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ATARI7800fan

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Posts posted by ATARI7800fan

  2. Posted

     

    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)

    Well, according to metacritic, they are the ninth best reviewed publisher in the world, on a list with the likes of Sony, Nintendo, and Capcom.

     

    As fo sales, Sonic Colours has now sold just about 2 million copies, and it is only on two platforms. Sonic 4 was something like first or second best selling xbox arcade game. Even a critical flop like Sonic Unleashed sold 2 million copies.

     

    As fo mass market appeal, it depends on what you think Mass market means. Sonic is popular enough to have 4 TV shows, a current line of action figures and RC cars, a comic in publication for almost 20 years now (with a second series running alongside it now). Everytime Sega announces a game being developed or published it gets a ton of coverage (look at the coverage of something like Vanquish, Sonic Colours, or Virtua Fighter 5 and tell me every publisher gets that kind of attention). And Sonic, Puyo, and Monkey Ball games are on pretty much every console or handheld of any note in the world.

     

    I am very confused why you think they are not one of the top publishers and developers in the world. There is no metric you can use to back that opinion up.

    I agree with some of those points, plus Sonic colors as you said has sold 2 million copies in less then 2 months. While sonic unleashed sold that many it took it a year or more to do so. I think that is a nice comparison of how well there games this year have been received. While they did get worse after the Dreamcast it seems this year they are coming back.

  3. Posted

    Here's a question, if the Dreamcast and Saturn were so great, why doesn't sega still make hardware? Answer: because although the games they made there may have appealed to you, apparently they didn't do it for most people.

     

     

    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 ;))

     

    I would also agree with people and say that Sega Had some great consoles. The Dreamcast really did not deserve the fate it got. It was just a mix of not having enough money from prior problems to keep up with Sony, then Microsoft was like the final nail in the coffin. People that blame the Dreamcast and bernie stollar for Sega leaving the console business are annoying. It was to some extant the Saturn that messed things up for the Dreamcast. Sega spent money on advertising for the saturn that they never got back. Plus Sony announcing the PS2 a year before release was a bit of a sneaky move to. At least the Dreamcast will be remembered by most as the last console from sega, the first 128 bit console, the first console with online play straight from the box, and a console with one of the best us launches this decade. (I am going to now go and give my dreamcast the attention and love it deserves.)Was better then the Gamecube.

  4. Posted

    So is there a particular genre you would like to make a game from?

    Side scrolling platformers and shooters(like R-type)with awesome music, and maybe some beat-em ups. If the master system could do it why not the 7800.

  5. Posted

    Wished I could have gotten that much for mine, had to sell it for about 26 dollars and it was the stainless steel version. Had the voice module, expansion box, 40 carts, few cassettes, cassette player, original joysticks with box. and the adopter to switch between games. Games included burger time and Pole position.

  7. Posted

    HI, I have recently found a ebay seller(atari sales and services). That is selling a supposed never released version of Tower Toppler. Here is the add

    eBay Auction -- Item Number: 1405055345471?ff3=2&pub=5574883395&toolid=10001&campid=5336500554&customid=&item=140505534547&mpt=[CACHEBUSTER] . What do you guys think, is this real or is it just a scam, never new there was even a version in development for the Atari 8-bit. Thanks for your time.

     

    it's unreleased, never sold...I bought it, good seller,A+++++ from me!

     

    he has sold hundreds of these...

    Thanks, how does it compare to the Atari 7800 version. Is there anychance you could post a gameplay video or some screenshots of it for me. Also will it work with a 64K 600XL, american version. His add was a little unclear of which system it worked on exactly. Thanks for your time.

  10. Posted

    Awesome game, can't wait to buy a cart version from the store. Too bad developers back then did not put as much passion into there games. The animation, all the little things like the drill spinning, this just goes to show this system could do side scrollers well, maybe in even more detail then the NES, keep up the good work. Too bad there are so many good homebrews lately and too little money, currently putting into getting my first 8 bit Atari computer. This is defiantly on the list after that though.

  11. Posted · Edited by ATARI7800fan

    I see this "nintendo snatched up the hot arcade licenses" argument a lot, but I can recall very few exclusive arcade titles on the early NES. I'm probably just unaware of them, but what titles are we even talking about here? Seems to me that the games that really pushed the NES forward were original, and could have been created for any system by anybody.

     

     

    Any game that was licensed for the NES was exclusive to it for 2 years per the contracts with Nintendo of America. The game could've appeared on various computer platforms but not on another console.

