kool kitty89

There are lots of places online where you can get refurbished mobos for nearly any computer. They usually stick their own stickers on the boards to let you know when it was worked on. That's what I'm referring to when speaking of computers that clearly haven't been made in 20 years. Chips haven't been around long enough for them to be bad just while sitting in a bin. The 2 to 20 years I mentioned was for ACTIVE systems (depending on how actively they are used). I said 100 years was doubtful sitting in a bin, so maybe we'll see in another 60 to 80 years if I'm right on that. And again, there's a lot of other factors that will kill ICs in heavy active/intermittent use that are far more likely than gradual degradation of the interconnect. Power surges, bad power supplies, bad capacitors, bad voltage regulators, etc, etc. (and even for cases where such components don't take out ICs when they go bad, they may put strain on the system that will shorten the life of the ICs) #1 no no on building you own PC is using a cheap power supply. (you can go cheap on almost anything else and not risk total failure of the system, but a cheap/crappy PSU can fry the whole system when it dies -graphics card, HDD, motherboard chipset, etc) That's also one of the problems with the Atari XE computers: cheap power supplies that can die and take out the computer when they do. (and unlike other A8 models, the XE PSUs actually have regulated 5V DC output, so the system isn't regulating that or protecting against surges -you could mod the system with some fuses and possibly diodes to help protect against that though) Hmm, or does the 800/600XL also use regulated 5V DC? (it uses the same power connector, so that would be dangerous if they weren't compatible) I know the 400/800/1200 used ~9V AC supplies that were rectified and regulated to 5V internally. (rather like the NES)

Back on topic: I was corrected on this. The B/W labels were only for the very early (namely 1986) 7800 releases and most/all new games released from '87 onward used color cart labels, so it had absolutely nothing to do with jack leaving later on.

The 7800's odd joystick interface was specifically designed (albeit somewhat unnecessarily) to allow both buttons to be detected as the normal fire button on the VCS (or one of the buttons on the SMS or Genesis), but that wouldn't explain why button 2 doesn't work for the 2 button 7800 games. (maybe they went cheap for the 2600 specific joypads and opted for wiring both buttons together rather than the bit of added circuitry and pull-up resistors needed for the 7800 2-button hack)

That's not a bad idea technically though, and vice versa, depending on the circumstances. (you've got plenty of cases where game console architectures could be attractive to rework into computers or computers into game console or arcade systems -Commodore missed out on using the C64 and Amiga chipsets as such in heavily cut down configurations -dropping the computer hardware side but retaining all the major areas needed for a good console -dropping most added peripheral I/O and expansion support, cutting out RAM with more emphasis on ROM carts, etc -the C64GS, CDTV, and CD-32 were messes of hardware that were configured wrong and/or released at the wrong time -C64 should have been pushed as a game system no later than 1986, Amiga OSC no later than 1990, and AGA probably no later than the 1992 introduction) The GPU in the PS1 probably could have been marketed as a good low-cost 2D/3D PC graphics card in the mid 90s, the Jaguar's TOM probably would have needed more tweaks for such (or for Atari's own computers if they'd still been pushing them) but is also interesting. (especially given the 1993/1994 timeframe -while it wasn't until 1995 that ATI, NVidia, and S3 had their chipsets on the first consumer 2D/3D graphics cards -ATi's Rage being the most well balanced and also including MPEG-1 acceleration, heh, that chipset may have made the good basis for a game console at the time ) The Colecovision could have made a good computer, but the Adam was a mess. (several others managed the same -or similar- chipsets quite well: Sega even did break your above claim after the crash with the 1984 SG-1000 Mk.II supporting a computer add-on that turned it into the SC-3000 computer standard -which Sega had released in 1983 to be cross compatible with the SG-1000: had Coleco did the Adam like Sega did the SC-3000, it may have been a success and actually boosted CV popularity) The Intellivision may not have made a very good computer, but trying to do that with compatibility may have been a lot better than what they did with the Aquarius. The original (simple) concept of the Atari Graduate had some merit too, though I think a more complete (internal) redesign of the VCS may have been an even more useful route. (at least if they pushed that earlier and in parallel with the VCS -like in 1978 as a low cost computer in a new market sector below the TRS-80 and directly VCS compatible -using more RAM, a full 6502 and hacking TIA for software driven text/graphics like the later Graduate did -or BASIC Progamming back in '77, probably somewhat like the ZX80/81 did with the BIOS ROM routine for the CPU driving the display -especially with the CPU able to work in vblank on the ZX81 vs the simpler ZX80 design that had to turn off the display for any added CPU work)

Backward compatibility hasn't really been such a big part of TV console history. The 7800, PS2 and Wii had pretty complete backwards-compatibility, and the PS3 and XB360 had just a little bit. It wouldn't have motivated me to buy a 5200 - I already had a 2600 and the games were getting old anyway. Since no TV console before 5200 had backwards-compatibility, it wasn't an expected feature. Don't forget Sega's SG-1000 Mk.I/II to Mk.III/SMS to Megadrive/Genesis. (albeit the latter required a passthrough adapter to play SMS carts rather like the Game Gear -technically it shouldn't have been difficult or expensive to push a pin compatible 50 pin SMS type connector along with outboard pins for expansion a la 7800/SNES -especially with added logic to remap the main 50 pins for MD and SMS modes like EISA did for ISA slots- but perhaps Sega wanted to make a profit with the Adapter -cheap to sell, but cheaper to make given it's mostly plastic and a simple IC to manage the pause button) It was a selling point in Europe for the MD, but probably not much different in the west. (and again, they probably could have made the Genesis more cost effective and/or powerful if they'd pushed more of the SMS hardware to the module -with cart or expansion slot including the added signals needed to still minimize cost- which also could have been done with the 5200 -careful hardware design and enough signals on an expansion port or the cart slot to facilitate a cheaper and simpler VCS adapter) In '79 it was simply too expensive and it would have only had 8k RAM. After FCC class B was established and component costs came down (along with higher volume production and some consolidation), it would have been more practical. (exactly how the 600 was -and higher end 1200XL) No need to drop the keyboard either, just make it a cheap membrane one like the 400 and offer the "full" 600 with a proper keyboard at a higher price. (probably with 16 and 32k models rather like the 400 it was replacing -or have the 16k model only for the cheap game system version) Many A8 games required keyboard input to a minimal extent at least and it also may very well have been cheaper in the long run to embed an inexpensive membrane keyboard on the main unit than bother with the external connector and keyboard accessory. (on top of the minimal keys needed for most games added on the main unit) Plus, if it removed the keyboard, you might have a tougher time with legal issues over Donkey Kong. (vs a definitive "game computer" ) And the other difference from the planned 600 for 1982 (which was canceled of course) would be swapping the BASIC ROM for a built-in game (perhaps Pac Man) to save cost over packing in a separate cartridge. How much of the A8 chipset was Miner actually involved with? I though he mainly worked on the VCS (mainly TIA) before he left and mainly contributed to some early concept design for the A8 architecture. (I thought it was mainly designed and engineered by George McLeod, Steve Smith, and Doug Neubauer) I see people make the claim about Miner all the time, but I can't find any detailed reference for his direct involvement.

Show me the market data. From the rough figures out there (many vague, especially as far as Sega and Atari were concerned), Europe made up close to 20% of the world market by the peak of the 4th generation, but possibly closer to 15% in the 3rd generation. (South America is an odd case as you do have a massive amount of Nintenso stuff, but it's largely pirate/clone stuff -surprising Sega actually managed to pull off both the SMS and MD as such- and the SMS was launched very late in Brazil -on top of that it wasn't especially popular outside of Brazil, but it varied a bit -overall, I'd leave out South America altogether due to the odd situation there, plus the rough 11 million figure for SMS sales is almost certainly not including South America, or at very least the post Sega stuff under TecToy's independent production -continuing to this day) OTOH, there's also the fact that Europe had an absolutely MASSIVE computer game/programming market that squeezed the console market rather tight, especially in the 80s, and following that (with the MD, SNES, and later) you had a ton of strong European development houses. (often commissioning for or partnering with western publishers as well -and Sony bought out Psygnosis of course) And if you include the low-end/consumer range computer game market worldwide with game consoles, you'd get a rather different picture. (the market that overlaps with consoles -especially in Europe, but also the C64 in the US -and A8, though that was relatively small by comparison, MSX in Japan -also relatively niche compared to the dominating NEC computers and Nintendo/NEC consoles) For coding alone, it's much more straightforward to lump in all computer/console game developers/programmers into a net comparison. (of curse, many small developers who started out on computers later moved to consoles as well) There's lots of vague figures, but the 29 million Genesis one is definitely wrong based on business and gamign articles and Sega press released back then. (it seem to be ~35 million at the very least and closer to 40 million worldwide if you go by the highest estimates) In Japan it didn't tank, it was profitable and had a notable market share, but was a distant 3rd against extremely aggressive competition -again they were damn lucky that NES totally blew it in the west, or we may never have seen the Genesis do nearly as well as it did -or Atari Corp not offering any competition at all while Sega got some of the best US marketing/management they'd ever had with Katz and later Kalnsike. (if you actually compare market share figures and overall sales of the MD in Japan vs PCE vs SNES, it's not far off from the Saturn vs N64 vs PSX -Saturn did better than N64 in overall sales, but the PSX did so much better that it was far more extreme of a gap than with the SNES -Sega's official figures are lacking, so it's tough to tell if the MegaDrive was actually the most popular of Any Sega system or the Saturn in Japan -for contemporary figures based on overall hardware sales in the generation: if you cut it off when the MD and Saturn were discontinued long before the SNES or PSX, you'd get much more favorable figures for Sega in both cases of course) Actually, the Megadrive/Genesis may have led in every single major market outside of Japan (definitely in Europe and likely in the US -by a much smaller margin), but the >17 vs ~3.5 million in Japanese sales made a massive difference. (the western markets were rather close by comparison, but with a favor on the Sega side -in hardware sales number- for the most part, though those figures aren't as definitive as Nintendo's -and, of course,Sega faltered in the mid 90s while Nintendo managed a very smooth transition of the SNES into the late generation and budget markets, so Sega's final sales are less favorable than if you compare them at their peak in world market share some time in 1993 iirc) Very few have been global leaders, and those who have (in terms of selling more worldwide than anyone else) still often have exceptions where they lost certain significant markets. (like Atari with the VCS only really doing exceptionally well in North American or Nintendo in Europe until the current generation -I think the Wii is the first time Nintendo has had a dominant European home console -not handheld) Sony had the lead in pretty much ever major market in the world with the PS1 and PS2 though. OK, I'm done . . . and, again, this is really getting off topic, though it's interesting to discuss at least. (hopefully we can conclude this reasonably soon -in terms of post count-)

