kool kitty89

I think it was pretty reasonable, Sauron's first warning was perfectly fine too. (and up to that pint it was more heated than derogotory, mostly on the X-Wing vs Battlesphere issue, which I found quite interesting, though it did go off topic), and that ended up getting straightened out. (the original comment about BS being a sarcastic exaggeration, and thinks settled down, just poorly implied) It was the "Surrounded=ST emulator" comment that was more of an issue, and where the mod stepped in again, though it was nice that the unfounded claims against Gorf's demo were refuted (not just by him, but AtariOwl), and it's fairly clear that GT-Turbo (unlike CyranoJ's battleSphere comment) was not at all intended to be in good fun. (Cyrano did have some criticisms to BS, but later established that his initial post wasn't literal) At which point I'm glad the mod stepped in again, and didn't lock it. (anything else could have been handled in PM's, though I doubt GT would have responded positively to being rebuted, based on how he responded in the thread)

Well, all these parts should be stockpiled to a good degree anyway, sou you'd be putting them in this 5200 alternative instead of the 8-bitters or 2600's. (then again, with what'd described above, you'd have extra PIA and 6507 chips floating around, balancing production later on could solve this though, at least for the 6507's, the PIA could depend more on the populartity of the 8-bit line) Having onboard comaptibility wouldn't necessarily add too much to cost, significantly less than producing a seperate add-on (with its own circuit board, switches, and depending on how it's interfaced, controller ports, and maybe even CPU -what was the historical 2600-5200 adaptor like inside?), and you would have some use of the 2600 chipset. (possibly replace PIA with RIOT as suggested and TIA's sound, and maybe some use for RIOT's RAM) If they could have used a 7800 style cartridge connector, it would probably be a good option, otherwise you'd still have to at least have a passive adaptor to plug in, and you'd need to take it out to play the new games. (like the Power Base Converter for the Genesis) In which case you might as well simplify things and go straight for the 8-bit's chipset and an adaptor arranged like the ColecoVision, so it wouldn't monopolize the cart slot. (preferably using the 6502c rather than a 6507 on the adaptor)

Having TIA onboard wouldn't necessaruly be bad either, at very least you'd have the extra audio available. (you could have a single chip TIA+RIOT too, not too much point while there are stockpiles of chips though) Then just have a passive (or mostly passive, but additional switches) adaptor for the cartridges. (this assuming you couldn't use 7800 style carts, with 32-pins possibly not enough for what the 400/800 cart connectors included) Having RIOT onboard would avoid sending the joystick lines to the cartridge, and it would be replacing a PIA ( I dont know if there would be much price difference between the 2 chips ) TIA would only be for 2600 games. ( If Antic/GTIA were redesigned - then a 'TIA mode' could be included.. but I think a cart adapter would have been good enough ) Well, for a TIA compatibility mode on GTIA, don't forget you'd need to add the sound circuitry as well, and the cartridge adaptor would need to activate a 1.19 MHz mode for the system. (and if you wanted a simple TIA cart, you'd need to include 2600 compatible switches on the main unit, also, don't forget TIA read the pots and fire buttons as well iirc, so it wouldn't be that simple) With TIA onboard you could use the added sound channels for games specifically taking advantage of this (probably set-up like the 7800, with the CPU dropping to 1.19 MHz while accessing TIA), but also, it would solve the cont ollerich I hadn't considdered until you mentioned the RIOT configuration) as you'd need the fire buttons and pot lines hooked up to TIA as well for that to work. (still using POKEY for pots outside of 2600 mode as iirc the way TIA reads the pots isn't satisfactory when not "chacing the beam" while POKEY works as an ADC for the pots more or less, I think) If using 7800 style 32-pin cartridges would have worked, you could even have out of the box compatibility with 2600 cartridges and accessories. Another thing to possibly considder is additional buttons, while this obviously wouldn't matter for games meant for the 400/800 using single button joysticks, it would be a nice feature, as the single button is rather limiting. You should be able to configure the pot lines as additional buttons, giving a total of 3. (this wouldn't be necessarily limited ot eh new console either, it should be possible to do this on the 8-bit and 2600 as well, with sotware utilizing it of course -and controllers released as an accessory) You could also use the pots for an analog joystick (or even a psudo digital one with fixed voltage imputs to the pots), which could then have up to 5 buttions, but this would be incompatible with the standard digitall joysticks. (while the previosu one would be compatible, just with 2 additional buttons to be taken advantage of) Also, I wonder if there's any use for RIOT's 128 bytes of SRAM, again it would only be for system specific games (not direct ports from the 8-bitters), but still in interesting though, not really sure how much use that would be though. While the commodore computer comment has already been addressed, there's also another thing to note, that's the FREDDIE chip used in the late model 8-bitters which, in combination with a MMU, allowed Sally (6502C) and ANTIC to access RAM independently. But that wasn't until later. (so not part of a 1982 console)

