Brilliant 7800 Promotion.

[CV Gus]

Originally, the 7800 was slated to take on the ColecoVision in late 1984. Just how good or boneheaded an idea this was is being discussed elsewhere.

 

But, as we all know, what really ended up happening was that the 7800 was forced to take on the NES. Just as with the CV, it was a bit one-sided.

 

So, Atari- by now Tramiel Atari- tried the old tactic of a promotion.

 

It worked like this: you would buy certain numbers of 7800 cartridges to be eligible for prizes. Five would earn you a T-shirt! Fifteen would be a FREE CARTRIDGE!

 

And if you bought twenty-five, you could win a trip to CA, to see Atari in action! You'd have to write a 25-word essay, but hey.

 

First, you'd get a poster showing Atari 7800 games, and with it enclose proof of purchases.

 

O.K., so far, so good...until you noticed a few things.

 

First of all, at least three of the initial batch of games were NOT on the poster: Xevious, Galaga, and Pole Position 2. Granted, that last one was a pack-in, so, very well. But those first two, which someone buying a 7800 was very likely to get, were out. Off to a great start, right? But it gets better.

 

That poster had about 28 games on it.

 

And at least a dozen were COMING SOON, so you couldn't even buy them yet!

 

You also had to figure the cost. Where I bought the 7800, games were $20.00 each (ignore tax for a moment). Therefore, you'd have to spend $100.00 for a crummy T-shirt, and $300.00 for a bonus $20.00 cartridge. And did I mention that Summer and Winter Games were NOT a part of this deal, and they could substitute your choice for something else? So- assuming you had 15 games, only 11 were eligible.

 

Adding insult to the injury was the fact that this was effective as of October 1st, 1988, and it ended September 30th, 1989. So for that last stage, you needed to get 25 games in 12 months. And odds were, stores never carried them all: even Kay-Bee and Toys `R Us where I lived never did. 15 games was unusual.

 

If, as several people here have said, the 7800 was available in 1987, then any early purchase was...well, you were out of luck.

 

So this was really a stupid promotion. The NES got a jump on the 7800, and as some here have said, overall the NES was superior. It had the games, and the licenses.

 

Why, then, did Atari have such a promotion? Did they think people were that dumb? Or that the 7800 would be so popular that people would gobble up those games, even assuming they liked ALL of them (which would have been most unusual)?

 

Why didn't Atari simply have that trip-prize open to ALL 7800 owners? The prize (I think there were two such trips offered, one in spring of 1989- meaning that to get the earlier one, you had to buy even faster, which may not even have been possible!) would have been the same, except that you didn't have to buy all of those games. As for the free game, why 15, instead of maybe 6 or 7, with a longer period of time allowed?

 

Isn't the idea behind such a thing to draw people to your product? You have to show some generosity for it to work, and Atari was not doing that.

Edited October 8, 2008 by CV Gus

[Crazyace]

Maybe they expected more games to come out

[Trip_Cannon]

LINK!

[Crazyace]

According to the small print the games could be 2600 , XE, or 7800 - I think the '25' was aimed at 2600 or XE - as the offer was a 7800 system for 25 dollars ( A bit pointless if you had 25 7800 games )

[Atarifever]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I was a kid I didn't even know people with 25 games for a supported system. Generally you had 5 or 10, and you rented and traded/ borrowed the rest.

[RodLightning]

LINK!

 

 

Thanks for linking the contest poster! I have a copy put away somewhere but I haven't seen it in years. If I remember correctly, the poster was too big for a standard flat bed scanner. A digital image will last longer.

 

-

[suaiden]

Originally, the 7800 was slated to take on the ColecoVision in late 1984. Just how good or boneheaded an idea this was is being discussed elsewhere.

 

But, as we all know, what really ended up happening was that the 7800 was forced to take on the NES. Just as with the CV, it was a bit one-sided.

 

Why are you always so anti-Atari in your posts? (Following the ridiculous 7800 vs CV argument, which from a technical standpoint is totally worthless.) I just bought my 7800 a week ago. We like it. I'm quite proud of it.

 

Is this forum being attached by subversive Cabbage Patch dolls or something?

[Shawn]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I was a kid I didn't even know people with 25 games for a supported system. Generally you had 5 or 10, and you rented and traded/ borrowed the rest.

