Lynxpro
-
Content Count
4,140 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Posts posted by Lynxpro
-
-
Does any AtariAge users own one of the reported ST models with a socket on the motherboard for installing an Intel 8086/286 CPU?
Back in the day, I read about some models being offered as such but never had a confirmation they truly existed. If they did, I believe they were prior to the introduction of the STe models but I could be mistaken...
-
It certainly would have been interesting to See what Time-Warner could have done with Atari Corp from '91 onward. (from the computers to the Lynx to the Jaguar -or maybe even an earlier console pushed to get them back into the mainstream home game market ASAP and with better funding and in-house software development via AGames/Tengen/TWI on top of the management)A Time Warner owned Atari Corp. combined with Atari Games would've been a force to reckon with. There would have been enough funds to put back into the Lynx and "Atari" could have launched the Panther or ended up doing what they ultimately did...skip it and move onto the Jaguar. I'm rather of the opinion skipping the Panther may have been as big of a blunder as Atari having skipped using the Motorola 68020 in the ST line [for a mid range system, EST, whatever] and waiting to use the 68030 in the TT which was too little to late.
Under such scenarios, it calls for speculation whether Time Warner would've pushed for 3D0 to merge into their reunified "Atari" company [TW owned a 25% stake in 3D0 as well] and whether they would've pursued a merger/sale with Williams-Midway as did occur in 1996 in our timeline.
And had Time Warner continued owning "Atari", there may have been enough tech people inside Time Warner to side with what AOL wanted to do with the warring Time Warner properties following the AOL Time Warner "merger" and it might have been the roaring success people expected it to have been instead of the giant cluster**** it ended up as.
Interestingly enough, Warner Bros Interactive - owners of the Atari Games Corp/Midway IP - is an investor in OnLive's nonconsole platform.
-
Yes, it's a pretty awesome chip and hopefully we'll see some stuff even putting better Amiga tunes to shame.
(and thus also better than anything Atari Games ever did with it -at least AFIK: all the Atari Games YM2151 music -and most western arcade games in general- tends to be rather average and bland in terms of what the chip is capable of -weaker than the better examples of Adlib stuff, and the YM3812 is much less capable than the 2151 -tons of awesome 4-op FM from better examples of Megadrive/Genesis games -Japan, North America, and Europe- as well as various Japanese Arcade/Computer stuff)I dunno. Audio from the Amiga Paula chip seems "warmer" to me. The Yamaha just sounds "synth" in comparison. I can't imagine the Yamaha chip doing as good of a job with the music from, say, Shadow of the Beast.
It would make me chuckle if someone wedged a SID or a Paula chip into a 7800 homebrew title.
And while I didn't care for TI back in the day, I did like their speech synthesizer module for the TI99/4A. Which reminds me, I'd love to see a port of Parsec to the 7800...
Are any programmers planning on using the YM chip for music and the Pokey for sound effects?
A relatively small percent of NES games use any advanced mappers or added RAM. (even SRAM for battery saves was extremely rare). Most of the added chips were just normal bank switching logic, mappers actually enhancing the VDP capabilities (or in a few cases accelerating other things -I think some were sued to completely avoid the CPU overhead for switching 8/16k banks for delta modulation playback)It amazes me nobody [MOS, Atari, Synertek, Rockwell, etc.] didn't produce a modified version of the 6502 that allowed for more memory without bank switching. Don't stone me if the Lynx's version of the CPU actually accomplished this...
limit ROM to 256k max (256k NES games only appeared at the tail end of the 80s -512k not until the 90s and there's only a handful of such large games -Zelda was only 128k, for example), and probably limit RAM to 32k as well. However, you wouldn't have to discount the YM2151 either, just use it to simulate a cheaper sound chip from the time. (like the low cost OPLL -YM2413- used in add-ons for the SMS and MSX, or the full OPL2/YM3812 of Adlib and such or the older/slightly simpler YM3526 -or for non FM stuff as well -like a simple pulse/triangle/saw/etc sound chip)Well, I brought up 512K ROM images as optional of that era since the SMS did have them. Oh, in Sega talk, that would be "4 Mega"!
