How come a lot getting into retro games skip Atari?

[Lynxpro]

 

Great, so how about I go down to Radio Shack to pick one...oh wait, I Can't Cause They Don't Sell Them Anymore!!!!!!

 

Can still get one online but still need a CRT display...

 

No you don't. I hook mine up to my Sony Bravia 42" LCD and also a cheap Best Buy Insignia 22" LCD in the bedroom with those adapters. You can buy those adapters at Lowe's and Home Depot if Radio Shack is out of biz in your area and you don't want to buy them from Amazon. Pay $4 for the gold ones.

[Lynxpro]

To be honest, I was hesitant to try out an atari because I thought they wouldn't function. It still boggles my mind to think that something made nearly 40 years ago still works. Heck, I've been through 3 or 4 blu ray/dvd players in the last 8 years. Things are made so shabbily today.

 

It would be nice to atari re-release it's console with modern connections. There are so many NES clones. Haven't seen an atari yet.

 

 

You've never seen an Atari Flashback before? They sell them all over the place. And they do have composite output standard.

 

Granted, if you want one that's actually a real 2600 and not emulation, you'll have to buy the older Flashback 2 or 2+ on ePay, Craigslist, the AtariAge Marketplace, or a thrift store. You can even mod them to have a cartridge port.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I don't think the Activision people splitting off into their own entity was a bad thing, it was perhaps the best thing because since then every major console has had majorly wicked software libraries thanks to first & third party support. Atari was basically the first to the dance, got huge and fucked it up. Nintendo was second to the dance, learned from Atari's failures and never fucked up. Though I feel no need to kick Atari when they were down when the system was still so great. The circumstances that Atari found themselves in with shitty games sucks for them, but they made so many poor decisions that I don't feel the need to defend them to the moon, either. They certainly didn't help themselves too much. Somebody's gotta lose so others can win. I mean, Nintendo went to Atari to work with them. It's not like they didn't have their chance at redemption only to fumble that as well because of petty bullshit. Hindsight is 20/20, but I don't see how a company losing so much money with no future in sight besides fledgling systems wouldn't adopt a system with great graphics and games already in the can waiting to be released. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but I can't blame Activision employees or Nintendo because Atari shit the bed. I'm no businessman, but it seems to me billion dollar companies should have their fingers on the pulse of what's going on in their industry, the capital to make quality products that people want. It seems Atari did none of this.

 

I don't, however, think that most NES fanboys have researched the subject enough to form an opinion as to Atari being the old guard or anything like that.

Anybody else notice that Activision still survives as a company to this day? Atari has been one very long trainwreck filled with corporate takeovers and bankruptcy. The former devs who left Atari to start up Activision had better business sense than all the Atari execs combined.

[Lynxpro]

I really hate it when people say this. Sure, Nintendo did pioneer the modern video game after it's smash hit in Super Mario Brothers caught on like a wild fire in late 1986/early 1987. However most of the early games for the console either consisted of classic pre-crash arcade classics (after all the console was designed literally with the idea of playing an arcade perfect port of Donkey Kong in mind) or games in the style of those classics. (games like Birdweek and Devil World by Nintendo, Nuts and Milk by Hudson Soft, and Yie Ar Kung Fu by Konami)

 

Hell, the reason my father bought us an NES was so that he could play a home version of Xevious that was close to arcade perfect. He even bought an Advantage joystick and everything.

 

 

And if you didn't like platformers like Super Mario or Action-Adventure games like the Legend of Zelda, the system still offered a lot of arcade style games for older players. You had run and gun games like Contra by Konami, and modern shooters like Gradius and Stinger by Konami plus the very brilliant Summer Carnival '92 Recca. Also racing games too like Excitebike or Mach Rider and Rad Racer.

 

Xevious is better on the 7800 than the NES.

 

As for cute games, I do agree with your sentiment. It's not like Nintendo invented the platformer. Pitfall did, along with Miner 2049er and others. See, another example of video game innovation falsely attributed to Nintendo.

[Lynxpro]

 

With that dogshit controller. Good lord, how I hated that thing. One of my friends got that system when it first came out, I remember being at his house and trying the games and not being able to play a single one for long because of those controllers. And people complain about the 5200 controller! That stupid 4-button cross directional pad (though good that it had more than one fire button) was a deal-breaker. And people accepted that! Fine for every game? No thanks.

 

While I agree that the Nintendo and other systems could do arcade ports better than the 2600 (really, which ones couldn't), there was still the general acceptance of the cute games and that includes platformer games. Which I hate (ok, except for Major Havoc, that one was great but it was also vector and had a horizontal spinner so that negates home consoles). That was another "advantage" of the 2600's horrible graphics. I mean, can you imagine trying to create a Sonic hedgehog using the 2600's LEGO block graphics? All you would end up with would be a blocky shape that you would have to imagine was Sonic.

 

 

 

Did someone say Sonic on the 2600, eh?

 

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1052

 

Edited November 29, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Lynxpro]

The switch in game design is an interesting rabbit hole.

 

In an NES game, you're trying to reach the ending. Do you remember your high score in Castlevania?

 

Probably not, you just remember if you've completed it.

 

Atari games are mostly about high scores. This is a generalization, but you get the point.

