Europe in the mid/late 80s)
It's not just something specific to post vs pre-crash, but something that was changing pre-crash, mid-crash, and post crash. (and still to this day)
And I maintain that the advances in music/art design were parallel to that evolution and part of a common phenomenon, but also independent to a fair degree. (lots of factors contributing to the advent of both of those changes)
The fact that both the European and Japanese computer/video game markets were expanding at the time and there was a surge in programming/development efforts also had a lot to do with that evolution. (who knows how things may have played out if home video games stayed US-centric longer) Hell, some AA members explicitly mentioned disliking the common art and music/sound design seen post crash (especially with the NES), but that obviously wasn't/isn't the mass market consensus.
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You also have to keep in mind that prices on Commodore computers at the time were very fluid. Dealers actually paid more wholesale than consumers did at mass merchants. Jack really lost the trust of many dealers when he implemented this. The local dealer in the town that I lived in actually drove 90 miles and bought their C64 stock from one of the mass merchants.Paid more wholesales than consumers at retail before or after the rebate?
If after rebate, then that would be perfectly fair since consumers could likewise have been paying less than mass merchants were for wholesale, not just dealers.
(consumers would also be paying less for rebates after buying from a dealer as well -just the same difference in the retail price in general)That would be no different than any manufacturer rebates as such. (the manufacturer would be eating the losses from such rebates, not any retailers -be it dealers or department/discount stores, like Atari's Sears or Commodore's K-Mart)
It's funny though, I never considered the TI in the same price league as the VIC. Sure, it was selling at about the same price, but when you added a disk drive, you were right in the same league as the C64. I always considered the TI and C64 to be in the same league. What was the cost of the TI disk drive and controller? I thought that was real expensive? And if memory serves me correct TI software was like $40 a cart?What about memory, a disk drive (or tape drive) is relatively useless without enough memory to work with, even if the system is mainly used for games. (and for non games, the fact that only 256 bytes of the 16.25 kB were for CPU program RAM vs dedicated graphics memory -for games, most data would be for graphics and thus you'd have the rough equivalent of an average 16k cart game) ROM carts were also huge detractors in the Euro market, but that's another topic. (disks werent big for 8-bits either)
It really needed more memory to be competitive as a "real" computer and the CPU was a hindrance there due to the need for fast memory. (albeit by the early 80s, faster DRAM grades should have been applicable and even SRAM would be getting cheaper -the VIC was using all SRAM after all, including all RAM expansion-)
Did the TI99 even have any RAM upgrade options?
As it was, a stock TI99 was little more useful than a stock 16k Atari 400 (actually less useful in many cases since that full 16k was usable for CPU work RAM and the relatively affordable option for an upgrade to 32k -and some nice 3rd party keyboard upgrades, though a shame Atari didn't offer them). Even the CoCo was more flexible/usable in many respects, though obviously weaker for games.
A more flexible/upgradable platform with a range of machines along with a market model open to 3rd party software would have helped things greatly. (strong advertising/marketing would have been important too)
I don't think the C64 was selling at a loss; but if I am not mistaken the TI was. I believe that Commodore felt it cost TI $125 to produce it's computer; while the C64 was under that price point.That's odd since the TI was a generally simpler machine that had been in production longer. The only definitive component that was more expensive in the TI was the CPU (part of why Z80 based derivatives of the same chipset were more cost effective), but even then it had less RAM and similar vertical integration. (the only other difference would have been build quality)
And I meant selling at a loss after the rebate was taken into account.
I wonder what Jack Tramiel's plans were for moving on after winning the price war in '83. (other than pushing some of the things he did at Atari Corp)
It's interesting to think of Atari Inc in the context of selling at very low profits, or even at a loss since they had the investment in 1st party software to make a razor and blade model (even with open 3rd party development) attractive to promote stronger software sales and profit from that as they did with consoles. (even with the missed opportunities for vertical integration -buying out/merging with the likes of Synertek) That, and further cost reduction and consolidation (like with CGIA and beyond) on top of high capacity mass production could have meant catching up and going beyond the advantages of vertical integration. (various others on the market like the Apple II, CoCo, or TRS-80 for that matter, had lots of potential to be pushed in the low-cost role due to the simple design -especially with the Apple II's popularity, but that simply didn't happen -it did with the Spectrum in Europe, but not with any of the US contemporaries)
Of course, their problems across the board didn't put them in a very good competitive position in 1983 and the screw ups related to and exacerbating those problems (from consoles to computers to the arcade to general management) made that situation even less favorable. (the option for selling hardware at low prices/profits was a realistic possibility, but simultaneously pushing strong marketing would have been an issue and the collapse of the console market would have really hurt things)
The unfortunate timing for the shift to Morgan's management also played a big role obviously and his halt of operations in late '83 basically cost them the 1983 holiday sales season. (they really needed new management earlier than that and needed the sort of reform seen in early/mid 1984 back in '82/83)
Atari Corp did push some of those tight prices with the computers in late '84 with the $99 800XL and such, but regardless of loss or profits, they were in an even worse position after the mess split than Atari Inc had been in previously and lacked the ability to properly distribute the computers/software and the production capacity/inventory to really compete with the sales CBM was pushing at the time. (especially after Atari Inc missing opportunities to push big into the mass market in previous years -not to mention in Europe)
Back to the rebate offer in general: I wonder how CBM managed the hardware getting sent to them in return for the rebate. At very least, they could have sold them for scrap, but better would have been to scavenge them internally for usable components for their own products (various CPUs, RAM, I/O hardware, etc) and/or reselling the discrete components in general and optimizing that for the machines most commonly sent in and most useful component-wise. (hell, all those Timex 1000s they probably got would have come in handy for Z80s in the C128
-same for colcovisions) Any VIC-20s they got in could have been refurbished and resold directly too.I heard that the Timex 1000s made good doorstops.
Yes, Sinclair's early computers were rather ironically shaped as such. (it was rather successful and realistically useful in Europe though and played a major role in building the foundation for the homebrew/budget software market -the Spectrum took that a step further and into mainstream of course)
It certainly would be interesting to know more details on just what CBM did with all the hardware they got via the rebate offer in '83.
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That and the other universe is supposed to be years ahead in technological development compared to "ours". (in that sense, the mac plus might not have gone far enough, though that's a case where you could easily give it up to inconsistent/divergent areas of the alternate timeline premise)
Yeah, maybe they had the color Mac that appeared in the Short Circuit universe...
I can't remember what thread [AICN?] it was a year or so ago that I complained about the Walterverse not being different enough. For example, I mentioned they had Windows computers in the Walterverse and I complained that perhaps they should show "modern" versions of the Amiga or the Atari ST as having won the personal computer wars...
Or IBM not using off the shelf parts for PC and partnering with DRI, or the Apple II or TRS-80 being managed/marketed/distributed differently and becoming mass market standards. (or the Atari 8-bit . . . but that didn't have the potential for simple cloning a la PC that the Apple and TRS-80 did
-or ST)That reminds me: I watched Watchmen the other day and noticed the window based OS depicted in that looked rather like GEM though maybe it was more of a UNIX inspiration.
I love Fringe and its characters. I feel bad that it will likely be canceled this season.