Our friends in Europe and Latin America may find that a tad ethnocentric ... Indeed. The Master System destroyed the NES here was really well supported indeed. Hell its still being sold in Brazil! We discussed this before: there aren't sold final sales figures for any of Sega's consoles, but given soem market share and snapshot figures as well as various business and anecdotal reports: The SMS dominated in the UK, the NES was considerably more popular in Europe (but not as extreme as the US), and Nintendo also held a number of smaller markets (like scandinavia, Holland, Denmark, and a few others iirc, and in some cases it was about as extreme as the US) Apparently the 7800 had a better overall market share in Europe than the US, but I haven't seen official figures there either. (however, it's also apparently far behind both the SMS and NES overall in Europe -I don't think it was even ahead of the NES in the UK) Heh, interesting that the 2 polarized Sega/Nintendo regions in Europe (namely the UK and Germany) were also 2 of the biggest markets for the ST. It depends on the context, I love (or like) a lot of games that the masses find mediocre, let alone the classic gaming Sega fans in general. And, other than my comments on Shadow and some other ones qualified on personal preference, the rest was either aimed at the classic Sega fanbase, or the current mass market in general. I went a bit off topic, but the main thing I was trying to address is that Sega (or Sega-Sammy) as they are today are nothing but a shadow of what they once were in terms of software development prowess. Not so much 1991 since they were awesome in the software side of things from the early/mid 80s all the way up to the early 2000s when they started declining. (especially after the Sammy takeover) Reviews are not somethign I addressed before and are often tangent to 2 other major factors: mass market appeal and long term appeal or percieved quality. (Sonic Heroes on the GC got an 8.0 by IGN, almost as high as they pushed for the Sonic Adventure games on the Dreamcast -8.6 and 9.0- or various other reviews for that matter, but reviews are biased and inconsistent: the Gamecube ports of the Sonic Adventure games got mediocre reviews -and not due to any flaws compared to the DC versions or even due to them being ports of older games, but rather complains about things that the Dreamcast reviewers had thought were minor problems -then if you compare public polls, it's a whole other story in general) Is Sega still a notable publisher, yes, do they still have somewhat notable in-house development capabilities, yes, but are they among the top developers in the world (as they once were), I think not. (that was my main point of contention . . . unless you make a long list of "best developers" though that kind of defeats the purpose) The metric in judging "best" is a bit ambiguous too, but if you go by review scores, sales figures, and mass market appeal, Sega is way down the list. (going by publisher or development houses) No, I'm not talking about such picky Sega fans, but the sort of fans that encompass a wide range of retro games from Sega (and very often others) with many not liking all Sega platforms even and quite a few liking modern games a lot (others more on the fence who play modern games, but not nearly as much as classic games, and othrs still who are fed up with the genres that have become popular -I'm in the case of liking pretty much everything to some degree). The thing with Sonic 4 is that it was largely intended to be a faithful (and to many, long overdue) continuation of the original series from the Genesis/CD days, but it ended up being a rather average game overall that's not bad, but not especially impressive in modern terms or compared to the classic games. (or compared to homebrew/fan efforts -in both gameplay, graphics, sound, and style in the case of Fan Remix) Hell, a well-done HD/3D remix of the classic games (or derivative based on the classic games that largely draws on the original levels) may very well have been better. (there's plenty of other developers who did that quite well, though others that fell rather flat in terms of quality -like Earthworm Jim) Sega's gotten to the point where they've messed with the franchise so much that they can't make a single game without a massive chunk of the fans complaining (be it the "old" fans. "new gen" fans, or intermediate ones -I sort of fall in the middle as I like the better 3D games more than even my favorites of the 2D games, but still like many of the 2D games and some of the less well liked 3D games) In any case, many of the new games have not yet stood the test of time that will give any indication on whether they're truly enduring in the grand scheme of things. No they don't, a ton of the fans don't care for the Saturn, some don't care for the Dreamcast, some don't for the Master system, and some (rarely) don't favor the genssi sthat much either. There's a small (but notable) chunk who actually like the 32x more than the Saturn, and many more who like the Sega CD more, a lot of different combinations. (not unlike with the Atari 2600/5200/A8/7800/ST/Lynx/Jaguar -except, in my experience on AA, there's more love-hate stuff and less general retro fans than on Sega-16, but other trade-offs as well ) And? Whether it sold is a toally different contenxt from whether it was good. You've got complete crap that sells well because of good marketing (especially in the US), or more often medocre stuff that get far more popular than much higher quality products for the same reason. The reason the Saturn failed in the west (especially the US) is a very complex issue that I really don't want to start to get into here. (the Dreamcast is more straightforward, but I still spent a lot on that above -so you can imagine how far off track the Saturn could take this, let alone all the necessary parallel stuff with the 32x, late-gen MD/Genesis, etc, etc) I could say marketing was the problem, but that was a small part of it. (it was really a huge mess of conflicting management, bad timing, overlapping and compiling mistakes, from software issues -1st and 3rd party, hardware issues -especially cost to performance ratio, and of course massive competition from Sony pushing many things that the market had never seen before -never selling at the sort of losses Sony did, never pushing advertising budgets like Sony did, or software development budgets, etc, etc -it was a perfect storm for Sony with both Sega and Nintendo screwing up -Nintendo in dropping optical media and still pushing a lot of the limiting licensing policies of days gone by that they are still pushing on the DS today -nothing like the NES days, mind you, but some of the things that persistent in the SNES days continue to this day -like Nintendo controlling how much a game can be produced and when supplies will be available, etc) OTOH, the master System was most definitely a success, as was the Game Gear. Neither dominated the market, but both were profitable and had notable market positions in the global perspective. None of Sega's consoles were highly competitive in all regions. (the Saturn is the only one to even come close to #1 in Japan, or #2 for that matter -well the GG was #2 on the handheld market, but there was basically no other competition) The Saturn was a success in Japan, but I believe it lost money worldwide like the 32x. The CD probably came close to breaking even if not being profitable in all regions it was released in. The Master System did certainly fail to reach its full potential in the US market though, and unlike the Saturn, that's not nearly as complex: it's almost 100% down to distribution and marketing that Sega employed (especially in the critical early period when Nintendo had no advantage in the market). Nintendo had the fundamental advantage of existing Japanese support and some related clout, but it wasn't until after Nintendo gained a solid foothold as the market leader in North America that it really shut things up for Sega. (ie if Sega had competed on par -or even pulled ahead- with great marketing/distribution in '86/87 in the US, Nintendo wouldn't have been able to push the exclusivity agreements it did) The TG-16/PCE is pretty much the same, btu far more extreme. (NEC had resources close to those of Sony's in the mid 90s, but they didn't remotely push those advantages -lucky for Sega in particular, who likely would have gotten steamrolled under NEC in the US and maybe even fallen far behind in Europe -price cuts, saturation marketing, heavy investment in western software as well as bringing over Japanese software -including publishing 3rd party games under NEC's label to break Nintendo's licensing limits, etc, etc -they had the most cost effective hardware with vertical integration and tons of funds on top of that plus a strong Japanese market) No, Sega-16 is about as wide breadth as Atariage in terms of userbase. There's a big chunk of Sega-16 members who don't have the Genesis/MD as their favorite system -or even Sega as their favorite: quite a few who like Atari, Nintendo, NEC, or Sony more but still have a strong interest in Sega. (I reference that site as it's one of the most active Sega retro communities out there and one of the closest overall to Atariage -especially in terms of a lot of members who aren't fanboys in general -I'd love to find a Nintendo site that's remotely like that: NintendoAge is the closest I've seen, but still a bit too fanboy-ish for my taste) OTOH, maybe a better example would be a non sega specific site like Racketboy. Again, Sonic 4 isn't bad, but it is disappointing compared to what it could have been and compared to the classics, or even some of the more recent handheld games. (and compared to what some fans have done already and are working on) Not just the uber retro fans either (again, a great case for racketboy since that aims at a breadth of classic gaming fans who enjoy modern games too), but average gamers who enjoy the sonic series and possibly grew up with it or may not have. (aside from those who totally avoid "old" games in general) Yes, but the original comment I responded to was in the context of Sega "still" being among the top arcade/home "developers" in the world as they were years ago, and I contend that. (as above, not that they're insignificant, but they're pretty far down the list of "top" developers no matter how you slice it -publishers is a different category, but I still would put them pretty far down the list, probably not in the top 10) Likewise, I wouldn't proclaim Working Designs the master of soem great RPGs when they only published the games (and translated them -sometimes rather well, sometimes more meh -and often with some odd increases in difficulty over the japanese originals). Same for Sega publishing various 3rd party developed games back in the 80s and 90s -from Game Arts, Virgin, Novatrade, Ancient, Treasure, etc, etc, or especially cases where the games were published in the US by Sega but not in Japan like with Thunder Force II: it would be like giving Sony the credit for Final Fantasy VII since they published it in the west. Though I would give Sega credit for their in-house ports/remakes of 3rd party games (like Yuji Naka's Ghouls n' Ghosts conversion licensed from Capcom and developed in-house by Sega, Sega's amazing remake of Popful Mail, the awesome port of Final Fight for the Sega CD, etc -or various other cases of licensed games developed totally independently from the original company; conversely it wouldn't make sense to criticize the original maker of a game for a crappy port/remake by a 3rd party) Again, much of what I said above was made in observations, not personal satisfaction. I personally don't care nearly as much as some others, and not enough to be seriously disappointed or dragged down, but enough to make note of where some degree of disappointment is valid. (I don't really care for Mario Galaxy -2 a little more, but it doesn't hold my interest either- or NSMB, though I really like Mario 64 and Sunshine as well as several of the Sonic 3D platform games -Colors seems OK too, but it's got much of the annoying elements of Unleashed: it's better than the on-rails Black Knight or Secret Rings or the buggy and rather *off* STH 2006 game, but I'd probably put it below many of Sega's other things) What I like, and what I think in terms of mass market position, good/bad business decisions, etc, etc are totally different contexts. (I rather like the 32x as a system and there's several games on it I really like, but I don't think it was a good business decision at all, I think the Saturn was also fundamentally flawed in terms of hardware as well as the market position it was being forced into -though in spite of the hardware issues, and even after the fact of 32x, they could have managed things MUCH better, probably more than an order of magnitude better, but things kept getting worse from '95 onward until the release of the DC, and even then there's a lot of mistakes with a variety of reasons -some obvious in hindsight, others that I can't see why were made at the time either -though not nearly as extreme as the WTF factor of the Saturn and 32x -and among the reasons I'd love to see more in depth answers and details to Sega's history on the level that Curt and Marty are pushing for Atari) I'm sorry if I cam off the wrong way with my comments. You mean the shadow that Sega-Sammy is of Sega's former greatness. (they've lost much of their best talent -and 2nd party connections- and much that remains is distributed such that said staff members aren't nearly as influential as they once were) In some respects, it's rather like comparing Atari Games in the early 90s (or maybe the late 80s) to Atari Inc as a whole in the early 80s (or late 70s), less so comparing Atari Corp with Atari Inc though. The difference, of course, is that Sega-Sammy is still alive and Atari Games is gone. (and Sega-Sammy is more "sega" than Atari Games was "Atari" after they were folded into TWI and later Midway before completely dying when Midway West was shut down)