     

    I'm pretty sure the contract also stated that not only was it exclusive to the NES console but that they could only appear on computer platforms if they were disk based. This would explain why Atari didn't go around this by licensing the games for the XE computer line, converting them to cartridge format, and then providing them to all the retailers that stocked the XEGS. It was either that or the Tramiels didn't think about that or it possibly being a marketing nightmare explaining how the cartridge was for the XE computer line but omitting the XEGS from the packaging and still assuming Joe Consumer could understand this without receiving misinformation from the retail zombies at Toys R Us and the like...

     

    Licensing only became more loose after both Ataris took Nintendo to the courts over antitrust allegations. It still baffles me how Atari Corp. lost that case...

    Yes they did loss but it was only a few years later like in 1989 when The state of New York and the US government sued Nintendo for monopoly charges and illegal contracts, basically getting exclusives to all the third party developers so none of there competition could get games. Of course NES fans never want to bring that part of Nintendo's history up.

  12. Posted

    Oh and Tramiel of course, but I'll leave that to others :)

    Yeah, if he were able to pull off miracles like some kind of business guru, he might have been able to take a near bankrupt company and battle Commodore and others in the computer market. Heck, if he were really good he might even unload all that 2600 stuff they had lying around and make tens of millions of dollars in sales off it. And if he were truely amazing, he might even take a near bankrupt company and make it into a Fortune 500 company and get it to last from 1986 all the way to the mid 90s. Too bad he couldn't manage any of that. Oh wait.

    I wouldn't say he helped the companies self image much though, I have talk to plenty of people who used to own a Atari 2600 when they were kids who have never heard of a Atari 7800/XEGS/Jaguar/ST before. So I guess he was not good with image or advertising then.

  13. Posted

    The dominant genre was side-scrolling platformers - which couldn't have been a worse match for the 7800 if they had tried!

     

    After writing three scrolling homebrew games (2 of them scroll in all 4 directions) I can't agree with this statement. The 7800 is easily capable of doing scrolling in all directions.

     

    For all the power of the system, it was mostly theoretical. Actually programming for the 7800 was a bloody mess. (Kind of the same problem Atari would have with the Jaguar several years later.) The 5200 ended up superior to the 7800 in a number of ways, not the least of which was that programmers had an easier time squeezing the results they wanted out of it. The fact that the hardware was more generic helped as well.

     

    I agree that the 7800 was never pushed much back its day. However, I don't find the 7800 hard to program. Any game is always a trade off between the resources available and what you what it to do. If the 7800 is so lacking in prowess how is that I've developed six games in "C" on it? We all know about the overhead of "C" programs ;).

    I agree with the last part, just wondering what are the three scrolling homebrew games you have written. I do not think I have heard of them before.Especially the two that scroll in all 4 directions.

  14. Posted · Edited by ATARI7800fan

    There's that 1%. I stand corrected! :D

     

     

    LOL

     

    =)

    Mentioning atarimax carts, do all the games from atari-sales.com come on the atarimax carts or is it only the bigger ones, do you use recycled atari carts for the other games. Just wondering never bought from your website before, do I need to do anything to my system to run the Atarimax carts or do they work just a normal cart. though I defiantly want Tempest love the music, listen to it when I am studying at college, once I get the money.Can't wait for Space Harrier to come out. Sometimes I wonder if the XEGS would have work better then the 7800,nothing against it I love mine, but I am amazed at what people can get out of the computers.Guess I shouldn't be surprised though same designer went on the make the Amiga. What do you guys think of Space harrier.

  18. Posted

    Great work. would it be possible for someone to come out with the 3200 and have it as just a homebrew console, with the same case and controllers as the pictures of course. I would defiantly pay big to have a version of the 3200,just to see what the console is made of.

  19. Posted · Edited by ATARI7800fan

    Nice article about the 3200 But doesn't it even say that by the time they were developing it intellivision and other companies were already breathing down the back of there necks. So wouldn't it make sense to say that if they had started developing a successor earlier like in 1979, not replacing the 2600, they would have had the 3200 done in time and not have had to rush and had the 5200 come out instead. On a side note though, would it be possible for someone to come out with the 3200 and have it as just a homebrew console, with the same case and controllers as the pictures of course. I would defiantly pay big to have a version of the 3200,just to see what the console is made of.

  20. Posted

    There's a Wolfenstein 3D for the A8?

