kool kitty89

Starfighter was pretty good in that respect, even compared to the Playstation port. The problem of a lower price point was that they made virtually nothing on 3rd party licencing (something most console companies make most money from), and didn't really have significant 1st party games to support it either. Otherwise they could have afforded to sell the hardware at cost, or close to it. (this decision was probably the biggest mistake of the 3DO) The hardware really wasn't up to the PSX (at least in 3D), but they probably could have at least competed and released a lot of the same games (the really polygon intensive ones cut down of course). I think the 3DO may have had some strengths in 2D though. Something like Resident Evil shouldn't have been a problem for the 3DO as it's mostly prerendered backrounds with a few polygonal characters/enemies on screen. Had it had a successful launch at a more reasonable price point ($400 or less), the head start in the market would put it at an advantage to the Playstation or Saturn. Though had 3DO been handeled better Atari probably would have been even worse of with the Jaguar. Or, in hypothetical terms, had the Jaguar design have been modified a bit (the simplest changes that could be done quickly -swapping the 68k for an 020 wouldn't really require any modifications), and had marketing and deals with deveopers been handled reasonably well (as much a problem as the hardware, if not moreso), the Jag could be in a similar boat as the 3DO. Of course, without CD's there's some things the Jag wouldn't be able to do, but it could keep a much lower price point. (They could probably still keep a lower price if they went with a slower 1x speed CD drive, but this would have trade-offs like loading time and possibly video quality; still significant due to the low cost and flexibility of the medium though -particulrly in terms of 3rd party intrest)

By mistake I mean with overall marketing and the situation of the time, along with the technical side of things. Atari just wasn't willing to shift interest away from the 2600, and the way they handled the 5200 didn't help either. I'll say the internal problems at Atari were a lot bigger than the 5200 itsself. (and many of the problems with the 5200 were directly related to these) Lack of control over 2600 games was a big part (both from a quality controll standpoint and royaltees/licencing) should have been major motivation to switch over a new cosole. (but does the 5200 even feature some form of lockout? I know the 7800 does, but if the 5200 didn't that wouldn't really help thing in this case) Along with the controllers and compatibility, I think keeping cost low would have been very important, I don't know if this could have been done with the existing 5200 hardware with a RIOT+TIA tacked on. (looking at shots of the 5200 board, it had omponents pretty spread out, so perhaps they could have arranged things to be much more compact, even with a couple added chips) Cutting back to 8 kB could have cut a little cost too, and still the same amount of RAM as a stock 400. Though, with royaltees and licencing agreements from 3rd parties they could probably afford to sell it at cost. (which became the norm much later) I do think it's a cool system though, and considdering the short period they had to get it out after the 3200 was dropped, using the 8-bitter architecture was rather logical. (going specifically for a new system though could ahve been better overall, more capable and cost effective, but probably not available nearly as soon) Problems with the 7800 and Jaguar are rather seperate, both under Tramiel who wasn't particularly interested in selling games or pushing advertizing. (note that when he finally decided to launch the 7800, it probably was unrelated to the NES's launch, the 2600 Jr. was released before the NES even test marketed) Still, who knows how the 7800 (and Atari) would have done from '84 onward, under Morgan. In any case (games aside), are there any figures available on the 5200's actual sales? THe 7800 sold surprizingly well given the circumstances, >3.7 million based on Curt Vendel's recent figures. Another noted problem (that continued to some degree to the 7800), is releasing many of the same games that are on the 2600 already, granted, thet're on the 400/800 already and natural to port over to the 5200, but they could have been more selective about which ones to bring over. (Pac Man, definitely, some others like Missile command, definitely -especially with a good analog controller, but the 8-bt/5200 version of Space invaders was kind of lackluster and lacking in some of the features of the 2600 version, for one -and particularly unnecessary on a proposed backwards compatible console) Port over games that were done poorly on the 2600, or good on the 2600, but exceptionally well on the 8-bit line. (or well on the 8-bitters, but even better with analog controlls) Of course, the opposite situation could occur, with a major title not yet being on the 2600, being ported to both (or to the newer one first, then the older) this has happened with newer systems too, the Master System is a big example (at least in Europe). And Halo 2 for 360 was pretty much the exact same thing as many exaples on the 5200.

