jbanes

I honestly don't think it would have mattered. For the vast majority of consumers, Atari fell off the map after the 2600. Anything past the 2600 wasn't even a blip on their radar. In effect, you got your wish. For the vast majority of players it was 2600 -> Jaguar. The fundamental problem is that Atari never understood how to adapt to the changing game market. They just kept doing more of what had already failed. Which at least made some money for Tramiel since he got the entire stock of equipment in a buy-1-company-get-10,000,000-pieces-of-hardware-free sale. But once that ultra-cheap stock ran out, Atari didn't know what to do with itself. The Jaguar simply couldn't compete in the market. And it wasn't because of the hardware. (Though being the first major 3D console on the scene with no hand-holding for developers didn't do it any favors.) It was because Atari didn't understand how to cater to its market. They didn't know how to approach them, reach them, or otherwise build games for them. For every Tempest 2000 or Aliens vs. Predator, there were 10 Cybermorphs or Kasumi Ninjas. Without getting into a long, drawn out analysis, Atari had the business side down pat but completely failed on the Movie Videogame Magic needed to inspire their customers. Without a fundamental shift toward games and away from stupid technical statements, Atari never stood a chance.

Don't get me wrong, guys. I have a joypad and I generally like it. It's a hellva lot better than the 7800 sticks. It also works well for 2600 games. But put it up against just about any other gamepad (NES/SMS/TG16/MD/etc.) and it just isn't very good. And that's considering that the NES gamepad was about as basic (and painful!) as you can get.

This is just a standard PC floppy drive formatted with FAT-12 or FAT-16, right? Seems easy enough to get hold of: http://www.computerpartsgalore.com/drives-floppy.htm http://www.computertradeexchange.com/inventory/TEAC.html http://www.codemicro.com/store/product/sd621l/Refurbished http://www.codemicro.com/store/product/d503/Refurbished https://www.upgradebay.com/c1_itemdetail.asp?rid=22&itemid=169078657 The catch is that these things are stupidly expensive and your motherboard needs to have a floppy controller to support them. It sounds like you have the latter problem solved, though I believe there are adapter cables out there if you need them.

That would only matter if consumers saw the XEGS as a computer. I suspect the $250 price tag had the effect of reinforcing prejudices against it rather than convincing consumers to purchase one. Remember, the C64 had already nailed this space. The fact that consumers had abandoned Atari and Commdore computers as serious competitors means that there was a quiet disenfranchisement with cheap computing devices.

Given the quality of Atari sticks after the CX-40, that's not saying much.

The joypad was a REALLY poor substitute for a gamepad. It sucked with the stick screwed in. It sucked with the stick screwed out. And whoever designed the ergonomics simply screwed up. It's as if they watched the early Nintendo commercials a dozen times and didn't pay any attention to how players actually held gamepads!

See, I can live with the Coleco joysticks. And the 5200 joysticks are actually quite usable when they're not disintegrating and have had an eraser taken to the flex circuit. If Atari had used better materials, the 5200 joystick would have been (SHOCK!) pretty decent. 1. I program a wide range of languages from ASM to modern Javascript and everything in between. (e.g. Java, ObjC, PHP, C/C++, etc.) You won't catch a lot of snobbery from me. 2. You answered your own question. You're using modern toolkits to do your programming. That makes the task significantly easier. For Assembly programmers in the 1980's of which many had no real CompSci exposure, the 7800 was painful. And from what can be gleaned from the docs, it's very easy to do vertical scrolling over horizontal scrolling. Which is why I say it was a bad match to platformers. ---- On the subject of the XEGS, I think there's one other point that many folks forget. By the late 1980's, the IBM PC and Mac were nearly synonymous with "home computer". In part this was because PCs and Macs were seen as more "serious" than Ataris and Commodores. (Because everyone knows the only thing those did well is play video games! ) The other aspect was that the NES sealed this idea that video games were "toys" and were thus fundamentally different than computers. The XEGS belonged to a time (i.e. the early 80's) when every game system was trying to also be a computer. Attempting to sell such a system in the late 80's was a really bad idea. Especially when your computer lacks the convenience of built-in drives and a bundled monitor.