If that does happen with fair warning, at least they might be able to wrap it up with a reasonable series finale. (the main story arc does seem to be getting relatively close to completion)
There's nothing worse than a neat TV series that gets canceled with a cliffhanger ending. (except maybe one that gets a good, satisfying finale but then gets revived with a later follow-on series that is disappointing and contradictory to the original series)
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Jack tramiel is what happened
Jack wasn't in charge then, Sam was
Yes, at e3 Sam was in charge and they announced a big advertising campaign. Shortly after e3 Sam got a heart attack and Jack took over. Instead of doing a huge advertising campaign he cancelled projects and prepared Ataris fusion with jts.
Nah, I think the Sam comment was almost right on.
It's come up many times since this old thread, but Marty's quote summarized it rather well: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/90927-sam-tramiel-interview-next-generation-1995/page__st__100__p__1823912#entry1823912That, and this on Jaguar era spending vs revenue. http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/163658-7800-atari-corp-revival/page__st__50__p__2126059#entry2126059 (granted, the successful 1993 hype facilitated in Atari securing loans/investment capital that kept them going in the short run -and helped them win ongoing litigation- but the very fact they were in such a bad position in 1993 is the real issue
-and problems that continued under the Jaguar, albeit exacerbated by Atari's already weak position compared to Atari Corp's late 80s) Aside from the impact of that hype that the focus on the Jag facilitated, you could argue that keeping the Computers and Lynx going would have been healthier business-wise in general at the time. (the Lynx was still selling -and was more popular than the Game Gear in some European regions- plus it had room for a 3rd model with further consolidation/cost reduction and the advent of acceptable quality reflective -non backlit- color LCD screens in the mid 90s would push that even more on top of a critical reduction in battery life -something Sega totally missed out on with the Game Gear, and computers were more or less dead in the US, but not in Europe -in hindsight, CBM's collapse opened a gap as well prior to PCs really taking over in Europe)
Hmm, actually, lack of emphasis on Europe was one of the critical failings of the jaguar as well: Europe dropped from the test market in '93, delays in introducing it to Europe in '94, and chronic shortages in general with the US apparently getting priority in supply -in stark contrast to what happened with the ST in the late 80s. (given their position in 1993, Europe was the only place they had a chance in hell of having any sort of decent/stable long-term market position, let alone the much greater feasibility of viral marketing due to the denser populations and stronger magazine culture -and where a huge chunk of developer talent resided at the time, especially if Japan was off the table)
Anyway, interesting video, I need to check the jag forums more often.
Also interesting to note the substantial events going on at that same show with Sega's ill-fated early release of the Saturn and Sony's showstopping "299" announcement.
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Seriously Kool Kitty 89 - you make way more out of that post than is intended.
I think the bottom 3 paragraphs at the very end turned out to be the most straightforward part of the response with the whole point on gradual evolution and such. (a lot of the rest ended up being filled with me musing and going a bit off the point with specific examples -especially the whole middle section from where I mentioned the Genesis up to the 2nd quote box)
That and the various examples of single programmer based games much later on. (albeit still taking advantage of various other areas of progression/evolution in the industry)
Also, there's the fact that you had examples of single programmer "teams" porting/adapting games that had been originally developed with larger teams for the original arcade/computer/console platform.
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The Joust box in the shot is the 2600 one, right? The graphics in the game shown on the TV looks like the 5200 version (doesn't look like MAME or the 7800 version). And there's never a clean shot of the console.
Here's an HD snapshot: http://www.pcedev.ne...8h01m35s188.png
It looks similar to the 5200, but it's a bit off for that - the patterns in the bottom rock/platform are shaped different (and I don't think it's a TV aspect ratio). For example on the far right of that rock the two dark rock shadow grooves angle inwards more on the 5200 and these go more straight up and are longer.
Thanks for the screenshot, it's definitely not the 7800 or NES.
It looks like the 5200 to me:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/emHOUliGJhs/0.jpg (the perspective is obviously screwing with things, but it really looks like the 5200/A8 version)
It's definitely not the 2600 version either.
The console is never clearly on-screen completely, but given what is shown, it seems like it could only be a 2800 or 7800 (the edge of the console visible and angle of the cart sticking out -more so when there's no glare on the console) or maybe a 2600 Jr if it was mounted at an angle. (was the Jr even out in 1985?)
Do 7800 and 2600 carts both go in with the label backwards, or just 2600 carts? (I know A8 and 5200 carts go in with the label facing outward)
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I checked the recording/download of the episode at home and I'm not really sure what to make of it. The sound definitely seems to be the arcade, the game on-screen looks like the 5200/A8 version color/graphics wise (brownish yellow bround/platforms with a greenish tinge -common to A8/5200 RF- plus the characteristic red enemies and yellow player sprites), and the box (and all game boxes visible) seem to be for the 2600. (Secret Quest, Missile Command, and Battlezone are visible next to the TV) It's definitely a proline controller too, so definitely an odd mix of themes there.
(though technically you COULD play the A8 game with a proline stick)I attached a screenshot.
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I will find the two sources for you. Sorry I am just now reading your reply. (Must have missed it.) To clarify a bit, it came to $99 after the $100 rebate that was run during the holiday season that year. Tramiel wanted to crush TI and the best way to do it was via lowering the price on software, which TI needed at a certain price point to make money on selling the TI computer at such a loss.
OK, that makes sense, close to $100 after the rebate offer. (there was a lot more info on prices in general brought up following the post you quoted -including references to the C64 being over $200 in early 1984 and between $170-200 by late that year. (when Atari Corp dropped the 800XL to $99 US SRP)
In either case it was a short-term thing that TI chose not to compete with. They had most/all of the technical advantages over CBM and then some (in terms of vertical integration and engineering resources they had a good bit more) and the only fundamental disadvantage of the TI99 was the rather costly (albeit in-house) CPU that also complicated expansion of program RAM. (vs the much lower cost Z80 implemented in sever successful designs with otherwise similar chipsets)
The other issues were all up to marketing and market model in general: one was CBM chose to push for lower cost designs and manufacturing in general (albeit the quality control issues did have negative impacts on CBM at times -PR and losses from returns under warranty), another was TI's odd decision to block 3rd party software development for a console-like market model, lack of RAM expansion (and only 256 bytes of CPU program memory) among other things.
Both would have had to make the trade-offs in the short run to sustain losses in the short run and things to offset that. (profits from other products/divisions or from software/peripherals for the systems being sold at a loss) Of course, the longer both played the game of selling at a loss, the longer both would suffer reduced profits and risked market saturation at sub-optimal margins. (whether they actually suffered net deficits would depend on just how big the losses were relative to net revenue and other expenses)
Hell, bring Atari into the picture and you've got more trade-offs on top of the definitive advantage of being a huge software publisher of the time such that selling hardware (even at a loss and without the advantage of vertical integration) could mean stronger software sales in general. (of course, Atari had other problems that put them in a weaker position to push such and other problems in general, especially by late 1983)
Back to the rebate offer in general: I wonder how CBM managed the hardware getting sent to them in return for the rebate. At very least, they could have sold them for scrap, but better would have been to scavenge them internally for usable components for their own products (various CPUs, RAM, I/O hardware, etc) and/or reselling the discrete components in general and optimizing that for the machines most commonly sent in and most useful component-wise. (hell, all those Timex 1000s they probably got would have come in handy for Z80s in the C128
-same for colcovisions) Any VIC-20s they got in could have been refurbished and resold directly too. -
GroovyBee has a funny way of describing it that is appropriate: "excuse my programmer art, while I wait for graphics from the artist". Part of the pre-crash charm is the 1-developer does it all approach. On the other hand, I think at least some of the visual differences between the pre-and-post crash games can be accounted for by the inclusion of artists.You make some good points in that post. To me, part of the fun in working in a team is the ability to bounce ideas off each other vs the lone wolf approach. However, back in the day, teams required bigger budgets (more wages/contractors to pay for starters) and probably took longer development cycles too. Both of which are detrimental to maximising your profits.