-
Isn't Solaris basically a port of Buck Rogers?No its an original game by Doug Neubauer who was the creator of Star Raiders and originally the game of the Last Starfighter. The game still blows my mind today, never thought the 2600 could pull off a game like that.
It looks a lot like Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom. Granted, the graphics are incredible for the 2600...
-
Even worse, chip tunes were already "borrowed" for commercial songs.
First Zombie Nation used the music from the C64 game "Lazy Jones" in their hit "
". Although not the same sound, the melody is the same and sounds similar. They settled with the composer David Whitaker who apparently got more money from Zombie Nation than he was paid for the full game back then
Further Timbaland used his SidStation with too much liberty and said to be used parts of the
ofin the Nelly Furtado song "".Listen to the
and listen also to thehe did before the Nelly Furtado song. The similarity is striking but Timbaland denies it and refers it to "sampling"
The case seems to be still in court.Robert
I'm glad someone else is well aware of Timbaland's fondness for chiptunes/SID music. I remember I got ripped a new one over suggesting creating a collector's edition of an A8 or ST anniversary computer with an AMY chip last year based upon how popular such an item would be with not only chiptunes enthusiasts and professional music producers such as Timbaland...
-
Is there any chance of any homebrew games getting onto Xbox Live and PSN if they begin offering emulated console titles? I'm still cheesed off that XBox Live offers what reports to be the arcade version of Gyruss but was actually the NES version...
And have any homebrewers tried to gain the attention of Chris Hardwick [nerdist.com] and his crew at G4? Yes, I know G4 sucks in comparison to the old TechTV channel they murdered, but it is still publicity...
-
1
-
-
I dunno, my half-hearted comparison to the 32X got nothing but responses of "SACRILEGE!" when I uttered the words.
That's because it's not the same. You need to look beyond the form factor of it plugging in. This is more akin to taking hardware intended for a cartridge (ie. sound chip, RAM, mappers) typical of the day and putting it in one unit instead of multiple cartridges.
32X was VERY different:
- It transformed the 16-bit Genesis into a machine capable of about 1 million instructions per second to a 32-bit console capable of running 40 million instructions a second. This doesn't give the 7800 additional CPUs
- It enabled a console that couldn't do scaling, rotation and 3D texture mapping to do so in hardware, typical of other 32 bit machines. This does not jump the 7800 up a tier into 16-bit or 32 bit consoles.
- It increased the 64 colors onscreen out of 512 colors to 32,768 on screen colors out of 16.7 million! This does not increase the color palette of the 7800.
The XM does:
- Adds RAM, much like cartridges back in the day did. See IMPOSSIBLE MISSION, WINTER GAMES, TOWER TOPPLER, JINKS
- It adds sound hardware, just like COMMANDO and BALLBLAZER did with the POKEY. Atari also originally intended to offer other sound chips (see GUMBY) than POKEY. This chip was used in arcades of the day. While I tend to agree that this one aspect may be overkill, the idea has precendence.
- It adds mapper hardware that enable the existing MARIA to do a bit more, in a way that's similar to the NES mapper chips did with the PPU. See Castlevania 3 or Super Mario 3 Mike Tyson's Punch Out for examples.
- It saves high scores, similar to the intended 7800 HIGH SCORE cart. See Curt's reproduction from a few years ago.
- It allows connection of peripherals, similar to the initial 7800s with expansion ports (removed from most 7800s)
If this were like the 32X, it would transform the 7800 into a SUPER NINTENDO or something. It doesn't.
What it does do is enhance the 7800 in a way that would have been how Atari intended and/or how Nintendo enhanced the NES in cartridge ... but without the expense of building invidivual carts to do so.
I'm in total agreement but wouldn't it have been more plausible for Atari Inc. to have offered a Dual POKEY option over bundling a Yamaha sound chip?
My wish list would be all of the Atari Games Corp/Namco titles of that era that should've been made available for the 7800 in the first place...
Having finally played - via emulator - Mat Mania Challenge on the 7800, I feel a bit guilty having pestered Atari Corp often back then to license the two original arcade games [Mat Mania and Mania Challenge]. The port is terrible while the original arcade games were awesome.
