How would A8 scene be different

[Scooter83]

Summer games is a 90.00 crystal castles is 125.00 Mario bros 50.00 right there is 265.00 on 3 items. There's a reason Mario is the only one I have. :/. Need 4 or 5 more for a full XE collection. One day

[Scooter83]

Might get a cart with a memory card. That would be a good way to get disk images of games to play. Atari max cart you guys are talking about right?

[Marius]

Disk images emulation on cart is very poor, since I/O routines of OS needs a bypass which increases incompatibility.

 

Conversions of games into binaries (the famous .xex and .com files) do very well on carts, since the loaders of these games can be located very low in memory.

[Marius]

There are several choices:

 

Atarimax (very good, but limited in capacity)

 

SIC! carts (also very good, but the cart case is not as pretty as the atarimax, and the capacity is rather limited)

 

MegaCart 4mb (very nice cart, large capacity, same case as SIC!)

 

The!Cart 128mb (not received yet, but I guess this is great)

 

But beware:

You need some solution to program these carts. If you stick to atarimax products and you do not want to go for disk image solutions, you could buy the USB programmer. Very nice solution, but limited to Atarimax carts ...

 

 

 

[+davidcalgary29]

 

Summer games is a 90.00 crystal castles is 125.00 Mario bros 50.00 right there is 265.00 on 3 items. There's a reason Mario is the only one I have. :/. Need 4 or 5 more for a full XE collection. One day

That's outrageous! I'm glad that I started to rebuild my A8 collection in 2000. I'd post a WTB in the Marketplace forum, as you might be able to find those games (and I'm assuming that you're looking for boxed titles)for a lower price here.

[Scooter83]

Those are for loose items. I would love to get boxed but loose would be a good start for me. Harder titles due to price. Utility carts and banking carts are really high due to scarcity but I don't think the bank books are there for the prices people ask so there's a lot on eBay of gridlock.

[+wood_jl]

My first purchase when I got back into A8 a few years ago was Atarimax SIO2PC USB version. My second was Atarimax 8mb flash cartridge. I've bought a hell of a lot of other things since then, but those are pretty good! Programming the Atarimax cartridge might take a little work for someone who is *absolutely* unfamiliar with A8, etc. But SIO2PC USB is easy to use, great, and you'd need it first (or some sort of disk drive emulator) to program the cartridge in the Atari anyway, so SIO2PC is the best place to start, in my opinion. You could buy the Atarimax Programmer and use your modern PC to program the cartridge, or you could buy an SIO2SD or Sdrive to load the disk images from SD card instead of your PC, but that's all additional expense, hence the cheapness and functionality of SIO2PC USB version.

[sack-c0s]

I was a C64 user back in the day, but eBay and the internet gave me the opportunity to broaden my horizons and see how everyone else spent their 80s.

 

For me in all honesty the difference would be that My Atari would've been the one I got in the mid-80s and the C64 would have been later

[+doctorclu]

Best to look at the numbers:

 

Atari 2600 (30 mil) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles

Atari 8 - (4 mil) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family

Atari 7800 (3.77 mil) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles

Atari 5200 (1 mil) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles

Lynx (500K units US only?) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Lynx

Jaguar (250K units) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Jaguar

 

I wanted to throw in the ST numbers, and I want to say the numbers would be high there with the ST in Europe, but couldn't find any quote to units sold.

 

Bottom line, the 2600 was what a lot of people started out on. We simply called it "An Atari" and though the "2600" might have been thrown in later on, the truth was, we either called it a "Atari" or a "VCS" if we were using adaptors on the Intellivision or ColecoVision. But we all still knew that "VCS" was "Atari".

 

So bear in mind you are a 8 to 10 year old kid, where do you go once the Atari VCS graphics got old?

 

Intellivision was cool, but at the turning point, it was also old and looking long in the tooth. That was a system ahead of its time, and had the computer module come out sooner, things I think would have been different. Truth is, with the movie WARGAMES * out, many wanted a cool computer to get on the phone with, hack systems, download games. A lousy Atari VCS (no offense) was yesterday. Yep, this was the thinking in 1983, bear in mind, the Atari VCS had been out for five years

 

ColecoVision (released in 1982) was looking GOOD at the time and sold overall about 2 million units **. If you can't have a computer, at least have a system where the arcade titles looked like the Arcade! This was really really tempting. I sold my Atari VCS and was just about to buy a ColecoVision. Now if you took this route like my friend did, you would be one of the 100K *** people that bought a Coleco Adam to use as a computer.

 

It would be interesting to see of those 30 million people that bought the Atari 2600 where they went afterwards. Truth is, the Atari VCS/2600 was sooo popular it sold from 1977 to 1992! **** That is a insane run for any game system.

 

So if you were a casual gamer, you had a Atari and were happy. Poor 5200 and 7800 didn't stand a chance really because the 2600 was already there and still kicking. If Atari had trusted themselves, released the 7800 when they planned to and cancelled the 2600 at that time, I think things would have been VERY different. Some of those 30 million no doubt where those sales in the later 80's that might have been 5200 or 7800 sales if the options to the public might have been narrowed. "We are cancelling the Atari VCS since it has been out 5 years, but the Atari 7800 will be able to play the games of a VCS, plus games with arcade graphics" And the fans would have said "WE LOVE YOU ATARI... ATARI FOREVER!!!"