Actually, both the 400 and 800 (especially the 800) were more expensive than the 5200. Well, the 400 eventually went down in price significantly, but the 800 was always more expensive than the 5200. The 1200XL, which appeared at around the same time as the 5200, was even more expensive than the 5200 ($899!). I don't think the 400/800 saw anywhere near the marketing push by Warner as the 2600 had, and afik there really wasn't a push for the 8-bitters as gaming machines, despite the 400 originally being intended for this as well as the line being adapted from plans for a follow on to the 2600. (probably as it could have cut in on the 2600's market) The 1200XL was a bigger mistake than the 5200, expensive (probably the biggest point), still rather bulky, and not fully compatible with the 400/800. The 600 and 800XL would have been great around the time, much better replacements for the 400/800 and better competition to the C64 than the 1200XL. (in terms of cost and form factor) Had this happened, may have even been good to push the 600XL as a game system and not release the 5200 at all. (probably release a 2600 adaptor to match Coleco as well) However, with the 8-bit line there's still the problem that the 2600 has with no lockout control to regulated 3rd parties or piracy, and more importantly, make mone off of licencing deals with 3rd parties. (allowing the pric of the base hardware to be cut as well) So in terms of a console, they still would probably be looking for something different, and out of the box compatibility would have been a major point, along with low cost. (something like the 7800 would have been great, even if it meant waiting a bit longer, like mid-late 1983) Not necessarily identical to the 7800, there's a number of different routs that could have been taken (including directly building off the 2600 hardware, possibly in a similar way to the 8-bit architecture, but keeping 2600 compatibility) It's fairly clear that compatibility was already a significant consideration before the 5200 was developed, with the cancelled 3200 design sporting it. From a cost stand point, it's not just the production costs, but also higher distibution costs due to the high weight and bulk of the 5200. (had it been more like the 5200 Jr./5100, it could have been better in this respect, but still fairly large) With mounting competition from Mattel, and the Colecovision looming, Atari rushed for a quick fix after the failure of the 3200 (I beleive planned for a 1981 release), and they ended up with the 5200, with its flaws. They probably could have gone a similr route using the A8-bit architecture to expideate development, but strongly focused on keeping costs down (small a board as possible, same for casing, probably 8kB rather than 16, only 2 controller ports), and included 2600 hardware (TIA and RIOT) onboard for compatibility plus added sound from TIA. You could even have analog joystics (using the paddle lines as the 5200 did) without changing the connector, though you wouldn't have the keypad, you could still have up to 5 buttons. (fire button plus 4 joystick switches from the 2600) Though such a system may still be fairly expensive to produce (consolidationg chips, at least later on, could help though), if they could get it down to $200 or below it would have been nice. Of course this also ignires the internal problems at Atari at this time. (which didn't start to improve until Morgan was in charge, with Tramiel taking over thereafter, Morgan's efforts never really got to show) However, had the 5200 had a better launch, and the crash been avoided, or at least postponed, perhaps Morgan would have had time to correct things before they collapsed. (or at leased lessened problems and cushioned the crash) Having something more like the 7800 (particularly cost wise), would have been even better in this case though. One thing that any backwards compatible machine should have done, however, would have been to make the new system's carts look significantly different and, preferably, not even fit into the older console, and make it very clear in advertizing that it's a new system that will work with your old games. (no confusion like with the 7800, especially 2600 games that said "for use with 2600 or 7800") I think the long throw of the 5200 stick combined with the lack of self centering made it problematic for use in 8-way digital controll situations, the Vectrex doesn't seem to get the same criticism and it had an analog joy/thumbstick. Quality also comes into play though as, even if not actually broken, they joysticks seem to often become "jittery" (though this could be related to centering as well), relaibility problems with the fire buttons seem to be an even bigger problem though. (on a related note I think a single fire button on either side like CV or 7800, would have been better) Making the controllers slightly smaller in general and easier to hold would have been better as well. (I beleive the revised, self centering controller was like this, but never released) Also, if you did go with a digital stick, you could still add 2 more butons (via the pot lines), or use the pot lines in a 2-axis joystick fassion but with 4 buttons (2 on each axis/pot line) sending fixed voltage signals trough the pot lines, and then you could have up to 5 action buttons like with an analog stick. -using multiple, fixed, voltages on pot lines for additional action buttons would be problematic as it wouldn't wotk if you pushed both buttons simultaneously that share a single pot line, while this wouldn't be an issue for a joystick as you can only activate one (up, dn, L, R) or 2 switches (diagonal) simultaneously, and you'd have the fixed voltage switches arranged in axes similar to actual potentiometers. (up+dn sharing one line, L+R sharing the other, so there's never crossover) Ideally you could even have a controller set-up with switchable analog and digital modes, using a layout similar to the fixed voltage layout I mentioned above, but switchable to actual potentiometers as well. Have a short throw, self centering, analog joystick with 4 buttons/contacts arranged to also get pushed like a conventional digital joystick (with fixed voltages close to full up/dn/L/R on the pots), with a switch to choose the mode. (thus both modes are automatically compatible with all games, tough you wouldn't want to use dgital mode on games catering to track-ball/2-axis speed-sensitive analog controlls, and it wouldn't be useable at all for position sensitive games, like breakout) As to the technical/design side of things mentioned above, a lot of that was recently discussed in these threads: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=146992 http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...47026&st=25 (particularly this one, starting on page 2)