Looking at this video of
their aren't many moving sprites so its definitely possible on the 7800.As for STUN Runner it should be possible given that you can do hardware polygon filling with MARIA. See this emulator only demo by andym00. The scaled graphics would be a bit of a ROM hog.
Wasn't STUN Runner's [arcade version] graphics made possible by a very special and expensive TI graphics chip?
I already threw this out there in an earlier XM thread, but Crystal Castles would be great. Not only would it sound good with XM, but it would be fully possible to have an Arcade perfect port, and room to throw in some extras. Also, this project would be perfect for any XM programmer, since Crystal Castles was slated to be released for the 7800, but never seen the light of day.
To do it justice, you'd need a Trakball controller. With that in mind, I also suggest Marble Madness. The C64 was able to do the title decently, so it should be well within the XM's abilities.
Sequels to Atari 2600, Atari 5200 or 7800 games:
Adventure 3
River Raid 3
Rador Lock 2
Solaris 2
Isn't Solaris basically a port of Buck Rogers?
Ninja Golf 2: you and your wolf-caddy fight your way across 18 holes of death. use ninja magic, poison powder, double jumps and your attack caddy. play golf in a live volcano, fight sharkmen in the lost city of atlantis, rescue kidnapped geisheas and become the greated ninja golfer ever.
I think you just wrote the scriptment to the greatest stoner action film ever. Pick of Destiny what?
Would love to see any of these ported...
Vindicators
Zoo Keeper
Ever notice the music from Vindicators is taken from the soundtrack to Futureworld?
4D tic-tac-toe
beat um and eat um 2
Realsports Pie Eating
Video Staring Contest -3D
Indian Summer games
Geddy's Lee's Pancake Canoe
Triple Dragon
Midday Mutants
Possible Mission
Realsports Zen Buddism
You could play Realsports Zen Buddhism with the Mindlink controller.
Hey, what's Jake Gylennhal (sic) doing in your avatar?
Having a caricature of Muhammed in it would be awesome.
That would certainly be a way to get free publicity for the XM via the traditional media.
lol...yeah...I fall into the same trap as koolkitty does with my long posts, so I can understand there's some initial, I dunno..."excitement" there that causes us to perhaps omit editing and brevity. Gotta get those thoughts down as quickly and as soon as possible lest they float away from us lol
A little off-topic, the amount of RAM and the FM chip are my only "concerns" about XM. Something along the lines of at most 64k and just the POKEY would've been more feasible for Atari back in those days as on cart or as part of the keyboard add-on. And because of that, we'll have a harder time showing XM games to NES fanboys and having them take it seriously as it's not running on "stock" hardware, and the argument of "it would've been on cart or the keyboard add on" kinda falls flat due to the inclusion of the FM chip and that amount of RAM (and lack of keyboard,
)Then just use 32K of the allotted RAM, a 256K/512K ROM image, and use of the Pokey... That's more than enough to show off the power of the 7800 to the NES weenies.
I dunno, the 6502 machines I had access to were almost entirely 128K. xD
I had a 128K 6502 machine growing up too ... an Atari 130XE. Ramdisk was handy when I was writing papers and does but otherwise didn't make much of a difference vs. the XEGS I got later.
Well, in fairness, what was the lowest common denominator of RAM most A8 games were written for? 16K? 32K? 48K?
I mean, how many games for the ST were written for machines with 1MB RAM or greater? Most were written for the 520ST's 512K RAM...
-
Is it just me or do the audio samples not sound much better than the often maligned Yamaha sound chip found in the Atari ST? Other than Haunted Castle, the music isn't that great. I guess my flawed memory that makes me think the Atari Games titles that used the same chip sounded less "Yamaha'ie" - and more "Atari'ie" - than those examples...
-
Atari Age and Analog both did full articles on the 7800 before its scheduled release in 1984.
The best article I could remember on the 7800 right before its 1986 release was done by Electronic Game Player which shortly thereafter became EGM.