Even without a team you could still bounce ideas off co-workers so long as they weren't in direct competition (with related conflicts of interest). Or you could get lots of inspiration from other sources and "borrow" ideas as such. (especially building on or adapting something rather than "cloning" it outright)
That would also be true with teams too, borrowing/sharing ideas with separate development teams within a software development firm. (it would again depend on a work environment that avoided conflicts of interest as such -though balancing that with competitive motivation could be a bit tricky)
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3 reasons:
Being released in 1986 instead of 1984
Arcade games, not deep adventure games like NES
Blocked ability to create better games because of NES licenses
Extreme oversimplification of issues already addressed. (and lack of many other issues that have also been addressed)
I'll give you the '86 vs '84 issue not really being oversimplified though. (the "WHY?" behind it is the area of complexity)
The latter 2 are sort of the same thing (and definitely are the same issue), and it wasn't an issue of arcade games vs "adventure games" along, but really an issue of not enough games in general. (many newer arcade games WERE inclusive of adventure games -or with strong action/adventure elements- short of the likes of Zelda or various RPGs) A huge chunk of the NES's library is made up of arcade ports or derivatives/clones of arcade games or other games of the same genre as current arcade games. (SHMUPS, platformers, beat em' ups, run n' gun, action-adventure, rail shooters, etc)
And again, the "WHY?" behind that is the real issue. (and the answer in brief is that it was due to a combination of factors from the problematic split in '84 to related management issues to funding issues, etc, on top of Nintendo's anti-competitive tactics, popularity in Japan -for various reasons, and ability to get established in the US market without strong competition -in terms of having the right hardware/software/marketing/management and the funding to push that accordingly)
Having the 7800 out by late 1984 (or even in '85) would have made a big difference, but looking at the reasons it wasn't released, there's a LOT more tied to that same issue (the mess caused by Warner's management of the split/sale of Atari -and the split/sale in itself) that had considerable negative effects for all involved.
Then you could argue whether pushing for the 7800 was the right move at all (especially under the circumstances of Atari Corp immediately post-split, but even prior to that -ie whether Atari Inc should have pushed for the 7800 over sticking with the 2600 and 5200 and A8 for the time being -whether the 5200 should have been different from the start or released at all is a separate matter from what happened after the fact).
In the specific context of the post-split Atari Corp, you had the issues of the conflct with Warner over the GCC contract delaying plans for release considerably and the whole mess of the transition putting Atari Corp in a worse position than Morgan's Atari Inc had been (and different priorities on top of that). Keeping the 2600 going was obvious and something they already did, but there were a variety of options for a newer/more capable mass market games platform: re-introduce the 5200 (which had previously been discontinued) and push hard for cost reduction of the hardware as well as addressing the functional and reliability issues of the pack-in controllers (a variety of short and long-term options for both of those issues), or they could keep the 5200 dead (though still being sold off for the following year or so) and push the A8 line as the prominent games platform (perhaps with a specific low-cost model with a gaming bundle -sort of like the XEGS but cheaper and more realistic for 1984/85 -probably a derivative of the 600XL).
In either of those cases, you'd avoid the delay issues of the 7800 and have a high degree of commonality for hardware production and software development, more so for the direct computer option. (the 5200 option would build onto a system already positioned solely as a game console and with a hardware loadout allowing lower cost for generally similar functionality -the lower cost was wastefully contradicted in the original 5200 design, but could have paid off more in the long run) In both cases you also had stockpiles of components for hardware (especially A8 chips) as well as software whereas the 7800 only had a few thousand units completed (about 5,000 with a little more for non-asembled components) that would be realistic to write off in the long run. (plus, the commonality of production would mean parallel cost reduction and consolidation of both units -with some divergence with the 5200 due to the lack of use of some features or components)
Continued popular support for the 5200/A8 would have meant generally more competitive late generation games for both platforms to the extent of quite being ahead of many 7800 games (even the better ones) and much more competitive with sheer content against Nintendo (though not technical capabilities obviously) or Commodore for that matter. (and they could have been working on a full next gen console to address that issue)
All of those issues except the timing of the 7800's release also apply to Atari Inc in general or Atari Corp with a better transition. (ie the fundamental argument of whether the 7800 was needed/preferable at all)
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It's really obvious to me that a lot of pre-crash games were designed by a single developer and suffer from comparatively poor art direction, sound and music. In contrast, many post-crash games have programming done by a developer, but also artwork done by an artist and music and sound effects done by a musician. To me, this does make the world of difference. Not to suggest there aren't some developers who are artistic but it was more of a team effort post-crash than pre-crash. Had 5200 and Colecovision had active development post-crash, we probably would have seen more NES-like games on those systems.
I assume you mean programmer when you say developer. (developer generally implies the whole development team or even the development company/diviaion as a whole)
That's more about high budget games in general. There were still many, many computer and console games programmed/designed/etc by one person and thus it depended on how versatile that person was. (and even higher budget games often had very small development teams at the time, though that gradually expanded and exploded in the mid 90s with multimedia and 3D)
One thing about more powerful and more user-friendly hardware is that you can be a weaker programmers with better level design and/or musical skills in general.
It's the cases where you have a single, very talented/versatile individual doing the brunt of the work where you tend to see things getting pushed harder on the technical side of things. (or you need very tight cooperation) When you don't have such techinical capability (either with a single person or very tight team), you tend to have to rely on weaker programming in general and greater emphasis on high level interfaces. (sound for example could be pushed very tightly with the right programming: older systems need more low-level access in general for many cases, but pushing software driven effects -especially without an interrupt scheme- takes good programming skills to pull off well -and also tends to require tight cooperation -if more than one person- with other programmers/team members to not clash with system utilization for graphics -be it memory bandwidth, CPU time, etc)
If you look at the 7800, you've got a case where bus time monopolized by MARIA varies depending on what you're doing and that would need to be taken into account for any CPU driven effects that have to run at regular intervals outside of vblank.