Don't forget the Amiga version of No second place: Amiga's the one with 32 colors. Anyway, it's obviously got decent sound compared to the ST version (almost always the case), but both of these vids seem to be on real hardware and show some slowdown, I suspect the previous ST version linked to is emulated (or possibly run on a Falcon, which runs such games much more smoothely, same for Starglider II). There's also this game on the Genesis, 4-bit color of course and the poly count is even lower (still keeps the framerate up though, unlike Hard Drivin'). I don't think the question was wether SC3D was more advanced than these crude poligonal games, but rather the game design and playability. Granted these are different game styles, and flaws or not, SC3D isn't very comperable being a dirt track motocross style racer, and the other more like Hang On or Super Burnout. (granted these latter 2 are both 2D games, but the game style is closer) Also, Gorf, would dropping down to low color (maybe 256/8-bit, not necessarily 16-color/4-bit) solid-shaded graphics really allow a major jump in polygon count on the Jag compared to current games using untextured (usually g-shaded) higher color graphics? (like Cybermorph or Checkered Flag?

Completely different games types though, many who like the fast paced rail shooter genre won't care for Cybermorph. I'm a bit neutral on the latter, though I haven't played it enough to really judge it, by apearances it could have been a lot more polished though, and could have been more esthetically designed. (soem of the color schemes and backgrounds -or lack thereof- are rather garrish compared to Star Fox, Battlemorph resolved this, resolved the annoying Skylar, and the lack of music) Not really a direct comparison to Cybermorph, but I'm also a big fan of combat flight sims (space sims particularly, but historical/realistic ones on occasion as well), particularly the old X-Wing DOS PC game. (CD-ROM version, not Win95 version mid you) Granted, this is really more comperable to Battlesphere. Again, differen't genres, and the Jag could have made a 3D rail shooter that would easily blow Star Fox away, more colors, higher resolution Gouraud shading higher framerate and poly count/draw distance, and all that probably even using the 68k as the CPU, as was common, not really tapping the Jag's true potential. (too bad they didn't have a railshooter like this, probably would have appealed to more people than CM) I like Star Fox, still play it too, just a fun, pick up an dplay game. (the music is great too, really sets the tone of the action, one of the major things Cybermorph lacks)

I was mainly referring to this in my Jag II comment: Though honestly, mid-late '97 would seem a good time for the Jag II, good period after the Jag's release, relatively soon after the N64 (but time for some initial hype to dissipate), and a big jump over the Dreamcast. (and not getting anywhere near DVD's being a factor) Cost wise, it may still be preferred to stay with to a slower (16 MHz rated) EC020 though, as kskunk mentioned. (if you got the system up to 32 MHz you could have an 020 running at full 16 MHz rather than 13.3 too, but that's a different issue and would have some impact on cost as well) Going really cheap you could knock T&J down to 25 MHz and go with a 12.5 MHz 020, but that doesn't seem like a good option. In any case you'd still have the wider bus, cache, and much more effecient accesses over the 68k. What do you mean by "with a 68k," that the double buffereing would have been particularly important with the existing 68k (and less important with an 020), or did you mean along with the change of the 68k to an 020?

