The first week with a 5200

[Lynxpro]

Ah yes licensing games and ensuring quality and not mass produced garbage assuredly made the NES a quality machine with out its great titles is could have faded into obscurity too. I had heard about Atari being greedy and treating staff like crap kinda reminds me of Konami at the moment haha.

 

If you have ever watched AVGN, you'd know Nintendo owned cared about money from the 3rd Party developers. They licensed tons of krap games for the NES. The Ninjaendo Seal of Quality was a gimmick.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Lynxpro

[kiwilove]

From what I remember reading about - the Quality seal was just for testing the program to see if there were any serious bugs in it? And that was all. It was never about the actual quality of gameplay, etc.

Videogame companies are there for making the money - but like all such entertainment companies - they can fall into the trap of trying to make product they think the audience would like, instead of making things they like to play themselves (ie. the programmers) - that it should be creativity at work. An example being movie tie-ins, most of these seem to be designed to fail.

 

Nintendo could only dictate what their own software division could do - and they have a pretty good track record for producing significant titles.

 

Harvey

[BassGuitari]

 

The way I understood it is that the people at Atari,Inc. didn't even know Atari was up for sale and therefore was already taking the correct steps to come out ahead after the video game crash but Jack Tramiel shut all of that down when he bought it. They already started launching the 7800 and 2600 Jr., they already completed the 7800 keyboard, they were working on the 7800 high score cart, they were working on the 7800 ProSystem Adapter to upgrade the 5200 to play 7800 games, they were working on an upgraded self centering 5200 joystick, they were working on a low cost junior model of the 5200 just like they did for the 2600, they were working on getting more games developed,etc. And they were going to put all of this into high gear with a huge marketing campaign around the Summer Olympics but then there was Jack...

 

No. What shut all that down was that Atari Inc./Warner didn't pay GCC for the 7800 or any of the launch titles that they'd developed, and the sale of the consumer division to Jack only muddied that issue further. Jack eventually had to pay GCC (out of his own pocket, IIRC) for the 7800's games so his new Atari Corp. could actually release the damn thing. You can thank Jack Tramiel that we ever got the 7800 at all. The notion that big, mean, ole' moneygrubbing Jack Tramiel came along to take videogames away before changing his mind when the Nintendo started kicking ass is an old internet legend that has been thoroughly disproved many times over.

 

As for the 5200, the mere fact that Atari Inc. began the 7800 project, like, less than a year into the 5200's commercial life should tell you they had little to no intention of supporting the 5200 long-term, regardless of the improvements its engineers came up with. Gotta remember, just because some guys in R&D come up with something doesn't necessarily mean the company, at the corporate level, plans to do anything with it, nor does it necessarily mean that said "something" was mandated by corporate in the first place. Any improvements to the 5200 at that time would have amounted to stop-gap measures.

 

(By the way, Tramiel/Atari Corp. supported the 5200 into the late '80s, long after Atari Inc. likely would have, selling old stock of consoles and controllers, reissuing old games, and even releasing a handful of new ones--namely Ballblazer, Rescue on Fractalus, and Gremlins.)

 

But to the topic at hand, I remember my first 5200 well. In fact, I still have it. I got it on eBay about 15 years ago (!), when I was still in high school. It was a 2-port version and came with Defender, Berzerk, Pac-Man, and I think Super Breakout. The two controllers it came with only mostly worked, but were good enough (though it wasn't long before I was opening them up and tinkering and cleaning). The first time I hooked it up, I was surprised by how much more advanced it was than the 2600 or Intellivision I had. I actually became so enamored with the 5200 as the ultimate pre-Nintendo system in my mind (apologies to Coleco fans!) that I didn't even get seriously interested in the 7800 until many years later.

[+madman]

The 5200 is a fun system, lots of great titles to be had. I've got a couple of the Best controllers and while they work, I think they're still far less than ideal for most games. There are many games that I just cannot play with that controller, Kangaroo comes to mind as a game that's an exercise in frustration. Other games like Qix and Pole Position play quite well with the stock controller.