-
1) NATCO was not put in to play yet, hence they wound up having no case. Their grievance was that since they were sold on it and signed on, then they were part owners (employee stake) and the sale was illegal. The NATCO reorganization never occurred.
Was the court case dismissed or settled?
2) Jack fired zero NATCO staff because of point 1. Likewise, once again Atari Corp. was a completely different company. People were being hired over to that, not fired. I'm sure they certainly had that viewpoint based on how the transition occurred, but if they were being "fired" it was from Atari Inc. because they weren't needed at Atari Corp. Likewise, most of the press reports of the time were misleading or incorrect - they also stated Jack as "taking over" Atari, and often confused the two companies as well.Similarly, Atari Corp. always traded upon the past history of Atari Inc. and portrayed it as one-in-the-same company to the public. After all, there were plenty of Atari Corp. press releases reading ad naseum (sic) that the company was founded in 1972.
After all, GM went bankrupt a little over a year ago. It was re-organized. Do we consider GM a new company? And under a strict definition, once Warner had Atari Inc. re-incorporated in Delaware, it was not the same company as the one Dabney and Bushnell founded in 1972...
I also would not be surprised if Atari Holdings Inc. still exists. It still existed on the books in the late 90s the last time I read a Time Warner annual shareholder's report.
-
How is TOS/GEM not intuitive? It doesn't do anything as asinine as dragging a disk icon to the trash can in order to eject it like Mac OS/Mac OS X.
If anything, I've always found TOS/GEM far more intuitive than Windows or Macs. And I'm not even going to dignify the GUIs of Linux in the discussion...
-
1
-
-
Wondering what Jack and the boys are up to today? Obviously Jack is long retired but how about his sons? They were not that old yet to retire when Atari pooped out? Or are they rich and have no need to work elsewhere?
Anyone know what they do today?
tj
Sam Tramiel is involved with companies that fund Israeli tech startups and help them peddle their wares to the US market. You have to do some deep Google searches and use LinkedIn to find that info.
Leonard has his science textbook crusade.
The family has a real estate business. Hopefully for them, their data isn't backed up on JTS hard drives...
-
Yes, rather ironic that Morgan ended up pretty good while Kassar didn't though neither were experienced in the business . . . except Morgan WAS experienced in management of a consumer products based company while Kassar really wasn't AFIK. (he had his experience in the textile industry iirc, and not even the consumer/marketing end with clothing -ie consumer products- but I may be mistaken)
Given the young age of the industry, it probably would have been more feasible to (instead of Kassar) bring in someone experienced in managing/marketing some form of consumer entertainment products. (maybe even from Warner's record business -on that note, many have said it before, but using Warner's record distribution network for Atari's distribution probably would have avoided the issues seen with distribution)
Kassar at least had the brains to license Space Invaders. He also had the brains to jump into the home computer market albeit his "appliance" computer idea hampered the top end of the A8 line.
As for Warner's WEA Distribution system, it was the best but WEA itself bitched about Atari. WEA didn't want to distribute games and they weren't forced to do so until after the crash. Even then, the various divisions of Warner Communications - except for Atari - were run like private fiefdoms that Steve Ross had to put his foot down at times. The merger/reverse acquisition that he thought up with Time Inc in 1988/89 was meant to put an end to the fiefdoms by bringing in outsiders but it didn't stop it. Warner Communications and Time Warner have a history of squandering synergies. Ross's successors then thought the Time Warner/Turner merger would accomplish it and when that didn't work, they dreamed up the AOL merger. Yet even AOL couldn't get Time Warner's mess together. Time Warner Cable resisted rebranding their cable modem service as AOL [and also tried to stop reselling AOL], Warner Music wouldn't cooperate with AOL's plans for digital song distribution in fear of wiping out CD sales, you name it. Basically AOL Time Warner was a repeat of the lessons not learned from the Atari days at Warner Communications. Apple's modern success can be said to be due to the failures of AOL Time Warner who could've done everything Apple later accomplished if they forced their divisions to work together.
The independent Atari distributors were directly responsible for the flawed sales data that led to the glut of product in 1982. Had WEA cooperated and handled Atari cartridge distribution, "1982" would not have happened.