Yeah, maybe if the Panther wasn't crap... even then you'd have the problem of being relatively close to the Jag's release date. Maybe if the Panther really was powerful you could bybass the Jag and go straight for a CD based Jag II instead. (~1996/97) Somthing like a Falcon derivative (preferably with the bus opened up to 32-bits) might have worked in '91/92, particularly if you emphesize the advantages over the Genny and SNES, you'd definitely need to cut thing down quite a bit to get to a reasonable cost for a game console though. (switching to a 68EC030, less RAM, cheaper sound system, maybe cut out the DSP+PCM chip in favor of something cheaper -though you may want to try and keep this as it could be a majot competitive point) Even then, had the Falcon-ish console failed, the Jag (or Jag II) may never have been released at all. Getting popular arcade ports could help, but exclusives (or at least primary/first releases) of similar, new titles (MK3 for one) would be more significant, granted going for the Arcade is still limited and you'd definitely not want to focus mainly on this. (getting big developers to sigh on and stay, certainly) Plus come out with a bunch of revamped Atari classics for old hardcore fans, try to get licencing for remakes of old classics that Atari didn't own as well, like Space Invaders. (which they had promised, but hardly delivered) Along with this, make sure to get Arcade classic compilations too, to round things out. (Williams Greatest Hits was on practically every console out there when it hit, SNES, Genesis, PSX, Saturn, and later releases by Midway on N64 and dreamcast) You wouldn't want to keep the hardware the same, it was buggy and flawed, and with a few, important changes, could have been a lot better and more useful to developers. (switching to a 68EC020, fixing the MMU, then the blitter bugs, etc, you wouldn't have to fix everting, just the 020 would be huge, though the biggest hardware bugs should be addressed too) As for 3D, the Jaguar II design should have been quite capable here. Or the Trtamiels could have made some personal investments if they really wanted to push for Atari's future, but they weren't willing to make that bet. Having arcade titles as part of your system's strengths is fine, just don't hinge marketing on it. The Genesis was very strong for Arcade ports (it was heavily derived from an arcade system after all), the initial "arcade at home" ad campaign was admittedly flawed, but having tons of great arcade ports wasn't a weakness there (especially the SHMUPs). THe Saturn had many problems, both technical and in terms of marketing and management, the emphesis on arcade was hardly its biggest problem.

That's what I was thinking. One difference though, would be that the 7800 was set up to be launched in time for the 1984 holiday season prior to Tramiel taking over, while the NES probably couldn't have made a full launch eariler than it did, everything else being the same. (delays from negotiations with warner, the gaming crash, designing the actual NES -modifications to famicom to AVS, the test markets in '85, gaining confidence with retailers-Worlds of Wonder, etc) Yeah, also interesting that they got the 2600 going again (released the Jr.) by fall of 1985 (before the NES test market), though that probably could have happened sooner if he'd been more concerned about balancing the VG portion of Atari with his own plans. (his actions are pretty understandable) It does seem like he rushed a bit though, loosing some people that could have been useful for the computer sides of things. (like the engineering team for the AMY chip -a good addition for the ST) Projects like Sierra may have been other things that got passed up, though the information seems to be too vague to determine whether that would have been a parctical design as an alternative to the ST. (if it was practical, being already prototyped, could have meant a significant savings in development costs and a quicker release -possibly more competitive or even superior to the Amiga as well) The related Gaza project otoh doesn't seem like it would fit in this respect though, with the dual CPU layout and (supposed) high-end workstation orientation, it would probably be too expensive.