 

You really have to wonder what Atari was thinking at the time...kinda like when they made the 7800 controller and the Jag controller too

[Lynxpro]

As I said before, it was WARNER who canned the 5200, not Atari Inc's management. They wanted built-in 2600 backwards compatibility and they wanted it in a cost-reduced yet next-generationie console. That's the 7800 to a tee. It was based upon the promises GCC made to Warner and Warner started trusting GCC more than their own employees at Atari.

 

Had it been up to Atari Inc's engineers, the 5200 would've been backwards-compatible with the 2600 from the start. But it would've been extra cost to add the TIA and an extra cartridge slot to the system. Shame though. That extra cost would've meant a lot more 2600 owners moving up to the system.

 

As for Jack Tramiel, don't give him so much credit on supporting the 5200. It was all about getting rid of inventory and profiting off of that back stock. He cared not a fig for gaming. His sons liked video games though; at least Sam did. There's plenty of 5200 games that never were released/completed because Jack wanted to switch the former Atari Inc programmers to contractors instead of Atari Corp employees. That also backfired on him when those coders went onto work instead for Tengen and Sega, amongst others. Regardless of where the 5200 would've still fit in, the 7800 could've definitely benefitted from the likes of Steve Woita and Keithen Hayenga* working on games for it which didn't transpire due to Tramielian policies. Hell, the 7800 could've used Dave Staugas (sic) but by then he was focused on ST projects like NEOchrome.

 

 

*Keithen also could've been an asset to the ST Team since he went on to work on Apple Mac OS stuff, Palm OS, Palm OS 6 [ahem, BeOS], and webOS, amongst other projects. But then again, Tramiel couldn't even keep Landon Dyer working on the ST Team; Apple later benefitted from his talents when he exited Corp. Landon could've also helped with 7800 games too, but alas, it was not meant to be.

Edited February 8, 2016 by Lynxpro

[kiwilove]

This is so typical of those at the top of their industry - they're there for the short term - and have not a good idea of what they are actually doing. Not that you could plan ahead for this new tech industry back then.

 

But I like to think that those who chose to go Atari - was because of what that hardware promised, thinking that hardware was more capable than it's competitors.

 

We like to think that we do know what the hardware is capable of now? But seeing new stuff being done on it is always a joy.

 

I don't know if the 7800 is a really capable machine or not? Specs wise, it promises a lot - but I don't think I've seen much of how far can it be pushed?

 

Harvey

[BassGuitari]

As for Jack Tramiel, don't give him so much credit on supporting the 5200. It was all about getting rid of inventory and profiting off of that back stock.

I wasn't really giving him credit, just saying that Atari Corp. carried it longer than Atari Inc./Warner probably would have.

[Schizophretard]

No. What shut all that down was that Atari Inc./Warner

What I meant by "the people at Atari,Inc." wasn't the people in charge but those working on things. To my understanding, they were working on solving problems while Atari Inc./Warner was really keeping them in the dark about selling.

[Lynxpro]

What I meant by "the people at Atari,Inc." wasn't the people in charge but those working on things. To my understanding, they were working on solving problems while Atari Inc./Warner was really keeping them in the dark about selling.

 

Warner kept all of Atari in the dark of their intentions. Steve Ross certainly wasn't telling James Morgan that he was going behind his back and trying to sell Atari to Philips and finally Jack Tramiel while Morgan was doing his best to correct all of the issues at Atari. It's a shame because Morgan was on the right track.