"like the 32x" would mean doing 3D in software on the CPU, but judging by the CPU, it'd probably be closer to 3D on the Game Boy advance than the 32x. (though probably a bit better thna the than the GBA, as I think the CPU is a bit faster and has a cache unlike the 3DO or GBA) PC's up to this point were the same way, as were MAC's, it wasn't until ~1995 that 3D acceleration hardware started to become popular. (as mentioned above the Pippin was also all software, granted with a very powerful CPU) The 3DO didn't have hardware support for 3D either I beleive (or at least not for the 3D calculations), and its CPU was actually a bit slower than the GBA's, but it had hardware support for tecture mapping and the GPU would draw the polygons with the CPU handeling the 3D calculations. (the Saturn was kind of like this too, but with much more support and the disadvantage of using quads instead of triangle polygons, with much more CPU power of course, the PlayStation had the Geometry Transformation Engine coprocessor to handel all the 3D calculations, so no load on the CPU) The Jag would do the calcultions on one of the RISC processors (Tom or Jerry), but had to do texture mapping in software as well (unlike the 3DO), there was just hardware support for gouraud shading, which I'm not sure the 3DO had. (still a nice feature to have though, a lot better than flat shading) I think there was also hardware support for z-buffering.

One problem with the 5200 is most of its games are ports from the 400/800, designed to work with a standard 1 button atari joystick or paddles. (and possibly some keys) Additionally, the 5200 hardware was altered in ways that made porting games somewhat frustrating, and still didn't add a real security/lockout feature. (they should have kept the hardware the same as the 8-bitters and just added a security check/authentication mechanism and used a cartridge connector incompatible with the 8-bitters, and either supply a minimal keypad attachment, or modify games to work w/out keys or with the 2600 keyboard controller in one of the controller ports) A related discussion's going on here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...47811&st=25 Some games did (or at least should have) benefit from the analog controll, like missile command (as long as the controller was in good working order and not worn and jittery with coresponding fire button issues), but many were trac-ball games, so benefitting even more from a real trac-ball controller (the 2600 tracball should be compatible), except for a couple games like Star Wars that were designed for 2-axis joystick/yolk controls. Thinking of missile command in particular, one change, probably at least as significant as analog/trac-ball control, is 3 fire buttons with 3 seperate missile launch sites, like in the arcade, that would have been cool. (in fact, you should be abole to have this even with a digital joystick using the 2600/400/800 etc joystick port, configuring the 2 pot lines as additional buttons, something that shouldn't be technically lminited to the new console either, but should be possible as an accessory for the 2600/8-bit computers as well -with supported games -of course, using the 2 pots for the joustick you could have up to 5 buttons as well, but that would create a joystick that wouldn't work properly with games meant for the digital ones) Also I think the problems started around 1982, not right after the 2600's launch (didn't really get a killer app until Space Invaders), and th ecomment on defender is debatable. (that one seems more of a technical limitation, and single fire button than th eproblems with games like ET, or Pac Man in particular, both of which had the possibly bigger problem of overproduction, costing Atari money, as well as an above average licencing fee for the ET rights)

Having TIA onboard wouldn't necessaruly be bad either, at very least you'd have the extra audio available. (you could have a single chip TIA+RIOT too, not too much point while there are stockpiles of chips though) Then just have a passive (or mostly passive, but additional switches) adaptor for the cartridges. (this assuming you couldn't use 7800 style carts, with 32-pins possibly not enough for what the 400/800 cart connectors included)

Interesting to note that the Virtual Boy used the same CPU as the PC-FX.