 

Bingo. I had maybe a total of 25 games by the time I stopped playing the 2600 in the late 80's when I whored over to the NES fulltime. Only reason I eventually had that many is cause I got my cousins games after he stopped playing atari right when the NES came out so in a sense I had 2 collections. Some where doubles also on really popular games like asteroids,ect.

[CV Gus]

Originally, the 7800 was slated to take on the ColecoVision in late 1984. Just how good or boneheaded an idea this was is being discussed elsewhere.

 

But, as we all know, what really ended up happening was that the 7800 was forced to take on the NES. Just as with the CV, it was a bit one-sided.

 

Why are you always so anti-Atari in your posts? (Following the ridiculous 7800 vs CV argument, which from a technical standpoint is totally worthless.) I just bought my 7800 a week ago. We like it. I'm quite proud of it.

 

Is this forum being attached by subversive Cabbage Patch dolls or something?

 

 

Anti Atari?

 

Hey, man, I got an Atari 2600 when it first came out!

 

And I was one of the minority of dopes who bought an Atari 7800 back in 1988 instead of an NES!

 

And in 1997/1998 I went twelve miles one-way to a town-wide garage sale to pick up an Atari 5200, which had busted controller plugs and switchbox- do you know how long it took me to get it up and running?

 

And did you fail to notice that I not only built a working DIGITAL CONTROLLER for that 5200, but also- with Big O's help- posted the tech plans so anyone could do it? Or how I built a working paddle controller for the 5200, just for a good game of Super Breakout and Pole Position?

 

For someone who is "anti-Atari," I sure seem to be interested in the games and in building hardware for Atari systems.

 

 

The whole point of my CV vs. 7800 post was to determine if the 7800 effort- which was clearly planned in 1983 (what else did Atari think they were going to be up against in late 1984- they had dumped the 5200, so that just left the CV)- was a stupid idea. Try to get this- if so, then the 7800 was doomed even without the Tramiels! I'm actually NOT blaming the Tramiels for it!

 

But the fact is, the CV outsold the 5200. The 5200 was doomed in 1983, since Atari had decided to dump it. The 7800 was not all that much better than the CV, so- by extension- it was not that much better than the 5200, either.

 

And all you have to do is look at that promotional effort to see that it really was incredibly stupid. No wonder Wall Street had to be bailed out to the tune of 700 billion dollars (most of which is foreign money, so now foreigners own countless mortages, by the by). American businesses haven't been able to do much of anything right for decades now!

Edited October 11, 2008 by CV Gus

[CV Gus]

And notice that the games had to be purchased within a particular time frame. A year.

 

I assume from the fine print that the trip was for the owner of a 7800, too.

 

The 25 dollar 7800 was just too easy. I had always assumed that it was a typo. If you had one, why would you want another (and only at a discount at that)? Even a different system?

[suaiden]

Anti Atari?....

For someone who is "anti-Atari," I sure seem to be interested in the games and in building hardware for Atari systems.

 

 

The whole point of my CV vs. 7800 post was to determine if the 7800 effort- which was clearly planned in 1983 (what else did Atari think they were going to be up against in late 1984- they had dumped the 5200, so that just left the CV)- was a stupid idea. Try to get this- if so, then the 7800 was doomed even without the Tramiels! I'm actually NOT blaming the Tramiels for it!

 

Duly noted on the work you've done for your video game. I too owned an Atari 2600 and an Intellivision, my cousin down the block owned a 5200 and then a NES, I owned an SMS, a Sega Genesis, and these days we use our computer and a PS2 (I bought my 7800 this past month). I had friends with a CV. That said, it appeared the whole point of your post was that the CV was actually a stronger *machine* than the 7800 which is absolute nonsense (perhaps you mean the point of *this* post, however). As a fan of "non-establishment" game systems (of which I do *not* count the 2600) I generally did not take the public's declaration that something was better at their word. And I was told from childhood the CV was superior.

 

But the simple fact is, I am not sure why. And so comparing it to the 7800 was, for someone who has been playing all these games as they came out, sort of offensive to my intelligence.

 

Even without delving heavily into the technicals, the CV was a system which was designed to create its screens primarily using character mapping. I am not a programmer. I dealt with learning about sprites on a Commodore 64, and it helped a lot in terms of understanding relative sizes and widths. The CV had a total of 32 sprites which could not break a 16X16 character map but could exist in different sizes (similar to what a C-64 could do with double sized sprites).