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" "Yes, you in the back. Did you have a question?" "Why yes. Yes I do. *ahem* What the HELL Atari?" *blank looks* ---- Of course, the real WTF is that the game is available for every system except the Wii. Why is that a big deal? Two words: Wii Zapper Not good enough? Here's two more words: Sin & Punishment Talk about missing your market.

To throw my hat in the ring... The #1 problem was timing. The 7800 was designed to be a Mofo at arcade games. For when it was designed, it was extremely powerful hardware for home use. Had the home market been interested in playing arcade games at home, the 7800 could have gone on to sport a number of fancy, high-color arcade games from the late 80's. Some of the best Shoot'em Ups of all time were made in the late 80's and would have been more than enough to keep the 7800 in games. The problem is that by the time the 7800 hit the market, Nintendo had already changed it at a fundamental level. The games that players wanted to play didn't look anything like arcade games. Computer games were closer, but they still didn't cut the mustard. The dominant genre was side-scrolling platformers - which couldn't have been a worse match for the 7800 if they had tried! If history had been written a bit differently, Atari would have never released the 7800 when it did. Instead, it would have scrapped the project and gone on to create something more competitive for the home market. Which brings me to problem #2: Atari didn't invest in first party games. I mean, it simply wasn't in their culture. (Before and after Tramiel.) They gave a programmer a limited amount of time and budget and told them to create a game. With little thought paid to the quality, they then shipped it. Nintendo transistioned the industry over to thinking in terms of teams with a game designer laying out a vision and overseeing the quality of the product. IF Atari had somehow gotten around the timing problem, they would have had to invest heavily in first-party titles to compete. Only after those issues do we get to the various other factors. The hardware is easily #3 on the list. 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 think the POKEY issue gets overblown a bit. Yes, it sounds better. Yes, customers care about sound. No, you can't put sound on the back of a box. And the NES wasn't exactly pumping out high fidelity digital symphonies, so the issue probably wasn't as big as many people make it out to be. The joysticks, however... Atari invented the home console joystick. They seemed to think that made them masters at figuring out what was a good controller and what wasn't. (The XEGS commercial is case in point. "Play with a real joystick?" As if it was a feature!) Yet as we follow Atari's history with joysticks, they seem to get progressively worse. The 7800 was by far the poorest excuse for a joystick in history. The long neck combined with the thin body was nothing but a recipe for players to fight with their own torque. The fact that the "world champion" game players looked like dorks using them didn't help. All in all, the 7800 was the wrong console at the wrong time trying to reach the wrong market. It never stood a chance, which is why it's no surprise that it's barely a footnote in history. Or to put it another way, the 7800 was to the NES what the Game.com was to the GameBoy.

FYI, the list of winners is available over at http://www.infinitesands.com

There's a rather massive number of JRPGs showing up on the iOS app store. Quality varies greatly and a large number of them are either untranslated or poorly translated, but they are there. Here's a few off the top of my head: Across Age Chronicles of Inotia Zenonia War of Eustrath HYBRID: Eternal Whisper Crusade Of Destiny Guardian Soul Blade Master: Prelude to Destruction Seed: Rise of Darkness Itarus Dark Shrine Crimson Gem Saga Chaos Rings Axion Ash Elven Chronicles I'll just stop there. Otherwise I'll be at this all night! Suffice it to say that there are a LOT of JRPGs on the app store. And by a lot, I mean easily several times the ones I listed there. I can't really speak to the quality of any of them, though I do have about a dozen that I got cheap or free lying around unplayed. Of the ones I have played, some of them came off as excellent specimens from the hey-day of 2D RPGs while others came across as poor Otaku attempts at RPGs. (It sucks when even the Otaku can draw better than I can. Damn you Japan! ) Many of the games have sequels or are sequels in long running RPG series. @Gabriel - Love the change of avatar. It's so beautiful it almost brings me to tears. Aye, she's a beaut!