OK, the ~3.7 million 7800 figure is just for the US/NA and only for sales between 1986-1990 http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...144552&st=0 As to backwards compatibility, it really depends on the case, with the 2699=> successor this was new territory, and it wasn't unreasonable for consumers to assume a new Atari machine will be able to play their old games. (Atari themselves seem to have been planning this on the 3200, but that died and the 5200 was slapped together instead) There are some circumstances where compatibility is supplied out of the box, like 7800, Sega Mark III/Master System (JP), PS2, and Wii, and others that have the necessary hardware onboard, but require a (semi) passive adaptor to provide this function, like the Genesis/MegaDrive did for the Master System. (via the power base converter) Another important point for compatibility in the 2600's case, is that Atari split the market, with the 2600 being too strong to give up despite the problems (aging hardware, no control over 3rd party software content), a compatible successor would allow the older unit to be discontinued more quickly with customers buying the new system already having a large library of old games as well. (plus, no need to port over games already on the 2600, except for ones done poorly like Pac Man, or ones done well, but that will still be significantly better on the new system, showing off its capabilities) Making a new system incompatible isn't necessariy advantageous either, the only times it really is, is when both the old and new systems have significant software support and the same games being ported to both, even then things can get tricky. (support an old system too well and it can detract from the new one as was with the 2600) If your old system is still getting support, but not a significant number of common games to the new system, there's really no downside, in fact it could be beneficial, as some new customers (who never owned the previous system) will purchase those games for the old system to play on the new one. (especially if therer were a bunch of games on the older system the already knew they wanted, but decided to pass up getting the older system as they were interested in the new games as well) Sony probably would have contiued compatibility had it not been so problematic on the PS3. (though dropping PS2 software emulation support was rather odd) Too bad as the PS2 is still getting some nice exclusive titles. (or maybe not exclusive, but not featured on the PS3) Selling more hardware wouldn't be the reason as game companies thend to make practically no profit off the hardware (often taking a loss to cut prices), making money from 1st party software sales, and 3rd party licencing/royaltees.

Yeah, but really, alongside the 7800 and 2600 Jr? Kind of confuses things. IMO they could have released a 65XE gaming pack and been done with it. (in fact, it may have been better to do something like this back in '84, given the iffy Game console market, put more emphesis on the 800XL as a game machine, and release a special gaming pack) In any case, the 8-bit line had the same problem as the 2600 as a game system, no control over 3rd party software development. (thus no definitel quality control over software, and no licencing.royaltee payments -the latter of which would facilitate dropping the price of the base unit) The only reason to keep the 8-bit line going as long as they did was all those extra chips Atari Inc/Warner had stockpiled, the same thing a properly handeled 8-bit derived game console could have done. (unlike the 5200)

I thought there was supposed to be an add-on for 3D, but it was never released. I don't know about onboard hardware, but the CPU was fast enough (21 MHz/15.5 MIPS RISC) to do simple 3D in software, fairly limited though. (depending on what kind of hardware support there was) Also, as to sound, it looks like they added a second ADPCM channel to the CD/Duo's. (so CD-DA, 6 PCE sound channels, and 2x 31.5 kHz ADPCM channels) As to a scenario with no Playstation, who knows what would happen, I kind of doubt the PC FX would have done too much better (the hardware really was kind of dated), though perhaps NEC would have gone for a new, updated design without the threat from Sony, likewise the Saturn might not have been so rushed. (though there are some intrinsic problems with the Saturn in certain areas that are not bug related, still it was sstrong in 2D, and less rushing could have meant better tools/dev kits before launch, though there'd still be Sega's internal problems to considder, not a big problem for the JP market, but really screwed Sega of America) And who knows what would have happened with Nintendo with Sony not beating them down. (though maybe some frustrated developers would leave for NEC or Sega instead of Sony)