Or take the ZX spectrum, CoCo, or Apple II where you have to have the CPU driving everything without the help of interval timers and thus need very tight coding and graphics/sound catering to the system's limitations to get good performance. (not talking about the CoCo 3 and Spectrum 128k)
Or take the Genesis/MD where you have a quite capable system with a lot of hardware acceleration and dual CPUs on separate buses (with bus sharing as well), but some bottlenecks and limitations to work with. Sound is via 4-op FM synthesis, an SN76489 PSG, and an optional 8-bit DAC channel (software written 8-bit unsigned PCM). The Z80 is usually used to manage sound, or at least sample playback (usually via the DAC mode, rarely using the PSG -After Burner II does the latter), and you've got DMA to ROM (in 32k banks) along with 8k of SRAM to work with, but no timed interrupts except 50/60 Hz vblank. (the 16-bit YM2612 timers are unconnected to Z80 IRQ for some odd reason -presumably an oversight- and only the 68k has hblank timed interrupts -with intervals of x number of scanlines at the 15.7 kHz hsync rate)
So, for decent PCM you need at least a decent Z80 coder who can manage tight cycle timed loops and, for more advanced games, deal with DMA bottlenecks imposed by the VDP. (namely vblank DMA where the VDP asserts total control over the 68k's ROM/RAM bus and halts the 68k -Z80 keeps running in its RAM but is locked out of ROM, and thus you need a fair amount buffering into Z80 RAM to avoid missed reads/halts and preferably interleaved DMA accesses from the VDP to leave a few gaps in vblank for ROM access to the Z80 and 68k -and for the latter, you need cooperation for the graphics programmer as well)
And there's a lot more to deal with from bank switching overhead (more so for multi-channel playback -buffering helps a lot there), software decompression, etc that require more cooperation and more skill with Z80 programming. (mixing multiple fixed-pitch channels via interleaving or adding is relatively trivial, but the greater bandwidth and multiple sources in memory to access -lots of bank switching is you use more than 32k of ROM for sound- will be the real challenges, especially at higher sample rates -even more bandwidth and more CPU time used for playback and any additional decompression)
The fact that you have a good amount of Genesis/MD games had poorly managed PCM playback is generally a result of lack of investment in getting skilled Z80 programmers, lack of emphasis on pushing tight PCM coding even with such programmers (ie sheer priority issues), and/or cooperation of teams of programmers (regardless of actual sample quality or the time period of development -some publishers got consistently worse as time went on including some with otherwise excellent sound engines and music/FX -like technosoft)
Then you have even more need for cooperation with a composer on top of a sound programmer (if you can't get a composer who's skilled at programming) on top of cooperation with graphics use in the system.
The high level option greatly reduces the need for added programmers but also limits the quality to the capabilities of the libraries and related sound engines (or graphics -though very few games of the 16-bit or 8-bit generations used high level graphics/game engines) and the limitations of the high-level interface. (user friendliness and general features/flexibility)
On that note, leaving samples/PCM aside for the moment, you have examples of MIDI or tracker interfaces for some sound engines on the Genesis, but most/all were rather limited by default selections and thus resulted in mediocre arrangements (regardless of good or bad compositions). GEMS would be the prime example, an engine that offered MIDI and realtime playback of a sequence without the need to compile it (a direct interpreter), but the default instrument set was very limited for most things and few games sounded particularly good (or even on par with average) when using the default instrument set. (some developers had people pushing custom FM synth patches and expanding the capabilities dramatically. (games like Earthworm Jim, Earthworm Jim 2, and Comix Zone are such examples of GEMS with custom patches/instruments -the likes of Aladdin, Jungle Book, Jurassic Park, Sonic Spinball, and many others used the default instruments) And to do that, you generally needed some amount of low-level programming ability as well as experience/skill with programming FM synthesis algorithms. (the latter would be inclusive of almost anyone who learned how to create custom instruments on a Yamaha keyboard/synthesizer -or other FM synthesizer in keyboard/module form -in addition to various arcade/computer platforms with FM chips)
On a positive note: the PCM engine used in GEMS seems to have been pretty decent. (not amazing, but reasonable and consistent at least)
I think similar limits may have played into mediocre sound with Adlib on PCs (albeit that's also a more limited FM chip than the Genesis -more channels but only 2-op rather than 4-op), though you certainly had some engines with good FM that most definitely used MIDI. (one interesting example is the rather dramatic step from X-Wing's midi on the floppy disk version vs the same 2-op 9-channel Adlib/SB FM MIDI on the CD-ROM edition a year later -not quite as good as the 4-op mode a la SB-16, but much closer to that than the 1993 floppy version) Another odd thing is the general lack of use of PCM samples for music alongside FM in spite of the DMA sound channel present on all Soundblaster/compatible cards. (tons of games used PCM sound effects/voices from the early 90s onward, but never seemed to use PCM for a sparing amount of percussion/etc samples for music -some had full-out MOD players that ignored FM entirely, but that's a totally different case of being wasteful- and you even saw the opposite with FM SFX options on some early 90s games -to be compatible with Adlib users vs SB compatibles- though also some odd cases of only PC speaker or PCM sounds)
The same would even be true for sample based platforms like the SNES and Amiga: without good high-level programs (trackers, etc), developers would need to rely on low end programming and/or develop their own tracking/etc software and sound engines for the system. (and any that used 3rd party -or consistently used the same in house- engine would be stuck with the limitations of said engine vs additional custom tweaks with a full custom sound engine -software mixing, etc: especially catering to resource limitations of a game by doing things like limiting mixing to fixed pitch playback and using simple interleaving to mix 8-bit PCM samples on one of PAULA's hardware channels with minimal CPU overhead -and not even worrying about overflow from adding multiple 8-bit samples to an 8-bit output)
GroovyBee has a funny way of describing it that is appropriate: "excuse my programmer art, while I wait for graphics from the artist". Part of the pre-crash charm is the 1-developer does it all approach. On the other hand, I think at least some of the visual differences between the pre-and-post crash games can be accounted for by the inclusion of artists.You still have modern homebrew with cases of single developer games (or close to it). (on the sound issue, I know some homebrew programmers who were/are doing the sole design/programming work from the sound engine to composing the music to the game engine and even the art design in some cases -or taking hand drawn/pixel art provided by others and customizing it for the limitations of the game/system used)
There's also a difference of time constraints (or lack thereof) with homebrew though.
That's another thing: not just higher budget/more resources going into games (or more ROM to facilitate more complex sound and -especially- graphics), but also longer development times becoming more common post crash.
OTOH, many, many of those things were gradually evolving pre-crash and the only reason you see such a dramatic distinction is because of the crash itself. (the evolution was a combination of the evolving industry as well as changes in technical limitations: cheaper ROM for larger games, more advanced consoles/computers and arcade hardware, new/better tricks/methods on older hardware, etc, etc)
Take a genre that got absolutely massive post crash: platforming games (be it action, action/adventure, etc). Pre-crash and during the crash you had a mix of arcade style games and a few page flipping games using multiple screens from the likes of Pitfall to Smurf (both '82) to Lode Runner, Jump Man, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Manic Miner, Jungle Hunt (sort of), Pitfall 2, etc. (and of those, Pitfall and Smurf followed by Manic Miner and Pitfall 2 would be some of the closest predecessors to later run and jump action/adventure/puzzle type platformers -add horizontal scrolling to Pitfall II and it's REALLY close on top of already having a soundtrack -and a dynamic one at that- and a large -huge for the time- world to explore, and the ability to complete the game rather than only aiming at a high score)
If you look at console/computer/arcade games as a whole, from all regions, chronologically, you don't see any dramatic shift of development trends in a short amount of time but, rather, a gradual evolution of the games and hardware on the market and the techniques used to make them.
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I couldn't make out the Secret Quest box. The writers must really have been fans of Joust and Atari. The kid had a Pro Line joystick in his hand but it could've been one for the 2600. The graphics looked like they were from the arcade so I suspect the production team had the arcade game running via MAME on an unseen computer...