Unfortunately, no. (At least not officially. Sometimes you can get a refund if you complain.) However, all apps can be backed up to some other media. So if an app gets pulled, at least you have your original copy. That copy will then work on all devices authorized with your Apple ID.

Speaking as an iPhone user who's anal retentive about obtaining and backing up apps - that sucks. There have been a few instances in the iOS App Store of an app getting pulled and reuploaded as a different app, but they are few and far between. Certainly nothing as bizarre as you describe!

Hmmm... I wonder if something went wrong with the webbrowser? Perhaps a falling out with Opera and a switch to Webkit? It seems likely given that just a week ago the features were still being announced for launch. If that's the case, that would explain the sudden delay. No web browser, no eShop. No eShop, no transfer utility. Honestly, I'd be happy if Nintendo switched to the more standard webkit. At least then we have a chance of all the browser features working correctly. Opera seems to make the browser worse every time they touch it.

3DS. But then, I never really liked the Playstation and its ilk.

*cough*VAT*cough*

That's fine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, there are a few points you might want to consider: 1. The PS2 is still selling at a rather shocking rate. (Approx. 80K/mo. as of 11/2010!) PS2 sales were instrumental in allowing Sony to maintain sufficient funding during the more difficult periods of the PS3's life. 2. The hottest application distribution channel at the moment is the Apple App Store. The runners up include channels such as Steam and XBox Live. These channels are all-digital, which is the writing on the wall for any and all physical media. 3. When the Wii came out, players were willing to spend hundreds of dollars extra to own one. And that was often ON TOP of standing outside in the freezing cold at 4:30 in the morning for a slim chance of getting one. Every. Weekend. 4. Netflix is available everywhere now. PS3, 360, Wii, Apple TV, Boxee, home computers, your new HDTV, and the list goes on. It's hardly a driving feature anymore. (Though some people do see it as an added bonus when purchasing a piece of hardware.) Sorry, I really don't see it. Nintendo peripherals (save for maybe the Power Glove) had a rather poor showing prior to the Wii. And the Power Glove only sold because Lucas said it was "so bad".

Nintendo didn't screw the pooch. Sony and Microsoft overreached. The tech upgrade treadmill was pushed so hard that the latter two companies floated in rivers of red ink to make their consoles possible. Sony even "won" the war against HD-DVD with the PS3 by spending far more money than it will recoup in the lifetime of the format. HD Movies are already going all-digital for customer convenience and greater marketability. Realistically, if Microsoft and Sony had waited and let Nintendo to get the Wii to market, they both would have hurt a lot less. And that's WITH the Wii trouncing their last-gen systems. They could have then introduced the Kinect 360 and PS3 Move systems NOW at an affordable price and completely pushed Nintendo out of the market. Instead, they both have suffered over the last few years. Gamers have been reasonably happy, yes. But Microsoft and Sony have gained an interesting stigma of being too expensive and "only for the hardcore players". (The latter of which is goofy because it's a warping of the marketing term "core gamers" which referred to Sony and Microsoft's CORE MARKET. That's what you get when MARKETING events like the E3 become a public spectacle.) This stigma makes it harder to move systems, much less the new motion add-ons. Of course, I say this with hindsight being 20/20. Trying to see this in the middle of a technology war is a difficult proposition. Only Nintendo successfully got the message, and that's only because they lacked the resources to go toe to toe with two of the biggest electronics/software companies in the world today.

Miners are not cool. Tearing off the deck of a carrier on afterburners while letting loose with three hundred terajoules of energy weaponry? Now THAT is cool*. * And fezzes. Fezzes are cool too.