Regardless of the SPAM, this got me thinking about something else on the XEGS. There are refrences, like this: http://www.gameconsoles.com/atarixegshome.htm that put the XEGS at a $250 launch price, which seems pretty high for old hardware, even with the included accessories. (and certanly not be attractive compared to the NES) I've also seen some stuff pointing to the XE computer (65 XE iirc) being ~$99 by 1987, which would make even less sense. Including this 1987 video clip, which also mentions the XEGS (unnamed) nearing release.

Which it did, in Europe. (and South America) Errr.... No? At least not here in Germany. Maybe the SMS was stronger here than in America, but the NES was more popular nevertheless. I meant overall (including UK as well), wasn't the SNES also stronger in Germany than the Mega Drive? (which from the figures I've seen, also outsold the SNES overall. (though I don't think "pounded" would necessarily be appropriate in either case)

Hmm, haven't read much about this, but my heavy sixer doesn't have the gray a/c adaptor, it looks more like this: (not exactly, I think mine might have some red on it and is taller, not as square, not out at the moment though so I can't check) I wonder what the difference is.

Which it did, in Europe. (and South America)

If you code in C yes, however, the fact is the twisty branchy stuff and especially math are ecexllent on the GPU and extremely surpising in performance out in main.... very suprising. C may be quick but it will never outdo hand coded assembler. You'll have your project done in a millionth of the time than that of asembly, granted, but a well experienced bit banger will always out smart a compiler....anyday. But this would be important to get a lot of quick, decent titels out for the Jag without the hastle of assembly coding. (particularly for a launch lineup) particularly for developers doing ports or multiplatform titles. (high quality eclusive titles that push the hardware would still be in assembler) Also, didn't Crazyace mention a while back, that the (flawed) J-RISC compiler Atari released did work for generating GPU code?

Yeah, that what seemed to make sense to me too, Gorf seemed to really be pushing the 1/2 speed thing though... Anyway, you'd still be getting double the bandwidth on Jerry too.

I think the Saturn version of the original is better than the PSX in some ways too, particularly the texture warping problems. Granted the Saturn has the issues from using quads (particularly problematic for triangular objects, but less flexible in general than triangle polygon rendering), the water effects look a bit odd to me as well on the saturn. (maybe due to problems with transparency effects)

Yeah, but just immagine if it had been close to the quality of Ms. Pac Man on the 2600...

I was mostly comparing them to the EC020 alternative, but as you say the relationship with Motorola would help in that case too. Also, I noticed the EC020 seems to be limited to 25 MHz in a couple refrences to it, supposedly Area 51 also had its EC020 clocked at 25 MHz but the rest of the system still clocked at standard Jaguar speed. (same for R3000 cojag units with a 33 MHz R3000 with normal speed Tom and Jerry) Would this require a seperate clock generator for the EC020 (would the change significantly impact cost?), or would it be reasonable to clock the whole system down to from 26.59 MHz to 25 MHz? (I don't think switching to a 1/2 speed EC020 -same as existing 68k- would be a good option, though it'd mean using a cheaper 16 MHz rated chip and still retain the advantages of the 32-bit data bus and cache)

Meh, maybey they're thinking of the PC versions.

In terms of the timeline, by late 1981 GCC was already colaberating with Atari, right? (the Super Missile Attack suit being dropped and the subsequent partnership being made) So, following the failure/cancellation of the 3200 design (planned for release in 1981 I beleive), it's possible they could have offered to start a project similar to the 7800 around this time, maybe not identical to what the 7800 ended up as, but in any case over a year ahead of the 7800's development. (it might not have been ready quite as quickly as the 5200 though)