[bohoki]

 

If you have ever watched AVGN, you'd know Nintendo owned cared about money from the 3rd Party developers. They licensed tons of krap games for the NES. The Ninjaendo Seal of Quality was a gimmick.

the seal of quality program was just to remove potentially offensive/unsensitive themes

 

basically they didn't want custer's revenge part 2 on their system

[Retro Rogue]

The way I understood it is that the people at Atari,Inc. didn't even know Atari was up for sale and therefore was already taking the correct steps to come out ahead after the video game crash but Jack Tramiel shut all of that down when he bought it. They already started launching the 7800 and 2600 Jr., they already completed the 7800 keyboard, they were working on the 7800 high score cart, they were working on the 7800 ProSystem Adapter to upgrade the 5200 to play 7800 games, they were working on an upgraded self centering 5200 joystick, they were working on a low cost junior model of the 5200 just like they did for the 2600, they were working on getting more games developed,etc. And they were going to put all of this into high gear with a huge marketing campaign around the Summer Olympics but then there was Jack...

 

1) Jack didn't buy Atari, he bought the assets of one division of it. After Warner managed to foil Rupert Murdoch's takeover attempt, one of the things they did was hire a firm to analyze all their assets and recommend what they needed to get rid of to become less vulnerable. Among the recommendations for selling was Atari. When Steve Ross couldn't find a buyer for the entire company (which was kept under wraps but still managed to leak out) he decided to try and sell off pieces of it. He cold called Jack, they had on again and off again negotiations a little over a month and finally reached an agreement. Jack's purchase was an assets purchase of the Consumer Division assets. Assets purchases are not a company purchase, they're a purchase of selected assets from a company. Usually some IP, contracts, buildings, etc. They do not include people. People are hired over to the purchaser to maintain the purchased assets if need be. Jack rolled his purchased assets into his company TTL (Tramel Technology Ltd.) which he then reformed as Atari Corp. (which he had filed for in May when the negotiations first started). Atari Inc. was still there with James Morgan at it's head. Warner, per the agreement, renamed Atari Inc. to Atari Games Inc. Morgan went on sabbatical and never returned.

 

2) Per the above, any plans in play would have been shut down during the time of the purchase because the Consumer Division ceased to exist after that. Not because Jack shut them down. It was an assets purchase, and even then they didn't know what assets they were all getting in the purchase. They spent the next month going through and evaluating everything while seeing who they wanted to hire from Atari Inc. to the new company. The confusion arises (especially with ex-Atari Inc. employees) because of the shitty way Warner did this. The divestiture of the assets wasn't planned out by Warner and given the normal length of time and execution. Ross just wanted it done. So while this was going on, Warner just kept everything operating as normal and people were allowed to just be in the dark and keep working business as usual not realizing that two separate companies were sharing the same space and that they were working for Atari Games Inc. and not the other. All they heard was something about Jack "buying Atari." Those from the Consumer Division operations that weren't hired to Atari Corp. were let go by Warner and actually received their final paycheck directly from Warner. Jack's small team had the herculean task of navigating all this in less than a month: Working with Warner's (and Atari Games Inc.'s) people to evaluate which buildings were going with who, who had to vacate what and how, what assets were going with who (everything from projects to equipment to office furniture), going over accounts receivable and payable that were part of the purchase (both of which were massively backlogged), interviewing people at Atari Games Inc. to hire over to Atari Corp., and on top of that evaluate all the projects and IP to see what they could continue with or should continue with at Atari Corp. And there was of course the attack by Commodore shutting down any computer operations that month, plus the constant onslaught of people looking for money they felt they were owed per contracts with Atari Inc. (An example of the latter is Nintendo, who considered Jack's acquirement of manufactured cartridges based on Nintendo licenses to be a purchase and therefore they were owed royalties). What's also interesting is that a lot of this trimming that gets attributed to Jack was actually set to be done Morgan and his NATCO initiative anyways. NATCO would have severely streamlined the product offering and the amount of staff.