I'd argue they still could have been better off following through with the Dreamcast if they'd done things a bit differently (even with the situation they were in in 1999). Sony was stuck, they weren't going anywhere and would have had to screw up big time (much bigger than any of the problems with the PS2) to lose that edge, but Sega still had a chance to be a reasonably profitable and competitive player on the home hardware and software market. (after all, other than the PS2, they had the GC and Xbox to compete with and the Xbox -like the DC and N64- was only strong in the US -and further down in market share than the N64 against the PSX- while the GC had more balanced sales distribution but that just meant it did only moderately well in most regions, so the DC could have been the established lower-cost -but still quite capable- option for the US market in the long run) They couldn't do much to avoid being niche in Japan, though maybe they could have kept Saturing going a little longer and aimed at a stronger Dreamcast launch rather than the rushed launch to attempt to meet demands. Europe really needed better marketing. The US was great as it was, but given Sega's funding position, they probably burned themselves out faster than they could afford with the massive marketing, low price point, free modem, rebate offers, investing in Seganet, etc all rolled together. (and then the price drop in late 2000 to try to steal PS2 sales, be really probably didn't help DC sales much at all, but made Sega lose more and postpone the transition from loss to profits on hardware sales -the PS2 had shortages as it was and at the original $199 the DC was already MUCH cheaper than the PS2, so the price cut almost certainly hurt Sega more than anything) Internet was cool, but it wasn't a gimmick worth what they were investing in it: having the modem available from day one would have been great (as it was), offering it bundled would be great too, but offering it bundled with all systems (along with a browser) at cut prices was something they really couldn't afford and something that didn't pay off. (the online stuff wasn't quite there yet, but it was close, and having the modem as a prominent accessory or pack-in with deluxe bundles would have been much smarter) They should have left things to 3rd party ISPs only and not invested in Seganet, plus there shouldn't have been the rebate offers for DCs either. Keep the $199 price, probably keep the 2 controllers pack-in too (though it's a shame the controllers weren't more like the much nicer Saturn 3D controller), and keep the strong advertising (critical in the US market). So basically, if they'd been conservative in soem areas they could afford to be, they'd have had a better chance at being stable and profitable enough to make SoJ consider keeping the system going for North America alone. (that is if Europe couldn't be pushed as well) Who knows? Maybe they'd have even outsold the Game Cube or maybe even the Xbox. And as above, they definitely missed out on exploiting the PC market as much as they could/should have. (from the mid 90s through the early 2000s they should haev been pushing ports and compilations of the most popular 4th/5th/6th gen console games as well as arcade titles for the PC -especially in the 1997-1999 perios in the west when they had almost no activity on the console market: Saturn had more or less been killed off by mid '97 and DC didn't come until mid/late '99, plus they'd ruined their chances at really haning onto a strong place in the budget market with the Genesis or on the handheld market with the Game Gear -the thing was due to a cost reduced redesign back in '95, especially sicne reflective -unlit- color screens were finally gettign good enough to allow a lower-end unlit model that would not only be more cost competitive, but more compact and -most importantly- have far longer battery life -probably the biggest single reason for the Game Boy's success) DVD was something they could do much about, but I do think they DC's chipset had MPEG-2 acceleration (the streaming video looks MPEG2 quality), and it may have been a long shot, but maybe they could have made a licensing deal tying into the Chinese SVCD standard (especially the CVD format -the earliest standard completed and also the best in some respects) and license the GD-ROM format to allow that to be rolled into the standard for CVD/SVCD and thus get a strong base to support a standard commercial video format that could be implemented on the dreamcast with nothing more than some added software (an embedded player) and offering an excellent lower end alternative to DVD that was far better than VCD and better than SVCD due to the high capacity media. (higher quality and/or less disc swapping) Obviously, Sega couldn't really push such a format on their own (a proprietary format rather than a broad standard), but with the tie in to the massive Chinese format standard would have been very significant, but whether it would have caught on in Japan, the US, Europe or the rest of the world would have been the factor for whether it made an impact or not. (licensing the GD-ROM format for profit would have been useful in any case) Edit: I forgot to mention that Japan pulled the plug on the Dreamcast before many of the best games were released. Production was halted in January of 2001 and officially discontinued it in March. (oddly, they kept a niche market going in Japan with additional games, but didn't do anything remotely close to that in the US, the one region the system had been truly popular -Shemue 2 was even released in Europe but not for the DC in the US) There's a ton of other great Japanese arcade companies (Capcom, Konami, SNK, Taito, Namco, etc), but yes Sega is up there with the best of them. (though saying that today isn't nearly as impressive as 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago with arcade games in the state they are today) Atari Games was pretty good, though (in terms of mass market appeal and success), I don't think they can really stand up to some of the giants of the business emerging from Japan in the mid 80s. (unless you include the Atari Inc days, then you'd have another picture entirely) Atari Games was arguably the best western arcade company from the mid 80s onward, though you don't have that many others to look to in that category either. (there's Midway, Williams -which merged with Midway later on, and who else?) Off topic: but on the issue of western (especially US) arcade games, were there ever any examples of YM2151 (or similar) FM synth music that was remotely comparable to the best/better Japanese arcade stuff (or comparable to the best stuff on the Megadrive/Genesis for that matter)? There's a charm to the simpler FM music that a lot of the US FM arcade music used (though other cases where it's plain grating), but mainly in the same way old Adlib music on DOS games is (the average stuff, not the exceptional stuff that really pushed the YM3812 -let alone the few cases pushing the YMF262) and that's not saying much given the YM2151 is FAR more capable than the YM3812 -for that matter, I'm not aware of an example of US arcade YM2151 music that's better than the best Japanese arcade music using the weaker YM3812 -like Zero Wing, which admittedly sounds better on the Genesis. (maybe I should move this to a separate thread, at least if anyone else is interested) And I'm not really biased towards Japanese stuff in general, just an observation. (I know on console/computer games there's definite exceptions with some pretty nice Genesis, NES, SNES, and various computer synth stuff -though on average the Japanese and European developers seemed to make better use of the sound hardware -sometimes the compositions weren't any better, but the arrangements for the hardware are what made the difference -then again, European 8-bit music tends to have that heavy use of fast arps that drive some people crazy )

Not true at all. The Dreamcast had great games for it. However, Sega was being manipulated by Microsoft [a la dropping 3dfx for NEC's PowerVR at NEC's behest], a lot of gamers held out for the PS2 because of hype, and at the end, Microsoft pushed Sega under the bus in order to make way for Microsoft's own Xbox. I'm going to go back through the other posts later (and I really didn't want to turn this into a Sega discussion -especially one that's been done many times in far more detail over at Sega-16), but the MS issue is a bit overstated though it was a factor to some extent. (they probably had their most significant role in how the SD was discontinued -though SoJ had the main say in that) The piracy threat due to the GDROM dumping and CD-ROM booting exploits were also not really that bad, but something Sega couldn't afford given their position with limited funds and Sony's massive hype. (they'd managed to shed the 5th gen stigma for the most part with the awesome marketing and launch in the US -the sort of marketing/timing/launch that could have MADE the Saturn in spite of the cost/hardware issues) PowerVR was awesome and so was the overall developer tools. (and with some technical superiority over the PS2 -let alone FAR greater nominal superiority due to the tools and architecture that meshed better with PC/console contemporaries) The windows CE deal was a very smart move as well: something MS paid them for and something that made porting PC games (liek pod racer and MDK2) easier and smoother in general. The biggest issues were Sony's hype, Sega's financial situation from the previous mid 90s mess with the Saturn (and to lesser extent, 32x -plus screw ups with the Genesis late gen that cost them a lot of revenue/profit), and the fact that the Dreamcast only got the marketing push it needed in the US. Japan had strong initial demand, but got quickly crushed by the PS2 hype (and DVD -which Sega could never had afforded), plus that initial demand couldn't be met (shortages) and pushed a premature launch with limited software. Europe OTOH had all the situational advantages of the US, but also a somewhat less horrible situation over the Saturn, but SoE management was a sorry excuse for what had been in the early 90s and totally botched marketing in UK/Europe. Thus, the US was the only market where the DC had a strong following, but Sega of Japan didn't feel that merited continued support in the long run (they weren't willing to do what Nintendo had with the N64 -ie strong US market but weak elsewhere) and unlike the master system, games on the DC required much heavier investment and the hardware was being sold at a loss. (made worse by the decision to drop the price in late 2000 when they should have left it at $200, also worse by making the modem free as a pack-in standard, and worse still with the heavy rebate offers for Seganet -and investment in Seganet that never paid off, should have used only 3rd party ISPs as many users opted for anyway) OTOH, they could have offset those investments by going multiplatform while still pushing the DC, PC games would be the lest conflicting with the DC as such (ie not yet publishing for Nintendo or MS -let alone Sony), and they already had been getting into the PC market earlier, but they didn't push that with the DC. Hell, they should have been heavily pushing PC game releases of ALL major Sega published console and arcade games from the mid 90s onward (would have helped tons to address the Saturn deficit) and even push release of older hit games (like sonic 1 and 2 among others) for PC that they missed out on big time. By the time the DC came around, Sega should have already pretty much standardized parallel console/arcade/PC development and kept pushing for that with the DC. (ie have most Sega published DC games released soon after for PC) They were making no money (losses) on hardware sales, to pushing for PC games as such would be substantial. (the main reason to go with the DC rather than 3rd party in general is to cut out licensing fees -which are generally nonexistent for computers anyway- and to profit from 3rd party licensees on top of 1st party software sales) OTOH, Sony and their 2nd parties were already sometimes publishing for Sega and Nintendo consoles (like Wipeout on Saturn and N64), so that's a bit of an odd situation as well. (sort of like how Atari/Mattel/Coleco started publishing for competing systems just before -and during- the crash) What happened with the Saturn/32x in the mid 90s is a far more complex topic with some things simply unanswered. (lots of speculation and 2nd source info, but I don't trust a lot of that, especially given the discrepancy in Atari history that Curt and Marty have been correcting -again, we need Sega historians like those guys )

That looks a bit nasty, why the hell would they go with a Z800??? (maybe if they'd had a Z80 based platform to be compatible with -though even then NEC's line of x86 chips had Z80 compatibility as well and 80186/188 performance -hardware multiplier- plus up to 16 MHz versions available) Not remotely like the ST as far as I can see. (the 900 seems like a much worse idea than the C128 or even the Plus/4) OTOH, no 128, no Plus/4, no C64, phasing out the VIC (with the C64 alone in the lower end), and pushing the RBP/ST (or similar) at CBM would have been very significant. (or the Amiga for that matter, but with low cost models pushed from the start alongside higher end units and with a simpler, much more user friendly OS that was put in ROM almost immediately after launch -if not from day 1) The time for something like the C16 would have been in '82/83 and as a 16k version of the C64 to add to their arsenal in the price war. (the MAX was too low end in that sense, and not pushed in the US anyway -something the VIC could be phased out in favor of and then dropped for the C64 alone -with the C64 being directly compatible as well and the C16 being upgradable to 64k) I thought it was discontinued in favor of higher end machines due to the DRAM shortage. (OKY2000 game me that impression -and mused on it being a bad idea over pushing the low end models) However, what they really should have had was something more like the Tandy-1000. It still would have had a tough time against the ST and Amiga, but it would have been a rather cost effective machine with better graphics and sound than any other PC (let alone low-end PC) of the mid 80s. (especially one the DMA sound channel was added) The PC200 type form factor mated with the capabilities of the Tandy-1000 would have been pretty decent -let alone with a GUI better than deskmate, though deskmate was OK given it was a pack-in DOS shell-like GUI predating Windows 1.0. (though the main advantage over the ST/Amiga would be native PC/DOS compatibility and that was far more important in the US than Europe) IBM of course screwed up with the PCJr when they could have had a machine more like the Tandy 1000 (a clone of the PCJr hardware, but substantially improved, non proprietary expansion/peripherals, faster CPU, more RAM at 128k minimum in '84, and a better value overall). If it hadn't been for Tandy's limiting distribution mainly (or totally) to Radio Shack stores, it probably would have been one of the most popular (if not the most popular) PC clone of the mid 80s (if not the late 80s). The 130 ST was only the demonstrator model, 128k was totally unworkable for a practical production machine, 256k (with TOS in ROM) would have been minimum and they did release the 260ST in the US and Europe iirc, but some sources claim it had 512k. (and was just the branding used on the cheaper, standalone versions of the 520) And just because the 520 was selling well, hardly means they shouldn't have gone for lower end models to expand the range further (and start cutting deeper into the higher end 8-bits or the lower end market in general). Keeping that range going into the DRAM shortage would have offered a route for a low end model with a more competitive price in '88 as well. (when the Amiga 500 matched the 520 STFM due to the ST bumping from $299 to $399) And maybe not offer a 256k model at all, but just a cheaper, stripped down version of the 512k machine. (and not split the market with a lowest common denominator -though easy RAM expansion and proper marketing would address that too) Hell, you could argue they shouldn't have bothered with the 130XE at all and stuck with the 65 alone as their low end computer that would also be using up the stockpiles of A8 chips and help sell older software (probably have the ECI on it though like the 800XE -which would have been a better and less confusing name to use as well). And you'd have a moderately more expensive bottom end model ST to offer something more expensive than the 130XE (probably in the $400-500 range for the bare system -at least if they cut to 256k), but a much better value overall. And, of course they needed to push for a higher end model as well. (both faster CPU models of the console machines and desktop form factor machines -if missing the '85 launch, pushed as hard a spossible to make '86) Then there's all the evolutionary hardware tweaks they could have made, provisions for expansion, etc. (aside from a general expansion port, they could have made the CPU socketed and maybe some jumpers on the board to allow faster clock speeds -especially if they modified the DMA set up to allow wait states and higher CPU speeds in leu of interleaving- plus a socketed SHIFTER for easy replacement with a "corrected" model adding harfware V/H scrolling -maybe even facilitating later SHIFTER upgrades as well, maybe higher color depth palette, more bitplanes, more resolution modes, dual playfield, etc -the sort of things that would be less realistic to add to a general expansion port) Again, this is really a separate topic that diserves its own discussion. Yes, by the time it arrived it was sort of redundant (the normal A500 made more sense), but had they pushed idea that back in 1985/86 (alongside the A500 in the mid range and 1000 in the high end), THAT would have been very significant. (like the above case with the ST, they could have removed much of the internal peripheral/IO hardware in favor of a unified parallel expansion port to add such features and the bare bones parallel+floppy ports standard) Yes, low cost 16k single board machine without shielding would have been good for 1980/81 with 32k and 48k versions (also single board) with low cost emphasis as well in the higher end. (probably have monitor ports only on the higher end models, the rest being RF -at least in the UK- and probably a cheaper -perhaps better than 400- keyboard on the 16k model) By '82 they should have been pushing more for the 32/48k models (perobably in the 600's form factor) and possibly introducing a lower cost version of the 1200. (or the same machine without any shielding -but a derivative of the more compact 600 motherboard with the 1200's memory layout -or maybe 48k- pushed to the 1982 600 form factor as well -or maybe slightly larger more like the later 800XL, but smaller than the 1200 and lower cost) Also note, of course, that "48k" and "64k" on all these machines is relative since many had more use of less RAM due to the way things were mapped, use of built-in ROM vs loading into RAM (which the 1200XL had to do but 48k 800 didn't), RAM wasted to I/O space (64k XL/XEs are technically 62k max, less after the OS is loaded, let alone BASIC), even the 48k Ataris had the upper 16k mapped to the same space as cart ROM (so an 8k cart -including BASIC- would cut that 48k to 40k max and a 16k cart would be no better off than a 32k machine). The C64 had only a little more than 32k available after the OS/BASIC was loaded, etc, etc. (of course, with Atari machines you didn't need BASIC wasting RAM to load a tape or DOS to load a disk game -if it was a self booting disk- since you could simply hold star to load the tape with the built-in OS -which was all in ROM unless you had a "64k" model and thus left the full 16/32/48k RAM available for added software) Cart games would be unpopular with EU users (as with disks due to cost), but the BASIC cart would be a notable factor. (and most games should have avoided using BASIC for that reason -let alone the early model Ataris not having BASIC built-in) Then there's character vs framebuffer games, and the Spectrum ate up a fair amount of RAM with the framebuffer -especially double buffered- vs very little RAM for the character display/attributes on the A8 or C64. (aside from bitmap games) From what I understand, the lower 16k was addressed for video, but I'm not sure how that could be divided for added data/code vs dedicated to video space and limiting RAM to 32k. Thus a 32k Atari could be quite useful overall, but 48k would be good as well. (64k is a bit more wasteful for how its used though, especially for any cases where the OS needs to be loaded -ie most non cartridge games, and in such situations you'd only get 52k to load games into, so barely any gain over the 48k models with OS flat mapped to ROM -that's also where there's a good argument that Atari should have used a banking scheme for expansion beyond 48k, especially one like the preexisting Mosaic board using 4k banks mapped to the "hole" of unused address space in the A8 -thus keeping the lower 48k and 10k OS ROM flat mapped 100% of the time) Yes, 16k and 32k should have been pushed early on and by '82/83 16k should have been phasing out, 32k starting to as well with 48k as the normal standard. (and leave further expansion for later -especially via a PBI like port- preferably like the Mosaic did, maybe even directly compatible if there weren't legal issues with that) They should have had PBI type expansion from the start in the US and Europe if not high end models more like the Apple II for the US. (probably still cheaper than the Apple II too, in spite of much better hardware and features) And with better marketing, pricing, and facilitating 3rd party software more, the A8 line could have taken those reasonable sales and gone MUCH further. (plus those lower cost single board design probably would have been more attractive due the smaller form factor in general) For Europe at least, dropping to 2 joystick ports from the start may have made more sense (especially since much of the competition had 1 or no joystick ports and the 3/4 ports were almost never used -even in the US, Asteroids is the only game to use 4 player simultaneous with joysicks while 4 player paddle games only needed 2 ports). Atari also probably missed out with the VCS in Europe too, something like the starpath supercharger marketed by Atari earlier on probably could have expanded the market a lot more. (promoted piracy more, but also greatly expanded interest as a low-cost machine) That, and/or pushed for a really low-end computer directly derived from the VCS to be more in the ZX-81's cost range but with color, TIA sound, and better game capabilities in general -basically a VCS with full 6502, ~4k RAM -with expansion for more- and a BIOS ROM driving the software character/bitmap display modes -probably like the ZX80 where CPU is monopolized in active display but with added work time in vblank. (and they could have had a TIA hacked 20x24 text screen or 40x24 if they used low res 4x8 characters -software text hacks at reasonable -160x192- pixel resolution had been pushed since 1977 with things like the BASIC Programming cart, so they could have pushed for an evolution based on that principal much earlier, maybe even prior to the launch of the A8 in late 1979) There was also potential for a VCS computer add-on, but it would have been much more efficient to push a standalone unit. (probably not even much more expensive than an add-on, and with better overall capabilities) Such a machine may have been important for Japan and significant in the US as well (especially being fully VCS compatible), but Europe probably would have been the most significant. (designing the A8 chipset to allow direct backwards compatibility with such a machine could have been improtant too -and also greatly facilitated a compatible successor the the VCS -it probably would have meant distributing the duties of the A8 chips a bit differently -centering around CTIA/GTIA building on TIA and being compatible and RIOT in place of PIA, probably only 2 joyports from the start, etc)