 

Score based games still do eat up a huge chunk of the modern game market though, look at the first person shooter market. Most players care more about their online kill/death ratio or win/loss ratio then they do about finishing the tacked on story mode.

 

Games with endings kind of make their own trophies once you're done with them. You finished it! Hooray for you. Now you can move on to another game. I wonder if this also feeds into the collector mentality that seems to go hand in hand with retro gaming.

 

I was about 11 when the NES debuted and I didn't get an NES until 1987 or 1988. My first console was my 2600 which I got when I was 6. If 2600 game play can be reduced down to "high score" or "twitch" gaming as a means to describe it in generality, then the NES can be reduced down to "save the princess" repetitiveness. What's the goal of this game? Oh yeah, save the fucking princess yet again. I can understand why the feminists look back with disdain over it. It's basically been Ninjanedo's gaming SOP going all the way back to Dankey Kang. [yes, I'm purposely misspelling their IP].

 

I sold my NES and took the money and put it towards my Atari Lynx. But of course, I kept my 2600 and 7800.

 

As you mentioned, back in the day, Atari Inc didn't like repeating itself. At Atari Coin/Games, it was considered beneath the programmers to do sequels and repeat the same thing over and over again. But look at Nintendo. All they do is recycle their same IP because that's all they have. The Super Mario extended universe and Pokemon. That's the only thing that keeps them barely a step ahead of the Microsoft and Sony steamrollers. Now that iOS and Android have basically destroyed their lock on the handheld gaming market, their demise is rapidly approaching despite how many Amiibos (sic) their fanbois purchase.

[Lynxpro]

 

That's your problem that the industry ended up making it the standard. Hell, Atari's europe division saw that the writing was on the wall for older joystick style controllers when it released the NES style controller for the 7800.

It's this type of of thinking from the older generation that I think would have held back gaming immensely. I understand that you may not like platformers and that's fine. I don't like games that are strictly puzzles in nature or the modern cinematic style RPGs either. But the fact of the matter is that in order to drive the medium, you can't simply stand on old classics and expect people to stomach it indefinitely. Eventually you will hit your saturation point and people will start reacting negatively to the medium.

And this is a bad thing because.......?

As I pointed out, this is absurdly false. The d-pad offers the same controller layout as your standard arcade cabinet. Don't believe me? Go look at your standard arcade cabinet and compare. Second, the d-pad allows the users to engage in movement without needing to put the full force of their body-weight onto the controller with through the thumb. Where as arcade cabinets are built with the idea of supporting people's body weight when people are pushing and pulling on the joystick. This is something that was lost on many earlier joystick style controllers because in many cases you had to hold them while having your supporting hand fire the action button. This is a very awkward set up. In fact, it wouldn't be until the Saturn and the Neo-Geo that you get joystick controllers that are actually supported. But then these were massive and expensive bricks that were built to play only fighting games, really.

I would argue this is a false perception. Considering the fact that the joystick style controller was something that even Atari abandoned as a bad idea in the end, it tells me everything I need to know really.

 

The DPad won because it's cheaper to build versus an actual joystick. That's why Nintendo designed it in the first place. It was all about profits, not ergonomics or any perceived game play enhancements.

 

Nintendo's DPad also didn't originally test well here in America when the NES debuted. That's why Atari Corp's advertising at the time mentioned the 7800 came with "real joysticks". They also later highlighted that when the XE Game System debuted:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnz3UWU6aCs

 

 

In truth, it took several years for gamers to warm up to DPads. It's also why Nintendo sold quite a few Advantage joysticks. I know that's what I preferred to use with Super Mario Bros.

 

The revival of joysticks via the thumb stick proves the superiority of it over the DPad. However, they are analog in nature. And which company brought analog joysticks to consoles first? Atari via the 5200. Which console had the first Pause button on their controller? Again, Atari with the 5200.

 

Had Atari Inc survived, most likely what would've happened is that the 7800 ProLine joysticks would've been abandoned quickly in favor of a smaller joystick - and not a DPad based game pad - that didn't break as much and would be more comfortable to use than a DPad controller. That being something like the Amiga Power Stick:

 

http://www.museumofplay.org/online-collections/22/43/111.3310

 

Oh, and Atari was in the process of acquiring Amiga [which was started by ex-Atari people anyway] when Atari Inc started collapsing and Amiga's management decided to defraud Atari for the sole purpose of selling themselves to Commodore for approximately $19.5 million more. Atari's intent was to use the Amiga Lorraine chipset in a 16-bit video game console code named "Mickey" which they intended to release for Christmas 1985.

 

Amiga also famously created the JoyBoard for the 2600 25 years before Nintendo's Wii Balance Board:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyboard

 

You are correct that a lot of us are cranky that a lot of the pre-crash companies didn't survive and we don't like what we've been subjected to since then. How true. Both the computer and video game industries would be far different - and far better - today had the original Atari Inc survived. As Nolan Bushnell says, the crash cheated us out of a good decade of tech that would've been released but so many companies and start-ups got crushed in the crash. A surviving Atari Inc would've kept Nintendo boxed in Japan meaning the industry wouldn't have been monopolized by them and they would've had to play by Atari's - and other American and European companies' - rules. It would've meant the 16-bit console era - and no, I don't count the Intelllivison as truly 16-bit - would've started with Christmas 1985 with the Atari "Mickey", not in 1989 with the Sega Genesis. And considering Atari had dual processing 68000-based computers in development using a GUI sitting atop BSD back in 1983/1984 years before NeXTStep and Apple Mac OS X, I'd say we lost a great deal in the computer industry too. That's like 2 decades of setback right there without even factoring in Microsoft's destructive practices into the equation.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Lynxpro]

I was exactly the right age for the NES, and my childhood experiences in the arcade were of the " begging for quarters variety" as mentioned by Stardust. What I think we really missed was the competitive experience of the arcade. I was drawn to games that let me explore and play on my own. Nintendo didn't invent this, they just kept working on it while others dropped out. The industry also had to learn how to sell a gaming experience outside of the arcade and many of the early experiences didn't seem to inspire many spinoffs (Superman, Adventure).