It's also worth noting that consumers are more willing to pay for electronic gaming devices than they were back then. For better or for worse, the average household allocates significantly more funds to gaming equipment than back in the day. Which is in part because the gaming generation now consists of as many (or more!) adults than children. An interesting side effect of the older crowd is that the "6 and under" warning will have far less effect. I disagree. The steampunk design of the DS Phat didn't have wide enough market appeal. The key point in making the DSLite was not to sell to the same people all over again. (Though it did have that effect to some degree.) The purpose was to make the console appealing to a broader audience. If you recall, the introduction of the slick white plastic of the DSLite (very Mac-like at the time!) coincided with Nintendo's push into more casual gaming. Nintendo sold millions upon millions of the things before introducing the DSi. Now if you want to argue that they should have skipped the DSi and went straight to the 3DS, I would have agreed with that. However, I doubt they would have done as good of a job with the 3DS if not for their experience with the (mostly unloved ) DSi. The DSi XL was just plain weird. Nintendo noted the popularity of the iPhone and decided to make something that "Executives would carry around". Maybe in Japan. But here in the US it was just all wrong. Being bigger made it less attractive to Execs and the maroon color was a rather poor stand-in for faux wood. If Nintendo tried harder to make the things mini-laptops with handwriting recognition, they might have had a chance in that space. Instead they delivered stupid Mario clocks and useless "professional" features through the DSi store that could be had standard on a far more useful smartphone.

Everyone keeps using that word. The word you're looking for is "core". "Core gamers" keep buying Call of Duty Black Ops.

In defense of the N64 controller, it technically dropped to 2 face buttons. The other four buttons were for camera control. (This was before the advent of dual-stick controls.) I realize that's not how the buttons ended up getting used, but Nintendo did make an effort to simplify. A lot of people say that they like the GameCube controller. I don't. But I will again concede that Nintendo tried simplifying a complex situation. The second stick is smaller with the yellow color coding for camera. The 4 face buttons are designed to be felt by touch, with the emphasis placed on a single "main" button. Of course, the asymmetrical Z trigger was a pure and simple mistake; while the pressure-sensitive trigger buttons ended up being less usable than the digital devices they replaced. All in all, the GameCube controller represents the direction that gaming was going. Nintendo finally wizened up with the Wii and said, "what a minute! What can we do with the power of modern hardware that doesn't require more buttons?" And thus the motion controller was born.

Hey! Don't be diss'n my Virtual Boy! The VB was a perfect way to check out from the world. It's only fault? It died on early death. Well... that and it was in all red. That kind of blunted the cool factor a bit... I have a 3DS on preorder. Of course, I have... erm... other plans for it. So we'll see how long it takes before I have games for it. Here's my prediction: On launch, everyone will be uber-impressed by the 3D. So impressed that they'll recommend everyone go out and purchase it. Which will drive a lot of sales. Six months to a year after launch, the 3D will be seen as cool but gimmicky. The device will continue to sell because it can do more than the DS. A year after the launch it will come down in price a bit. Nintendo will expect it to sell millions. But the outlook gets a bit fuzzy here. Jobs will certainly be pushing the latest iPod Touch/iPhone by this point. Consumers will have difficulty choosing between the systems. The deciding factor will be the quality of the online store. Unfortunately, Nintendo's track record on downloadable content has been iffy. So this may be a hard battle for them to win. Personally, I think Nintendo should seriously consider opening up the 3DS to 3D webapps. The ability for anyone to create 3D content for the device would open the doors for a flood of new users. Nintendo would have the opportunity to encroach on iDevice's choke-hold on mobile content. Knowing Nintendo though... *shrug* Meanwhile, the world fails to care enough about the PSP2 for it to do any better than it's predecessor.

Fair 'nuff. I wish I could release it for the iPod Touch, but between the single-screen action and the need for large controls, it just can't fit on the small screen. (That is, "fit" without your big thumbs getting in the way. Not "fit" in terms of pixels. ) That being said, I see posts from AtariAgers who used the promo codes. Which means it falls to them to defend AtariAge's honor! (Or somesuch. )

Whoa. Planetshooter from TouchArcade (aka JohnTA321) just broke 20,600! Come on AtariAgers! Are you telling me that TouchArcade visitors are better hardcore game players than you are?