Why didn't the programmers try harder?

[joeybastard]

After playing some of the VCS arcade conversions I got to wondering why the VCS programmers didn't try to match graphics better. I know the Pac-Man story already but for example look at VCS Space Invaders vs. the new Space Instigators. The VCS version is very good but why wouldn't they try to match the arcade as was obviously possible? Another example would be Warlords. The "kings" in the castle on the VCS don't look anything like the Daryth Vader heads in the arcade. I realize in some instances it just wasn't possible, but some of them seem like the programmers didn't try very hard.

 

Any thoughts?

[Room 34]

I have wondered this too. Obviously, in some cases things just weren't possible to carry over exactly, but there are many cases where, for instance, the sprites on the 2600 are as detailed as their arcade counterparts, but for some inexplicable reason, are just DIFFERENT. It seems like they'd only do that if they were concerned about copyright issues, but when it's a licensed conversion, why would you not try to make it as much like the original as possible?

[Godzilla]

well there wasnt even really a license issue with some of the titles you mentioned, as warlords for example is atari's own arcade game... so one does wonder... maybe nolans much vaunted 'shorts and potheads without work schedules' atmosphere is to blame?

 

programmer joe : 'Hey you wana take the time to draw good kings in warlords, or smoke a fatty?'

programmer bob: 'shhhawww maaann! like you haveta ask!'

[rasty]

programmer joe : 'Hey you wana take the time to draw good kings in warlords, or smoke a fatty?'  

programmer bob: 'shhhawww maaann! like you haveta ask!'

 

IMO, possible causes could have been:

 

- Graphics done lazily by the programmer

- Lack of original game for comparison

- Will to improve on the original

 

Any more?

Rasty.-

[sku_u]

Let's not forget that some of these Arcade ports came out very early in the Atari's history. Space Invaders was considered innovative for its time. In today's world, one could easily hack up a game thanks to fast computers and large memory banks. This did not exist in 1977.

 

Some arcade ports are pretty dead on, but came out much later (Like Frogger). Maybe the programmers didn't really know the limitations of the system yet, or perhapse they were upset over the $5/hr some of them were getting paid.

[Paul Slocum]

My guess is that sometimes the developer wanted to give their own look to the game, and sometimes made the games more colorful than the arcade to make up for the simpler graphics or lack or features. I really like the way 2600 Space Invaders looks, and I don't think they'd figured out how to do more than 6 invaders per row at the time. Although I don't know what to say about Pac-Man.

 

In Warlords, the missiles are used to draw the kings, so it probably wouldn't have been possible to draw a convincing helmet. The gameplay in 2600 Warlords is so awesome that it doesn't really matter.

 

-Paul

[Tempest]

There are several reasons:

 

* Experience - Programmers didn't know the hardware very well early on. As time went on programmers got better and better at exploting the 2600's hardware for all it was worth.

 

* Time - Many programmers had to get a game out ASAP and had little time for tweaking.

 

* Money - Many programmers had to do games as cheap as possible due to the highly competative market. This meant less money for RAM and extra programmers.

 

* Apathy - Some programmers didn't think gamers would mind a mediocre game because so many other games out there were mediocre as well. They just didn't care enough to go the extra mile.

 

* Talnet - All programmers aren't created equal. Some are gods and some are clods.

 

* Collaboration - Programmers back then had a very small circle of people they could collaborate with. There was no internet for sharing programming techniques and tricks.

 

 

Tempest

[joeybastard]

My guess is that sometimes the developer wanted to give their own look to the game, and sometimes made the games more colorful than the arcade to make up for the simpler graphics or lack or features.  I really like the way 2600 Space Invaders looks, and I don't think they'd figured out how to do more than 6 invaders per row at the time.  Although I don't know what to say about Pac-Man.

 

In Warlords, the missiles are used to draw the kings, so it probably wouldn't have been possible to draw a convincing helmet.  The gameplay in 2600 Warlords is so awesome that it doesn't really matter.

 

-Paul

 

I totally agree that both SI and Warlords are great games, I was just wondering about what seems to be obvious graphic tweaks that could have been made.

[smf_4ever]

Didn't the original games also have a 2k limit on the games?? would that have had some issues involved with it?? (talking out of my ass here.. but I remember something about this..)

 

and/or possible the lack of development tools back in the day?