The CV controllers are OK, certainly better than the 5200's for accurate 4/8 directional movement, particularly when used as a thumbstick rather than a joystick. (the same thing many people end up doing with the 2600 sticks) The only problem with using it in this configuration is it can be hard to reach both action buttons, not to mention the kaypad. Anyway, despite analog controll not being advantageous in some games, there are a significant number that work better with it (trackball typle games, and others like the Star Wars Arcade game that was designed for 2 axis analog controll). The problem is that the quality of 5200 controllers is often questionable and they become inaccurate/jittery when worn (assuming they don't break entirely), along with this is the lack of springs for self centering. The Vectrex handeled this a lot better. (also, while it had more buttons, it wasn't overkill like the the IV, CV, and 5200 -though the keypad was occasionally useful -particularly for games meant to work with one like Star Raiders, it was often unnecessary and added unnecessary complexity to some games) With a reliable, comfortable, self centering analog stick, the disadvantages to a standard 8-way (4 switch) joystick is less and many problematic games become much more managable. (though not quite as good as a real digital stick, it could probably work well enough to not be overly frustrating) I think most will agree that the Intellivision controller is worse than either the 5200 or CV's. Membrane keypad (a flat one at that on the IV II), flush/recessed directional disc that was placed in a less convienent place (the bottom) compared to the 5200 or CV. And the 16-direction controll that was often inaccurate and problematic in a similar way to analog controlls. (when a standard 8-way joystick would be preferred) The button placement seems a bit less comfortable to use as well. Still, there's probably those who like the IV's controller compared to the others. (though the machine was lesser in the graphics areas compared to the 5200 or CV, granted it was released earlier -though the 5200 hardware was around as the 400/800 by then, and I think POKEY beats both the IV's AV chip and the CV's Texas Instruments PSG, the latter 2 being rather similar)

Do you mean a console with the 7800's general characteristics, or that specific hardware arrangement? (like some of the alternitives I proposed) The 7800 was cost optimized so taking the 8-bit/5200 hardware and smacking 2600 hardware onboard for compatibility wouldn't be an ideal option. (though adding a POKEY would probably have been a better idea in the long run than the on-cart expansion -might have been used for the planned keyboard interface as well) But instead of MARIA, adding an ANTIC like chip, POKEY, and 6502 (or 02C) in place of the 07 could have been a good route to go with. (maybe enhance TIA as well, but with the ANTIC-alike you'd have a lot more options and a lot more CPU time already, include a lockout/licence protection system, of course) Would that have been possible to arrange? (specifically with the current 7800 hardware -even if interfaced to the cartridge port differently)

First realize that Atari after 1984 was under Tramiel and Atari Corp. was completely different from the old Atari Inc. In any case, the 7800 was most definitely not launched after the NES owned the market (same for the Master System), it was launched only a couple months after Nintendo had made their full launch in mid 1986 (not the limited 1985 test markets). N had not yet owned the market, they had a head start, but they were just begining. The 7800 was killed by lack of advertizing and software sopport. (Sega's marketing strategy in the US was also weak in this period, this all changed in 1990/91 of course) In spite of this the 7800 seems to have sold rather well, from Curt's recent sales doccuments it apears to be over 3.7 million units sold in the US through 1990. (87 and 88 seeming to be the strongest years, selling over 1M units each) I don't know what the 5200's figures are so we can't compare them, it seemes to have outsold the Intelevision at least. (possibly outsold the Master System in the US market as well, but I haven't seen figures for that either)

I don't want to be too nit-picky, but I'm very certain this was not the original plan and I suspect it was never a serious plan at all. I still agree with you, BTW. I think it's a shame Flare didn't see the potential of promoting Tom into a real CPU. Thanks for clearing that up, I'g gotten that impression somehow. (perhaps it was just a suggestion one of the engineers made lae in development? I'll have to look through the thread again.) Hmm, that's interesting, a while back x86 was rejected as compatible with the Jag hardware: Intel style CPU would never have worked. BE vs LE here. The logic to do the adaptation would add an extra $75 to the bottom line. The 68000 in 1993 was $21, the 68020 in 1994 was $25, not a dramatic difference in price. Also, 2MB of RAM in 1993 cost $15, 4MB in '94 $8. I still have my Digikey catalog collection THough looking at that response, it's the same one that game me the wrong idea on RAM prices. (and based on the charts you sited a while back, the only way these RAM prices are feasible is if they're actually for Mb rather than MB. Anyway, that opens up some interesting possibilities like using a 386/derivative or Cyrix 486SLC Crazyace proposed. (can't really see this being cheaper than a 68EC020 though, which Crazyace seems to have been implying) Given Atari's manufaturing agreement with IBM, perhaps an IBM 386SLC may have been a good option, but it still has the issue of the 16-bit data bus, at least it has a hefty cache. (so it would be more limiting to Jerry specifically than the overall system) A pure 386 would have the issue of requiring external cache, which would take up additional board space and add to cost. (not sure how significant this would be though) 286 would obviously have the same problems as the 68k.