Battlesphere wasn't a homebrew, it was a commercial game in development during the active life of the Jaguar (ie before the 1996 discontinuation) and was one of the few games to continue development at a slower pace and get released to a niche market in the late 90s (or 2000 I think in that case). There's several other examples of that. (Skyhammer among others) If BS wasn't so rare and expensive, it would be a major selling point for me on the Jaguar, but it is rare and expensive enough to deter me. (that and the rising prices of jags on the market -though you can still occasionally find a good deal for a fairly complete bundle for around $30) Compatibility is always important to some extent, it really depends on the market situation (especially in regards to competition) and how efficently the compatibility can be done or, conversely, how much more efficient the system is without compatibility. (the 7800 for instance could have had better performance for similar cost and R&D time if it wasn't tied down by VCS compatibility) The 3200 being developed in 1980/81 seems to be among the better cases of efficient backwards compatible cases, but it was canceled, of course. (it seems to have been a hybrid A8/VCS in hardware with an evolution of TIA -STIA- which would have had GTIA like capabilities -maybe even more than that- to be driven by ANTIC -or FRANTIC, rather- and use RIOT and a SALLY 6502c CPU along with 2 kB of SRAM -half of the 7800- though I'm not sure if they were going to upgrade the sound of STIA or not) But the 7800 route (or hacking GTIA+ANTIC into a similar design in place of MARIA) is a faster/simpler option. (but less efficent, especially in the short run -before added consolidation, though CGIA was almost ready by late 1983, so that would have helped too) OTOH, even with an incompatible system you can make provisions for cheaper and simpler compatibility via an add-on. (ie add an expansion port to the 5200 that allows the CPU to be used as a 6507, perhaps make the controller pinouts compatible and map those lines to the expansion port as well to attach to RIOT externally, have composite video and sound input on the port, and enough power to supply RIOT+TIA without an added PSU -or you could use the cart slot like the Genesis did with the Power Base Converter, but that would prevent the use of 5200 games while the module is plugged in) Then there's the various areas where the 5200 itself is lacking in cost efficient design, etc, etc. (as I mentioned above) And the controllers which are great in some ways (fairly ergonomic among other things), but lacking in others (and also an odd mix of cut corners and added cost), and while analog is nice, digital (or pseudo digital) standard would have been preferable with analog sticks as well as paddles (probably driving controllers too) as accessories. Asteroids on the A8 is the only game that really needed 4 controller ports, then again, maybe there would have been more if the XL hadn't dropped 2 ports. (A8 asteroids didn't get ported to the 5200 in any case) Given Atari's other problems at the time, the rising home computer market, and the fact Atari wasn't pushing their computers as well as they could/should have at the time, it may have been much more foolproof to go for a fully compatible design, but not with the VCS: with the Atari 8-bit computers by bringing out the proper successor to the 400 with the 16k 600 in 1982 and offering a gaming bundle for it with marketing to match. (you could have donkey kong too since it was a computer ) The 400 itself was in part aimed as a game console with a keyboard, but it was too expensive for that role initially, and with the dropping prices of manufacturing plus the consolidated 600 design, it should have been possible to have something that could potentially be cheaper than the 5200 overall as well as more attractive due to versatility and the market position of computers. (and from Atari's PoV, it would be one fewer platform to support with direct compatibility with the 8-bit computers -the lack of lockout was no better on the 5200, so that would be a non-issue) They could have pushed a step further and had the dedicated low-end computer/game console version of the 600 have a cheaper keyboard more like the 400 (and probably a game rather than BASIC built-in) with the "full" 16k (and 32k) 600 models with the proper keyboard. They should have released the 600 in either case, but since the 600 (if marketed well) would fundamentally compete with the 5200 at the same time, it really would make more sense to drop the 5200 as a high-end console of the time. (maybe continue the 3200 design and evolve it into a more efficient machine overall with actual advantages over the A8 chipset as well as integral VCS compatibility and lockout a la 7800, and lower cost than the computers with a 1983/84 release) Another thing is that console companies started throwing exclusivity out the window just before (and during) the crash with Atarisoft publishing for the Colecovision and competing computer platforms, Coleco and Mattel pushing cross-platform, etc. But back to compatibility in general: it's always important, but not always the most important or integral feature for success. (ie the PS2's compatibility was a nice gimmick, but there's so much more that made it big -and other areas where it could have been much improved with or without compatibility, likewise the PS3's weaker market position is not mostly due to lack of compatibility, but other factors -high price, stronger competition, marketing, etc -and it is more popular than the 360 in all regions but the US) The SNES might have done even better with compatibility, but that issue is tangent to other areas where better trade-offs could have been made in the design (investing in implementing a better memory interface to allow RAM/ROM to be accessed with single CPU cycles -more like the PCE/TG-16 or some other 650x platforms- vs 1/2 cycles requiring 2x the memory speed -or at least I think that's why the CPU is stuck at 2.68 MHz for RAM/ROM -except late games offering faster ROM at up to 3.58 MHz CPU performance, or recognizing that the SPC sound system was way overkill and overly expensive for what they needed -there was the 8 channel Ricoh PCM chip available, various FM synth chips, simple DMA audio more like the amiga, etc in various combinations that would have been much cheaper -and in some ways significantly better even- than the Sony sound system, among other things). Making the system more ideally cost effective (from hindsight or even from a more conservative perspective of ~1988/89) wouldn't be mutually exclusive with integral NES compatibility. (and there's the option for partial compatibility internally to make an adapter unit much simpler and cheaper but not sacrifice performance too much -the Genesis probably should have done that given they had an external adapter anyway, the SMS compatibility forced some significant trade-offs on performance and cost efficiency of the MD/Genesis's design compared to partial compatibility where minimal sacrifices would be made and active logic in the module to address the rest of that, or a totally different system built around efficiently evolving the SMS's architecture rather than tacking on the VDP+Z80+RAM at the expense of board space/die space on the main VDP -for SMS logic/cost for the Z80+SRAM, DMA logic, etc) The N64 is so far from the SNES that it wouldn't have made sense to integrate compatibility. (the Saturn's design was so inefficent that they easily could have had an evolutionary design built on the MD+CD architecture that was roughly on par performance wise with the Saturn -not as good in some areas, but close enough that most wouldn't notice a huge difference- while being considerably more cost effective and possibly better performing in some areas -like ease of programming, if nothing else related to the similarity of the MD/CD for developers experienced with those, but an all-new system could have been more efficient still -which the Saturn wasn't remotely close to -the Jaguar chipset -namely TOM- is a lot closer to what they'd have needed for cost/performance, especially given Sega's position and resources -and ~6 months longer development- would have meant avoiding the bugs and pushing a system that was far less skimpy than Atari Corp's Jag -limited by the $150 price goal, limited internal resources, limited production volume, forced to sell at a profit, etc, etc) So lots of variables in most cases where compatibility would be an option. (as with the 5200, where compatibility was hardly the only issue -let alone Atari's much bigger problems with distribution and inflation of the market leading to the glut and crash- though the fact Coleco had compatibility and Atari lagged in getting their adapter out was significant -let alone the CV adapter being more convenient) It did seem that this was viewed as important, as though people just couldn't own 2 systems at one time. Didn't appeal to me though. In practical terms, it's not just about owning 2 systems (and being able to sell off your VCS to buy a 5200 while keeping some of your favorite games), but even for higher-end users it's a matter of convenience: only needing to have 1 console hooked up to your TV. (especially in the days of manual RF switchboxes) Otherwise, new 5200 buyers (with no VCS games) could focus purely on the new games only (only an issue for VCS exclusives -so important to port over any of the really significant VCS exclusives or produce upgraded sequels), while low-end users would push for a VCS alone. (VCS owners looking to upgrade without dumping their entire VCS collection -or havin multiple consoles hooked to the TV- would be the factor for compatibility) For one thing, the big arcade hits were what gamers DEMANDED. With the exception of Super Breakout, I welcomed the upgrades of my favorite games. 2600 couldn't deliver the arcade sounds & visuals, and 5200 could. I loved the 5200 versions of Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Joust, Pole Position, Dig Dug, and even the Activision games - loved the upgrades to HERO, Megamania, and especially River Raid. ALso, it is incorrect to say that these upgrades were of 'existing games'. The 2600 and 5200 versions started to come out simultaneously, and the 5200 versions were much more advanced. Quite true, and several of those games would go on to almost everal later platform as well. (Ms. Pac Man was even the best selling 3rd party published game on the Genesis bar none -albeit it was also a budget title) 5200 software was not really a critical problem with the system. (for the 7800 it was, but not so much due to having old games as having few games in general due to limited resources to produce new games -very limited funds initially among other problems, restricted options for licensing games -most Japanese arcade games had Nintendo exclusive contracts or Sega, etc) The delay with getting Pac Man pack-in was one of the bigger software problems though. (honestly they probably should have pushed Ms. Pac Man as the main bundled game once it was available -a more popular game that was also better looking on the 5200 in general) Okay but not everybody could go out and buy an $800+ Atari computer. I do agree that the atari computer line was better .. but at double the cost as the console. For its $200 or so price range when we bought it, 5200 delivered. And it was beautiful sitting on the carpeting in front of the TV, and had awesome looking cartridges , unlike the drabby little brown computer line carts. The 16k Atari 400 was down to about $200 when the 5200 launched (a bit closer to the $250 5200 launch price at retail, but under $200 with Atari rebate offers in late 1982) The Atari 400 also had added value as a versatile computer, a large established library of cart, tape, and disk games, expandability/upgradability, smaller/lighter form factor than the 5200, etc. (had they released the 600, you'd have had an even more compact and cost effective machine with simpler ROM expansion via PBI for up to 64k, a sleek look, and nice keyboard -unless they offered an even lower end version with a cheap keyboard as I mentioned before) The Atari 800 was a good deal more expensive, even after the discontinuation in favor of the 1200XL. (and the 1200 was more expensive in spite of the cost reductions over the 800 -the 64k 1200XL should have been significantly cheaper to produce and distribute than the 48k 800, but the market prices didn't correspond to that AFIK -and the lack of the 600 for a lower cost option and true successor to the 400 made things worse -plus the 1200's compatibility problems and perceived weaknesses of lack of expansion and missing controller ports) On top of that, Atari's marketing for the 8-bit seemed to be heavily overshadowed by the consoles early on and thus limited the public recognition of those machines. (they did make a push in late '83/early 84 -whenever the Alda commercials came out- but that was a bit late in the game -plus there'd been the halt on operations in late '83 that severely curtailed distribution of new 800XLs and 600XLs)