That may have been supported by the 25% stake in Atari Corp, but what about how Warner turned around and sold off Atari Games to Namco within a year?As far as I remember, Warner retained a 10% stake in Atari Games Corp. after Namco acquired it. Namco didn't own it for long though...
And what was that about Time-Warner trying to buy Atari Corp in the early 90s you mentioned before? (might have been in another thread)Electronic Gaming Monthly made a big deal about it back in 1991. Time Warner was distributing EGM and EGM said Time Warner had informed the Tramiels of their intent to reacquire the assets of Atari Corp. following their (re) acquisition of Atari Games Corp.
Though the selling for more (for profit and for perceived quality) is something you'd apply to a luxury item . . . there's a lot better ways to push quality without having a high price. (IBM's PCs with the sturdy build quality and high quality keyboards certainly did more than the high price in that regard -that and the IBM name)A solidly built machine with high reliability and quality "look and feel" would go much further. (in that sense: the Atari 400 was much more solidly built than the VIC-20, but to an average person comparing the 2, the keyboard would probably be amjor push for defining the VIC as "higher quality"
)The way the story has been told is Manny/Warner didn't want to sell the 2600 at cost because they didn't want the system to appear "cheap". They did think of it as a "luxury" as opposed to Atari's "knock off" competition from the earlier days of the Pong knock-offs. Nolan allegedly wanted to sell the 2600 at cost mimicking the Gillette business model.
Nolan was also pissed over the cancellation of the hot tub strategy sessions. Although for all of Warner's alleged "lock downs", they never were able to clamp down on marijuana consumption or hookers from the stories told by others. You know, I bet there wasn't a lot of pot smoking at Atari Corp, just a big exec supposedly snorting a bunch of coke.*
*Ironic that Jack Tramiel put a stop to Shadoe Stevens's "Fred Rated" mascot of the Federated Group upon Atari Corp's acquisition of the troubled retailer... Shadoe was rumored to have drug problems back then...
Atari Corp didn't terminate anything, Warner did when they liquidated Atari Inc without due course of an organized transition and the forced layoffs of all non coin personnel. (Tramiel didn't do that, Warner did, Tramiel and Co. had to decide who to hire to TTL -or Atari Corp rather; It wasn't "who do we need to get rid of" but rather "who do we hire to this new company" -I think Marty or Curt made a very similar comment a while back)That's not what the lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit alleges the "sale" of Atari assets was fraudulent/illegal and thus the employees still worked for the [according to them] still operational NATCO [aka "Atari Inc"] that Warner was allowing Jack Tramiel to administer via his "Atari Corp/TTL company. From their viewpoint and assertions, Jack was indeed firing the NATCO staff and thus Warner was in breach of their oral and written contracts with the NATCO employees who they cheated out of the severance packages they were dissuaded from accepting.
-
Maybe someone should make a 7800 homebrew called "loosen Jack's wallet".
Milestones in the game would be
- Getting more ads on tv,
- More loaner review cartridges for magazines so they'd write reviews
- Additional development of in-cartridge enhancement chips
- Bigger game development budgets for A+ developers and A+ development cycle
The final boss would be a 512K 7800 game with 16K RAM, a Mapper, a Pokey sound chip and a battery save created by someone like Konami, which was advertised on tv ...
But I digress
Don't forget retrieving the Sword Quest sword from Tramiel's house...
To get to the final boss [Jack], you gotta defeat Leonard by shaving off his shaggy beard* and you thwart Sam by throwing a bag of white powder at him. Then you borrow Woz's Segway and run over Jack with it before crushing him with millions of ET cartridges.
*or you throw a bunch of science books at him with erroneous errors for him to correct...
-
[
-----------------------------------------------
Designed by James V Zalewski.
Description: According to programmer James Zalewski, the original concept called for this game to be a “Legend of Zelda” style game to compete against Nintendo. James informed Atari that he would need more memory on the cartridge to handle everything they wanted (map, characteristics, etc). Atari refused to spring for the added memory and thus the idea was scrapped before any work was started.