 

3) There's a pervading myth about Jack immediately canceling video game projects and products because of no interest in video games, and that primarily stems from one story (promoted at one time by Curt) about throwing the 7800 off a desk, that Curt and I now chalk up to a pissed off ex-employee. Why? Because in all the interviews (with people directly involved in the matter) and documentation research for the second book that we've done, we've found the opposite. In fact we've had direct confirmation on the GCC side that Jack was still in talks to do the national launch for the Christmas '84 season and actually looking to up the number of parts orders from GCC to produce even more than Atari Inc. originally wanted. He also hired on some game developers from Atari Inc. as contract workers as well to finish out some games and to do new ones should everything work out. Likewise we have verification that he was looking into the 2600 Jr. project to start up again as well. Keep in mind, this was not Atari Inc. Other than some IP and physical assets changing hands, it was not a continuation of Atari Inc. this was a new company. A company that was running on fumes, with Jack investing a lot of his own money and even then having to renegotiate with Warner several months later because they weren't able to collect on most of the debt Warner had promised they'd be able to for funding operations.

 

4) Once everything was legally settled with payments to GCC in spring of '85 and Jack was able to lure Mike Katz away from Epyx to start up an electronic entertainment division again late September, it's not a surprise that the 7800 peripherals were cancelled. a) The people who had been working on them at GCC were gone by then. b) It was a different market and that sort of computer driven expansion wasn't needed or desired any more. Katz's focus was on getting "hot" titles and felt that's what made a console sell.

 

5) The 5200 was cancelled well before Jack purchased the Consumer Division assets. Jack's re-introduction of the 5200 was to empty out warehouse and parts stock he got in the '84 purchase as Lynxpro mentioned.

Edited February 8, 2016 by Retro Rogue

[motrucker]

I bought my first 5200 back in 1982. That unit finally bit the dust about two weeks ago (Might be a record?). I just found a (sort of) local shop that sells refurbished, used, and new Atari machines of all kinds. So, I will replace the 5200 within a week. May as well, since I still have all these cartridges.

I bought one of these video adapters, so I can use the 5200 (and most of my other retro consoles) in 720p or higher:

 

http://www.hk.viewsonic.com/en/products/advancedtv/nextvision_n6.php

 

Rather than mod the machines. This way the consoles are left like new, but I still get much better video. THis is the best adapter I have seen to date, even if it is old, design wise.

I still rank the 5200 very high on my list of retro consoles!

Edited February 9, 2016 by motrucker

[dj_convoy]

I was like 3 or 4 when we got our 5200, so I'm afraid I don't recall my initial impression. I do recall many, many hours of enjoyment it brought me, particularly with Kaboom, Keystone Capers, Dig Dug, Jungle Hunt and the almighty Pitfall II.

[Lynxpro]

the seal of quality program was just to remove potentially offensive/unsensitive themes

 

basically they didn't want custer's revenge part 2 on their system

 

That's a very generous statement. It was more of an excuse to restrict third-party developers and force them to buy their cartridges from Nintendo directly. Nintendo also could tell them how many copies of a game they could sell and also restrict the number of titles they could release per year.

 

In fairness to Nintendo - did I really type that? - it did ensure that all cartridges were of the same physical quality. I'm not aware of any licensed NES games suffering PCB problems like Activision 5200 cartridges or Tengen Genesis cartridges.

[Keatah]

I don't know if the 7800 is a really capable machine or not? Specs wise, it promises a lot - but I don't think I've seen much of how far can it be pushed?

 

Harvey

 

I think that the more complex a system is the less it gets pushed toward its limit. Once you've thrown enough hardware at the problem it becomes a habit and you throw more and more. While all the time not even considering re-writing and optimizing software. One begets the other. A rat-race forms and software bloats up.

[Lynxpro]

 

 

1) Jack didn't buy Atari, he bought the assets of one division of it. After Warner managed to foil Rupert Murdoch's takeover attempt, one of the things they did was hire a firm to analyze all their assets and recommend what they needed to get rid of to become less vulnerable. Among the recommendations for selling was Atari. When Steve Ross couldn't find a buyer for the entire company (which was kept under wraps but still managed to leak out) he decided to try and sell off pieces of it. He cold called Jack, they had on again and off again negotiations a little over a month and finally reached an agreement. Jack's purchase was an assets purchase of the Consumer Division assets. Assets purchases are not a company purchase, they're a purchase of selected assets from a company. Usually some IP, contracts, buildings, etc. They do not include people. People are hired over to the purchaser to maintain the purchased assets if need be. Jack rolled his purchased assets into his company TTL (Tramel Technology Ltd.) which he then reformed as Atari Corp. (which he had filed for in May when the negotiations first started). Atari Inc. was still there with James Morgan at it's head. Warner, per the agreement, renamed Atari Inc. to Atari Games Inc. Morgan went on sabbatical and never returned.