Not entirely true, the NES barely had a headstart over the 7800 (or Master System) in the US market (in mid 1986) and didn't get really big, and tie up developers until a while later. The advantages were, it already had a lot of support in Japan, so lots of software to bring over and developers already working on it, while the 7800 had been dormant after Atari Inc. ceased to exist. (and the Master System was brand new tech, and Sega was already losing in Japan, without much developer support to carry over from their SG-1000) Nintendo had very savvy and expensive marketing campaigns, particularly the team-up with worlds of wonder. Warner (owning Atari Games) still held a sizeable chunk of Atari Corp stock, so cooperating over Atari Arcade titles would benefit them. The biggerst problems were the lack of advertizing and delay in release of the 7800. (as well as the poor job courting developers, but this goes along with the late release as well) Also note that the 7800 was not "finally" released in response to Nintendo, Tramiel had already started marketing the new 2600 Jr. in mid 1985, prior to Nintendo's test market. Yeah, they kind of rushed with the Adam, it might have been better if handeled a bit differently. (and simpler/cheaper, more compact, especially no onboard tape-drives) It could have been a good gaming computer to switch over to durring the crash as well, compatible with the CV being a big point. Because the 7800 was a 3rd party (or 2nd party depending on how you look at GCC) development, started independantly by GCC who saw the numerous problems with the 5200 (specifically lack of 2600 compatibility and cost), though there were other reasons to go with an A8-bit derived 5200-like design (but a quick and clean conversion, easy to diretly port 8-bit games to, but not cartridge compatible not mangled like the 5200), especially the stockpiles of 8-bit components, the important thing was to not split the market (so either have 2600 compatibility or an adaptor at launch) with 2 strong systems, rather have an aging system being phased out (but still supported, possibly with a cost-reduced form aimed at the budget market), and a newer, more capable system. (the typical generational transition) The other important thing is to provide lockout, so as to not run into the same problems as the 2600. (no controll over 3rd parties, either in a quality sense, or licencing fees/royaltees, same problem with the 8-bitters, the 5200 didn't really resolve this problem either, though the 7800 did)

Are the sales figures for worldwide or just US/North America?

Scrap the commant about the backgrounds, I don't know what I was thinking, they look fine.

Supposedly the controlls were done intentionally to mimick "real" physics, ie acceleration, but it doesn't work very well, especially without analog controls. (and it's not even a good representation of real life physics) I think, more virtua racing like controlls would have been better. (fairly linear, but with drifting an spinouts when turning too hard without slowing down) I think it looks way better than the 16-bit color, lower poly count and framerate of Genesis VR, though closer to the 32x's Delux version. Gouraud shading really would have been nice like Gorf mentions (it really adds some nice depth and smootheness), and a bit of texturing on the road, some of the sounds, and maybe work on the backround too. (the AI seems off too, but it's a bit hard to tell in conjunction with the controlls, but it seems like that would be something to work on as well) But control is the main problem. (definitely th emost hindering, had they done the rest too, not only could it have been good, but great, not even mentioning re-writing it using GPU code -though that would make the game take far longer to program...)

Yeah, I forgot about the PC FX, still, who knows how they'd have reacted to the Jaguar hardware, not to mention possible modifications they might have wanted. Still, they'd have to choose between their (then shelved) Iron Man hardware or Flare/Atari's. Atari's would seem equal or better in both cost and capabilities (except Video playback which the PC FX shine in, but I'm not sure whether that was even part of existing Iron Man hardware), though I'd immagine they'd have wanted to make some modifications to the design compared to the existing hardware, probably similar to what Gorf's been suggesting. (though probably different in some areas) Assuming such a partnership occured some time in early '93, you'd have some time to make hardware revisions, but probably not go with major redesigns, ie work on hardware bugs, use an EC020 host (be it 16.7 or 25 MHz), and double buffer the blitter. (not sure about other modifications to Jerry) You could probably bump the system speed up a bit too, previously ~33 MHz would be practical (with coresponding increase in bandwidth as well), but faster would get into expensive RAM, at those speeds you could also have a 16.7 MHz clocked close to its full speed rather than 13.3 MHz of the current system. I don't think redesigning the system with dedicated memory blocks would probably not be possible in the timeframe, the shared system bus was one of the key features (and probably in large part to keep cost low), along with the host processor needed to boot the system. Things like increased RAM or CD drive would be other decisions, but not stricly related to development of the hardware. (CD would be definitel with NEC, having already had a CD basedunit as their main console for a while) But, again, with NEC you've got the manufacturing capabilities, so no middle man to deal with for chips or drives, so maybe they could keep cost down even with a 2x speed CD drive, maybe even with 4 MB of RAM. (or sticking with 2 MB but adding provisions for RAM expansion if cost still starts getting high, though you could be selling the Unit at cost, or below, relying on software sales and licencing royaltees for profits) Also, thinking about the PC-FX's video playback capabilities, while the Jag CD only used Cinepak, you could develop a custom codec specifically talored to the hardware which would be substancially better. (higher compression, and more colors, at least 16-bit, Cinepak only using a 256 color format)

