Comparing the NES and 7800 on a technical level

[DracIsBack]

 

I haven't programmed anything for the 7800, but have looked into it. I know the NES inside and out. On a technical level, the NES just stomps it

 

"Stomps" seems excessive to me based on what I've seen and played on both. Happily conceding the NES has some strengths, but it's not like you're comparing Hawaii in the summer to Alaska in the winter here ...

[Major_Tom_coming_home]

Out of curiosity, is my understanding of the 7800 vs NES hardware correct? The conclusion I have drawn for myself is that the 7800 is more capable when it comes to having a lot of moving objects on screen at the same time, while the NES is better at scrolling. This basically means the 7800 was great for games such as Robotron 2084 while the NES was better at Super Mario / Castlevania type games. Of course, at this point video games and consumer demand had moved on past arcade style offerings in favor of deeper experiences that were totally different from anything found in the arcade. I can't help but think Atari just didn't 'get' that the world had moved on and yet another slightly better looking version of MS. Pac-Man wasn't going to cut it any more. The only 7800 game I can think of off the top of my head that had the right idea of where to go was Midnight Mutants.

[mbd30]

Out of curiosity, is my understanding of the 7800 vs NES hardware correct? The conclusion I have drawn for myself is that the 7800 is more capable when it comes to having a lot of moving objects on screen at the same time, while the NES is better at scrolling. This basically means the 7800 was great for games such as Robotron 2084 while the NES was better at Super Mario / Castlevania type games. Of course, at this point video games and consumer demand had moved on past arcade style offerings in favor of deeper experiences that were totally different from anything found in the arcade. I can't help but think Atari just didn't 'get' that the world had moved on and yet another slightly better looking version of MS. Pac-Man wasn't going to cut it any more. The only 7800 game I can think of off the top of my head that had the right idea of where to go was Midnight Mutants.

 

You can see how clueless they were by the inclusion of the very bland Pole Position II as a pack-in title.

[high voltage]

7800 had Pro Controllers, NES had some messed-up wrong way around control pads, made for Japanese guys

[Jinks]

Nes had a horrible cart port design that made it not read games and they made games that flickered so bad they invented a seizure warning label for video games.

Most bosses were 50% invisible.

[Trebor]

Out of curiosity, is my understanding of the 7800 vs NES hardware correct? The conclusion I have drawn for myself is that the 7800 is more capable when it comes to having a lot of moving objects on screen at the same time, while the NES is better at scrolling. This basically means the 7800 was great for games such as Robotron 2084 while the NES was better at Super Mario / Castlevania type games. Of course, at this point video games and consumer demand had moved on past arcade style offerings in favor of deeper experiences that were totally different from anything found in the arcade. I can't help but think Atari just didn't 'get' that the world had moved on and yet another slightly better looking version of MS. Pac-Man wasn't going to cut it any more. The only 7800 game I can think of off the top of my head that had the right idea of where to go was Midnight Mutants.

 

The NES is absolutely more efficient when it comes to scrolling.

 

While not as efficient, the 7800 is no slouch either. The parallax scrolling sky/clouds of Choplifter! The parallax scrolling in the bonus rounds of Tower Toppler. Desert Falcon has fantastic isometric scrolling with often a large amount of sprites on the screen; especially with the "speed-up" boost, it is very impressive how lightning fast the screen scrolls with a barrage of sprites. There's the silky smooth scrolling of Scrapyard Dog, and of course the awesome and abundant parallax scrolling found in the homebrew Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest, including numerous times containing several sprites moving without flicker simultaneously. Last but not least, the Toki and Sirius prototypes. Those games and more prove how capable the 7800 is regarding scrolling.

 

The greater issue is Atari catching on too little/too late with game releases due to a variety of reasons, along with little to no resources towards them. Nonetheless, it was 2-3 years behind to release similar, albeit meager quantity, offerings to the competition. It's not that the 7800 cannot handle a Punch-Out!!, Castlevania, Zelda, Final Fantasy/Dragon Warrior-type game...It just didn't deliver one. 1987 was a banner year for the NES. A considerable number of the 7800's better titles didn't hit until post 1987. By then, it was similar to the 7800 shooting a water gun at a raging inferno that was the NES. Sadly, it's not as if the 7800 came with a Super Soaker, it was a handful of good/great game worthy shots, a year, which went almost entirely unnoticed.

 

The majority of the 7800 library is at 64K or less in size, while the majority of the NES library is 160K or greater in size. That alone speaks volumes. The largest 7800 games are only 144K (2 of them). While size isn't everything, as some of the system's best and worst are 16K thru 128K, it can make a difference in polish and adding to an already good/great game. Even with the relatively small amount of resources utilized for the 7800, they were often poorly managed. Nintendo supported the NES in spades, managed and provided ample resources very well, and it shows; hence its well-known legacy.