 

My point is that usually a NES gamer looks at Asteroids and wonders "where's the rest of the game". That's because NES games were meant as a contained experience. "The rest of the game" for Asteroids was trying to beat your brother sister or dad - something that kids my age just didn't want to look for.

 

All that being said, I love the 2600, and after having really dug into both libraries I have had a lot more frustrations with NES titles. Yes there are bad games on both, but even some good NES games are confounding. Quick example - I can tell Legacy of the Wizard is a great game, but I'm never going to take on the built in difficulty added by required repetition needed to actually finish the game. My realization of this as I'm playing really takes away from the experience. I could have more fun with Beamrider in as much time as it takes me to search for a LoW walkthrough.

 

What's missing from Asteroids from an NES bias is a chip tunes soundtrack, power-ups, defined mission levels, and a "Boss" to beat. You always gotta have a Boss to beat on the NES.

 

Atari Games did address all of that in the arcades with Blasteroids. Although I guess they didn't have a princess to rescue in it. Can't win 'em all, I guess.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Lynxpro

[AtariORdead]

Thank Fuck Atari died when they did, the let the 2600 get run into the ground with shovlware. Atari have ruined everything they have touched, thank god for Sega and Nintendo.

 

Just look at the state of the jaguar so see how pathetic Atari were.

 

I for one am glad Nintendo and Sega became the front runners.

 

I loved the 2600 but it got ruined and tari have never been able to do anything decent since.

[high voltage]

I'm glad Sony pooped on Nintendo and Sega, and showed them who's boss.

[Lynxpro]

Yes, good for me and good for the industry too.

 

You mean archaic controllers where the control schemes are awkward as hell to use on damn near almost anything (the Intellivision disc pad and the colecovision), where the joysticks are cheap and prone to breaking, (the atari 2600) or are unmitigated disasters with non-centering joysticks and fire buttons that wear out (Atari 5200). To say that there is an "appeal" for the older systems because they are "unique" doesn't really seem like a selling point. Novelty? Sure. A game room discussion peice. Absolutely. But to say that the "unique controllers" are in anyway "more accurate" is patently absurd. Considering that a good number of older retro gamers do in fact either mod their older systems to accept NES or Master System controllers or will simply plug in a Sega Genesis Model 1 controller where applicable.

 

For an older guy you seem to speaking for a lot people in the retrogaming community when it appears you are simply speaking for your self.

 

That is extremely debatable.

 

 

Considering that Breakout had some damn near great updates and ports to the NES and Famicom Disk System and all but one port of the game made use of the NES/Famicom controller. (I believe Arkanoid was specifically programmed for the Famicom trackball) And the fact that Missile Command, Asteroids, Centipede, etc all had great ports to the Gameboy lends me to believe that either you haven't played them or never gave the d-pad a real chance.

 

 

 

This isn't an agument. This is just whining.

No shit. Considering the game originally came out in 1989 for a PC that had a GUI and mouse peripheral and never got a console port. Here's the thing. You can play Ultima on the NES with a d-pad. You can play detective games and early forms of visual novels and first person exploration games on the Famicom with a d-pad. You can play Sim city on SNES with a d-pad (a damn good game I might add). To say you can't imagine is kind of silly considering it's been done to death.

 

 

Oh look somebody making claims without giving evidence. Meanwhile in reality, you can play supposedly "superior" trakball games on a d-pad just fine.

 

Kid, you just lost all credibility when you claimed a DPad is a good substitute for a Trak-Ball. In no way, shape, or form does a DPad equal a Trak-Ball on games designed for a Trak-Ball.

 

Go out and play arcade Missile Command, Centipede, Millipede, Slither, Reactor, Crystal Castles, Rampart, and Marble Madness. Then go play their NES ports - some of them are on the NES - with a DPad. Uhm, yeah.

 

After that, go try out Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, Xari Arena, and even Tempest on the 5200 with the 5200 Trak-Ball Controller. You'll quickly change your answer if you are truly objective. After all, the CX-53 Trak-Ball Controller for the 5200 is arguably the best console accessory controller of all time.

 

And Arkanoid on NES has a Paddle/Spinner controller bundled with it. That's because it's a rip-off of Breakout which Atari sued Taito over and won.

 

Warlords isn't as much fun without Paddles. The Xbox [360] Live updated version - which itself is a port of what Hasbro did with it in the early 00s on PC - works decently with the Analog Stick but it's still not as good as a real Paddle/Spinner.