The graphics looked a lot like the 7800 version of Joust (which is very close to the arcade), though the sounds were nothing like a TIA, so you may be right.
Yes, it sounded like the arcade version, but there wasn't a clear close-up to distinguish it from the arcade-like 7800 version. (it was probably the plain arcade game -or maybe one of the various other ports since it's come out in some form on pretty much every console since the Genesis that was active from 1996 onward -when williams/midway started releasing compilations)
I didn't realize that was a real proline controller in the show; it didn't look like it to me. (I assumed it was some generic 3rd party controller from the period -or a newer controller of similar styling) For that reason, I actually considered it being intended to be the 5200 version. (or maybe the 2600 version -though both obviously look much less like the arcade than the 7800, but given that it seemed like they were pushing the actual arcade game either way, that didn't seem like a stretch)
The funny thing is that I didn't get the chance to watch the whole episode and only caught a few minutes on Friday, but that happened to include the Joust clip.
The other inconsistency was in the Walterverse, a Mac Plus was shown on Peter's desk...in 1985...Yah, but you can't really fault on that. It is an alternate universe so things could have unfolded differently there. The stuff that's supposed to be in our universe you can though.
That and the other universe is supposed to be years ahead in technological development compared to "ours". (in that sense, the mac plus might not have gone far enough, though that's a case where you could easily give it up to inconsistent/divergent areas of the alternate timeline premise)
Not sure if that original series Battle Star toy would have been on the shelves in 1985-1986, 7-8 years after the series original run.
The comic was going until '85, so it's possible. But the biggest things at that time were Transformers, GI Joe, etc. which I didn't see anything of.
It seems likely that they didn't push all those heavily copyrighted products due to licensing headaches.
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Yes, but very few games did so with Phantasy Star among those exceptions. (more games pushed such in the later years of the system's life, but that's a different context than '86-89) Remember that the vast majority of Genesis/MD games were no larger than 512k for the first couple years. (and was still the common standard in '91 -Sonic 1 was only 512 kB)The Phantasy Star games were among the exceptions to those too.
I remember Phantasy Star 2 being advertised as "6 mega", and I just now checked that's actually truly the ROM size. I didn't realize how weird that was at the time, but it is quite odd. I guess it's a pair of 512KB + 256KB 16-bit chips mapped at different address ranges, + another SRAM chip for save states (probably 8KB).. crazy cartridge.
A pair of equal sized 8-bit chips, or a single 16-bit chip, would seem much more sensible.
There's lots of games with such odd ROM sizes, and much further off than that (Ghouls n' Ghosts was 640 kB/5 Mbit, Panorama Cotton is 2.5 MB/20 Mbit Super SFII was 5 MB/40 Mbit), and it happened on the SNES too. (SFII Turbo was 2.5 MB/20 Mbit among others)
If production volumes got high enough, they could have opted for a single higher density chip or mated 8-bit chips and wasted the added space. (which may have happened anyway for later revisions of such games -or rereleases) However, take cost into account: you may get less bang for the buck with separate 256+512k chips or 128+512k for that matter, but if the smaller densities are still cheaper overall (including PCB manufacturing costs), they'd be preferable in the short term at least. (some games used 4 ROM chips and a ton of PCB space even -vertical orientation)
It's all a matter of context and how important short run cost is over long run. (opting for the single larger capacity chip or 2 matched smaller 8-bit chips would mean more room for animation/detail and no more cost in the long run, but higher prices or lower profits in the short run -especially important for games that only sell well in the short run)
With high enough production runs, it may have even been possible to push more custom ROM sizes (like actual 640/768k chips or 2.5/3/5 MB chips for that matter), and Sega did actually do that with RAM chips in the MD with the semi-custom 32kx16-bit PSRAM chips used in later models (up to the early revision model 2 MD/Genesis, they were using 32kx8-bit PSRAMs for main memory). Unless, of course, it's actually a 64kx16-bit chip that wastes 1/2 to save space over 2 separate chips. (all references point to an actual 64kB density though unlike the 128kx16-bit SDRAM used on the very final model 3 units -that's a 256 kB chip, so also a little odd but apparently industry standard since it was a normal off the shelf chip used in the Saturn and 32x as well -Saturn had a mix of those and 512kB SDRAMs)
The only other option that would keep costs down would be to constrain the ROM size to the next smallest density available (like 512 kB using one 256kx16-bit ROM or 2 256kx8-bit ROMs), but that would mean limiting game content more. (thouch also decreasing cost significantly or taking more time to carefully pack the data and/or implement more efficient compression schemes -any data that didn't need to be loaded on the fly could be losslessly compressed)
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If the ColecoVision was such a solid home computer by itself, why did the Adam expansion only use the video out?
As Kitty mentioned, a computer add-on was not planned from the start. The CV was itself however, specifically designed as a general purpose computer used like a console vs. console specific hardware. I got that verbatim from one of the people at Nuvatec, the company charged with redesigning the system from the original proto done at Coleco. According to them, they wanted to do that specifically to aid in expandability. Hence what Kitty mentioned about the expansion port functionality as well.
For some reason, Coleco management made the decision that it would be more cost effective manufacturing wise to reproduce (the wheel (since the Adam is basically an expanded Colecovision on it's own) and kill two birds with one stone by simply producing the Adam in two formats, one with the video components and one without that can plug in to any existing Colecovision owner's console. (And I purposely said reproduce the wheel rather than reinvent to make a point).
Maybe that's what happened . . . without proper provisions for such expansion, they could have restricted the computer design beyond what they wanted (or increased complexity/development time -though the only real issue would have been bank switching for RAM expansion beyond the address range of the cart/expansion ports -iirc there's 32k on the cart slot and 20k mapped to the expansion port). Given what the homebrew expansion module is pushing, maybe it was more a development time issue than anything.
Video encoding hardware is rather trivial though, especially since many of the NTSC TI VDPs output composite video natively (I think all of Coleco's NTSC stuff did that -PAL used the Y'CbCr output with an external encoder), so the only added circuitry would have been a bit of buffering and the RF modulator.
It seems like Coleco passed up on a lot of attractive options short of taking on a full Adam to a CV, like: allowing a low-end computer expansion for the CV itself that catered more to the limits of that (with the full Adam being backwards compatible with that) and/or a trade-in/rebate option for CV owners to take advantage of for an Adam computer (for trade-ins, Coleco could have refurbished the consoles and sold them at reduced prices).
In any case they should have offered lower-end versions of the Adam in general, perhaps meshing directly with keybaord/RAM add-ons for the CV itself. (with the possible exception that the standalone lower-end computers had proper provisions for expansion to full ADAM memory/peripheral spec)
Coleco seemed to push too far with the full desktop bundle and lack lower-cost models with a good range of machines and peripherals (sort of like what happened with the MSX -and What Atari themselves had done to a fair extent with the A8 line, though they had various problems of their own that limited its success). Hell, with simpler standalone units, they probably could have avoided the quality/reliability issues seen with the Adam.
The massive competition on the market (especially the likes of the C64) would have made things tough in general, but Coleco did have the advantage of the Adam being fully backwards compatible with the Colecovision and had a reasonably good cost/performance ratio for the time. Given the video game crash, it should have given a good route for a parallel shift of the CV to computer -with potential to shift back to an emphasis on consoles when the market emerged from the crash in '85/86. (as it was, the Adam died before the CV's production was halted)
Were the Coleco* and Intellivision engineers stupid or otherwise simply incompetent?Or it could have been management. But then hind site is always 20/20, and of course things would have wound up much different if you were running things.