 

As it stood, the VCS/2600 was REALLY ancient by the late 80's and people were ready for something better, and made way for Nintendo and Sega to enter the market. I think Atari's hesitance to move forward with the 7800 and how long the 2600 stayed around and was milked for more than it was worth labeled "Atari" as "Yesterday's game system". And this I believe hurt the Jaguar a lot.

 

The Lynx was different as a hand held and I think carried it's own following.

 

As for me, in 1983 I was going to buy a ColecoVision, but ran across a friend who had a Atari 800 *AND* a ColecoVision. He liked both, but he was able to pull in really cool games from over the modem for his Atari 800. I was sold. For the cost of a box of floppies I could have a HUNDRED games. Now that was cool.

 

By 1983 the Atari 400 was being sold out since the 1200 and other XL series were coming out, so I had enough for a 400 and my dad expanded to 48K.

 

And it is true that today when you talk to people they say "I had a Atari computer". You ask further and realize they were talking about a game system, the VCS/2600. However, if they were already working in 1977-1985 you will get people actually had an Atari 8-bit computer. Usually a Atari 400, since they were cheap and "portable" and they could take them on business trips and they easily could be carried in luggage and hooked up to a hotel TV.

 

So in summary, not as many Atari 8 users as 2600 gamers, but I think the Atari 8 was easily the next Atari system with the most user support.

 

But then again, what are the ST numbers?

 

* Wargames, 1983 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColecoVision

*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam

**** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600

Edited December 23, 2013 by doctorclu

[Mr SQL]

Just from personal experience, the reason A8 was the last Atari system for me to get into is because of the computer aspect of it. I don't want to deal with floppy drives or tape drives, I don't want to learn how to use an ancient OS (I'm a modern Linux guy) just to play games, I don't want to dedicate the space that an 8 bit computer requires as opposed to a 2600. The barriers to entry on 2600, 5200, 7800, Lynx, Jaguar, and JagCD were all much lower than on the A8.

 

 

As the OP is well aware, I finally did get an XEGS which mitigates some of the above concerns. I still think I'm going to limit myself to collecting carts, though. No floppies for me.

 

It's the same exact reasoning that has kept me away from Commodore 64 my whole life.

 

famicommander,

with a flashcart like the UIEC you can turn the C64 into a menu driven gaming system where you can just pick the cart image or disk or tape file you want to play.

 

You must enter a command from the console though, on my system it's Load "T",8

 

If I want to listen to SID's (the main thing I do with my C64) I browse the 40,000 SID High Voltage collection just as easily with Load "M",8

 

Easy to grep if you're running Linux

[+wood_jl]

And it is true that today when you talk to people they say "I had a Atari computer". You ask further and realize they were talking about a game system, the VCS/2600. However, if they were already working in 1977-1985 you will get people actually had an Atari 8-bit computer. Usually a Atari 400, since they were cheap and "portable" and they could take them on business trips and they easily could be carried in luggage and hooked up to a hotel TV.

There were so few people that I knew that had an Atari 8-bit and so many that had a 2600 that the converse of that question was also true in the 1980s.

 

OTHER PERSON: "What kind of computer do you have?"

YOU: "Atari 800."

OTHER PERSON: "No, I mean 'computer.'"

 

[TMR]

with a flashcart like the UIEC you can turn the C64 into a menu driven gaming system where you can just pick the cart image or disk or tape file you want to play.

 

You must enter a command from the console though, on my system it's Load "T",8

 

If I want to listen to SID's (the main thing I do with my C64) I browse the 40,000 SID High Voltage collection just as easily with Load "M",8

This can all be done without the LOAD command from the 1541 Ultimate 2 or Turbo Chameleon cartridges, just use the integrated file browser to locate the disk or tape image (or indeed SID file) you require, then launch it. (And yes, they're more expensive than the other solutions but they do offer a lot more on top and have a higher compatibility with things like fastloaders.)

[snicklin]

I remember someone at school taking the p:-)ss out of me for owning an Atari in around 1990 because an advert in the UK was singing "under 20 pounds" or something similar. That was the vcs.

[eightbit]

I grew up with Commodore. I didn't own an Atari 8-bit computer until a few years ago (I'm 38). I guess this puts me in the "new" sector, but kind of not really. This was one of the "other" computers (this and Apple) that my school chose against in favor of the Vic-20 and C64. I mainly started getting in to it just to see how the other half lived Needless to say, I love the Atari 8-bit computers and I really wish I did grow up with them as well. They are real contenders, and there are a whole lot of things that I like better about the 800XL that I own than the C64. They each have their strong points, and I wish I could have had a chance to be subjective back in the day

[Marius]

I'm getting rid of all my atari ST stuff. Hasn't been touched since I moved to this house 4 years ago. I remember that the first thing that I unpacked (my room where I have all this wasn't even finished yet) was my Atari 800XL and a small television, and I played a few games on it.

 

It describes for me the different soul/magic of this little computer (for me) compared to ST or other systems. It's bloody marvelous. Today I'm still fond of it. I must say that all the modern solutions do make atari 8bit life easier, but the magic fades out too with that (for me). I remember the days that I only had 800xl and 1050, and a ABBUC membership. Waiting for the floppy disk and magazin... and booting the disk and watching the intro on the disk... that was such a happy atari experience.

 

Now we have internet and hundreds of solutions to make your atari 8bit easier to connect/transfer. It has also positive sides. Thanks to all this development people started to get interest in a8 again (or stayed interested). The system kept alive. Also people on forums exchange knowledge a lot easier than in the old days, and thanks to this new games and demo's are still made.

 

So although the development and modern solutions are changing the original experience, it keeps the atari alive too, and that is a positive thing.