 

Let us see if I can help by comparing the two versions of Donkey Kong to help make this clear. You wanted a side-by side comparison, and I kept quiet when you got into the fight with that Vigo fellow. I am going to put them side by side. Then I wish to explain them.

 

 

Now, of course, the side-by-side's been done, you can say one thing and I can say another. But let's look at simple facts from the pictures.

 

1) Sprites are monochrome, as you mentioned you are aware of. Thus, the barrels in CV DK are not brown/black-- they are actually hollow. By comparison, the barrels are animated and tri-color on the 7800, something typical for a third-generation video game.

2) The system used to make the girders in the CV DK do not allow the 6 levels of the board to show, but 5.

3) In actual fact, there are currently only seven colors on the screen in the CV DK. The limitation is not something that can be "faked" or worked around through software because of the low pixel count.

4) The level of detail on each character is another indisputable fact. In actual fact, considering the limitations, the CV DK artists did a better job on DK than the 7800 programmers. But the detail is obvious.

5) Soundwise there is simply no comparison. Although the 7800 version has some of the worst sound of any game I've heard on a 7800 (I have 20 games, BTW), it is still virtually abuzz with sound; by comparison, the second-generation CV version is fairly quiet. While it seems at times a waste of resources at least there are resources to waste!

 

Now, I am not attacking the CV. I am simply dealing with an indisputable fact. The CV was a very typical 2nd generation system, perhaps in some ways better than others. But the fact that Atari made the 7800 early and then didn't release it doesn't mean that it was of the same quality. The Neo-Geo was *way* ahead of its time when it first came out.

 

These two systems just aren't comparable.

 

And all you have to do is look at that promotional effort to see that it really was incredibly stupid. No wonder Wall Street had to be bailed out to the tune of 700 billion dollars (most of which is foreign money, so now foreigners own countless mortages, by the by). American businesses haven't been able to do much of anything right for decades now!

 

That was not American business who got us into this crisis. It was an unscrupulous and unregulated banking system from the Fed Reserve on down. I hope the Fed gets dismantled (per Ron Paul's advice) because if not we are in serious trouble.

[Mord]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I was a kid I didn't even know people with 25 games for a supported system. Generally you had 5 or 10, and you rented and traded/ borrowed the rest.

 

Bingo. I had maybe a total of 25 games by the time I stopped playing the 2600 in the late 80's when I whored over to the NES fulltime. Only reason I eventually had that many is cause I got my cousins games after he stopped playing atari right when the NES came out so in a sense I had 2 collections. Some where doubles also on really popular games like asteroids,ect.

 

Hmm. For me I think I had about 45 games for the 2600 by the time I moved on to the NES. Never did see a 5200 or 7800 for sale back in the day where I grew up. By the time I finished with the NES I had about 25 to 30, maybe more. I'd be hard pressed to remember which ones tho. Only reason I remember how many 2600 games I had was because I explicitedly counted them one day years after I had moved on to the NES when I pulled the 2600 out of the closet one day.

 

But you're right, I traded/borrowed far more games than I actually owned on the 2600. Having a lot of games helped with making trades. Same with the NES later on, far more trading/borrowing and by then renting than I actually owned. Luckily a lot of people liked Adventure Island for some reason, so I was able to trade for other games farily easily.

 

But for some reason, that changed with the SNES and later. I didn't buy as many games (I only owned probably 5 SNES games myself) but rented most anything I wanted to play. Didn't trade/borrow much at all from others by then.

[xZanU]

Sounds like a good promotion... If you are the greedy company : ) Otherwise for the end user it did not make much sense to go for something like this. I was never aware of the promotion when I got the 7800 and I still bought games. I stopped playing the 7800 when my power supply died. Had no way to get a new one either at the time, but I did get a Sega Master System (and an Atari XE).

[Atari2008]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I was a kid I didn't even know people with 25 games for a supported system. Generally you had 5 or 10, and you rented and traded/ borrowed the rest.

 

Bingo. I had maybe a total of 25 games by the time I stopped playing the 2600 in the late 80's when I whored over to the NES fulltime. Only reason I eventually had that many is cause I got my cousins games after he stopped playing atari right when the NES came out so in a sense I had 2 collections. Some where doubles also on really popular games like asteroids,ect.