The XEGS came too late and, even had an equivelent been released in 198/3 it would have still had the problem of lacking lockout. (hence the preferred rout of a seperate derivative, like Curt mentioned) In addition to the late start of the C64GS as well (much moreso than the XEGS), it had compatibility issues due to lack of keys. (plus the standard C64 was already pretty cheap by then, rather like the 65XE was when the XEGS came out -actually I think the 65XE was significantly cheaper) And the "despite being 8-bit" comment doesn't really mean that much, the 2600 has an 8-bit CPU, as does the Turbografx 16 (in fact, both are 650x), and the Master System's is identical to the ColecoVision (which also has the same sound chip as the SMS), so it doesn't really mean that much w/out context.

Please see my previous response to that post (#471), a lot is impractical, some is reasonable though. Yeah, EA, when (as triverse mentions) 3DO was Trip Hawkins' baby... (inless you're taling about getting him to abandon it, in which case, good luck...) Atari Inc. (the original Atari, founded By Bushnell and Dabney), ceased to exist in 1984 when Warner Comunications (then Owner of Atari Inc.) sold it to Jack Tramiel (former president of Commodore), who formed the new Atari Corp. to market what would become the Atari ST computer. Warner kept the arcade portion of the original company and formed Atari Games. Now, as too cooperation between the 2, Warner still had holdings in the new Atari Corp (a decent chunk of stock), and thus, it was in Warner/Atari Games' best interest for Atari Corp to do well. (it went both ways, too, for example Atari Games had the Jaguar derived "cojag" arcade system) Also note Atari Games is the same company to release games under the "Tengen" label. (notorious for the debacle with Nintendo over their unlicenced games using reverse engineered lockout hardware) Bad idea, the Neo Geo CD required over 7 MB of RAM and it's own specific hardware, which would need to be included on top of the Jag's, not a very efficient design to work with. And as to the "power" of the Neo Geo, its greatest strengths came from the massive amounts of memory it used for the time (huge ROM cartridges, compensated for by a rather large chunk of RAM and multiple loads in the CD version), and it had lmited color capabilities compared to the Jag, and don't even think about 3D (or psudo 3D, scaling, or rotation). It was a sprite monster (an all sprite system actually), and impressive for its time, but the Jag could out-do it in 2D, at least when properly utilized (possibly even using the 68k). What the Jag may have had trouble with is sprite animation, too little RAM to fit all the animation tiles, the Saturn managed to adress this problem with RAM expansion cartridges (and in one case a companion ROM cart). With the cartridge based Jag you might actually be able to get around this without expanding RAM, by streaming ROM off the cartridge; while this is limited (6 MB w/out bank switching, and keep in min ROM is expensive, so you wouldn't want to go much higher anyway), the Jag has the advantage of compression, using one of the RISC processors to decompress it and dtream the data in real time. (IIRC Gorf mentioned something like 14:1 compression being practical, which would allow a 6 MB cart to hold the equivelent of 84 MB of uncompressed data, that's 672 Mega Bits, or close to the size of the largest Neo Geo games) As to the CD based Jag, you could have provisions for RAM expansion, like the Saturn, for virtually Arcade perfect (if not enhanced) ports not lacking any animation. I don't think having any Neo Geo hardware onboard would be a good option at all, very impractical in terms of material costs and board space it would take up, and the large amount of RAM that would be difficult for the Jag Hardware to properly take advantage of (being on a 16-bit data bus, or 8-bit for the Z-80 portions, inless you modified that too, but that could be problematic) Really, just a bad idea. I'm still a bit skeptical of gettting SNK to actually partner with Atari, I suppose the Jag's 2D strengths might be attractive. (maybe even licence it to them as an arcade board) I still think, if anything NEC would be the best choice (though again, any partnership could be rather shakey), in particular they had the Manufacturing capabilities to produce the hardware, so a close partnership could be good, of couse added funding would be great. Additionally, they had a name in Japan, with the successful PC Engine and successive CD unit (2nd to Nintendo in the console market), meaning they could market a rebranded Jaguar in Japan quite well. 1993 would be a good time too, as their current home console was starting toshow its age and they never did get a proper successor out. Having Hudsen Soft as a developer would be a boost too. But who knows if NEC would have ever been willing to make such an arrangement.