Is Mr. Zalewski on Atariage?
-
Nothing which requires save game features so you can come back and keep adventuring/progressing.
There are few long games, but they came later. Scrapyard Dog, Midnight Mutants, Commando and Dark Chambers are all pretty long. Also, Fatal Run and Meltdown have password saves. But yeah, would have been cool to have a Zelda.
According the lore, there was supposed to be a Zelda-like game called Time Lords of Xantac. It was Tramiel-ized. Here's the details from Digital Press:
Silly programmer... Time Lords are from Gallifrey!
-
1
-
-
I agree whole heartedly. And in that alternative universe, who knows what would have happened with Philip Morris. At the very least you would have had Morgan testifying instead that video games are no more violent than gummi bears during the mid 90's.
Thanks. I forgot it was Philip Morris and not RJR.
I came across an old article the other night speculating on what Tramiel would do with "Atari". It was written after the "takeover" in 1984. In it, Tramiel mocked Morgan's background. Funny how Morgan despite a lack of a tech background seemed more capable than Tramiel [not counting Morgan's initial freeze on Atari's plans so he could analyze them]. Morgan would've been like the real deal that John Sculley was supposed to have been for Apple.
We do live in the sucky universe. The speculative alt.universe would be a lot more fun.
Considering Manny and others were gone just after the deal, I don't think they were hoping for much in any sort of relationship. It seems more likely they just wanted to clear house.Except in both sales, Warner retained stakes in "Atari Corp" and "Atari Games Corp". A lot of the stories I read during the time - although they may be fabrications - was that Steve Ross was sure that gaming was not a fad and it would be back and he wanted a piece of it when it returned.
Manny seems to have stayed active in the game biz, separate from Warner. For such a level headed guy, it amazes me he seemed to butt heads with Nolan so much in the early days. Was he the person from Warner who insisted Atari make a profit on each VCS sold [and that if it was too "cheap" consumers would think it was of low quality] while Nolan wanted to sell it at cost [or less]? Perhaps there's a lot more to that story...
Much of the talent at least. Most of the advance research group (Atari Corporate Research Labs) had already jumped ship.True. But they could've been tracked down and rehired. Even the limited resources Atari Corp. tracked down the AMY engineers.
They still would have, none of the deals with any of the investors interfered with selling Amiga to anyone. Nor did it give Atari any exclusivity - quite the opposite, Atari had to delay any sort of computer release to give time for Amiga's own computer on the market.Which means circa 1986, NATCO and Commodore could've been marketing computers based on Amiga's IP. However, they probably would've had different operating systems still.
Who knows, haven't been able to get a hold of him for an interview.So you have tried contacting him for an interview? I'd imagine he'd be up for a conversation on what could have been with Atari as long as you didn't ask him about gummi bears.
Couple of things i remember, the ST had more lineage with commodore and nothing in common with any Atari lineage
Except the Atarian responsible for Star Raiders worked extensively on the ST's operating system. That's about as Atari Inc. as you can get. Sure, Amiga Inc. had Jay Miner but they also had RJ Mical from Williams and people from other companies. Miner is basically the Amiga's only lineage link to Atari Inc. Granted, that is a major one but even Apple itself has a much closer lineage link to Atari.
Oops sorry, single market was 1st january 1993
Anyone know the reason why former natco people bought a lawsuit against tramiel and warner's (since i can't be bothered with all that legal crap posted on the natco pdf on curts site)
Because the sale to Tramiel according to their assertions was a violation of their written and oral contracts. Warner persuaded them to sign up for NATCO and as reasonably prudent persons they relied on Warner's assurances. Because of these reliances, they opted not to take the severance packages offered by Warner/NATCO to Atari Inc. employees who didn't wish to remain; instead, they remained and effectively were improperly terminated by TTL/fake Atari Corp. who according to the Atari Inc. employees were illegally running the formerly legal entity NATCO.
I can't see how they would've lost the case. I hope they settled for a pretty penny although reading the PDF, I wish they would've won outright and kicked the Tramiels to the curb.
It's a great read.