 

This is true. The NES was my first system and looking back I don't think I owned more than 10 games for it. Games were expensive and so one game had to last a long time. And yes I rented far more than I owned, going to the video store and getting an NES game for the weekend was routine.

[Atari2008]

Now, I am not attacking the CV. I am simply dealing with an indisputable fact. The CV was a very typical 2nd generation system, perhaps in some ways better than others. But the fact that Atari made the 7800 early and then didn't release it doesn't mean that it was of the same quality. The Neo-Geo was *way* ahead of its time when it first came out.

 

These two systems just aren't comparable.

 

This is something I've been thinking for a long time, and that's that the 7800 is more similar to other 3rd generation consoles like the NES and SMS, and the Colecovision is more similar to 2nd generation systems like the Intellivision. The CV is a great system, was awesome in its time, and as a result ended up with a great software library that people enjoy today. Truth be told, I enjoy the CV's game library far more than I do the 7800's, but this doesn't deny the technical superiority of the 7800. I mean the 7800 could have competed better against the NES if Atari's programmers were pushed to do so...the CV would've had no shot against the NES. The 7800 could pull of games like Scrapyard Dog and Midnight Mutants, I doubt the CV could do those. Unfortunately, given the situation at Atari at the time, the 7800 didn't end up with as memorable a library as the 2600 or 5200.

 

For me though the more important thing is enjoying what these systems have to offer and what's to come with new homebrews. This rehashing of the past doesn't really seem productive and involves so many what if's, who's to say what would've happened. I'm just enjoying these classic system and what they still have to offer now.

[suaiden]

For me though the more important thing is enjoying what these systems have to offer and what's to come with new homebrews. This rehashing of the past doesn't really seem productive and involves so many what if's, who's to say what would've happened. I'm just enjoying these classic system and what they still have to offer now.

 

Frankly, I'd like to see Street Fighter 2 on a 7800. If it could be done (badly) on a Commodore 64 or (somewhat better) on an SMS, I imagine it could be done well on a 7800. I wish I could program.

[DracIsBack]

Frankly, I'd like to see Street Fighter 2 on a 7800. If it could be done (badly) on a Commodore 64 or (somewhat better) on an SMS, I imagine it could be done well on a 7800. I wish I could program.

 

For me, that falls in the realm of "cool achievement but not actually fun to play".

 

I have Mortal Kombat on the SMS. I find it an incredible technical achievement. But I find it about as much fun as watching paint dry to play.

 

Ditto for Double Dragon on the 2600. It looks great compared to other 2600 titles. It's just not all that fun to play, IMO.

[suaiden]

For me, that falls in the realm of "cool achievement but not actually fun to play".

 

I have Mortal Kombat on the SMS. I find it an incredible technical achievement. But I find it about as much fun as watching paint dry to play.

 

Agreed; I dislike MK on the SMS. But SFII on the SMS, I thought, was fun. The fun factor has to definitely be there, but it would definitely be worthwhile, lacking a cartridge issue of Missing in Action.

[Crazyace]

The 7800 actually doesn't come off too badly against the NES version of Donkey Kong either.

[suaiden]

Well, you have to remember that the CV version of DK was by no means the best example of what could have been done.

Take DKjr. It had three screens.

 

It's the best example because it's a real one. Both these games were released fairly early in the system's lifecycles. Both these games operated within the standard parameters. EXCEPT that the Coleco version was worked on a great deal more because the game was meant to sell the system; it was originally packaged with it. To say "by no means the best example" is offensive to the historical record because it was *precisely* that game which was billed as a showcase of the CV's abilities. I think the reason these discussions dragged on so long is because no one cut you off at the outset. The above statement is nonsense. Total nonsense. I could easily say that the the 7800 version of DK was a total joke. The point is it still looked better than the CV version because there were *more technical resources* available on the system, not because it was a "bad example".

 

Let me see if I can make this clearer. With coprocessors and a hard drive and RAM expansion you can get a Commodore 64 to connect to the Internet with GUI browser. One says "amazing". No. Not amazing. When you jack up a machine way past its normal capabilities, it is now a custom machine. You or the other Coleco guy mentioned 1 meg cartridges on a CV like this is a big deal. It isn't. With enough time and patience I could jack up a 2600 to one meg. It's not the way the system naturally ran, however.