Yes, there's the sound chip (Yamaha FH1 DSP sound processor also called "Saturn Custom Sound Processor"), along with the 68EC000. (mainly intended as the audio controller, but as I understand it, not limited to this, rather like the Z80 in the Genesis) Ayway, the DSP I'm referring to was in the same chip as the System Controll Unit (with the DMA controller), based on what I've seen online this was clocked at 14.3 MHz (so 1/2 system clock). There are some refrences to it in some threads on Atariage (tailchao brought it up a couple times in the Saturn Vs. Jaguar comparison thread), I also asked about it on Sega-16 (though noones who'd specifically programmed on the Saturn), butit apears like it was poorly supported in the dev kits (at least the early ones), and there was conjecture that perhaps some of the better 1st party 3D games (like Nights) did actually take advantage of this. (just conjecture though)

Yeah, okay, it's just every other racing game that's got the controlls all wrong. Seriously, I did manage to get relatively comfortable with CF's controlls, or at least used to them enought to be tolerable, but then I switched directly over to Virtua Racing (Genesis version, but then the 32x version for good measure), and I couldn't control the ting for at least 1 race!

Not when the chipset was quite good for a 1982 home game system. The problems would have encured in any event had management not improved. (especially restructuring the company to be more efficient as has been suggested, seperating development from sales/marketing, and medeate better between the computer and game divisions, avoid fuding) Had they just made a simple adaptation of the 8-bit chipset (basicly an atari 400 in a smaller, less expensive package, without a keyboard -possibly a minimal keypad- and a different cartridge design with lockout/securtiy protection implimented to avoid the problems with 3rd parties experience with the 2600) Now, on the topic of the 5200 alternative with 2600 compatibility provided via an adaptor, how would that work? Set-up like the 5200's as mentioned, or ColecoVision? I think the CV's arrangement is preferable as it doesn't take up the cartridge slot, so you don't have to disconnect it to play non-2600 games. However, with a 400 derived design, you do have something the ColecoVision lacks, a 650x CPU, so perhaps you could arrange it to have the 2600 adaptor module just have TIA, RIOT, and the switchboard interfacing with the main unit's 6502C into a 1.19 MHz 2600 compatibility mode. Or, yet another alternative, have TIA and RIOT on the main board, and have the adaptor mostly passive (something like a switch jumping a pin on the expansion/cartridge slot to activate 2600 mode along with the necessary switches) This latter option is akin to what Sega Did with their MegaDrive/Genesis, with their Master System Power Base Converter. (except the only additional switch/button it needed onboard was pause, while the 2600 has b/w-color, 2 difficulty switches, select, and reset -though perhaps reset could be done with a button onboard the main unit -as with the Genesis) In this arrangement perhaps you could even utilize TIA or RIOT for other purposes when in normal mode, probably the most useful feature being TIA's sound, granted this would only be useful for games specifically developed for the console (rather than direct 400/800 ports), or as an enhancement added to a port. (again, this is kind of like the Genesis which used the Master System's PSG chip in addition to the YM2612, plus the Genesis also had the Z80 used as a coprocessor, mainly for audio) One other option might be to include full 2600 compatbility out of the box, no adaptor needed, just have the switches built into the main unit, however this would only really be practical if you could use a cartridge connector like that of the 7800, but this only assed 8 pins (for a total of 32), which may have been insuficient. (having dual cartridge slots onboard would be a significantly worse option than a plug-in adaptor, having the additional switches onboard the adaptor should save a bit on the main unit too, so probably the better option overall, I still kind of like the idea of having TIA and RIOT onboard though, especially if they could consolidate them later on)