 

I will slightly disagree with LedZep regarding Tempest. Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar works fantastically with the Jaguar's DPad. However, it works better with a Rotary/Spinner. Tempest 5200 does work on the Analog Joystick but surprisingly works better with the 5200's Trak-Ball. Unfortunately, the 5200 didn't have a Rotary/Spinner so there isn't any code for such a device in the 5200's port.

[empsolo]

But that's unfair. Atari created the industry. There was no plan to license any of it to allow other companies to make games for it. Nobody did that before Activision. The companies that made the game systems exclusively made the software for it. That was the business model. Activision only happened because those Atari programmers wanted residuals just like how Hollywood operated because Warner [you know, Warner Bros!] owned Atari. Had Atari still been independent or owned by a conglomerate with no ties to Hollywood, that probably would've never occurred to them. Activision wouldn't have been born and consequently, those various companies that had no business competing in the industry wouldn't have jumped in and the crash wouldn't have ever happened.

Maybe, but then again, somebody somewhere would have seen the cash cow that was the VCS and would have decided to make games themselves. Knock-offs and derivatives of popular commercial commodities are as old as the first successful selling item in human history. It would only have been a matter of time, especially when US law was so vague back then.

 

The whole lock-out chip tech happened because of Custer's Revenge. Atari started the lockout with the encryption they had built into the 7800. It was Nintendo's reaction to the crash that gave them the idea to license third party developers and restrict them with their monopolist strategies. The Famicom itself wasn't as locked down as the later NES was.

I wouldn't say monopolistic considering that Nintendo was found not-guilty via a trial and the US government ended up dropping it's case right around the time of the 1992 election. In fact, it should be pointed out Sega adopted the same policy as Nintendo did for it's own Genesis and is even mentioned in the civil case that Sega brought against Accolade for patent infringement. But that's neither here nor there.

As for locking down the Famicom..... Nintendo of Japan felt that the Japanese market was very different and Nintendo would not fall prey to unlicensed garbage that infected the US market. However, Nintendo of Japan soon found out around 1988 that premise was faulty as the Famicom got flooded with kusoge. In fact US gamer has an article about how Nintendo of Japan faced the same problems that Atari did and how it influenced NCL to design the Super Famicom with lockout tech in mind.

 

 

The downside to the arrival of third parties was that Nintendo hadn't quite learned the lessons of Atari and didn't initially have much in the way of controls in place for its licensees. "In Japan, Nintendo did not even pretend to bestow Famicom games with a 'seal of quality,'" says Dr. Sparkle. "Publishers manufactured their own cartridges and could release just about anything for the system, no matter no cheaply made or buggy it was. Many companies with no video game experience began flooding the market with games created by anonymous contract developers. Scores of hastily produced licensed games hit the shelves, most of which were uninspired at best or unplayable at worst. Today we can get a certain amount of enjoyment from notoriously terrible games like Super Monkey Daibouken, but the kids who spent 5000 Yen on it 27 years ago were probably not very amused. The surprising thing about the Famicom library today is how much of it consisted of utter crap."

"After the [first] six licensees had begun selling games," writes Sheff, "Yamauchi realized that he had not only given away his ability to control the quality of the cartridges... but some potential profits as well, because he allowed the companies to manufacture their own games. Henceforth, Nintendo would be the sole manufacturer of games for the Famicom. The licensees would develop them and then place the order with Nintendo for a minimum of 10,000 cartridges. The terms were elegantly simple: Nintendo insisted on cash, in advance."

It also helped that Japanese copyright and patent law was different enough from US law and so Nintendo was able, by using legal methods, to wrangle control of the system away from the shovelware publishers. Maybe if US law had been similar to Japanese law, Atari might have avoided the fate of the crash. We shall never know, unfortunately.

Edited November 29, 2015 by empsolo

[Lynxpro]

I don't think the Activision people splitting off into their own entity was a bad thing, it was perhaps the best thing because since then every major console has had majorly wicked software libraries thanks to first & third party support. Atari was basically the first to the dance, got huge and fucked it up. Nintendo was second to the dance, learned from Atari's failures and never fucked up. Though I feel no need to kick Atari when they were down when the system was still so great. The circumstances that Atari found themselves in with shitty games sucks for them, but they made so many poor decisions that I don't feel the need to defend them to the moon, either. They certainly didn't help themselves too much. Somebody's gotta lose so others can win. I mean, Nintendo went to Atari to work with them. It's not like they didn't have their chance at redemption only to fumble that as well because of petty bullshit. Hindsight is 20/20, but I don't see how a company losing so much money with no future in sight besides fledgling systems wouldn't adopt a system with great graphics and games already in the can waiting to be released. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but I can't blame Activision employees or Nintendo because Atari shit the bed. I'm no businessman, but it seems to me billion dollar companies should have their fingers on the pulse of what's going on in their industry, the capital to make quality products that people want. It seems Atari did none of this.

 

I don't, however, think that most NES fanboys have researched the subject enough to form an opinion as to Atari being the old guard or anything like that.

 

The guys that founded Activision broke the previous business model. Had they not done so, they would've stayed at Atari cranking out the very same hits that they later cranked out at Activision [many of them were based on earlier Atari arcade games, btw]. And consequently, you wouldn't have had the shitty third-party developers jumping in and making krap games which is what caused the industry crash.