[Lost Dragon]

Steve Golson interview, RetroGamer magazine volume II, Issue II, from the 7800 article by Peter Latimer:

 

Steve:Graphically the 7800 is probably a bit better than the NES, but not quite up to the standard of the Master System.In terms of sound, it was behind both.'

 

 

'The 7800 could implement an arcade game better than the NES, but Nintendo wasn't trying that; it didn't do Donkey Kong over and over.instead it did Mario platform games.'

[DracIsBack]

 

You can see how clueless they were by the inclusion of the very bland Pole Position II as a pack-in title.

 

I dunno. At the time when I bought the 7800, I was pretty impressed with Pole Position II as were people I showed it too. it *LOOKED* really good and was a big step up from the 2600 I had before. My NES owning friend thought it looked in the same visual league as his games.

 

The biggest issue for me with the game was it only had four tracks.

[DracIsBack]

 

The NES is absolutely more efficient when it comes to scrolling.

 

While not as efficient, the 7800 is no slouch either. The parallax scrolling sky/clouds of Choplifter! The parallax scrolling in the bonus rounds of Tower Toppler. Desert Falcon has fantastic isometric scrolling with often a large amount of sprites on the screen; especially with the "speed-up" boost, it is very impressive how lightning fast the screen scrolls with a barrage of sprites. There's the silky smooth scrolling of Scrapyard Dog, and of course the awesome and abundant parallax scrolling found in the homebrew Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest, including numerous times containing several sprites moving without flicker simultaneously. Last but not least, the Toki and Sirius prototypes. All prove how capable the 7800 is in holding its own in that area.

 

The greater issue is Atari catching on too little/too late with game releases due to a variety of reasons, along with little to no resources towards it. Nonetheless, it was 2-3 years behind to provide similar, albeit meager quantity, offerings to the competition.

 

Thank you for the clarification in your post.

 

Too many times, discussions like this get posted and then inevitably someone later posts "I hear the 7800 can't scroll" or "I hear the 7800 can't play a Super Mario type game".

 

There's a difference between "can't do it" and "typically didn't" or "it's harder to pull off".

 

Whatever the differences between PPU and MARIA in terms of strengths and weaknesses, I always go back to the same benchmark. Whenever I showed the 7800 to people at the time it was new and later, the response was almost always two fold.

 

1. "Atari? That's so old"

 

Then I'd turn the 7800 on, playing something like Commando or Alien Brigade. This was followed by

 

2. "Oh - was that a competitor they made to the Nintendo?"

 

 

 

It's not that the 7800 cannot handle a Punch-Out!!, Castlevania, Zelda, Final Fantasy/Dragon Warrior-type game...It just didn't deliver one. 1987 was a banner year for the NES. The really good non-"classic" Arcade titles didn't hit the 7800 until 1989 and later. By then, it was similar to the 7800 shooting a water gun at a raging inferno that was the NES. Sadly, it's not as if the 7800 came with a Super Soaker, it was just 1, 2, maybe 3 shots, that went almost entirely unnoticed.

 

Indeed. In fact, some of those game types have been made as demos on the 7800. But as you note, 1987 was a banner year for the NES and Atari's response to the NES's banner year was to be distracted by releasing the XE game system.

 

By the time that had petered out and they turned attention back to the 7800 and making more competitive games like Commando, the NES had surged ahead further and the 7800 found itself with less shelf space because of the Genesis and Turbografx arrival.

 

I find - even to this day - many people who know the 7800 don't know about the later titles like Midnight Mutants and Alien Brigade. I guess it makes sense if they weren't really distributed much.

 

 

 

The majority of the 7800 library is at 64K or less in size, while the majority of the NES library is 160K or greater in size. That alone speaks volumes. The largest 7800 games are only 144K (2 of them). While size isn't everything, as some of the system's best and worst are 128K, it can make a difference in polish and adding to an already good/great game. Even with the relatively small amount of resources utilized for the 7800, they were often poorly managed. Nintendo really supported the NES in abundance, managed and provided ample resources very well, and it shows; hence its legacy.

The size issue/polish bothered me then and now. One of the most infamous examples is Double Dragon. While I find the game fun, it's a very flawed conversion. And it's often used as a comparison of how 'weak' the 7800 is compared to the NES and the SMS because the game is on all three systems.