Yep, I'll bet the 360's hardware flaws were much more due to management than any incompetence of the engineers designing it. (granted, the problems were exacerbated by quality control issues and the forced shift to lead-free solder, but the fundamental issues of the poor cooling/DVD drive position/etc were the real problems and do show significant signs of being rushed/forced by bureaucratic/management decisions -the fact it took so long to correct is also somewhat indicative of bureaucratic related issues)
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I found this very intriguing! Thread. I earned a little more respect for the 7800, but it's a shame that the sprites seem handicapped in such a basic game. (Referring to the black box around them) However, it was nice to see the use of the hi-res mode.
The "garbage mattes" (black boarders) are due to trying to maximize total color count iirc. You could avoid such clashing if you limited the colors per sprite a bit more (in terms of art design), I think, or maybe it's a limitation of that specific mode (the first demo had no clash/matte issues but was lower color).
It looks like what sprites on some other systems might look like without the forced transparent color entry. (ie if the Colecovision/A8/5200/VCS/etc had 2 color sprites that were always rectangular vs mono sprites with a transparent "color" as such -or NES sprites with 4 colors rather than 3, Master System/SNES/TG-16/Genesis sprites with 16 rather than 15 colors per sprite cell, etc)
You sometimes see the same issue for bitmap/framebuffer graphics based games due to lack of masking for the object that is "blitted" to the screen. (you have similar issues for not clearing the framebuffer properly before a blit -some A8 and Apple II games do that among others, with clashing colors apparing when a "sprite" overlaps with a non black portion of the background -like Apple II Donkey Kong)
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It certainly would have been interesting to See what Time-Warner could have done with Atari Corp from '91 onward. (from the computers to the Lynx to the Jaguar -or maybe even an earlier console pushed to get them back into the mainstream home game market ASAP and with better funding and in-house software development via AGames/Tengen/TWI on top of the management)A Time Warner owned Atari Corp. combined with Atari Games would've been a force to reckon with. There would have been enough funds to put back into the Lynx and "Atari" could have launched the Panther or ended up doing what they ultimately did...skip it and move onto the Jaguar. I'm rather of the opinion skipping the Panther may have been as big of a blunder as Atari having skipped using the Motorola 68020 in the ST line [for a mid range system, EST, whatever] and waiting to use the 68030 in the TT which was too little to late.
Lynx was still fundamentally flawed like the GG and doomed to be limited to a higher-end niche market for those who didn't mind the inconvenience of the poor battery life and (to a lesser extent) bulky size on top of the higher price point.
There was little thy could do about that early on other than drop to grayscale for low-end models. (the only way for a practical non-backlit screen prior to the mid 90s) By '94/95 (or maybe as early as '92/93, they could have pushed reflective color screen in lower end models with critically better battery life than the "deluxe" backlit models -on top of smaller size and lower cost)
That was something Sega really screwed up with too, especially since they continued to push the GG up to 1996 when they dropped it with only token support. (basically selling a "dead" platform -later kept alive by Majesco into the late 90s)
NEC also screwed up with the Turbo Express as such: not only never offering non backlit models, but ONLY offering the high-end (and thus very expensive) active matrix LCD models. (where low-end versions with passive backlit LCDs like Lynx and GG could have been price competitive with those consoles, at least with NEC's vertical integration and general position as a mega corp -like Sony later on- but they similarly failed to exploit that advantage with the TG-16)
Panther was a mess as it was, but I agree about needing an earlier system (1989 would have been a critical time with NEC and Sega pushing new consoles and the 7800 declining sharply -plus you also saw Sega expanding rapidly under the successful management of Michael Katz
-followed by Kalniske in 1991). The Panther was impractical as it needed fast SRAM to work and thus used only 32 kB, plus it had heavy contention with the CPU such that the CPU was pulled well below 16 MHz. (it's actually rather like the 7800 in several ways) Better options for '89/90/91 would have been a derivative of ST hardware or the Lynx hardware (in either case modified and optimized for a home console), and an ST derivative is what was being considered prior to the Panther project being pushed. Another option would have been the slipstream ASIC that Flare had (based on the Flare 1 chipset and intended for the Konix Multisystem but licensed non-exclusively such that Flare still had full rights to the IP), and that could have been pretty competitive even against the likes of the SNES. (though it would have needed tweaks if they wanted to use something other than a Z80/x86 architecture CPU -Flare 1 had used Z80 while the MS had an 8088) The Slipstream not only had a fast blitter with 256 color framebuffer support and 12-bit RGB palette, but it had a fast ALU coprocessor (fast multiplication and division) and the DSP intended for sound and 3D coprocessing. (so it could have pushed some rather impressive 3D/scaling/etc effects for the time -I think the DSP in the Slipstream may even be the same core used in Argonaut/Nintendo's Super FX several years later -it was developed by the same engineer, Ben Cheese, and Flare did still have the IP, so it may very well be the same core that was used in the super FX MARIO ASIC -on top of DRAM interface and I/O logic)
Another option would have been to continue developing the Panther to be more like the Jaguar's object processor for efficient use of cheap DRAM on a shared bus. (a 64-bit word buffer and line buffers -or short of line buffers, you could have separate banks of RAM for source and destination to avoid page breaks) However, that likely wouldn't have made a launch prior to 1992 (for a proper, non-rushed launch at least), maybe 1991 if pushed hard.
Keep pushing for the full Jaguar for sure, but with better funding (and a later release -like late 1994), it could have had fewer bugs, a less conservative configuration, perhaps a slightly modified feature set (like at least a word buffer for texture mapping), a strong launch lineup, good dev tools, etc. Plus, they'd have a better market position due to Panther/etc and it could have been made to be backwards compatible with Panther. (or possibly the Slipstream or Lynx derivative depending on the design)
Under such scenarios, it calls for speculation whether Time Warner would've pushed for 3D0 to merge into their reunified "Atari" company [TW owned a 25% stake in 3D0 as well] and whether they would've pursued a merger/sale with Williams-Midway as did occur in 1996 in our timeline.
3DO was a much less efficient design than the Jaguar, though it probably could have been a real 5th gen competitor if it had used a normal razor and blade console market model and also pushed for fully standardized hardware and low-level development tools on top of the nice libraries. (hardware of the time needed low-level assembly work in general -even most PSX games would need a fair amount of assembly/low-level work for really good performance, though was certainly a lot better off than the competition)
It may have made more sense not to invest in 3DO at all in the first place if Time Warner had Atari Corp.
It certainly would have been interesting to See what Time-Warner could have done with Atari Corp from '91 onward. (from the computers to the Lynx to the Jaguar -or maybe even an earlier console pushed to get them back into the mainstream home game market ASAP and with better funding and in-house software development via AGames/Tengen/TWI on top of the management)A Time Warner owned Atari Corp. combined with Atari Games would've been a force to reckon with. There would have been enough funds to put back into the Lynx and "Atari" could have launched the Panther or ended up doing what they ultimately did...skip it and move onto the Jaguar. I'm rather of the opinion skipping the Panther may have been as big of a blunder as Atari.....