 

Yet, I also have a four-screen version. Rough around the edges, true, but that was the result of rushing it out. And I have played a complete NES version of DK, although nobody else here seems to know anything about it. Yet this was NOT for the Super NES.

 

Rushing it out? It was showcased on a CV commercial which caused it to sell over a million systems. It was not "rushed out". It was perhaps the most tweaked out game and advertised of its time before it went to market until the 2600 Ms Pac Man.

 

It's true that the 7800 version would enjoy advantages over the CV (note- since the Intellivision was considered a second-generation system years ago, I typically refer to the CV and 5200 as third-generation).

 

Then you are wrong-- to quote Ronald Reagan: "there you go again". All those systems shared space on store shelves. I remember well. There was never any question of whether one game system was more "advanced", just better made. They are all the same generation, with the same expectations. Thus, when Intellivision's DK flopped people smelled a programmers' conspiracy. For that matter the Blue Sky Rangers noted somewhere on their website that Burgertime was, in part, an answer to Donkey Kong. And Burgertime, graphically and soundwise, on the Intellivision, was more detailed and colorful than CV DK. These were not separate generation systems, so I will stop you. If you "typically" mislabel videogame systems I will typically answer "there you go again".

 

Just as it did the NES. But, if versions of games like Mr. Do!, Subroc, Buck Rogers, DK and DKjr., etc. came out using the CV's abilities at least pretty well, they would have been comparable to the 7800 versions. Certainly Illusions,

 

An Intellivision game....

 

Pepper 2,

 

You can't possibly expect me to respond to a game that can be 80% character mapped, can you?

 

Matt Patrol (NOO-OOOOOO-OOOOO...not Matt Patrol again, CV GUS!!!!! ), and Bump `N Jump were good examples...

 

While Bump'N'Jump was graphically slightly better on the CV (and that itself is a subject of debate), the Intellivision version ran quite well. I am biased. I was addicted to that game.

 

and look at Opcode's CV games! Not as good in ways the 7800 could do, of course- have I ever denied it?- but not good enough to win over CV owners, or to soothe angry, abandoned 5200 owners. Hell, I was a CV owner, yet I felt what Atari did was wrong!

 

I wish I understood your logic. You are getting dogmatic about things that aren't even technical. You say that the CV and 7800 are essentially similar, third generation systems. Then you say you never said such a thing. Homebrews are homebrews. Whether Opcode likes it or not (and his work, from what I see in screenshots is amazing) he is a homebrewer. You have the advantage of hindsight. Period.

 

It's not just a matter of is it better, but how much better. If it's not much better, than it was doomed to failure. And if it wasn't able to outdo the CV by much, then what chance did the Tramiels think it had against the established powerhouse called the NES?

 

I bought my 7800 with the intent of buying a 3rd generation system I missed out on. I would know if I was buying a 2600/Intel/CV. I did not. So this question of "can't outdo the CV by much" is silly. And the simple fact is it failed against the NES for a few reasons, not the least was their awful advertising after the crash (would anyone like an Atari attack?)

 

 

Agreed- the Fed isn't even a part of the government. But they merely supplied the weapons; nobody told Big Business to screw up everything, or send to jobs overseas, or to sell out to communist China. Reagan's deregulation frenzy of the 1980's doomed us to destruction.

 

Unfortunately, Ron Paul isn't going to be President.

 

Once again, Reagan didn't establish the Fed. To that end he did some good actually; by beginning the regular reissue of legal tender currency in gold (but giving them nominal values).

[+doctorclu]

LINK!

 

Wow!! The 7800 looks cool!! I want it!

[+Mitch]

Please try to stay on topic and don't discuss politics here. Thanks.

 

Mitch

[suaiden]

Please try to stay on topic and don't discuss politics here. Thanks.

 

Mitch

 

Hey, I didn't start it.

 

I am forced to take back my request to see R-Type on a 7800, since Sirius is pretty similar but really difficult. I'd LOVE to see Sirius on a CV though. I have a feeling it would look something like this.

 

 

OH!

[CV Gus]

Are you "sirius?"

[Crazyace]

This is how Rtype looks on MSX - so I expect a CV version would be similar...

 

It actually looks really nice in still shots - but the scrolling really ruins it for me. ( I dont actually mind the aliens moving on character boundaries for certain attack waves - it's better than flickering )

 

Rtype on 7800 would probally look like the C64 version ...

- as the sprite resolution matches