 

The problem is I don't think that's remotely as good a conversion as can be done on the 7800. It smacks of rushed development. The Abobos in the game are the same sprites as the wrestlers in Title Match Pro Wrestling. The cartridge is only 128K when it's 256K on the other too systems. There's no additional hardware in the 7800 cart, but is in the NES cart. Whole elements are cut out of the game for space reasons. And the developer is the same house that brought us Fight Night and Title Match Pro Wrestling. Though admittedly, I find this at least a bit better effort from them.

 

But alas, there's no bizarro universe where Nintendo's top software team is given 7800 hardware and told "go make a three megabit game over the course of the next year with the same budget as spent on Super Mario 3. Extra RAM and POKEY on the cartridge are no problem".

[mbd30]

 

I dunno. At the time when I bought the 7800, I was pretty impressed with Pole Position II as were people I showed it too. it *LOOKED* really good and was a big step up from the 2600 I had before. My NES owning friend thought it looked in the same visual league as his games.

 

The biggest issue for me with the game was it only had four tracks.

 

I mean, it's not a terrible game, just not that exciting. It would have been more impressive had it been released a few years earlier rather than competing against the NES in 1987. Rad Racer was released the same year... and um, yeah.

[DracIsBack]

 

I mean, it's not a terrible game, just not that exciting. It would have been more impressive had it been released a few years earlier rather than competing against the NES in 1987. Rad Racer was released the same year... and um, yeah.

 

I don't disagree. I thought it looked good. But it had that limited scope that so many early 7800 games had. Of the original 7800 titles, I wonder if Xevious might have been a better pack in?

Edited May 27, 2018 by DracIsBack

[mbd30]

 

I don't disagree. I thought it looked good. But it had that limited scope that so many early 7800 games had. Of the original 7800 titles, I wonder if Xevious might have been a better pack in?

 

Looking at the launch titles, Ms. Pac-Man would have been okay. At least it would have been a more universally appealing title.

 

Or Ballblazer to show off the system's graphics capabilities.

Edited May 27, 2018 by mbd30

[Trebor]

...

1. "Atari? That's so old"

 

Then I'd turn the 7800 on, playing something like Commando or Alien Brigade. This was followed by

 

2. "Oh - was that a competitor they made to the Nintendo?"

...

I find - even to this day - many people who know the 7800 don't know about the later titles like Midnight Mutants and Alien Brigade. I guess it makes sense if they weren't really distributed much.

 

That is indeed often the problem. Many who are truly trying to be objective about the system, can't help but think: Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede, Galaga, Dig-Dug, and or whip out that horrid port of Double Dragon, and reason:

 

"Wow that's it, those games encompass the system's complete capabilities - older classic arcade games. Maybe a few newer Arcade titles too, but it really couldn't manage them."

 

While I love the classics when ported well, heck even under the Sega Genesis, Ms. Pac-Man is one of the console's best sellers, there absolutely needed to be more, especially back in the mid-to-late 1980s considering what the competition provided. Technologically the 7800 could do more, but resources weren't leveraged as intended, for a plethora of reasons.

[DracIsBack]

 

That is indeed often the problem. Many who are truly trying to be objective about the system, can't help but think: Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede, Galaga, Dig-Dug, and or whip out that horrid port of Double Dragon, and reason:

 

"Wow that's it, those games encompass the system's complete capabilities - older classic arcade games. Maybe a few newer Arcade titles too, but it really couldn't manage them."

 

If you look at the ads for Double Dragon, Activision didn't themselves do the system any favours. They declared "The best ever graphics and sound for the Atari" right in the ad. My NES owning best friend saw that and laughed.

 

Of course, later I pulled up the ad for Alien Brigade and he shut up.

 

He was also pretty obsessed with Life Force and declared, "The 7800 could never play a game like that ..."

 

In fairness, there wasn't an answer to give him until decades later when the Sirius prototype was found.

 

[Trebor]

...The problem is I don't think that's remotely as good a conversion as can be done on the 7800...

Absolutely, it is not even close to as good of a possible conversion. Just view the update - adding POKEY but staying within the limited confines of the original graphics template and game programming, look how much better it could have been:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnPHU0Bp6DI

 

Granted, the 7800 could do even better than that; nonetheless, the abomination received should not have been.

[8th lutz]

 

You can see how clueless they were by the inclusion of the very bland Pole Position II as a pack-in title.

Atari could've done worse than Pole Position ii as a Pack-in considering some of the other Launch titles such as Asteroids. Asteroids was a good game, but it not the game to showcase a game console as a Pack-in even in 1984.

 

The 7800 for some of its launch titles had the problem of being released on a different Atari game console and wouldn't be ideal as a pack-in game.

Edited May 27, 2018 by 8th lutz

[mbd30]

7800 had Pro Controllers, NES had some messed-up wrong way around control pads, made for Japanese guys

 

Ironically Europe got the NES style gamepads while Americans only got the joysticks.