Seeing as how the Jaguar had its head cut off by Playstation (et al), I don't see that producing a less-capable console would have been a move in the right direction.
Those things aren't mutually exclusive. The Panther was planned for a 1990 release before the cancellation: I address the problems above, but also maintain that a 4th gen console would have been very important for Atari Corp in general. (but the panther as it was would have been a relatively poor option -and having something out by late '89 would have been important as well, especially with Sega pushing as well as they did under Katz)
The Jaguar was crushed under the PSX, but even without that it would have been relegated to niche due to Atari's market position. (at best, with a strong focus on Europe, they might have managed market share in line with the Lynx or maybe a bit better -especially if Sega still made the mistakes they did) But without Sony, Sega, 3DO, and Nintendo all would have fared much better in general. (or NEC even -especially since Sony influenced some of the mistakes made by competition -except Nintendo)
A complete "Atari" with Time Warner's money could've acquired more game publishers and incidents such as Rayman getting delayed by Sony's manipulations might not have occurred.
Yeah, but I mean it was Gran Turismo vs. Club Drive as it were, and if they'd have built a lesser console, it would have been more of Gran Turismo vs. RC Pro Am - or along those lines. They needed MORE, not less.
With a strong position in the 4th gen market, they'd have been in a much better position in the 5th gen, the Jaguar could have been developed a bit better (better tweaks to hardware), configured less minimalistically (ie not as cut-down with the weak 68k, etc), and they software tools and development (1st and 3rd party) support could have been much stronger in general. (potentially enough to realistically compete even against the likes of the PSX)
Club Drive is an example of very poor utilization of the hardware as it was though. (as is checkered flag)
Sony spent something like a half billion dollars marketing the first PlayStation. No wonder the Jaguar, and 3DO and got steamrolled.
The PSX was in a perfect Storm for Sony: they managed to get out some great hardware that fit the market very well (even without further tweaking things in their favor with ads). It was powerful in 2D as well as optimized for 3D in the established triangle rendering method and pushing the emerging push for texture mapped graphics. (catering both towards trends on PC and in the Arcade) It pushed a highly cost effective architecture with heavy caching/buffering and a high degree of integration from day 1 (though configured in a fairly high-end manner with 3 buses -2 of which with high-speed 33 MHz RAM). It also favored high-level programming (becoming increasingly popular and even occasionally used on the SNES and Genesis) and had tools to match. (especially the awesome SDK put together by Psygnosis)
On top of that Sony had heavy vertical integration of manufacturing on top of owning patents/licenses to the CD-ROM format and having a pre-existing license for the R3000. On top of that they had the resources to afford to sell it below cost in an extreme twist to the previously used razor and blade marketing strategies used. Then they pushed massive marketing and software development funding on top of that. (and bought exclusivity for games and bought out some developers outright as well)
Then you had the competition generally screwing up (NEC with PCFX, Sega with general internal management issues and resulting problems with the 32x/Saturn and marketing/software efforts, Nintendo going with carts and losing Square, 3DO having the wrong market model and having a product that was generally cost inefficient, Atari being in a generally weak position, etc).
Competition screwing up is often a critical factor in the market in general: when the VCS was launched the competition was relatively weak on the software, marketing, and/or hardware fronts (the Astrocade was competitive in hardware and OK in software too, but the price and marketing hurt it -if it was just the price/cost issue, it could have been a heavy competitor as things shifted to favor higher-end consoles more and as cost came down -it probably could have been more popular than the Intellivision if marketed aggressively enough).
The Famicom/NES had that advantage too, though Nintendo also took a big risk in Japan to push it at the prices it did (investing in a 3 million unit contract with Ricoh to keep per unit costs down on top of the investments in designing such a heavily integrated -yet powerful- custom design vs competition pushing older and/or off the shelf hardware). In the US, it was a combination of good marketing, success in Japan, and weak competition (Atari in a weak position, Sega managing marketing poorly) that allowed them to dig in and take over like they did. (in Europe Nintendo screwed up and Sega didn't and Sega managed to have an overall lead -though Nintedno was still a very real competitor with a lead in countries like Germany)
Sega managed to do well in the early 90s thanks to good management/marketing on top of a good product for the market at the time and good in-house software (partially tied to good management -more so for 2nd/3rd party software), the luck of NEC horribly screwing up in spite of their massive resources and more cost effective hardware (and vertical integration, strong position in Japan, etc), and Nintendo being rather arrogant and not pushing their licensing policies more competitively to pull interest away from Sega. (there was a point where the tight licensing contracts became a liability rather than an asset -the SNES having far less cost/performance than it could have was also a major issue -the late release date wasn't so much an issue since the SNES/SFX ended up launching just as the NES was starting to come down from its 1989/1990 peak -had they pushed more competitive/proactive licensing and more cost effective hardware, with similar nominal performance at lower cost or higher nominal performance at similar cost, they could have competed much more strongly -the proprietary/tight handed stubbornness of Nintendo would bite them much bigger with the N64 going with carts)
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the fat pixel graphics are embarrassing compared to the NES[/i]Yeah, what's up with those fatty pixels? A throw back from '84 from when the system was originally design? NES was from '83 and didn't have fatty pixels. SMS was from '85 and didn't have fatty pixels.
Thinking on this again (in addition to what I said above), you could say the same thing about the SNES STILL pushing a 5.37 MHz dot clock when launched in 1991 (for all of its useful modes at least -the 512 wide modes being somewhat like the 7800's 320 modes in that sense) and both the PCE and MegaDrive had already added more variable and flexible higher res modes. (plus in more useful resolutions than the 512 option on the SNES -which was too high to really be worth it in NTSC composite or RF - and even the PCE's 7.16 MHz mode was pushing it a bit compared to the MD's 6.7 MHz -which also made closer to square pixels for NTSC and a fairly reasonable compromise between NTSC and PAL pixel aspect)
OTOH, the 7800 itself (of any console for that matter) could have benefited from higher dot resolution modes that were otherwise identical to the low-res modes in speed/color/memory use/etc (just with a larger boarder) to better facilitate various artistic options. (especially useful for arcade games using vertical orientation)
You could even have cases where lower res modes would have been rather useful too: in the 7800's case, you'd rarely want to drop below the lowest default resolution anyway (though the 80 pixel GTIA modes can be useful -let alone an 8bpp mode), but various others could have had useful options with lower res dot modes. (like if the ST had a 4 MHz dot mode as the lowest res rather than just 8 MHz even if it was still only 4 bitplanes -lower res could mean faster/less intensive CPU rendering where the trade-offs would be preferable, plus the C64 used the exact same 4 MHz pixel res -and 8 MHz in the 320 modes)
I thought the 7800 had a better realistic colors per scanline setup than the 5200. Maybe that's because of the higher number of objects doable per scanline? I remember the A8 being pretty limited on a scanline basis and isn't the 5200 pretty much the same thing video wise (what, some port is different locations or such)?