 

[dirtboy69]

i think it all comes down to the programmers having the attuide "hey i'm getting paid anyway why kill myself trying to get this system to do somethig never done before"

[Room 34]

I think the real issue for me in this discussion is specifically what I mentioned earlier... cases where sprites just LOOK DIFFERENT from the arcade versions, even if their level of detail is roughly comparable.

[Mind Master]

Atari seemed to have a huge quality control problem. Some stuff got out the door that really shouldn't have. I think they were making so much money they didn't see it as a problem and so didn't pay attention to the details - like making sure their programmers worked hard to capture the look of the arcade game.

 

And many of the programmers, I would guess, were not highly motivated to do their best work. It took a kick in the butt from Activision and Imagic to get Atari to look at their stuff and see how weak it was.

 

None of this applies to Adventure, of course...

[ZylonBane]

Hey, 2600 Space Invaders is a paragon of authenticity compared to the bizarre 400/800 home computer version.

 

By Rob Fulop, no less!

[joeybastard]

Hey, 2600 Space Invaders is a paragon of authenticity compared to the bizarre 400/800 home computer version.

 

By Rob Fulop, no less!

 

Good point. In that case at least it seemed to be ego that changed the graphics. Thanks for that link, I hadn't seen that before.

[NE146]

Yeah.. nice link! I like the Missile Command part on how he got a bonus Turkey

[+DamonicFury]

* Apathy - Some programmers didn't think gamers would mind a mediocre game because so many other games out there were mediocre as well. They just didn't care enough to go the extra mile.

Tempest

 

Reading "The First Quarter" gives some good insight into what was going on early on at Atari. The programmers were not paid well and they were given NO recognition for their work. Given this situation, it's amazing that many of the first generation games are as good as they are, and hardly unsurprising that many are clunkers. It wasn't until the formation of Activision which rewarded it's programmers with the money and fame they duly deserved that 2600 games started to seriously improve.

[mos6507]

There is something else you guys are missing.

 

Programmable videogames were a new industry, and most programmers who made their way into it were NOT ARTISTS and may have had absolutely zero aptitude as artists. Their prior experience was in nuts and bults coding on text-only computer systems or with hardware-only designs. (Al Miller came from NASA, for instance.) They might have been bright enough to know how to get the 2600 to do great graphics, but not artistic enough to make it look as good as it could be. It's the whole right-brain-left-brain thing.

 

Picking colors, plotting points, and doing sound was a whole new thing for most of these guys, and it showed.

 

That's why the very earliest games have almost arbitrary color selections (often way too garish and with poor contrast) and very childlike sprite shapes.

 

David Crane was one of the few who could do it all, but he was one in a million, but even he had his early finger-painting period (Canyon Bomber/Outlaw). Crane actually did cosmetic work on other people's games eventually, like Kaboom and River Raid, but this was the exception, not the rule. Since 2600 games were largely one-man efforts, they reflected the creative limitations of the individual.

 

There also wasn't enough competition early on for the cosmetics to really matter to that extent. The 2600 represented a generational leap over pong units so that most people who saw it in the early days thought it was pretty advanced even just by seeing Combat and Air-Sea Battle. It didn't matter that the colors were flourescent or that the dragons in Adventure looked like ducks.

 

By the early 80s, with other platforms and 3rd party competition heating up, game developers were expected to develop more of their artistic side to give their games an edge over the competition.

[Room 34]

I agree with this point, that the early programmers did it all and were not artists, but I think that by the time period we're talking about -- the big era of arcade conversions circa 1982 -- enough was known about how to get a decent looking result on the system that, even if you weren't graphically inclined, you could do a pixel-by-pixel duplication of the appearance of the sprites in an arcade game.

 

That link to Rob Fulop's "hidden" initials in the Atari 400/800 version of Space Invaders explains a LOT though!

[Christopher Tumber]

I've always assumed that Space Invaders was originally intended to be a clone, sold under some other name (Like INTV Space Armada et al) or even just a game put together on the developer's own initiative. Then when Atari got the license, they either changed the name of the project (the game having already been completed) or the developer said something like, "Oh, by the way, I already have this ready to go..."

 

That's complete supposition, and I have no evidence whatsover except the game itself which IMHO looks more like Space Armada than the arcade Space Invaders. Someone would have to ask Rick Maurer...

 

 

I can understand them wanting to add colour, to show off the 2600's capabilities. Except they didn't really, since the rows of invaders are all the same colour. I absolutely can't understand why the bitmaps would be so different.