Even Amiga fans have admitted how the OS, while innovative, was buggy initially and generally less user friendly than GEM. (ie the Amiga was a better computer for the tech savvy as such, ST was more of a computer for the rest . . . and for the rest who couldn't afford a Mac for that matter ) The comparison of the modern OS thing is really pointless in this context though. (interesting in its own right, but hardly in the context of how much merit the machines had back in the 80s) Some of those unlikely circumstances were for the better too. For all the mistakes and problems they had, there's also many cases where they came back or hung on in spite of the odds. They did exceptionally well in Europe, but you're right to a degree. Both Commodore and AtariCorp missed the board on offering a wide range of machines from day 1. (let alone positioning marketing to match that) Had both had the array of machines of 1988 back in '85/86, things may have been very different. (let alone if Atari pushed for expansion on top of that -even general purpose PBI like expansion for the console models) Commodore missed the boat to push the Amiga in the lower-cost end initially, let alone aiming it at the wide range of applications it could handle. (had they pushed a bare bones razor cut cost model from the Start, the ST would have had a much tougher time, especially in the casual computer market -and in Europe, but simultaneously attacking the upper end of the market would have been very important as well) For that matter, you could argue the ST should have been made in an even more cost cut form factor in the spirit of the Amiga 600. (a 256-512 kB model -256k facilitated by TOS in ROM- with consolidated motherboard and much of the peripheral ports/interfaces removed -and some of the peripheral I/O hardware physically removed from the main board and a general purpose expansion port to address the removed features as add-ons -but have the bare necessities like the floppy drive port and probably the parallel port and monitor/power/etc obviously -but leave everything else up to the general expansion port for adding MIDI, RS232, ACSI, more RAM, etc, etc -again, such an expansion port should have been standard for all model too and a 1090XL-like module would have been instrumental in flexible expansion -adding RF/composite video to all lower end models also would have been necessary) Heh, it could run some MAC software faster than a Mac could. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X8ZKyBh4kE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X8ZKyBh4kE (see 12:07 though the "faster processor" comment is not quite right: I think the bigger issue is the interleaved DMA of the ST) Also interesting about the floppy reliability issues of the Amiga mentioned at: 10:25 Yep, as I keep saying, they (and Commodore too with the Amiga) should have pushed for a wide range of machines from the start, probably even dropping lower than the 520ST for a really low-cost model (as above, sort of like the Amiga 600 but even more cut back -actually a bit more like the ZX Spectrum in that context -especially with the expandability aspect) all the way up to lower-end workstation class machines. Lots of other missed opportunities on the ST (faster CPU models from the start -or very early on, among many other things), but that's really a separate topic. (though one I've been considering starting a formal discussion thread on based on previous input in various off-topic thread tangents) Honestly when you have a company that was such a large part of Warner's earnings that's now a major part of the losses, and you have chance to keep the more profitable section (coin) to spin off while dumping the loosing section with all it's debt, I can't see not taking that way out. Especially when they were trying to dump the company as a whole up until then to no avail. It all goes back to that firm they had do the analysis in January. Yes, but Warner did end up hurting themselves (along with Atari staff and Tramiel) with the way they managed the split. With TTL, things probably wouldn't have been as smooth as NATCO, but a proper transition (let alone an especially careful one to retain as much of the NATCO work ss possible and fold that into TTL) would have made things far better all around. (for Warner, Atari Inc consumer staff, and Tramiel) Much of the talent at least. Most of the advance research group (Atari Corporate Research Labs) had already jumped ship. What about the Advanced Technology division people from the Sierra/Gaza/Rainbow/etc and UNIX OS project? (and AMY for that matter) And Atari also got burned by Amiga pulling out like that: wasting Atari's time assuming they'd have the Lorraine chipset to work with rather than taking a more serious interest in their in-house stuff. Huh, I didn't know that, interesting. I wonder why they didn't/couldn't push into the late 80s lower end market with something between the VCS and 7800. (all it really needed was a redesigned controller and cost reduced motherboard/form factor -and marketing, of course) You'd have thought the burst of 2600 sales in mid/late 1985 would have spurred them to push that. (maybe even push for some negotiations with Sega with the SMS -should have been possible to offer a mostly passive adapter for Colecovision games on the SMS -and Coleco was MUCH better suited to market the SMS in the US than Sega at the time, maybe even porting some SG-1000 games to the CV in the budget market with the SMS in the mainstream current gen market)

The MAC examples I showed were close to that far off as well. It's an analog monitor and ALL can be adjusted or calibrated in different ways. (it's just that a lot of the cheaper non-multisync monitors tended to not have those controls easily accessible externally, though in most cases of it being accessible, users may calibrate non-square pixels intentionally to "fill the screen") CGA could be square, EGA could be square, ST could be Square, Amiga could be square (and was pretty much in PAL by default), etc, it all depends on the calibration of the monitor. (and likewise the Mac wasn't perfectly square either in some cases -and in that case you couldn't even adjust it without voiding the waranty on the entire machine -AFIK the all-in-one macs didn't offer scan adjustment) As for VGA, it depends on the resolution and how you calibrate your monitor. VGA has some very flexible resolutions possible via "mode X" and even with the default 16 and 256 color modes, there's quite a few options. The most common bitmap modes were 640x480x16 colors and 320x200x256 colors, but the latter was usually assumed to be stretched to 4:3 by the analog monitor (though some applications assume square pixels, so it varies). There's also 720x400x16 colors among the default modes, and others. (fully variable for the "mode x" stuff, though 320x240 with square pixels assumed was fairly common, you also had 320x480, 320x400, 400x300, 640x400, and various other combinations -far more with SVGA obviously) Atari Inc. spent a fortune on commercials for the XL line of computers. Alan Alda wasn't cheap and I can remember as a kid seeing Atari computer commercials all the time during prime time television [when I wasn't playing my 2600]. Even then, Alda seemed friendly and trustworthy, unlike George Plimpton and his Intellivision commercials which made him look like a douchebag. Umm, those were in 1984 (or very late 1983), AFTER the mistakes I was talking about. The Alda ads were great and the sort of things that Atari should have been pushing in the US since 1980. (the European issues were more complex though -and there were other areas of problems in the US from the lagging in gettign out cost reduced models to the limited expandabiltiy, etc, etc -not to mention Kassar crushing the potnetial of the 800 to be more like the Apple II in terms of expansion due to his vision of an appliance computer) That wasn't Atari's or Warner's shortcomings; it was the American general publics fault to fail to recognize that Atari was more than just videogames. Atari Inc. advertised the computer line well, unlike Tramiel's Atari Corp that advertised at 3am in most cases. The hell it was! That's right, blame your consumers for not recognizing your product when you hadn't pushed it nearly as much as another sector of the company. (namely the VCS) If Atari's computer marketing had been on par with the video game marketing from 1980 onward, they'd have been FAR better off by the time the video game market was destabilizing (assuming they didn't fix that too). The 1200XL's problems and lack of the 600 in 1982 were also major issues. (again, a slough of other things to deal with in Europe -mainly tied to cost reduction early on, tape software, and strong support/promotion for 3rd party development -advertising was lacking there too, but unlike the US, Europe required more of a balance by far -US is far more advertising driven, plus you had a different situation with the Euro competition aside from the CBM stuff) Where do you get that from? The PC didn't really take off in Europe until the early nineties and how can you say there wasn't plenty of third party support? There was a shed load more stuff available for the ST and the Amiga than the Mac. Mac owners were sort of in the same corner as Archimedes owners , always complaining about the lack of new releases. More like the mid/late 90s from what I understand. (Amiga took the lead around '89 in terms of hardware sales iirc, but CBM fell apart in the mid 90s and Atari dropped out of computers as well leaving no real competition to PCs in Europe) Atari was back in the black largely due to cost cutting, not skyrocketing revenues. Atari did make a little money off of the STs for a little while, but they were ultimately stomped by Apple, Nintendo and the clones. They'd have been better off concentrating their efforts on maintaining their 70% of the videogame market, which turned out to be vastly more lucrative than the cheap Mac knockoff market. Wrong, they were in the black due to several years of decisive profits and considerable success. The case deign is a love/hate thing for many. I don't like the bulky 800 or 1200 XL especially well, but they're OK (horrible for the European market though where the more compact, the better in most cases). I rather like the look of the XE, though a bit less so for the ST. The keyboard wasn't amamzing, but it was usable. (the small size is more of an issue than the rubbery feel IMO -especially due to the keys being rectangular shaped and wide enough, but not tall/deep enough to really rest your fingers on nicely without bumping other keys) It's a neat little computer that's very compact, but my favorite would be the prototype 600 case design by far. (much nicer than the 1200, 800, or 600XL with the all black top with ridged styling, function keys rather than buttons, etc) The change in stylign also may have caused some confusion of the userbase, not to mention the name change. (800XE made more sense in that regard though) But the form factor is a bit besides the issue, and I already outlined the other issues above. (from marketing to hardware, etc, etc) The 1200's issues were mainly marketing, compatibility, and lack of expansion support. The 600 being canceled was a major issue that meant Atari only had the aging/discontinued 400 to push into the lower-end market. (16 and 32k 600s to replace the 16 and 32k 400s in 1982/83 would have been very significant and also gone a long way towards addressing the Euro market as well -though the 3rd party support would still be an issue withotu widely available development tools and documentation of all the low-level hardware features) Yes, and even at their peak they were a niche player moving less than a million units a year. Compare and contrast with the C64, which by that point in its lifetime was moving millions a year. No, they virtually owned the European 16-bit market at the time. (the Amiga started cutting in heavily in '88 due to Atari's disadvantage with DRAM supply) You seem to have little knowledge of the European market in general. You do know that they diverted much of the ST supply to Europe around '88 and suffered some shortages in the US because of that, right? Atari never sold "millions" of STs a year. I doubt they ever sold much more than 500,000 units a year, and I believe only one model - the original 520ST - moved more than a million units in its entire history. In the US I think the highest was around 700k in one year, but in Europe (or worldwide), it was millions for most of the late 80s and maybe a bit in the early 90s. (and it was the STF/STFM models that moved the most in Europe) You have no idea of the European market obviously. PCs were niche in Europe until the mid 90s. (Amstrad started pushing in the late 80s, but the DRAM crisis largely killed those) . . . :daze: I was going to address this fully, but then I kept reading and . . . yeah, just yeah.