 

What was Atari thinking?

[Serguei2]

The other thing is not mentioned is I don't remember which stores sell 7800 in 1980s.

 

There were NESs available everywhere.

 

Maybe if Atari brings 7800 in all stores, the 780 would be more successful.

 

It's more like the same issue than Lynx: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/278521-so-why-isnt-the-lynx-more-popular/

 

Atari systems are not available on all stores where NES are.

Edited May 27, 2018 by Serguei2

[DracIsBack]

That's how I remember it as well. In Ottawa, Canada, the NES was *EVERYWHERE*. The most common Atari system in stores was the 2600jr. Typically, if stores carried another system by Atari, it was "one of".

 

For example, K Mart had the 7800 and the early games (1986-7). Zellers, for a while, had the XE Game System too. Consumers Distributing only had the 2600 JR. Toy City and Toys R Us had the 2600, 7800 and XE and some of the later games for all of them. The specialty Atari shops like Chiang Computers only had the A8 computers and software.

 

I used to have to take a pile of buses to get certain games because not all stores carried them. Toy City had Tower Toppler, while K Mart had Karateka and Toys R Us had Double Dragon and the Absolute games.

 

In contrast, the NES was in every store that carried video games and the SMS was in places that wanted a minimum of one alternative on shelf.

[Trebor]

What was Atari thinking?

 

In 1984? Remember to reason back then. Even if considering the 'real' release year of 1986 for the 7800 system, there were already thousands upon thousands of NTSC 7800 systems already boxed with joysticks. It is still pre NES/SMS '85/'86 exposure to the masses and pre-NES '87 popularity. The move of console based systems to transitions from joysticks to gamepads happened during the NES reign.

 

Even then, Nintendo had to concede to the still popular joystick with the NES Advantage, as did SMS with their Power Stick.

 

Gamepads became a (dominant) thing in America after the NES took off, not prior to it.

 

The PAL 7800's were released after 1986.

[mbd30]

 

In 1984? Remember to reason back then. Even if considering the 'real' release year of 1986 for the 7800 system, there were already thousands upon thousands of NTSC 7800 systems already boxed with joysticks. It is still pre NES/SMS '85/'86 exposure to the masses and pre-NES '87 popularity. The move of console based systems to transitions from joysticks to gamepads happened during the NES reign.

 

Even then, Nintendo had to concede to the still popular joystick with the NES Advantage, as did SMS with their Power Stick.

 

Gamepads became a (dominant) thing in America after the NES took off, not prior to it.

 

The PAL 7800's were released after 1986.

 

But they could have also released the pads in North America as an alternative to the joysticks.

[Trebor]

But they could have also released the pads in North America as an alternative to the joysticks.

 

Good point. Not sure why we never saw the gamepads BITD in North America; presumption is a financial and/or logistics based one.

 

While it may have been an option starting fresh for PAL territories, Atari was still looking to nickel and dime as much as possible. No way they would just disregard all that (joystick) stock and manufacture even more gamepads. It would be both a loss to possible sale of the joysticks, including not recouping the cost paid for the remaining inventory, as well as paying more money out for manufacturing additional gamepads to be produced. None of which were necessarily guaranteed to sell more than, or even as much as, joysticks at the time.

 

Hindsight is always 50/50. The years 1987-1989, incorporated Atari pushing out yet another system (XE) that used a joystick in North America. Moving to or offering a gamepad was likely seen as unwise at the time. It very well may have been, considering the circumstances and uncertainties.

[empsolo]

But they could have also released the pads in North America as an alternative to the joysticks.

There is a theory that Atari couldn't release it in North America because Nintendo had the patent on the gamepad design with the cross shaped D-pad. It's this design that forced Sega to adopt the Square D-pad for the SMS and the Rolling Dpad for the Genesis.

[mbd30]

There is a theory that Atari couldn't release it in North America because Nintendo had the patent on the gamepad design with the cross shaped D-pad. It's this design that forced Sega to adopt the Square D-pad for the SMS and the Rolling Dpad for the Genesis.

 

Interesting. I've never heard that theory before.

[empsolo]

Atari could've done worse than Pole Position ii as a Pack-in considering some of the other Launch titles such as Asteroids. Asteroids was a good game, but it not the game to showcase a game console as a Pack-in even in 1984.

 

The 7800 for some of its launch titles had the problem of being released on a different Atari game console and wouldn't be ideal as a pack-in game.

And that's the problem really. As the industry has learned since, you can't launch a console to fight yesterday's war. You have to give people something new to get mass market attention.