 

As for Atari brushing Nintendo to the side, you act like Nintendo was this angelic savior with better tech. Newsflash, Nintendo has always been a complete asshole of a company since day 1. The terms they wanted Atari to agree upon were ridiculous. They wanted a high royalty per game. They wanted to manufacture the cartridges and the console motherboard themselves and then sell them to Atari to resell. It was totally one-sided where Nintendo would've benefitted the most with very little effort. They also didn't want to share source code either and wanted to exclusively program for it. So Atari decided they were going to fuck Nintendo over and rightfully so. They decided to string Nintendo along while waiting to see what GCC would do with the 7800. And guess what? The 7800 was more powerful than the Famicom so Atari went with the 7800. It's unfortunate Warner allowed Atari Inc to collapse because I would love to see the alt.univese version where a completely intact Atari Inc brought out the 7800 for Christmas 1984, revived the entire industry all by themselves, and then crushed Nintendo and Sega as they tried to enter the North American and European markets.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Xevious is better on the 7800 than the NES.

 

As for cute games, I do agree with your sentiment. It's not like Nintendo invented the platformer. Pitfall did, along with Miner 2049er and others. See, another example of video game innovation falsely attributed to Nintendo.

But Pitfall and Miner 2049 didn't scroll. NES was designed from the ground up to play side-scrolling games like Super Mario Brothers.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

With that dogshit controller. Good lord, how I hated that thing. One of my friends got that system when it first came out, I remember being at his house and trying the games and not being able to play a single one for long because of those controllers. And people complain about the 5200 controller! That stupid 4-button cross directional pad (though good that it had more than one fire button) was a deal-breaker. And people accepted that! Fine for every game? No thanks.

 

While I agree that the Nintendo and other systems could do arcade ports better than the 2600 (really, which ones couldn't), there was still the general acceptance of the cute games and that includes platformer games. Which I hate (ok, except for Major Havoc, that one was great but it was also vector and had a horizontal spinner so that negates home consoles). That was another "advantage" of the 2600's horrible graphics. I mean, can you imagine trying to create a Sonic hedgehog using the 2600's LEGO block graphics? All you would end up with would be a blocky shape that you would have to imagine was Sonic. Adventure was a square dot for Odin's sake. Later consoles had better graphics, good enough for programmers to shoot for actual shapes instead of crude representations of shapes. More detail and more colors allowed for objects and characters that looked a little more realistic, actually had some depth and shading to them (compared to whatever the 2600 could manage).

 

As I said before, the arcade port will suffer without at least a minimal version of the same arcade controller. The directional pad can go screw. Tron needs to be played with a spinner and a joystick, Warlords needs paddles, Tail Gunner needs an analog joystick. All of those games suffer with something like the Nintendo controller. Superficially you can pretend that what you end up with at home was "the same" but that's like saying a kit car Lamborghini is the same as the real version because they mostly look the same even though the kit car is built on top of a Fiero. No thanks.

 

 

Come on, the D-pad was legendary. If it sucked so bad, why does every modern controller known to man still include it? Besides they made a special controller for people like you:

 

 

Yes. A programmer by the name or Chris Spry imagined it. Now it's a reality:

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1052

 

 

 

Did someone say Sonic on the 2600, eh?

 

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1052

 

Sorry, I beat you to it!

[Lynxpro]

Maybe, but then again, somebody somewhere would have seen the cash cow that was the VCS and would have decided to make games themselves. Knock-offs and derivatives of popular commercial commodities are as old as the first successful selling item in human history. It would only have been a matter of time, especially when US law was so vague back then.

 

I wouldn't say monopolistic considering that Nintendo was found not-guilty via a trial and the US government ended up dropping it's case right around the time of the 1992 election. In fact, it should be pointed out Sega adopted the same policy as Nintendo did for it's own Genesis and is even mentioned in the civil case that Sega brought against Accolade for patent infringement. But that's neither here nor there.

As for locking down the Famicom..... Nintendo of Japan felt that the Japanese market was very different and Nintendo would not fall prey to unlicensed garbage that infected the US market. However, Nintendo of Japan soon found out around 1988 that premise was faulty as the Famicom got flooded with kusoge. In fact US gamer has an article about how Nintendo of Japan faced the same problems that Atari did and how it influenced NCL to design the Super Famicom with lockout tech in mind.

 

It also helped that Japanese copyright and patent law was different enough from US law and so Nintendo was able, by using legal methods, to wrangle control of the system away from the shovelware publishers. Maybe if US law had been similar to Japanese law, Atari might have avoided the fate of the crash. We shall never know, unfortunately.

 

Highly doubtful. Activision was the impetus. Nobody thought it was possible and nobody dared to make games for someone else's console before them. Atari first sued Activision over the suspicion that some of their games had been developed while the guys were still working at Atari. After that lawsuit failed, Atari sued Activision for patent infringement and they settled so Atari was making royalties for every game Activision made. It's still unclear whether Atari made any other royalties from the other companies because the documentation hasn't come out into the light yet. Atari did sue Coleco over patent infringement after they cloned the 2600 and released it as the Gemini. There was a settlement involved with that. It's suspected that Atari didn't go after the small fry operations - which actually caused most of the damage which precipitated the crash - because they didn't want to trigger an antitrust case by the Feds since Atari was a [natural] monopoly at the time controlling approximately 90% of the market.