It's not one of his best works, he seemed to have been in kind of a slump for a while, the most recent vids seem to have been a lot more in liine with his better stuff. (though the Odyssey one probably could have been better w/out the "Nerdy Turd" still pretty funny though, and the ending was great) In the Jag one he wasn't informed enough about the technical aspects, and while he did refer to the ambiguity of "bits" to some extent, he could have been clearer, like mentioning that the Wii could be considdered a 32-bit system or something... And then he kept referring to how stuf on the Jag didn't look "64-bit" ... (he should have debunked this and gone in another direction) Also he refrenced to the Jaguar's "bits" being "added up" to 64, another misconception to the 64 bit "claim." (I's debatabl on how you define the "bitness" of a system and it's up to personal usage for whether the Jag is actually a 64-bit system, but that involves diffent reasoning than "adding up" processors, AFIK SNK was the only one to do that with the "24-bit" Neo Geo) I didn't mid the cat skit too much, but it ran at least twice as long as it should, it felt like many of the recent skits on SNL. (decent but drawn out long enough to ruin the joke) Also, he should have shown some real games he could have ripped into more to make a better argument of wanting to puke (refrencing the Cybermorph commercial in conjunction with this might have been funny too), and he seemed to focus more on grapics than some other issues, like the controlls in Checkered Flag. (though he didi go more for the control problems with Kasumi Ninja) There's Club Drive, Crecent Galaxy (which is not bat integrally, but rather unfinished, and not what the game should have been) among others. He could have mentioned the wide gaps in game releases and problematic advertizing campaign as well... As to the CD, given that it was a genuine connection problem and not something to do with the drive assembly (which gives a "?" signifying read error), it could have been an internal problem like broken wire/cable in the connector or detached ribbon cable. (his "expert" didn't seem to bother taking it apart...) Had the guy inspected it internally and still found nothing (no probblems with the power distribution -voltage regulaors- or cable/wire connections, blown fuse), thin it may have been screwed. (broken trace, damaged hardwware etc) I also really disliked the nintoaster guy's attempt at AVGN style character acting, either tone it down, reherse it better, or don't do it at all! The second unit may very well have had the common spindle allignment problem resulting in the "?" read error as he doesn't elaborate past "doesn't work either". (easily fixed by pulling the spindle up into place iirc)

I was mainly referring to what might have happened to atari under Warner with the changes/reforming being done by Morgan bofore Tramiel acquired the company. I'm aware the Tramiel pretty much dumped Atari's existing R&D (including the computer portions geard more toward his interests), though a lot of shelved/cancelled Atari projects probably weren't very useful for retail (don't know enough about Gaza or Sierra to say where they'd fit in), but he did at least show some intrest in their leftover projects, but as you mentioned, tended to replace the engineers. The AMY sound chip is one such case, which failed after loosing its designers, though the idea of putting one imto an 8-bit seems rather dumb to me. (it could have been an asset on the ST, particularly with its weak sound hardware and given that was one of the Amiga's strong points) Yeah, though we won't know for sure until more information surfaces on these particularl projects. Gaza sounds like it may have been less practical, being workstation oriented and (supposedly) featuring a dual 68k multiprocessor layout. Seirra might be more in line with something practical like the Amiga, but there's no way to be sure at the moment. (had Warner been a bit more level headed managing things, Jay Miner may have never left and the Amiga, or something like it may have been developed internally by Atari R&D, perhaps the 8-bit line would have been changed/improved as well) Of course a lot of theing could have been different with a change in management, that being the major problem in the Warner years... Ok, that asside, hypothetically speaking, if Atari had succeeded the 2600 and 8-bit line ~82, should they have focused on a single new product, or release new computer and game systems seperately? Also, while the popularity of the 2600 may have been significant enough to warent backwards compatibility, would it be woth bothering with this for a successor to the 400/800 (or likewise working on expanding/improving the 8-bit hardware -more than the simple changes on the XL and XE) or is making a clean start a better idea?