There's a note in one of the annual reports that they gave them shares in lieu of payment (which was overdue). Time Warner actually negotiated the stock deal settlement between Atari Corp and Atari Games Corp. From 1991 through 1994, Time Warner was increasing their holdings in Atari Corp. and courted the Tramiels to sell. When were they trying to buy Atari Corp? It was my impression that few wanted anything to do with Atari Corp by late '92/93 with their financial position as it was with the downward spiral following Sam taking over. (by '93, the company was down to a skeleton of what it was when Sam took over iirc and they only reason the likes of TWI and IBM were willing to partner over the Jag was due to the successful hype generated in 1993 -one of the few things Sam managed to do fairly well what at Atari, especially given the circumstances -granted, circumstances that he largely contributed to creating) If TWI could have negotiated a merger with Atari Corp back in '91, that would probably have been their best bet at getting things on track (1989 or 1990 would have been better though). Their funding and support may have been able to correct many of the management issues and investment in advertising and R&D could have been very substantial for both the Lynx's sales and Jaguar development/launch, and even the computers (if managed right, they still had a chance to maintain a niche market in the US, but more so, they had a chance to remain on the mass market in Europe -especially as CMB failed)

Yes, ideally they should have kept Morgan's plans going and built any other plans around that. I'm not sure about the spin-off to shareholders idea, though there were probably a variety of possibilities for separating the company from Warner as such (to get the debt off the books) while retaining some stake in it. (again, perhaps even Morgan could have taken over the company if he was willing -spin it off with loans in a similar manner as Atari Corp but without the sloppy split and change in mangement, liquidation of Atari Inc, etc -and total layoffs by Warner, etc) Perhaps, but what he did historically is hardly indicative of what he may have done under a proper transition: let alone a sale that held specific conditions that forced a trasition even if Tramiel wanted to take control right away and allow Morgan to smooth things over and at very least have the new management close to 100% aware of all Atari operations and existing plans for reorganization. (and of course properly map out the split on top of all that) And it's obvious that either case (properly managed sale or unadulterated NATCO plans) would have been considerably better than what happened with Atari Corp. (the 7800 and 2600 Jr would have launched as planned, A8 computers and peripherals would continue as planned, Amiga would be sued more decisively, ATG's designs would be considered/reviewed, all staff downsizing would have been much cleaner -Warner wouldn't lay off 100% of staff immediately but give proper notice to find new jobs with Atari Corp or elsewhere, the hiring process would be much smoother, Atari Corp would have a better relationship with Atari Games, there would be more revenue earlier on, etc, etc) I do think that Tramiel may have pushed the pricing a bit too aggressively for optimal health of the company. There's a point where dropping the price won't generate significantly greater sales, especially considering the low profit margins. (aggressive pricing is important and there's cases where Warner/Atari didn't push that far enough, but the 800XL price drop was probably a bit steeper than necessary -especially given the limited supplies they had to work with and apparently limited production capacity at the time; the 7800 game prices were also probably a bit too low unless it was only the older games that were moved down to $10 and the newer/larger ones at a fair bit more though the hardware pricing was probably right on for such a razor and blade market -for the computers it probably should have been $150 for the 800XL and $99 for the 600XL in '84 since the C64 was placed around $200 retail at that point) Maybe, maybe not, who knows? For that matter, maybe it would still have been significant in Europe depending on how Morgan tackled that market. Tramiel's name alone was quite strong in the indusrty and may have been able to generate some hype by that alone. He wouldn't have been selling the ST to another company (the ST was still only on paper in mid '84 anyway), he was trying to bring the computer to market at the low cost he felt the market needed. Likewise, I doubt Amiga would have been a factor: they were already going with Commdore at the time and as far as CBM getting the Amiga out any sooner, they'd have had to deal with Morgan suing their asses over breech of contract (with a stronger and cleaner case than Tramiel had), so the Amiga may have been even more heavily set back by that. TTL would have had to do all the same engineering for the logic design, wirewrap, LSI design, building on the prototype GEMDOS obtained from DRI, work on establishing contracts with manufacturers for the LSI chips, PCBs, final assembly and packaging, etc, and also get a distribution network put together. Distribution could have been built-up in-house, or (far more likely) a combination of that and outsourcing to various 3rd party licensees. Hell, maybe even license the system/chipset as a standard among several international 3rd party manufacturers (sort of like MSX), but short of that you'd probably have a royalties based licensed distribution system more like some game consoles did (and retain more control over distribution), or more of a hybrid model like 3DO did. (except that model fits a computer far better than the game console market ) Such licensing (especially the all around licensed standard) could have actually made the ST far MORE successful than it was and promote a broader licensed/clone market on the level of PCs. (especially in Europe where PCs were virtually nonexistent) As it was, Atari Corp (and CBM) should have pushed licensing of their designs for a broader market standard if they wanted any real chance in long term competition against PCs. (so they'd both aim at being the leading manufacturers of a broadly licensed standard -as IBM could/should have done with the PC but failed to in the long run including missed opportunities like the PCJr and PS/2) The alternative to such licensing from the start would be drumming up investor capital in other ways (ie not from companies licensing the chipset or planning on licensed distribution) and trading stock would probably only address some of that. Jack's name in the industry would have gone some ways in securing confidence for investment, but probably not far enough. (the ongoing hardware and OS developments would have been determining factors for sure) Given the ST's relatively simple and low-cost design and a relatively small company, it's somewhat parallel to Sinclair's machines in Europe. (in that sense, the ST is more like what the QL should have been in the general concept of what Sinclair was pushing -though they'd probably have been more successful with a further development of the Spectrum -not something basic like the 128, but more like the jump from the CoCo to the CoCo III) There was literally no low-cost contemporary to the ST, no high performance low-cost 16/32-bit computer on the market, let alone in Europe where the price was even more important. (Commodore wasn't going that direction until much later -in large part because of the ST- so it would more be up to what Morgan was pushing with the ATG designs, how low-cost those would be, and how he handled things in Europe -where Atari's position was quite weak and TTL would have had a far bigger opening in general) Of course, there's also the issue of what would have happened to TTL with CBM's lawsuit without the Amiga countersuit. (though CBM would have had their hands full with Atari Inc litigation over Amiga anyway, so that complicates things)

You forgot #4: 4. Triggered a massive retail purge of video game equipment and software, thus lighting the fuse of the Great Video Game Crash. Question is, without the Tramiel Commodore price war, would the Great Video Game Crash have happened simply from the glut of bad 2600 games or was it a combination of both factors? Perhaps Atari Inc. could've withstood the video game console collapse had it still had healthy sales of the A8 computers [and healthy profits] had it not been for Tramiel's insane rule of Commodore biting at the heals of their other market... The powder keg had been created by Atari/Warner management (and to some extent, others in the market) before the computer price war, the latter set it off before it could be defused. (by James Morgan, etc) That keg had been created by Warner/Atari management problems, but most prominently due to the distribution network that resulted in false feedback on market demand/sales figures and led to oversaturation of a market assumed to be growing faster than it really was. Those problems could have been greatly reduced with revised management earlier on (mid '82 is when they really needed it to avoid disaster entirely -they really should have had someone better than Kassar from the start, though that wouldn't have fully avoided the Warner conflicts on top of that -but someone better may have better catered to the difficulties of dual management as well) Of course, it didn't help that Mattel and Coleco both screwed up with their computer efforts. Had the Aquarius been Intellivision compatible, maybe it would have been OK, and if the Adam had been more like the SC-3000 or Sord M5, it very well may have been a reasonable mass market competitor that kep the Colecovision alive beyond the crash as well. (that wold mean offering the lowest end model of the Adam as basically a CV built into a keyboard with very little work RAM standard -the bottom end SC-3000 was 1 or 2 kB iirc, but something between 1 and 8 kB- then probably a 16k+16k VRAM model in the mid range with a full 64+16k model as the high, but possibly offer 1 or 2 desktop models as well -but without the odd tape drives, just standard cassettes at ~1500-3000 baud and DD 5.25" floppy drives, printers, etc, etc -the important thing would be offering the console models though, especially the bottom end one -basically a colecovision with a new motherboard, maybe a little more RAM, and built-in keyboard- and the 16k+16k lower/mid-range model -both of which should have been able to undercut the C64, and the bottom end model should have been cheap enough to push close to $100 fairly soon after launch -and all models being expandable to more RAM and peripherals, the low end units would probably omit most peripheral ports as well save a cassette interface and probably a parallel port for printer and/or disk drive) If either of those had been reasonably successful at computerizing their consoles (especially Coleco), it could have meant having the console continue along side it, or come back in '85 at least. With Atari it was a different issue: they already had a computer, but they'd made soem mistakes that prevented it from gaining more market share up to 1982 and then more with the release of the 1200XL (and the cancellation of the 600 on top of that), and then you've got the 5200 released at the same time. (holding off on ANY new console -in leu of projected delays of the 3200- and pushing more of a true successor to the 400's "video game computer" role with the 600 in 1982 could have paid off on many, many levels, maybe even more so with an even lower cost fully game-console-with-a-keyboard oriented model with a cheaper membrane -or maybe chiclet or XE style- keyboard but using the same motherboard as the normal 16k 600XL -a 32k model to fit in between the 1200 and 16k 600 would have made sense too; plus the gaming version of the 600 probably could have had a built-in game rather than BASIC in ROM -or simplyfying all of that with just the 600 with the full keyboard standard offered in gaming and computing bundles -maybe not even the 32k model, or maybe push that for Europe exclusively) That way, Atari would have only had the VCS to crash and a rising position in the lower end computer market even with the mid-range 1200XL having problems. That, and they could have released Donkey Kong on their game computer system.

Chilly Willy, have you replaced any of the ICs in your original 400?

Yes, and there's the fact that I mentioned earlier that ICs are pretty far down the list of failure in any given electronic device, or rather far down the list of failures due to age or normal wear and tear. (ie NOT due to using the wrong power supply, having a power supply blow and take out the system, have a power surge overload the PSU and do the same to the system, etc, etc -of course, some systems can be protected against some of those things as well, or therer's dying capacitors that may or may not lead to strain/destriction of ICs -may die and need to be replaced with minimal impact on ICs- or a voltage regulator going out and frying the system if fuses and/or diodes aren't used for preventative mesures -other things like ceramic capacitors, resistors, and various simple discrete components will be less prone to failure than complex ICs -there's also physical dmamage or corrosion to traces/pins separate from any of the above) There's tons of examples of ICs (be it simple logic chips, large gate arrays, CPUs, ROM, RAM, etc) that are still working fine after 20-30 plus years of regular use. (engine computers in many early/mid 80s cars would be one such example too -you occassionally see those being replaced, but very often with the original parts) However, there's plenty of other examples where the cars were scrapped for other reasons or out of ude for very long periods and thus don't given an accurate model to work with. The Heavy Sixer VCS I have was probablly in regular use for some 10-15 years at my grandparents' house back in the late 70s into the mid 80s before it was put in storage in a loft in their garage for some 15+ years when my uncle found it and gave it to me ~2001. (though it's only been sparingly used since then) No components (not even the capacitors which are technically long past their life expectancy) have been replaced and it works perfectly fine, but that doesn't mean the expected ~20 year life wouldn't model farily accurately with a complete set of data. (how many VCSs are dead or were thrown away, and how many of those had IC failures?)