 

As for Nintendo's monopoly, it wasn't a natural monopoly. They illegally prevented the third party companies from working on the same titles for other competing platforms for 2 years. They shorted cartridge orders of third party developers who offended Nintendo slightly and also had shipments to retailers disappear when the retailers didn't do Nintendo's bidding. Atari didn't do any of that back when they controlled the industry. And Sega didn't do any of that either with their third party licensing. Suing Accolade for patent infringement is completely different than what Nintendo did for years. Nintendo abandoned those policies because of the Federal Government's actions. And they were also sued in civil court for their shenanigans by Atari Corp, Atari Games, and several other companies that they injured due to their illegal and unethical business practices.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

I was about 11 when the NES debuted and I didn't get an NES until 1987 or 1988. My first console was my 2600 which I got when I was 6. If 2600 game play can be reduced down to "high score" or "twitch" gaming as a means to describe it in generality, then the NES can be reduced down to "save the princess" repetitiveness. What's the goal of this game? Oh yeah, save the fucking princess yet again. I can understand why the feminists look back with disdain over it. It's basically been Ninjanedo's gaming SOP going all the way back to Dankey Kang. [yes, I'm purposely misspelling their IP].

 

I sold my NES and took the money and put it towards my Atari Lynx. But of course, I kept my 2600 and 7800.

Blasphemy! Nintendo can do no wrong...

[Lynxpro]

But Pitfall and Miner 2049 didn't scroll. NES was designed from the ground up to play side-scrolling games like Super Mario Brothers.

 

Namco's Pac-Land predates Super Mario Bros.

 

Namco always > Nintendo.

 

 

As for your point about Activision surviving even until today and thus their management has been historically better than the train wreck of management that the Atari brand has suffered from, well, the Activision of today isn't the original Activision. It's a brand just like Atari is today. The original founders of Activision parted ways a few short years after they founded the company. They splintered off and created other game companies like Accolade and Absolute. That was during the time that "Activision" decided they wanted to be exclusively a computer software company - like Electronic Arts back when they not only published computer "simulations" but also actual applications like Deluxe Paint - and tried for a couple of years renaming themselves as "Mediagenic". That plan was abandoned when the console market was revived.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Lynxpro]

Thank Fuck Atari died when they did, the let the 2600 get run into the ground with shovlware. Atari have ruined everything they have touched, thank god for Sega and Nintendo.

 

Just look at the state of the jaguar so see how pathetic Atari were.

 

I for one am glad Nintendo and Sega became the front runners.

 

I loved the 2600 but it got ruined and tari have never been able to do anything decent since.

 

Ah, yes, Nintendo and their exceedingly high quality levels.

 

How'd that Wii of theirs turn out? Oh yeah, as a console well-known for its mountains of shovel ware.

[empsolo]

The guys that founded Activision broke the previous business model. Had they not done so, they would've stayed at Atari cranking out the very same hits that they later cranked out at Activision [many of them were based on earlier Atari arcade games, btw]. And consequently, you wouldn't have had the shitty third-party developers jumping in and making krap games which is what caused the industry crash.

Except Activision broke away because David Crane and company were tired of being the ones who made all these great games for Atari and then getting the shaft in terms of recignition and royalty. But then Atari was always recalcitrant to the demands of its employees wanting better wages.

 

As for Atari brushing Nintendo to the side, you act like Nintendo was this angelic savior with better tech. Newsflash, Nintendo has always been a complete asshole of a company since day 1. The terms they wanted Atari to agree upon were ridiculous. They wanted a high royalty per game. They wanted to manufacture the cartridges and the console motherboard themselves and then sell them to Atari to resell. It was totally one-sided where Nintendo would've benefitted the most with very little effort. They also didn't want to share source code either and wanted to exclusively program for it. So Atari decided they were going to fuck Nintendo over and rightfully so.

A high royalty per game because they were the ones who were not only doing the manufacturing but eating the shipping costs as well as providing Atari with first party titles that would be localized by Nintendo themselves. Why should Nintendo give Atari cartridge and motherboard rights williy nilly? Nintendo would have run into the problem it would later run into with Sony. Nintendo would have the threat of losing control over a product they have created and there would be a danger of Atari undercutting Nintendo by producing its own games and not releasing any Nintendo IPs. It's like people forget that companies make consoles at a loss and only recuperate those losses via software and licensing.

 

They decided to string Nintendo along while waiting to see what GCC would do with the 7800. And guess what? The 7800 was more powerful than the Famicom so Atari went with the 7800. It's unfortunate Warner allowed Atari Inc to collapse because I would love to see the alt.univese version where a completely intact Atari Inc brought out the 7800 for Christmas 1984, revived the entire industry all by themselves, and then crushed Nintendo and Sega as they tried to enter the North American and European markets.

Ah, the the much vaunted and gallant 7800. The famed white knight that would have saved Atari's ass. Only no, it wasn't more powerful as the system had to do significant trade offs to get more sprites on the screen. Further more it was a bitch to program for and forced prospective developers to pay extra for sound hardware that should be standard on the console.