 

Or it could just be that since it was the first licensed coin-op, they didn't realise the importance that would be placed on accuracy (Which seems self-evident, but hindsight is 50-50..). If you think about it, the previous conversions like Pong were always trying to outdo the original or previous conversions (adding more paddles, game options, colour). Likewise the various Computer Space clones... So maybe they thought that "enhancing" Space Invaders was equally important (witness all the Space Invaders game variants).

 

Thinking about it, that's probably it - They treated it like previous coin-op conversions by making it "better" and adding a bunch of game variants.. (A lot of the earlier conversions don't look nearly as much like the originals as they could - Asteroids, Battlezone, Missile Command...)

 

Chris...

[MegaManFan]

Thinking about it, that's probably it - They treated it like previous coin-op conversions by making it "better" and adding a bunch of game variants.. (A lot of the earlier conversions don't look nearly as much like the originals as they could - Asteroids, Battlezone, Missile Command...)

 

Chris...

 

All things considered, making it look different isn't always bad. Atari 7800 Asteriods looks nothing like the arcade version, yet it's probably the best looking of all the ones I own and/or the most fun to play.

[Video]

There are several reasons that console games didn't look like arcade games.

 

The biggest being, power. The arcade system simply blew the console away because they were custome built to run that game. While the 2600 didn't evolve, so it was stuck doing whatever it could. Also, Atari can do something like an 8 pixel wide sprite, while the arcade wasn't limited like that.

 

The second biggest being, the programmers weren't neccessarily artists. Remember, back in 77, computers were all text based, graphics were something new. Heck, games were something new. People didn't buy games for graphics, they bought them because they were fun to play. And because people would buy a game, nomatter what it looked like, programmers weren't encouraged to make the graphics better.

 

Then there's the fact that the Atari 2600 was young. People had just started programming for it. They had to figure tricks out their selves. So, the games were as complex as that programmer could figure out how to make it.

 

Now days, if you want to be a programmer, just punch up the info you want/need for the system of your choice, and you can get ALL the secrets of the traid back then. Leaving you with everything you need to program great games right now, or something to build your own tricks off of.

[Inky]

I want to think that another reason they didn't look the same, is that Atari didn't really want to kill off the arcade industry. By making Space Invaders look different than the arcade, people would still want to go to the arcade and get their fill of the real thing.

 

Even when you look at the games on the Colecovision, while the graphics are the same, there are still differences, and the difficulty has been ramped down a bit.

 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[ZylonBane]

I absolutely can't understand why the bitmaps would be so different.

This from the guy who's avatar is the least-authentic looking invader from his own Invaders clone.

[DEBRO]

I've always assumed that Space Invaders was originally intended to be a clone, sold under some other name (Like INTV Space Armada et al) or even just a game put together on the developer's own initiative. Then when Atari got the license, they either changed the name of the project (the game having already been completed) or the developer said something like, "Oh, by the way, I already have this ready to go..."

 

Chris you're dead on according to Rick's Stella @ 20 interview. He said he liked the game and started working on it before Atari got the license. He wasn't pleased with his outcome (he had flicker at first) and put it away for a while to work on Maze Craze.

 

Later when Atari got the license he pulled his code off the shelf and started working on it again. He mentions that he wasn't an artist and checked with artist that do the box art. He wanted their help in creating the invaders but ultimately didn't get it. So what you see is Rick's creation.

[slapdash]

I've always assumed that Space Invaders was originally intended to be a clone, sold under some other name (Like INTV Space Armada et al) or even just a game put together on the developer's own initiative. Then when Atari got the license, they either changed the name of the project (the game having already been completed) or the developer said something like, "Oh, by the way, I already have this ready to go..."

 

Chris you're dead on according to Rick's Stella @ 20 interview. He said he liked the game and started working on it before Atari got the license. He wasn't pleased with his outcome (he had flicker at first) and put it away for a while to work on Maze Craze.

 

Later when Atari got the license he pulled his code off the shelf and started working on it again. He mentions that he wasn't an artist and checked with artist that do the box art. He wanted their help in creating the invaders but ultimately didn't get it. So what you see is Rick's creation.

 

I've also thought it's less like the arcade just since he was already restricted to 6 x 6. If it's not going to look like the arcade grouping, why make the invaders like in the arcade? Let's be honest, there aren't that many bits in the invader sprites, so artist or not, he could have made them closer, but I suspect he recognized that it was already a different enough game and just made up his own invaders to make it stand out more. I wonder if the artists HAD helped out what they'd have looked like, but I suspect they STILL wouldn't have looked like the arcade game's aliens...