-
In some respects, it's rather like comparing Atari Games in the early 90s (or maybe the late 80s) to Atari Inc as a whole in the early 80s (or late 70s), less so comparing Atari Corp with Atari Inc though.
The difference, of course, is that Sega-Sammy is still alive and Atari Games is gone. (and Sega-Sammy is more "sega" than Atari Games was "Atari" after they were folded into TWI and later Midway before completely dying when Midway West was shut down)
Well, the arcades are dead. The only true way to revive the spirit of these formerly great "arcade" companies would be to somehow revive the arcade scene. And that can't be done unless "arcade" machines somehow leapfrog the tech found in modern consoles and computers for at least a full cycle. Short of full holographics, I don't see it happening.
Even the Dave & Buster's atmosphere isn't like the old arcade vibe, especially since most of the games at D&B aren't truly arcade style games...
As for Atari Games, all its IP is in the hands of modern day Warner Bros. Interactive. I'd love to see WBI buy up Infogrames/Atari Interactive Inc. and then we'd finally have all the Atari IP under a single entity again. I wonder if Nolan would stick around considering the suits would again be the seemingly undying "Warner"...
-
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.
While I didn't own any Sega consoles, I had much respect for them; of course, I really respected Sega in the arcade and being my second favorite arcade company behind Atari Games in terms of pushing the envelope while operating in a sea of mediocrity for the most part...
-
Atari hit is post-Warner peak in '87, on the back of the 520 and 1040STs and - more importantly I think - residual sales of the inexpensive to build and support 2600, 7800 and 8-bit computer lines and accompanying software and peripherals. Which is why I've thought for some years now that Atari would have been far better off ignoring the 16-bit computer market entirely and focusing their efforts on videogames. Nintendo did just that, and it made them a colossus.
That gives credence to the argument that Tramiel's early success with Atari had more to do with selling Atari Inc. inventory without the actual overhead Atari Inc. actually accrued... [such as the actual costs of building those items; the warehouses full of Atari 800XLs, for example] and not so much the Atari Corp. designed products...
Here's something I'd like to know. What would have happened if nobody (incl Tramiel) wanted to buy Atari?
The NATCO deal would have gone through, and Warner would just have had to eaten it's stock and debt losses.
NATCO would've been successful. If Warner couldn't divest themselves through an outright sale, they could've spun off the company to the Warner shareholders tax free.
For the life of me, I don't understand why they opted to sell out to Tramiel for promissory notes. It makes no sense. Since Rupert Murdoch had been satisfied/neutralized from his hostile takeover of Warner by that time, maybe Steve Ross was worried the Warner shareholders would vote him and the board out or perhaps get shaken down by yet another corporate raider [icahn, for example] if any vestige of Atari remained in their hands. Or maybe Ross thought the Tramiels would fail spectacularly and their "Atari" would go bankrupt and Warner could buy the pieces up dirt cheap and debt free.
NATCO would've retained the "talent" of Atari Inc. and there wouldn't have been a continuity break that ultimately cost Atari dearly [such as delaying the 7800's release by nearly 2 years, etc.]. Maybe they would've retained the Amiga, or maybe not.
Commodore might've cratered then if they didn't get 100% of Amiga Inc. under the scenario. They wouldn't have had a next-gen platform and would've been stuck with the C64 owners expecting another $100 computer as a follow-up. They certainly would've remained suing TTL.
TTL would've been SOL without Atari Inc.'s manufacturing facilities and distribution network. Which means they would've had to have bought Mindset or the leftover assets of Colecovision/Adam or sold out their computer platform to some other company and exited the market indefinitely.
Had this all happened, NATCO might still be a player in the computer and video game industries today... I bet James Morgan thinks about this quite often since his legacy via RJR is rather tainted thanks to his infamous testimony to Congress over tobacco from the mid 90s...
-
That Christmas for Commodore was horrible. His actions had the affect of
1. Totally pissing off his small dealers that Jack always had a love-hate relationship with.
2. The mass merchants like Kmart had inventory on their shelves that was worth 1/2 it's value. So Commodore had to give free products to them to make up for the difference. (This was common practice with retailers.)