[Lynxpro]

I was born in the '60s so I grew up with the old Atari 2600. Now, that obviously makes me biased towards it since nostalgia comes into play but I also experienced the Odyssey 2 (HATE that fucking thing), the Intellivision (best friend owned it, played almost all of its games, never got into it because of the graphics style and I HATE that disc controller thingy), the Colecovision (not bad but for some reason never got into it) and the Vectrex (magnificent, basically perfect, including the analog stick with 4 buttons, at the time I felt the screen was too small - I was wrong of course). It was always the 2600 for me. And, later, the 5200 (I owned an Atari 800, same friend with the Intellivision had the 5200). I didn't really get into anything after that (NES, SNES, Sega, etc.) because of the type of games they had and I was getting a bit overloaded with console games. Now games are really user-driven movies, not interested in that, either.

 

I also went to arcades. A lot. Those are still my absolute favorite games (only 5200 Star Raiders rises to that level). I agree with those who point out an arcade shooter/high score mindset fits with 2600 games vs. story completion for later systems. I don't give a shit about running around a world and solving the story on a game console. I had paper & pencil role-playing games for that (Traveller, AD&D, Tunnels & Trolls). The 2600 was great for that arcade mindset. The graphics are shit, I agree, but in a sense that was an advantage. Not really, obviously shit is shit, but I think not being able to hide a poor/boring game behind great graphics forced programmers to make games that were very playable (of course there were still many garbage games made, as with all consoles). That is key to me and it has its roots in arcade games as well. My favorite games all-time are straight-forward ones like Tempest, Red Baron, Xevious, Star Trek: SOS, Space Wars, Armor..Attack, Star Castle, Warlords, Missile Command, Robotron, Space Firebird, Rally-X, Qix, Space Duel, Centipede, Wizard Of Wor, etc. So many great games.

 

Controllers matter. Fuck d-pads! Goddamn, I hate those things so so so much. I grew up with dedicated arcade controls and only the early 8-bit consoles even tried to reproduce that experience. That means joysticks, of course, but that also includes analog sticks. Also, paddles & spinners (they are not the same!), trak-balls, steering wheels/pedals, and combinations of those. You never held the controllers in your hands, they were mounted. I liked having the Atari joystick sitting on a table (or in my hand, but still), having the trak-ball on a table (2600 and 5200), all the different options. Any gamer who claims that a paddle/spinner/trak-ball/steering wheel/button game plays just as good/the same with a d-pad or joystick is retarded and needs to stop calling himself a gamer. They are different! Sometimes subtly, but significantly. I cannot stand playing Centipede or Missile Command with a joystick, same goes for Breakout and Tempest, Pole Position and even Asteroids. I'll tolerate the joystick for buttons swap (digital to digital), but the rest are terrible.

 

As for "blaming" Atari for the crash, I suppose that that's partly due to Atari being the face of that gaming generation and the one-two punch of E.T. and Pac-Man. E.T. is a horrible game. It's not the worst, no, but it's maybe the worst compared to the hype. Same with Pac-Man. You can find worse Atari games but did they have the same "Oh shit, I cannot wait for Pac-Man for the Atari!!" expectation? And disappointment? I'd say no. In a way it's how I feel about Ralph Nader. He isn't the only reason that muscle cars died in the early '70s but he's a big reason. I will smile when he's gone. That's how much I love muscle cars. In the same way I can understand a hatred for the games that are commonly accepted as destroying the best era of video games. I still miss those arcade experiences. Not what arcades turned into (a bunch of driving pods, FPS cabs and ticket redemption bullshit) but seeing Tempest for the first time with a crowd around it so big I couldn't even see what was going on for a good half hour until I got closer in line to play. I remember spending 10 dollars one weekend playing basically only Xevious when it came out (the arcade had a good deal, 7 tokens per dollar, even more if you got 5 bucks at once). Tried so hard to beat that game. The 2600 maintained that vibe even if the graphics could not possibly hold up for most arcade ports.

 

I also hate cute games. Centipede and Dig Dug are 2 of only a handful of exceptions that I like to play. Those later NES/SNES/Sega consoles seemed to gravitate towards cartoony characters and veer away from shoot everything that moves games. I don't care about cheering for a character in a video game, I'm used to steering a vehicle or aiming pip in order to waste something, usually many somethings. Even when there is a character, like in Wizard Of Wor or Black Widow, the character is faceless, not cute. But if you grew up with that sort of video game then the older games will tend to be more anonymous, no "hero" to latch onto.

 

Totally agree with you, Ledzep. You are older than me but we had similar experiences.

 

Since you are a Trak-Ball fan, I hope you are keeping abreast - heh heh, he typed "breast" - of all of the hackery that's going on with the 2600 right now with hacking Trak-Ball support into the games that should've had it back in the day [Centipede, Millipede, Reactor, Missile Command, etc]. As a 5200 fan, you've probably see that Xari Arena was released a few days ago and it supports the Trak-Ball; same with Tempest which was released a couple of years ago. Playsoft converted Slime from A8 over to the 5200 so it can be played on the best home Trak-Ball controller of all time now.

 

Oh how I wish Atari would've released Black Widow for either the 5200 or 7800 back-in-the-day. That's another thing the legion of Ninjaendo fans won't understand… Dual Joystick action. Robotron 2084, Agent X/Cloak & Dagger, Black Widow, Smash TV, and Karate Champ. At least you can do Dual Joystick action for Robotron on the 5200, Atari 8-bit, and 7800, unlike the NES. Smash TV's NES port definitely suffered from not having that option...