I think Sega still has this claim today. Ignoring their weaker moments (Shadow the Hedgehog for example) that were necessary after they nearly died (yeah Shadow sucked, but how much did it make compared to what it cost), they still have one of, if not the, most diverse lineups in games. The consensus in the Sega fan community is that Sega declined rather heavily post Dreamcast in most areas including the arcades. (which were ever declining anyway) As for Shadow, it's no Sonic Adventure 2 (the best 3D sonic done IMO -some prefer SA1, but it's FAR less polished in all respects- and some don't like any of Sega's 3D sonic stuff), but Shadow the Hedgehog (on the GC) is probably the 2nd best example after SA2 and the best after the Dreamcast/ports in general. It actually feels like a less polished SA2 with 3rdps (a ala MDK) elements added. (of course, the GC version, not the buggy PS2 game -Xbox might be OK). Heroes was more annoying overall and a bit less polished, the Wii on-rails motion controlled games are horrible and annoying, Unleashed was OK but not up to the same gameplay quality and balance of Shadow IMO (some liked how they tried to push the day levels a bit like the old 2D games, but that doesn't work for me at all -and I like the 2D games-). Shadow is probably the closest to a proper sequel to Sonic Adventure 2 that Sega has ever published. I agree it's an acquired taste, and those who didn't care for SA2 will be even less likely to enjoy it (and I can see why a lot of people wouldn't care for it), but that's also true for a ton of other games. (including Unleashed -keeping on the Sonic topic- or the Sonic Adventure games in general) Sonic 4 has been a big disappointment, rather sad that it falls short of what the fan community has been (and is) doing, let alone some of Sega' handheld games. (the DS ones not so much, but some of the Sonic Advance games are decent -nothing has beat Sonic 3&K as far as pure sidescroller in the franchise though IMO and I know a ton of people who agree) Atari didn't have the chance to expand into those years. In the early 80s, they kicked the crap out of Sega in the arcade, let alone Sega's nonexistent home market, and who knows how that could have evolved under the right management. Sure, Atari had Space Invaders as their first definitive killer app, but they also had a massive number of in-house titles from the arcade to console exclusives. (and of course, some killer 3rd parties pushing great games likes Activision and Imagic -even the clones often had improvements over the originals) Plus a TON of the best Genesis games were 3rd party releases, the SMS was deprived of 3rd party support to any significnat extent so that has no comparison. On top of that, Sega had some great 2nd parties as well as some close 3rd parties they often collaborated with (or fully outsourced to in some cases) as well as STI's fast growing development on top of Japan's teams. (in some cases, infused with Japanese developers as well -Sonic 2, 3, and Knuckles were developed at STI by a combination of Japanese staff and US STI staff -more so for the latter 2). And in general, Sega had a lot more good 1st party games than Nintendo, but also far more broadly distributed Sales (fewer million+ sellers as such), though the weak position on the Japanese market played a role there as well. (plus SBW lasting as a pack-in standard for MUCH longer than any any 1 Genesis game -plus there were core systems with no games included at all) The Virtua Tennis series was on the Dreamcast. And yes, as an active member of the general retro community (including Sega-16), that's all well and good, but by and large a HUGE step down from what they were doing 10 years ago. Also, they don't do much in the way of in-house development anymore, mainly just publishing outsourced games. (which they did back in the 90s to a small extent compared to the in-house releases -let alone 2nd party collaboration) Some of those you listed are still considered rather disappointing in general (Sonic 4, Sonic Colors -for pretty much anyone who disliked the say levels in Sonic Unleashed, etc), while many of the others are outsourced and/or rehashes/compilations of old games that are BETTER emulated on PC thanks to Fusion and MAME. Most of this has been discussed at length on multiple threads on Sega 16 (let alone elsewhere), and bear in mind that Sega-16 isn't full of just sega-exclusive fans, but fairly balanced with a mix of general retro fans and others who like modern gaming as much as classic gaming (like myself) and many who didn't grow up with Sega at all, but got into it after the fact as part of general retro interests (again, like me, unless you include the Sega PC released I had back in the late 90s). How many games can you name that were developed and published by Sega in the last 4 years that were truly great games? (I mean significant with long lasting appeal that will likely break beyond this generation) Or for that matter, how many after the Sammy merger in general? It's rather ironic that they learned to keep milking the Sonic franchise when that was one of their bigger mistakes back in the mid 90s. (could have kept milking sonic games and spinoffs on the Genesis late gen -albeit not TOO late like the huge gap from late 1994 to late 1996, 1995 was a big screw up- and more importantly on the Saturn with a mix of filler games that were OK and sold well, plus definitive games in the franchise that kept it going -on top of the various hardware and marketing conflicts, lack of the right software -1st party at that- hurt the Saturn and even the late-gen Genesis though they at least kept Sports games right on the Genesis though they botched that along with Sonic on the Saturn -and even some other significant franchises including the Phantasy Star games, even more so with JRPGs coming into main stream bigger than ever ) But let's not get into Sega' history here, there's enough of that over at Sega-16 if you actually care to discuss it. (though there's a point where there's just too little info to do anything but speculate: we need some Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg counterparts for Sega history )

4-bit wide DRAM? Didn't exist in 1984, or especially in 1983 when the 7800 was actually being designed. 16Kx4 would have been perfect for the consoles of the day. Ah OK, that would explain why the 5200 used 2k (16kx1-bit) DRAMs as such. Were there only 1-bit wide DRAMs at the time, or just for the 8kB/32kbit densities? (or were there 2-bit wide chips? -I'd gotten the impression that 2-bit was rather uncommon vs 1/4/8/etc -8 being later as well, 16 later still, and 32-bit wide DRAMs not until the late 90s iirc) Yes, sorry" when I wrote "8k 1-bit" I meant 8kB (not kb) 1-bit wide chips vs all the cases where I specifically defined the chips as with 32kx1-bit (which would be 8kB 1-bit wide). I think I was trying to be a bit more straightforward with some of the less tech-savvy in the discussion, though I guess I just made that more confusing. (probably should have just qualified the kbit notation from the start and stuck with it) And while I wasn't even referring to such odd densities, yes, I do understand that issue with 4/8/32/256/1024kbit densities being standard. (SRAMs tending to follow the same, though ROMs and some custom RAM chips for high production count embedded systems vary more -I believe NEC had some odd densities in their PCE consoles and I know Sega used 64 kB -32kx16-bit- PSRAM chips in later model MD/Genesis consoles, though the SDRAM chips used in the 32x and Saturn were not custom and included 256 kB densities -128kx16bit- and the Saturn had a mix of 512kB and 256 kB SDRAM chips as such -the final model Genesis 3 used heavy buffering to allow the VRAM and PSRAM to be displaced by a single 128kx16-bit SDRAM chip -same as 32x/Saturn used- though only 128kB was actully used -the 8kB SRAM for the Z80 had long been embedded in the main ASIC by that point along with the Z80, VDP, all I/O, 68000, YM2612 -all of that save the SDRAM support had been integrated back in 1995 with the VA4 revision of the Genesis 2) Yeah, after thinking on it more, that's why I started favoring the idea for an add-on (via the cart slot or a dedicated expansion port) to address that a couple years down the road (or at/near launch given the delays for '86). In that sense, fully after the fact, it would favor a unified POKEY+RAM upgrade as well. (in Atari Corp's position, 1987 would have been a prime time to offer that given the 2 Epyx games pushing 32kx8-bit SRAM chips on-cart and BallBlazer with POKEY -though the latter didn't end up on the market until early '88 iirc) And again, if they took said 32k and actually restricted it to 28k mapped to the cart address space, they could use a single 32kx8-bit SRAM onboard the system for all later 7800s (7800+) and save space with a single 28-pin DIP vs 2 24-pin ones. (making more room for POKEY onboard) Huh? Nintendo? Nintendo didn't use external RF until 1996 with the N64. The VIC20 used external RF standard back in '81 in addition to the TI as you mention (Apple II too, but that was to skate FCC regs). The first production game console to use RF 100% external as standard was the 1988 Sega Mega Drive in Japan, no Mega Drive released in Japan ever had internal RF, just as Sega switched to in the US with the 1993 Genesis model 2. Nintendo was the first to have a console out with composite video support stock. (1985 with the NES test market -famicom in Japan was RF only) Nintendo was also the first to offer an automatic switchbox that was powered through the RF port (unlike the 5200 doing the opposite with the AC adapter supplying the switch which then sends the power to the console multiplexed in the RF cable -NES multiplexes it too, but a weak 5V signal to power a simple switch, not the 9V signal to power the system) I hardly see how it would have been too radical for 1983/84, it was less strange/radical than the 5200's mechanism (albeit RCA had sone it earlier without the auto switch). Computers had been using external RF boxes for 1/2 a decade or more by the time GCC was designing the 7800, so I really don't see the problem. In any case, it may not have really been cheaper than putting POKEY (or the RF modulator for that matter) on a riser board in the 7800, but it would have meant added flexibility for new high-end TVs with composite video, use with computer monitors, and a much cleaner route for a powered RF switchbox than the 5200's method. (prior to the NES style power multiplexed with RF output for the small amount of current to drive the external switch box) Add-ons (for new functionality, not backwards compatibility) fragment your market. They would NOT have been done, especially then. Even changing the base console fragments your market, and Atari was way too cheap, and it's just not done for a console that isn't taking the world by storm. It would NOT make sense, period, full stop. No add-on has ever been successful except for CDs (and the N64 memory), and CD expansions basically create a whole new system. Were there ever any cartridge games made specifically for the Sega CD? Nope. You can get away with incremental improvements in a computer system, but not in a ROM-based console. I highly disagree, it's just that add-ons have been extremely poorly executed in far too many cases and not followed through. One huge point is to totally discontinue the non-enhanced models and offer the add-on for early users only. (the add-on needs to be low cost, affordable, and attractive -and also affordable to embed into the overall system -hence limiting to 32k total RAM addressing) And again, rolling that all together with the standard for a computer add-on would have been even more substantial. (the new, 7800+ models could have had the expansion port for the keyboard+SIO module that was built into the expansion module) Such add-ons would fail if there's already 3rd party alternatives and/or a breadth of on-cart enhancements (a la Famicom -and to lesser extent NES -ie there's no common standard that could have embedded a single mapper+sound+RAM chip for the NES's expansion port -or the SNES for that matter), but if it's not too expensive, highly standardized, and avoids such alternate conflicts, an add-on can be ideal for such. The RAM Expansion on the N64 comes close, but leaves out standardization as later N64 models were not 8MB standard internally. No, Nintendo was brand new to LSI too, a very small japanese company (albeit with a fair successful PONG clone and Game & Watch niche with a couple hit arcade games) and they were making a massive investment with the Famicom in 1983 that would have ruined them if it wasn't a huge seller. They invested heavily in an extremely integrated low-cost embedded chipset with newly added/trained engineers and a very tight development timescale (not unlike that of GCC) and a HUGE investment in a 3 million unit order with Ricoh to keep net costs down. (it could have bankrupt Nintendo if it failed -or close to it, and they were more or less betting the farm on the Famicom -it paid off as they got it right with the right hardware, software, and price with weak competition -Sega's more conservative route and the general lack of earlier systems having any significant sales at all -especially due to the VCS failing to do well in the way they licensed it out for distribution: too expensive, not marketed as needed, and a bit late at that iirc, though the 2800 was even later... a shame Atari didn't have a strong Japanese subsidiary/division or at least license the VCS to a capable distributor in Japan) OTOH, Atari Inc was so screwed up to even need GCC to step in with hardware, it's rather sad. (so many bigger issues that hurt Warner/Atari -like the flawed distribution network- but they DID have the 3200 in development back in '80/81 with a design that actually appears more cost effective than the 7800 with compatibility more integral -of course the 5200 could have strongly benefited as well if designed to cheaply add compatibility externally and be far more consolidated in general, but they even messed that up) Actually I was wrong, the 7800 cart slot does have IRQ and everything else I was already thinking of, so nothing else needed. (it has MORE features than the 5200's 36 pin slot with so many unused and redundant pins) That's because they did indeed build it without much if any contact from Atari. And there really wasn't room for a full Pokey on that board. Pokey may have been a nice sound chip, but half its pins were for I/O functions that wouldn't be needed. And there wasn't any "inheritance" (like the 5200 had) that would make the Pokey better than another chip. Atari may have had thousands of them just lying around, but there's still a cost associated with them. A PSG would have been best, just from the smaller size alone. No, POKEY itself would have been instrumental to the computer add-on planned (an expansion port with the SIO and keyboard lines included), but short of that: I was also suggesting GCC use the POKEY sound logic design as a shortcut and/or push that off to a collaborative effort from AInc's side to produce a cut-down POKEY derivative with a small package and die. (if you didn't need I/O and since IRQ was rather useless with MARIA as it was, they probably could have cut it down to an 18 or maybe even 16 pin DIP with it hardwired to write only, no I/O, no IRQ, single clock input, etc) Or for that matter, if the redesign took too long, use POKEY's logic for a low cost on-cart option instead. (that would be a trade-off with an add-on though, especially since a full POKEY+RAM add-on could have been instrumental in a good computer/keyboard add-on as well -let alone rolling the high score cart in with that too) It's kind of difficult to get a "proper transition" when getting rid of a hot potato. Video games were considered dead (even if for the wrong reasons), and it wasn't just overstock that was being dumped. No, that was the definitive issue and Curt and Mart have both summarized it well. Warner made a huge mess of things and ruined a company that was turning around in an extremely positive manner: James Morgan was making huge strides in early 1984 and Atari had every sign of turning around (if not becoming stronger than ever with the management they'd needed back in 1980-82), albeit Warner's bureaucracy was still slowing things a bit and Morgan had a ton of red tape to cut through. Assuming Warner management did see this progress, they still had the issue of shareholders and market image with the massive debt tied to Atari and thus spinning off the company/selling it was highly attractive to get the debt off the books. They initially wanted to sell it as a intact, and that's what Morgan knew about and wasn't worried over (since he'd keep going either way). The split changed all that, and while there was potential to salvage most of the reorganization efforts with a normal transition, Warner screwed that up on so many levels it's not funny at all. (the timing of it was ironic though, with 4th og July meaning hapless staff coming back to utter chaos and confusion) It was something that hurt Warner almost as much as it did Atari and was one of the worst mistakes they ever made, ironically at a time when Atari was finally under management pushing to correct those mistakes that had driven them to the crash. (and the market along with them) Actually, there wasn't S-video. The connector was first introduced in 1987 and wasn't widespread until big screen sets in the late '90s, though Commodore had been using a form of it in dedicated monitors for the C-64. (Dedicated monitor = extra $$$ = not the console market.) And basically nobody used a brand new TV for video game consoles back in the '80s anyhow. Umm, none of that matters for a monitor. A Y/C monitor could have been released in 1979/1980 for the 800. It's true that S-video (via SVHS) wasn't standard until 1987 on TVs, but were're talking computer monitor options, not TVs. (it wasn't even until the late 80s that mid-range TVs started getting composite video jacks -and not until the mid/late 90s that S-video became a common mid-range standard -the low end standard stayed as RF up into the late 90s if not beyond that) Y/C was on the 800 from the start with the same pinout as the later C64 iirc, but AFIK Atari never marketed monitors for such -I'm not even positive they had their own line of composite monitors for the A8. S-video would have been a bonus for users with higher end TVs or those who wanted to use nice, sharp monitors. (especially for the high res mode)