 

2) Per the above, any plans in play would have been shut down during the time of the purchase because the Consumer Division ceased to exist after that. Not because Jack shut them down. It was an assets purchase, and even then they didn't know what assets they were all getting in the purchase. They spent the next month going through and evaluating everything while seeing who they wanted to hire from Atari Inc. to the new company. The confusion arises (especially with ex-Atari Inc. employees) because of the shitty way Warner did this. The divestiture of the assets wasn't planned out by Warner and given the normal length of time and execution. Ross just wanted it done. So while this was going on, Warner just kept everything operating as normal and people were allowed to just be in the dark and keep working business as usual not realizing that two separate companies were sharing the same space and that they were working for Atari Games Inc. and not the other. All they heard was something about Jack "buying Atari." Those from the Consumer Division operations that weren't hired to Atari Corp. were let go by Warner and actually received their final paycheck directly from Warner. Jack's small team had the herculean task of navigating all this in less than a month: Working with Warner's (and Atari Games Inc.'s) people to evaluate which buildings were going with who, who had to vacate what and how, what assets were going with who (everything from projects to equipment to office furniture), going over accounts receivable and payable that were part of the purchase (both of which were massively backlogged), interviewing people at Atari Games Inc. to hire over to Atari Corp., and on top of that evaluate all the projects and IP to see what they could continue with or should continue with at Atari Corp. And there was of course the attack by Commodore shutting down any computer operations that month, plus the constant onslaught of people looking for money they felt they were owed per contracts with Atari Inc. (An example of the latter is Nintendo, who considered Jack's acquirement of manufactured cartridges based on Nintendo licenses to be a purchase and therefore they were owed royalties). What's also interesting is that a lot of this trimming that gets attributed to Jack was actually set to be done Morgan and his NATCO initiative anyways. NATCO would have severely streamlined the product offering and the amount of staff.

 

3) There's a pervading myth about Jack immediately canceling video game projects and products because of no interest in video games, and that primarily stems from one story (promoted at one time by Curt) about throwing the 7800 off a desk, that Curt and I now chalk up to a pissed off ex-employee. Why? Because in all the interviews (with people directly involved in the matter) and documentation research for the second book that we've done, we've found the opposite. In fact we've had direct confirmation on the GCC side that Jack was still in talks to do the national launch for the Christmas '84 season and actually looking to up the number of parts orders from GCC to produce even more than Atari Inc. originally wanted. He also hired on some game developers from Atari Inc. as contract workers as well to finish out some games and to do new ones should everything work out. Likewise we have verification that he was looking into the 2600 Jr. project to start up again as well. Keep in mind, this was not Atari Inc. Other than some IP and physical assets changing hands, it was not a continuation of Atari Inc. this was a new company. A company that was running on fumes, with Jack investing a lot of his own money and even then having to renegotiate with Warner several months later because they weren't able to collect on most of the debt Warner had promised they'd be able to for funding operations.

 

4) Once everything was legally settled with payments to GCC in spring of '85 and Jack was able to lure Mike Katz away from Epyx to start up an electronic entertainment division again late September, it's not a surprise that the 7800 peripherals were cancelled. a) The people who had been working on them at GCC were gone by then. b) It was a different market and that sort of computer driven expansion wasn't needed or desired any more. Katz's focus was on getting "hot" titles and felt that's what made a console sell.