 

But back to Trak-Ball action. If you are on Facebook, join our Trak-Fan group. We include links to all of the Trak-Ball goodness content & ROMs that are hosted back here on AtariAge, but it's a little easier to locate there. Dan Kramer, the Atari engineer who created the Consumer Trak-Balls [the CX-22, the CX-53] is an Admin and he's always happy to answer questions as well as give advice on how to repair them. For the record, he was also a consultant on that Nyko trackball you mentioned for the PS1. He also designed the first glow light for the Gameboy too, for those Ninjaendo fanbois' interest.

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/trakbombers/

[BassGuitari]

 

The revival of joysticks via the thumb stick proves the superiority of it over the DPad. However, they are analog in nature. And which company brought analog joysticks to consoles first? Atari via the 5200.

The Interton VC4000 (I think it was) had analog joysticks in 1976. [/devil'sadvocate]

[BassGuitari]

Thank Fuck Atari died when they did, the let the 2600 get run into the ground with shovlware. Atari have ruined everything they have touched, thank god for Sega and Nintendo.

 

Just look at the state of the jaguar so see how pathetic Atari were.

 

I for one am glad Nintendo and Sega became the front runners.

 

I loved the 2600 but it got ruined and tari have never been able to do anything decent since.

You know the Atari responsible for the 2600 (Atari Inc.) and the Atari responsible for the Jaguar (Atari Corp.) were two completely different companies, right?

 

(Not that it matters as it relates to your statement, I guess.)

[hizzy]

 

 

You've never seen an Atari Flashback before? They sell them all over the place. And they do have composite output standard.

 

Granted, if you want one that's actually a real 2600 and not emulation, you'll have to buy the older Flashback 2 or 2+ on ePay, Craigslist, the AtariAge Marketplace, or a thrift store. You can even mod them to have a cartridge port.

 

I live in Canada, Montreal specifically. Sometimes stuff takes a while to get here. There is only one shop in my town that sells the flashback. Nothing at wal-mart, ToysrUs, or anything like that. I do want a real 2600. I hope to pick one up soon.

[empsolo]

As for Nintendo's monopoly, it wasn't a natural monopoly. They illegally prevented the third party companies from working on the same titles for other competing platforms for 2 years/

It wasn't illegal. A court found Nintendo not guilty on case that Atari Corp had brought against Nintendo. Furthermore, if Nintendo's practices were illegal then Sega would not have even thought about having stricter policies in it's own licensing agreement for the Genesis. The court documents from the Sega v Accolade case note that licensees for the Genesis were strictly forbidden from publishing games for competing consoles. Not just the same game for two years but games period. In fact, Accolade's CEO found Sega's terms so repugnant that it drove him to not only become a SNES developer but to start releasing unlicensed games for the Genny.

 

 

They shorted cartridge orders of third party developers who offended Nintendo slightly and also had shipments to retailers disappear when the retailers didn't do Nintendo's bidding.

It has been suggested that this had happened but generally we know that Nintendo as well as Japanese-based PC manufacturers all experienced chip shortages in the late 1980's. There has been no evidence whatsoever to corroborate the assertions made by Atari Games/Tengen and indeed both Atari Corp and Tengen both lost their respective lawsuits. The only thing Nintendo was dinged on was for it's practice of controlling stock over the demands of retailers. Something that was rectified by a 50 dollar rebate mailed to consumers who bought Nintendo products between 1988 and 1990.

Atari didn't do any of that back when they controlled the industry.

According to Pheonix: the Rise and fall of Video games. It was alleged that the big three would conduct whisper campaigns to the big retail chains to try and get each other's stuff pulled from market and when that didn't work they each resorted to suing each other.

 

And Sega didn't do any of that either with their third party licensing.

They did with restrictions. It's mentioned in the brief for Sega V Accolade.

 

According to Accolade co-founder Alan Miller, "One pays them between $10 and $15 per cartridge on top of the real hardware manufacturing costs, so it about doubles the cost of goods to the independent publisher."[3]:381 In addition to this, Sega required that it would be the exclusive publisher of Accolade's games if Accolade were to be licensed, preventing Accolade from releasing its games to other systems."

If you take a look at the foote note, it will take you the actual brief in question and it says:

 

 

 

Sega licenses its copyrighted computer code and its "SEGA" trademark to a number of independent developers of computer game software. Those licensees develop and sell Genesis-compatible video games in competition with Sega. Accolade is not and never has been a licensee of Sega. Prior to rendering its own games compatible with the Genesis console, Accolade explored the possibility of entering into a licensing agreement with Sega, but abandoned the effort because the agreement would have required that Sega be the exclusive manufacturer of all games produced by Accolade.

 

Suing Accolade for patent infringement is completely different than what Nintendo did for years. Nintendo abandoned those policies because of the Federal Government's actions. And they were also sued in civil court for their shenanigans by Atari Corp, Atari Games, and several other companies that they injured due to their illegal and unethical business practices.

And what happened? Oh right. The US federal government ended up withdrawing it's case that it launched on Pearl Harbor day. Atari Games was laughed out of court over the lockout chip debacle and Atari Corp lost it's case when it alleged that Nintendo ruined Atari due to Nintendo's third party practices.

Edited November 29, 2015 by empsolo