http://books.google.com/books?id=rC4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA32&dq=atari+800xl&hl=en&ei=7nZZTYKeJoP78Aa48t2yBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CEEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=atari%20800xl&f=false "In November, he cut the price of 64k home computing to about $100." Ah, OK $119 or less, I wonder what the 600XL was priced at. I assume those were being sold at a net loss, but given the position of Atari Corp at the time, selling off the stock as fast as possible to generate revenue in the short term and cut out some of the debt (as well as make a stronger market position) makes some sense. A shame they weren't in a better position to begin with though. (with the A8 line not being nearly as popular as it could have been with better marketing -let alone without the 1200XL, dropping the 600, and problems and missed '83 Christmas sales, but even prior to that they seem to have missed out on pushing the sort of advertising they did for the VCS -and a whole slew of mistakes when it comes to catering to the European market) The arrival of the XLs in Europe and especially the price drop of the 800XL led to a short term boost of the A8's popularity in that market iirc, especially since the C64 had yet to become dominant by that point (not really coming into its own until '85 with the Speccy being far more popular early on and still extremely popular into the late 80s), but the weaker Atari brand name in Europe as well as the weaker distribution and advertising (from what I understand) still limited it there as well -and of course the limited 3rd party support coming from Europe, especially in terms of developers having good documentation of the full features of the hardware. (hence the 65XE/800XE not really catching on over the C64 in '85) Though the limited production and stockpiles would also be major factors and that wouldn't just tie into Atari Corp's position at the time, but again, the missed opportunities to really expand the computer market earlier with Atari Inc. (even without vertical integration, the arrival of CGIA and other integration could have helped close the gap with CBM -especially with additional things like merging POKEY and SALLY or consolidating DRAM logic, PIA, MMU, etc) That, and of course, if the console gaming market had avoided oversaturation and been properly regulated (steady growth that was moderated and highly profitable), Atari could have even afforded to push tight computer prices more so with the stronger console profits. (and 1st party software sales for the computers and consoles) Though, had they acquired a smaller chip vendor for in-house production, that would have been even more substantial. And maybe the "99" price of the C64 in '83 was including rebates, since that would be a rather different issue. (especially if it's including the special rebate offers for trade-ins of game consoles or computers) That, or it's a mix-up with the VIC-20's price point. (the C64 dropping close to $200 alone would have been quite dramatic for the competition) I'm definitely seeing a lot of conflicting info on the subject though. (and in any case, things seemed much less extreme pricing in Europe -with the C64 still well above 200 GBP though '83- in spite of the Spectrum 48k offering a far lower price and selling exceptionally well -and apparently the Atari 400 dropping below the price of the VIC in that period as well, though the lack of XL machines would have made that a bit tougher in general) I'm seeing a lot of $199 or just over $200 prices for 1983 and '84 ('85 seems definitively $99 in the US) as well as some other references to those prices. (again, maybe it's the rebates that dumped the prices in '83) IIRC the rebate offer included game console trade-ins as well. I think the situation over Jack's departure was a bit more complex than that too, though I do wonder what his long-term business strategy was. (if the rebates and low prices were only short term tactics to knock out competition and boost market share -and software development interest- it may have meant shifting back to normal, profitable prices without rebates in '84 -which is what Commodore seems to have done after he left-) Actually, if they'd really wanted to undercut the lower end competition while managing profits on the C64, I don't see why they didn't launch a 16k model of the 64 to fill that role. (that would have been even more important if Atari had actually launched the 600 in '82) They could have phased out production of the VIC much sooner and pushed for production of the C64 chipset for 2 models. (and also avoid the C16 and Plus/4 in general, both of which required more R&D, separate production of the chipset, totally incompatible with the VIC or C64, and a later release date when they could have pushed the 16k derivative of the 64 from day one)

I thought they were all ST and Lynx licenses and included Hard Drivin, STUN Runner, Steel Talons, and a few others. (there was a list posted in one of the threads a while back -I think it was more than just the 3D games, but I forget the details) It was a later deal that came after Time Warner had a controlling share of Atari Games iirc, but before they folded the Tenden label into TWI. (none of the games were ported by Atari Games/Tengen staff, all were handled by Atari Corp staff and outsourced development -I think mainly the latter)

Are you sure it was just $99? That's a huge jump from the $300 point Atari Inc had had it posted at in early 1984. Then again, even if selling at a loss, it would be generating critical revenue to help tackle the debt. (still, if it only wanted to cut under the C64, a $150 point might have been better for starters with the 600XL down to $99) I know the 65XE was $99, at least by early '87, but that's a bit of a different context. At those prices, why even bother with a new game console at all? (let alone a razor thin profit margin 16k "game computer" model based on the 600XL with a cheap keyboard) Sure, they'd be throwing away the 5,000 7800 units and some hype (if they never released the 7800 later on), but they'd be pushing all those stockpiled A8 chips and consolidating production to just the VCS, A8, and ST chipsets plus the overstock of older A8 games to offer cheap -along with normally priced newer games. (not to mention catering better to the crashed gaming market and skating Nintendo's licensing later on -the last would be pre hindsight, but not the other stuff) Again, that wouldn't have been a bad idea to push in place of the 5200 back in '82 either, sort of like revamping the 400's position as a game console computer but at a price point that actually made that realistic -ie the $200 range, though the 400 itself was actually below $200 with rebates in late '82. (but the fact the 600 was scrapped altogether just made that worse) Of course, consolidation with CGIA would help all around too. (let alone going a step further with merging POKEY+SALLY or such -PIA hadn't yet been licensed/customized by Atari iirc, but the other 4 chips were in-house or already licensed/customized -merging all the DRAM interface logic into a single IC -or even inside another custom IC- would have been important as well) They'd have been far better off with vertical integration (via Synertek or other), but even so they could have competed in other ways for cost reduction as well as marketing. (especially since the C64 had a very slot lifecycle for consolidation and the A8 had older tech that had tons of potential for consolidation on newer manufacturing processes and newer packaging methods -like the 68 pin LCC used for the CGIA prototype) I think it was $900. I was pissed, because I'd just bought an Atari 800 (with 48k included) and threw newspapers for several months to get it out of "Lay-a-way" and I had the flagship for about 2 weeks, before I saw the 1200XL ads in magazines. The price on the 800 kept dropping as it was in layaway! I got it out early because of that. I think I ended up at $699, but it was about $900 when I started. At least you avoided the headaches with 1200XL compatibility issues. I wonder if they'd have been better off not trying to push 64k just yet and simply offering a consolidated version of the 48k 800 with a slimmer form factor, improved keyboard, and lower cost/price. (drop the right cart port but perhaps keep all 4 controller ports -especially since they wouldn't be using PIA for XL RAM select lines; they even could have used a different expansion scheme altogether like the 4k "hole" banking used with the mosaic add-on -which already had some software support and Atari could either clone or push to license the scheme depending on the legal issues; you'd lose the 62k of flat mapped memory, but also gain the advantage of retaining the existing memory map with OS ROM included and no wasted 2k I/O range or OS loaded into RAM, plus unlimited expansion via more 4k banks and full flat mapping of the lower 48k -unlike XE banking) They definitely should have had PBI though and the 600 prototype even did. (that port could be used for said mosaic type expansion -or normal 48k expansion on the 600 plus more banking support beyond that) Hmm, keeping simpler with no added MMU logic to remap things for the XL's added 16k RAM wouldn't just make for avoiding compatibility issues, but with only 48k onboard they should have been able to price more aggressively with CBM. (let alone keeping with the 400's tradition in the 600 with both 16 and 32k models out of the box with the 48k higher-end model -or maybe make the 16k model the cheap game computer with a membrane keyboard -or maybe just a lower cost mechanical/chicklet keyboard, the 32k model with lower/mid-range computer) Then again, they should have invested in lower-cost single board designed by '80/81 even, at least in Europe where the FCC was not an issue and where lower cost was even more important. (other marketing mistakes they made there though) Then again, the 800 could have been a single board design with no shielding in the US too if they'd dropped the TV support and gone monitor only like the Apple II (or with "unofficial" TV support externally). Not only that, but they could/should have kept the idea to include Apple II-like expansion on the higher end models. (maybe a lower end A8 with simpler expansion an a PBI like port for an external expansion box plus a full big-box Apple II type model with external card slots for more than just RAM -maybe drop the RAM cards on the 800s too in favor of simple DIP sockets -and soldering once 48k became standard)

Weird, I could have sworn I saw some 14-pin examples with the Amiga. In any case, my original context was for 2 8 kB SRAM chips on a cartridge where DRAM would be generally impractical (more expensive with all the logic -not to mention too large to fit in a normal sized cart) without a custom LSI chip for the DRAM logic. (and if we're talking a relatively small scale 3rd party product, it wouldn't have that logic) Again, even with the 3rd party VIC-20 boards for 32 and 64k, they stuck to SRAM exclusively. Those would have to be 2 28-pin DIPs, but that's the same amount of space as many games on the A8. (since they oddly tended to use 2 ROM chips -maybe that's only earlier 16k games when 8k ROMs were more common, or really early 8k games where 4k ROMs were more common -that should be 24 pins though)

Same for keeping the whole system clean: less dirt and dust= better ventilation. For that matter, removing the RF shielding (where not integral) can be beneficial as well. *SNIP* just dont remove the RF shield from a C64, it is actually a heat sink for the video (VIC) chip... and dust is a big enemy... it shields convection cooling from working... so dirt and dust, they are evil... sloopy. Except the models with cardboard shielding that actually insulates the chips and worsens overheating. (for other cases, you could always take a small strip of aluminum -or copper or steel for that matter- and stick it to the VIC-II with a bit of thermal paste -and that's assuming the added convection cooling from no shielding isn't better than the poorly attached steel shield fudged as a *heat sink* -apolloboy's C64 has no shielding at all, but his was cardboard to start with anyway iirc)