 

5) The 5200 was cancelled well before Jack purchased the Consumer Division assets. Jack's re-introduction of the 5200 was to empty out warehouse and parts stock he got in the '84 purchase as Lynxpro mentioned.

 

I can't wait for book #2. Since you've said Jack wanted to be in the games market from Day 1 - at least to profit off of in order to continue funding all of Atari Corp's other [computer] projects - I hope you guys have evidence as to why Corp didn't demand a licensing agreement for all of Games' new titles when they were hammering out everything between them and along with Warner. That seems to be the biggest blunder [?] committed by Corp in terms of their video game efforts. As you said, a lot of the stuff with GCC ended up cancelled because those people walked.

 

Now, yes, I mentioned Corp tried hiring a lot of ex-Inc game programmers on a contractor basis. Apparently, a lot of them didn't like that. Hence why Steve Woita left [which was a great loss in my opinion; same with Keithen]. Steve seemed to have went directly over to Games and helped with a few of their "Tengen" sub-branded releases for the NES. At least Corp was able to hold onto Landon Dyer [for awhile], John Skrutch (sic), and Dave Staugas (sic) even if they were working on Corp's computer projects and not gaming anymore. I feel the ST Mouse could've been better had they assigned Dan Kramer to the project. That might've been interesting enough for him to stick around longer instead of resigning. I don't know if Corp at the time considered offering jobs to some of the ex-Inc'ers who'd taken the Warner money and run. Seems Jerry Jessop for awhile was commercially upgrading STs independently according to his Antic interview. That and buying up surplus 8-bit disk drives and selling them so Gary Tramiel definitely knew who he was.

 

Since Games wanted in the home market almost from Day 1 - one of the reasons being they all felt they were the "Real Atari" anyway - it surprises me they didn't try to jump in and ask Warner for the 7800 [since the GCC deal was with Warner and Jack at that time didn't want to have to pay GCC for it]. Perhaps Ed Logg exerted some influence against them doing that since he was one of the people at original Atari who preferred the Famicom.

 

I think the reason why the story Curt publicized about Jack Tramiel shoving a 7800 off the table took hold was because it seems to be exactly in line with what Jack would've done. He was a "passionate" sorta guy, so to speak. I mean, who else would tell the folks at Amiga that he was interested in acquiring their tech but not any of their staff? That's rather counter-productive but totally within the moment. Plus, he was always dismissive of gaming. He didn't get it although his sons did. [see, I can acknowledge that]. But it does sound like an ex employee spinning a yarn at Jack's expense for the sake of the story, much in line with RJ Mical's storytelling "flavor".

 

I hope to read Jack and company set out to screw Epyx on the Lynx due to the shenanigans David Morse pulled way back during the Amiga days. Considering Jack's C64 price war was all about fracking over TI, it seems to be a plausible theory.

 

I suspect there's probably enough material for 2 books covering Corp's era. I do hope to read why Corp sued Sight+Sound over their improvements to the AMY chip. I'd settle for that over any hopes of reading about the final legal settlement between Atari Corp's and Commodore's multi-year litigation battles...

[Lynxpro]

I bought my first 5200 back in 1982. That unit finally bit the dust about two weeks ago (Might be a record?). I just found a (sort of) local shop that sells refurbished, used, and new Atari machines of all kinds. So, I will replace the 5200 within a week. May as well, since I still have all these cartridges.

I bought one of these video adapters, so I can use the 5200 (and most of my other retro consoles) in 720p or higher:

 

http://www.hk.viewsonic.com/en/products/advancedtv/nextvision_n6.php

 

Rather than mod the machines. This way the consoles are left like new, but I still get much better video. THis is the best adapter I have seen to date, even if it is old, design wise.

I still rank the 5200 very high on my list of retro consoles!

 

I hope you don't throw the existing 5200 out. Someone might be able to fix it.

[+darryl1970]

I have been using my 5200 Wico sticks, with a custom keypad I designed. The sticks are okay, but I can't say I prefer them over the stock.