3. And you are right, Commodore gave a $100 trade-in for any computer. So that Christmas season consumers were gobbling up new TIs and Sinclairs at $50 and sending them into Commodore for a $100 rebate.
You forgot #4:
4. Triggered a massive retail purge of video game equipment and software, thus lighting the fuse of the Great Video Game Crash.
Question is, without the Tramiel Commodore price war, would the Great Video Game Crash have happened simply from the glut of bad 2600 games or was it a combination of both factors?
Perhaps Atari Inc. could've withstood the video game console collapse had it still had healthy sales of the A8 computers [and healthy profits] had it not been for Tramiel's insane rule of Commodore biting at the heals of their other market...
-
Actually didn't Atari Games get 70,000 shares for games they licensed to Atari Corp? Exactly what games were these? It was a combination for 2600, 7800, Lynx etc.
There's a note in one of the annual reports that they gave them shares in lieu of payment (which was overdue).
Time Warner actually negotiated the stock deal settlement between Atari Corp and Atari Games Corp. From 1991 through 1994, Time Warner was increasing their holdings in Atari Corp. and courted the Tramiels to sell.
-
Atari would have flattened Nintendo and Sega if it hadn't been for Warner's horrible management of the split. I was speaking in the context of Atari Games being an insignificant facet of the problems caused by the split. (ie the 7800 would have launched in 1984, Morgan's continued plans would have meant for very organized downsizing in the final steps in reorganization -part of that would mean retaining the most integral console programming staff, Atari Games would could have had very friendly relations -or still been part of AInc if Warner hadn't found any buyer at all or sold off AInc intact, the Rainbow Chipset may have been adapted over the ST and ATG may have been properly folded into Atari Corp R&D, the 8-bit computers would have been marketed better in '84 and the planned peripherals would have been released, etc, etc -and more revenue/funding with diminshing debt much sooner so the company would be healthier on all accounts)
I think Atari would've flattened both Nintendo and Sega had Warner retained James Morgan at the head of NATCO. If Warner wanted to get rid of the company, they should've spun it off to the shareholders instead of selling it piecemeal on-the-cheap to Tramiel.
Having seen what the Tramiels did with Atari Corp., I think we can honestly speculate that NATCO would've been a greater success in terms of video games [at the very least] and computers.
A TTL only company that never acquired Atari's assets probably would've cratered on its own. It wouldn't have had any of the existing inventory to sell off to make cash in that regard. Jack would've had to pour more of his own money into the enterprise or competed against Amiga in trying to find a larger company to buy the "ST"...
-
The new one looks quite nice. Though I HATED the Amiga o/s back in the day,just awful. GEM was
easy,people loved it. Gui was still pretty new and it was just plain easier for the public to use. Much more Mac like which was all they had really seen up to that point.
I thought GEM was easier than Intuition back in the day although I didn't care for GEM's default green color [blue was better]. My pro-ST'ness was keen to focus on the limitations of the AmigaOS at the time: virus prone [were Atari ST fans writing them?], too dependent upon Kickstart discs, instituting multitasking on computers that shipped with less RAM than the STs and more crash prone. and the fact that Commodore was manufacturing it. I should've respected it for the abilities it could do with such limitations at the time.
I think AmigaOS/Intuition would have been better had GEM [or GEMlike] been the GUI. The "workbench" metaphor was rather strange compared to the "desktop" and AmigaOS past 3.x seems to have moved to the "desktop" metaphor from what I've seen. And for some reason, the GUI kinda looked as ugly as GEOS. Surprising that the text font for the GUI looked so cartoonish and 8-Bit. For all the talk of the limitations of the ST's standard fonts, they didn't look as cartoonish in my eyes and a wee bit more professional looking...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Pong system on a modern LCD TV?
in Dedicated Systems
Posted
I'm actually surprised Vizio hasn't tried this for their more expensive televisions as a way to distinguish themselves from the cheap Chinese/Korean competitors sold through the likes of Sam's Club and Costco.
But what we really need is an "Atari" branded flat screen with these capabilities.