    Yes there is just check on youtube for Project M vs 2.0 - Wolfenstein 3D for Atari 8bit computers. I would put the link down, but I can't remember if we can do that or not. It is amazing, they had the right Idea with the Atari XEGS. Might have done better if they had some new original games for it, maybe better then the Atari 7800.

  21. Posted · Edited by ATARI7800fan

    Should be getting a Atari 600XL with 64K of memory in a week or two. Still kept the 7800, can't wait for Outrun,Space harrier, and Wolfenstein 3D to come out. Still amazing what they were able to get out of 1979 tech. Warner should have made it into a console with a lock-out chip and replaced the Atari 2600 like Nolan Bushnell wanted in the first place instead of a computer. Who knows maybe then the game crash would have never started. Or at least had the 5200 with a lock-chip, able to play the computer games, kept the original design of the controllers and backwards compatible with the 2600, and had the full 48K or more of memory and they probably could have had something that lasted till the Genesis. How things could have gone so much differently.

    I don't think you have your history right at all there. The thing with Nolan was different from what you're claiming, and lockout was many years away. (you don't need a "chip" either; the 7800 used the rather elegant mechanism of a ROM header/signature to authenticate 7800 games and enable 7800 mode -a similar system was used on the Master System, Genesis -for all the but the very early models, and several others)

     

    I know Curt and Marty could explain the Nolan issue better, but even if you assume that he WAS pushing for the A8 chipset for a console to succeed the VCS:

    A. the final A8 chipset was FAR too expensive for a console design

    B. the initial chipset (pre-computer) was far less capable (no ANTIC and more like the VCS with CPU driving the display iirc)

    C. it would have been very stupid to cap the VCS back in '79 when it had yet to make a massive success with Space Invaders onward (initially, the VCS was planned to have a short life; the market was new and it wasn't understood that a game console could be milked for over half a decade if it got popular enough and fit the market right -in some cases even for more than a decade as with the Famicom in Japan or the VCS/2600 in the US)

     

    A good time for a successor to the VCS would have been '81/82 (if done right, or better delayed until '83 if they couldn't get it right in time) and keeping the 2600 going strong made perfect sense as it was shifted more and more into the budget market sector with the new high-end successor counterpart in the upper market sector that the VCS was in earlier on. (of course, that didn't happen and the 5200 was a bit of a mess in several respects, but more a symptom of the overall problem than anything else -internal management issues at Atari/Warner in several areas that materialized in '82 and got worse as the year dragged on and into '83 with the crash -one of the most critical issues being the distribution network being problematic and contributing heavily to inflated market growth figures that resulted in the so-called glut) Things started turning around after James Morgan came in in late '83 (albeit the freeze on operations in fall of '83 was an unfortunate move in his otherwise extremely positive/necessary reorganization effort), but Warner split up the company in mid '84 and ended all that. (and did so in such a sloppy manner -not so much rushed, but poorly planned out and disorganized- that much of the effort that had already been put into rebuilding Atari Inc was totally wasted, leaving Tramiel with a big mess to wade through before things settled down -many issues lingering into early 1985 or even longer)

     

    Warner/Kassar also messed up the A8 in several areas (some hardware features/concepts forced, but the bigger issue was on the marketing side and understanding the nature of the US -let alone European- home computer market -both high end and low end, business, entertainment, and hobbyist) and a lot of missed opportunities because of that.

    Thanks, It was the earlier chipset I was thinking off, I just got done watching a documentary/interview about Nolan. It was the original chipset that he and atari had started that was supposed to be the 2600 successor. He new that in 3 or so years to stay ahead of possible competitors they would need a new console. If I remember correctly that was why he was fired. Argued with Warner to much on how the company should be ran, there were other reasons too I think. I feel they might have let him stay if he had not argued about the chipset and just let them design the computer then around 1981 pushed to go ahead and with some improvements release the original chipset as a new console plus have lock out,maybe the game crash would have never happened. I wonder how things could have gone differently if he had not been fired. He was a genius with how to make money go along way. Can't wait for Space Harrier to come out though.

  24. Posted

    A little bump. I'm going to try selling off the rest of these here and on Neo-Geo.com for the next week or so, but then they're going on ebay. I've got to get rid of them and the wife's car needs new tires!

     

    Tempest

    How much would you want for, King of fighters 2003,Rage of Dragons, and Sengoku 3. Hope to be gettig a MVS converter sometime this year. Currently have a 1991 Neo Geo AES. Figured out MVS carts are defiently alot cheaper.

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