I agree that the main point going on was the 5200's sales relative to the CV, but, either way, it appears the CV's sales have been exaggerated greatly with the 6 million figure floating around. (and changes some other sales comparisons, like with the Intelivision, if the ~3 million figure for that is even accurate, or compared to the 7800's sales -at least there's some fairly definitive numbrs on that one, at least for US sales) Another one I haven't seen breakdowns for is the Master System (particularly US/North American sales), but that's a differen't issue. (my main interest for that is whether the 7800 sold better in that region than the SMS)

That's what I was thinking, wouldn't want to run into the pitfalls of the C64 Game System. (one useful reason for the 5200's keypads as well) Otherwise you could reprogram the games to avoid using keys, at least for ones that just used them for starting games. For games using keys in-game, you could alway use the keypad/keyboard controller. Probably a lot less of a pain that dealing with the bios and memory map changes in the actual 5200, as well as using the analog joysticks. But for quick, clean, direct ports, yes you'd need some keys. (preferably in a detachable, wired keypad so you don't have to be next to the system to use it, -use the same port to expand with a full keyboard) Also, as cool as Curt's concept design for the 5200 alternative looks, I think having something a bit more compact than that would have been more practical, more around the size of the 600XL preferably, or the "5100"/"5200 Jr." which I think was actually slightly larger than the 600xl. It would still be larger than the 2600 though, but really, the 5200 is so large it's getting impractical (no matter how cool it looks), and not just in terms of taking up space in the living room, but adding to production, packaging, and transport costs. Hey, there's no reason a smaller case couldn't be just as cool looking. ( I do tend to like the Sharp wedge and gloss of the 2700 and 5200 more than the 7800, though it's very clean and neat, kind of a stark contrast to the 5200)

Oh, come on, has he ever denied the 2600? Also, has it been established that the 6 million sales figure for the CV is definitely bogus? (with actual sales closer to 2 million)

The Pippin's PowerPC603 CPU was 3 instruction superscalar, right? (meaning that 66 MHz CPU would be rated at ~200 MIPS) So pretty damn powerful, but it had to do everything, rather like contemporary PC's (though 3D hardware acceleration was catching on by then, especially with 3DFX's Glide, along with DirectX/Direcrt3d and Open GL). All older PC games were basicly all done in software. (games like Doom, X-wing, Tie Fighter, Wing Commander 3/4 very fast, high end CPU's for their time to run at full detail settings)

Didn''t some saturn games use software rendering (rather like the 32x) to get around the quad problem? (very limiting, I know, but for a lot of games it seems like they'd otherwise need to be heavily altered or completely re-done to work off quads) Of course this method would be most useful for porting games, for an exclusive/original title, you could just go straight for quads. (though they are less flexible than triangles, hence why they were uncommon in the first place) What else is weird is that Sega's 3D arcade games (like on the Model 1 and Model 2 board) seem to have been constructed with quads, maybe not Virtua Racing, but Virtua Figher really looks like it's all quads. (and even the artwork for Virtua fighter emphesizes the quads) But they really should have been thinking ahead and allowed it to switch between quads and triangles, (or even just work in triangles and use pairs for sprite tiles like the Playstation did, still retaining the other advantages in 2D, like the VRAM arrangement and 2nd VDP) Selgus, I understand that the Saturn featured a DSP onboard the "System Control Unit" which was intended to be used for geometry calculations (rather like the PSX's GTE, though judging by the clock, not nearly as fast as the GTE), but it was one of the tings the Saturn dev kit was lacking support for. Was it rarely used really because of the poor support of development tools? (hence game engines handling the 3D calculations in software on an SH2, worse case not even using both SH2's) Gorf, why is the 93.75 MHz R4300 at a disadvantage to a pair of 28.7 MHz SH-2's or the Jag's 26.6 MHz J-RISC's? (I know clock speeds really don't directly compare power due to architectural and design differences, just adding them for reference) I can easily see the PSX's CPU losing out, and certainly the 3DO's (less than 1/2 the speed, on a shared bus with no cache or even local scratchpad), but those are different cases.