 

The 5200 sticks fit perfectly in my hand. I think the "trick" (assuming one has a working 5200 stick, in good condition) is how you hold it.

 

Back in 82, I read a video game book on how to BEAT the top 16 games. (Forgive me if I have forgotten. It may have been the Pac-Man book by Ken Uston that I also had) The book went as far as to describe HOW hold the joystick. It said that clutching a joystick with your fist is very tedious and less precise for movement. All of your movement isn't controlled in your finger tips, but it your entire arm and wrist.

I always cradled the 5200 controller in my left hand. I held the stick between my right thumb and first two fingers. This allowed finger 3 and 4 to anchor on the top of the stick. This gave me a perfect sense of where center was.

 

My thumb could easily press either fire button; the START, PAUSE, and RESET buttons were in perfect reach of my right index finger.

The number pad always seemed easy to hit. It was PERFECT!! (Except for reliability)

 

I figured out some ways to fix my sticks early on. I got two out last night, because I want to exchange them for Best Electronics gold.

To my surprise, one of the sticks I fixed STILL work -- every button. I was amazed, although the analog mechanism may need secured.

 

Anyway, as I was testing it, I played Defender. It was SO MUCH more fun than using my WICO. If I wanted to pause, I didn't have to reach for the keypad. If I wanted to "Hyperspace", I used my palm to press the keypad. (Instead of using my foot, as I have tried with the Wico). It is SO convenient. I no longer sit on the floor next to the keypad, as I would have in 1982-84.

 

The action in Defender was so high-paced. Particles were flying everywhere; the laser trails off, just like the arcade; the stars are flickering in the background. The sound had the same feel of the arcade droning. The 5200 is a workhorse. It was a complete package.

 

The PROBLEM is that somewhere along the line, people started holding the joystick like a... Well... Like a... Like...

 

I agree with the book, and I think this is the reason so many people have trouble finding center. Stop holding it like that!!!

 

NOW, to the defense of those who have difficulty with the non-centering element of the stick. I do believe that sometimes the inner mechanism can slip, causing the joystick to not respond properly. I did notice this a little with my old stick I pulled out of storage. There were a few times the stick seemed to just not respond. I do not recall this being an issue when I was younger. However, try this, if you haven't already. It really may change the experience for you.

 

As for the 7800 stick. I think it's alright. I miss the keypad. I miss the control buttons at the top. I miss two fire buttons per side. I think THAT is where they screwed up. Had history carried out in 1984, I may have actually been disappointed if I had to DOWNGRADE my 5200 to a 7800. (Please excuse me as I vent my frustration) Sure, they MIGHT have added Pokey to SOME of the carts., fixing the nail-on-the-chalkboard sound. I would have been perplex at how some of the games on the "improved" system/module sounded like a 10 year step backward. Sure, Joust is a better conversion. Look at Centipede though. The spider on the 5200 ATTACKS you and lunges. It is a challenge. The 7800 version is just a walk in the park, with horrible sound. What is wrong Galaga game play and graphics, and why is the starfield a bunch of periods? Robotron on the 7800 has all sprites, but we lost the particle explosions that made the arcade COOL in the day. I would have appreciated Maria's multi-color sprites, without flicker if they'd kept improving development. However, it seems the 7800 can only handle so much logic/gameplay balance. Maybe add-on chips, like the NES & 2600 utilizes could have helped. The 5200 had an advantage here. I would have been sorely disappointed with Pole Position (the car looked better, but the game seemed a little slower), Centipede (Slow spiders, a TERRIBLE border, and overall too easy), Robotron (No particle explosions and no border), Dig Dug (Sprites are ugly, music is even worse than the 5200 -- not much better overall), Mario Bros (missing a LOT of animation, poor control, horrible jump physics), etc.

 

Side note and wish-list:

I actually kind of like the Jaguar control pad. What I would REALLY like to see is an adapter to use the Jag pad on the 5200! That would rock, because all of the buttons would be at my fingertips again. It would also be self-centering!