IIRC, MARIA supports multiple sprite and playfield sub-palettes (I forget how many total) and has both 2-bit and 1bpp modes (not sure about other depths), as such it not only has a larger "practical" per-line color count, but a larger maximum color count as well. (for sprite color indexing alone, you beat the A8's 9 color max -aside from the 16 color/shade GTIA modes, and all colors are selected from a 256 color palette identical to GTIA's rather than the 128 color palette of TIA/CTIA)
Again, I'm not sure about other depths. (so the 80 pixel wide GTIA modes might be more useful for some things -like you might not be able to push some of the demos or things like the wolf3D inspired game, let alone other issues tied to the 7800's specific implementation -CPU time limits due to bus sharing and MARIA's much more bus hungry nature compared to ANTIC/GTIA also making IRQ based routines less pracical)
Ok, well, thanks for digging all those out. You must have spent quite a bit of time finding all those!
Of course there was criticism about the 5200's controllers. Especially since it was an unusual setup, considering the 5200's action/arcade game bias. Maybe it had some minimal impact on sales. I would still doubt it played a large part in the 5200's lack of success though. If that were the case, you could just as easily make the case that ColecoVision's or Intellivision's sales were affected by the controllers (and maybe they were). Though, it's a really good point that at least with the CV, you could just plug in an Atari-compatible stick for use with many games. That was a nice design-feature whether intentional or not. Either way, it's amazing to me that so many people complained (probably without having gotten used to them yet), and I also still wonder how many people in the "real world" complained about them. I sure never heard of it, and I still like them to this day, very much. Far far far more comfortable and usable than CV or Intv controllers for most games!
Anyway, thanks for all the effort, and so the magazines did print some criticism back then, ok.
I agree... Thanks for the time spent, CV Gus. It really adds to the memories.
I DID remember the magazines criticizing the joysticks. However, I agree with Mirage that people weren't used to them. I also think that the general public were like sheep. I think the magazines psyched people out from getting used to something new. My friends and I NEVER had any trouble getting used to them. I never had trouble finding my way around a Pac-Man maze, etc. I think it was just a bunch of unskilled gamers writing articles and leading the public. The BIG problem was that they were unreliable. So, that reinforced the negativity of the media.
Oh, no, even back then, most people I knew couldn't stand them. Trust me- I've had a 5200 for over 12 years now, and I still can't make sharp moves with regular 5200 controllers.
Nothing to be ashamed of. Some people need practice, and some just aren't very good with all the practice in the world.
Hey some of the best automobiles are available only with manual transmission. But, if you simply can't learn to drive a stick, simplicity is your best bet. Maybe a Ford Pinto or something.
If, after 12 years of practice you still aren't good enough maybe it's time to downgrade to a less advanced system/controller?There are fundamental flaws of the 5200 controllers, but that's true with many systems and some people have exceptions where many have problems (or vice versa), and many go along with the "common opinion" without even trying them themselves.
The 5200's use of analog may not have been wise for the standard controller (not ideal for the most common games, more expensive, more prone to reliability issues, etc), but would have been nice as an accessory. There were other issues with the buttons and such, but in terms of general form factor and ergonomics, I think the 5200 controller is perhaps the best of its time. (the CV's may be more reliable, but it's far less comfortable -though OK for games where you only need the directional knob and can thus use it with your thumb fairly comfortably . . . the intellivision controllers are just a mess)
The slightly later Vectrex controller is arguably better in every way than the 5200 (and thus the 2 other main competitors) in every way and managed analog far more satisfactorily from what I've seen (though they can wear out too), but the 5200's set-up is still rather competitive for the time. (and either could have been done in simpler 8-direction configurations as well -the analog is more necessary for the vectrex library though and thus more natural to have it pack-in standard -ie have the "digital" controller as an accessory where it should have been the opposite for the 5200)
The 5200 has a lot more issues than the controllers (and all have been mentioned already), but in general:
-the price/cost effectiveness (a much greater emphasis should have been taken to minimize overall production costs as well as pushing an aggressive price point at retail)
-the lack of compatibility was an issue, but could have facilitated the lower price point as well, it should have been cheaper to make than the Colecovision (as it was, they probably could have kludged a cut-down A8/2600 hybrid at lower cost than the historical 5200), and even without compatibility, they could have configured the system to allow an expansion module that was as inexpensive as possible. (using SALLY as the 6507 at the very least -cutting the module to just RIOT+TIA)
-the initial pack-in was an issue (and by extension, the initial software lineup was problematic)
-Atari failed to immediately push the 2600 into the low-end bracket with the 5200 not just in the high end, but pushed as their main new system with the 2600 gradually transitioned from the mainstream to the dedicated budget market. (and advertised accordingly -it should NOT have been discontinued though, at least not until it stopped selling profitably)
-most importantly: Atari Inc's internal problems hurt the 5200 as well as the market in general (especially the distribution system causing a bloated market and leading to the crash later on), though many of the 5200's other issues were symptoms of those underlying management issues. (as were Pac Man, ET, porn games, the "glut", etc, etc -sort of like how the 32x and problems with the Saturn were symptoms of Sega's bigger internal management issues rather than the fundamental cause of the problems as some like to claim)
-
the fat pixel graphics are embarrassing compared to the NES[/i]Yeah, what's up with those fatty pixels? A throw back from '84 from when the system was originally design? NES was from '83 and didn't have fatty pixels. SMS was from '85 and didn't have fatty pixels.
Yeah, one thing that often comes up is the possibility of MARIA having a 5.37 MHz dot mode (256 pixels) with more practical limitations than the 320 wide mode. (and 7.16 MHz makes for some hefty artifacting in NTSC, especially with composite encoding circuits of the time)
Having the low-res mode would still be attractive though. The C64 has the 8 MHz dot mode (320 wide) that had 2 indexed colors per character (and sprites could be mono pixels of the same size or the more common multicolor mode sprites iirc), but that was rarely used for games. (even though the color flexibility -and use of dithering- was generally greater than in multicolor more -due to 1 fixed BG color and the other limited CRAM entry, plus the C64's limited palette makes dithering a fair bit more attractive too)
Hell, if the NES had a 3.58 MHz dot mode with 3 or 4bpp graphics (with CRAM allotted accordingly), son't you think it would have gotten a fair amount of use?
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There was actually something worse than the 7800 soundwise
in Atari 7800
Posted · Edited by kool kitty89
That's not the original 16/48k beeper spectrum though, I'm pretty sure the context of the above post was for the pre-128k specifically without the AY8912 add-on.
The AY8910 and derivatives is obviously a rather capable chip, even with a few advantages over POKEY (and universal advantages over the simple SN76489 -all 3 being introduced in 1979 iirc, though the AY might have been slightly earlier).
From Intellivision to Atari ST you've got a huge range of platforms using the AY8910 and compatibles with some examples pushing it a lot further than others, obviously.
In any case, I already posted some neat PWM beeper demos above. (both by Follin, but others did that too)
It was good for sound effects, but relatively limited for music due to the pitch resolution. (also OK for instruments in music without a large pitch range -like for percussion/beat stuff) The simple SN76489 is better for music due to the number of channels and pitch resolution, but generally weaker than TIA for SFX. (the periodic noise of TIA is particularly nice)
POKEY was far more capable and better than the very plain SN76489 used on the Master System and in many ways better than the AY8910/derivatives (with trade-offs, more so depending on the circumstances -POKEY is much weaker if you can't practically use its interrupts for some things). All 3 are ca 1979, so significantly older than the likes of the SID or NES's sound hardware.
So with that in mind: the 5200 and Intellivision are generally superior to the Master System in sound capabilities.
(the Colecovision is pretty much identical)