Tempest Posted July 11, 2001 Share Posted July 11, 2001 For the longest time I've always wodndered why Donkey Kong was never relased for the 5200. Atari had a wonderful (still the best) version for the Atari 400/800, and since the hardware is identicle it wouldn't be hard to port it over. I always figured that it was planned but Atari never got around to it or that it would be too hard to play with the 5200 sticks. After reading Phoenix a bit, I discovered that Coleco actually held the rights to DK on video game systems and Atari only held the computer rights. Even though they're almost exactly the same, the Atari 400/800 is a computer while the 5200 is not (no keyboard). I guess that's why they never released it. There is one minor hitch in this theory, if Atari couldn't release DK for the 5200 because Coleco held the rights, why was DK jr. planned (there's a sales sheet with it listed)? Maybe Coleco didn't hold the rights to DK Jr. like that? Interestingly it was DK that stopped Atari from distributing the NES in America (and probably sealed Atari's fate). Atari and Nintendo were just about ready to sign the papers that would allow Atari to distribute the NES in the US when Atari saw DK for the Coleco ADAM at the CES. Atari was upset because they thought they had all the rights to the computer versions of DK while Coleco said that the ADAM wasn't a computer since it was really a Colecovision inside (contrary to what they were telling everyone at the CES). Atari and Nintendo then got into a little tizzy while Atari went after Coleco with a lawsuit (they won BTW). During this time the contracts didn't get signed, Nintendo reconsidered, released the NES themselves, and Atari got the shaft. All because of a little game called Donkey Kong and a crappy computer called the ADAM. Funny how history works out... Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhindle The Red Posted July 11, 2001 Share Posted July 11, 2001 Just a side note - according to Game Over by David Sheff, "Atari never had the money to buy the Famicom; the negotiation was a charade orchestrated to tie Nintendo up and remove a potential competitor..." So, as much as I'd like to find blame somewhere else, Atari's problems again came from within. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted July 12, 2001 Author Share Posted July 12, 2001 I think it was a little of both. Atari was strapped for cash but I'm sure they could have found the money somewhere (assuming they wanted to). The longer Atari waited to sign the documents the more Nintendo looked into Atari's finances and saw how percarious things really were. I think if Atari had pushed the issue Nintendo would have gone with them anyway. But you may be right in the fact that Atari may not have wanted to distribute the Nintendo at all, who knows? Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted July 12, 2001 Share Posted July 12, 2001 I had always heard that Atari had turned down NIntendo as far as the NES was concerned, after all they had the 7800. But I'm not sure if all of this was pre-Tremeil or not anyway...I know it was the Tremiel's who turned down the AMIGA in favor of their own ST. Warner's Atari even financed the Amiga's development. The Tremiels are idiots and need to practice the Japanese art of honorable suicide. I'm actually surprised the company managed to last a decade under their rule...The only successes they had were selling their pc's in Europe. I guess that was enough(to keep them afloat). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted July 13, 2001 Share Posted July 13, 2001 Well Gunstar, I think you are a little unfair towards the Tramiels here. They might have done some unpopular decissions and they might have made some pretty stupid mistakes too, but in my opinion they were the ones who saved Atari from the crash in 84. Atari lost something like half a billion dollars that year, and it was Warner who approached Jack Tramiel to practically give Atari to him. Hadn't he taken it, Warner probably would just have closed Atari down, making it the most prominent victim of the video game crash of 1984. And Atari didn't really finance the Amiga. They just borowed Amiga Inc. some money, which Amiga Inc. could have paid back in Amiga chipsets. Due to this deal Atari was working on a computer based on this chipset. I think Curt Vendel has some design documents about this machine on his Atari history site. I think it might have been this deal that got Jack Tramiel interested in Atari. The Amiga chipset combined with his old Commodore designers, who could have helped him to turn it into a cost effective computer, might have given him a powerfull weapon in his fight with Commodore. But in the TI pocket calculator debacle in the 70's Jack Tramiel had learned how importand it is to be in full control of all the components for your machines, to be early in the market and to have the lowest price. With this attitude he bought MOS and turned Commodore into one of the biggest players in the homecomputer business. Therefore he tried to get full control over Amiga Inc. And since he might have thought that his deal about the chipsets would have made the company uninteresting for anyone else, he tried to get it at a bargain price. This probably was the only really big mistake that Jack Tramiel made at Atari, which sealed it's fate for the future. Now his main competitor had a half finished computer with a powerfull chipset. Following his rules of trying to be the first in the market preferably at the lowest possible price, he quickly had to get a competetive computer of his own. So he had Shiraz Shivji design the ST in something like six month. And yes, the ST was quite successfull over here in Europe. During some time in the 1980's a good deal of the songs in the European charts were 'designed' with the help of a ST MIDI setup. If this was a good thing? I'll leave the decission to yourself. But this wasn't Atari's only success. For example the revived VCS 2600 still sold over 400,000 units in 1991 in Germany alone. Without the decission to bring back this console and support it for this long, we probably wouldn't have seen some of the more spectacular games for it, that came out during this time. Aw, enough ramblings. Since I'm probably the only one who dares to defend Jack Tramiel, I'll be banned from this board soon anyway. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted July 14, 2001 Share Posted July 14, 2001 Well, I guess us Americans are a bit more bitter toward the Tremiel's because WE did NOT get the same support as Europe did with Atari products. At first, things looked great, but both the 8-bit and 16-bit lines of computers were all but forgotten by most Stores and software companies over hear after just a couple of years. It was only Die-Hard dealers that gave us Die-hard fans any support. More of everything was released in England and Europe and support lasted a lot longer. The Tremiel's pretty much gave up on the US market by the late '80s. Even the game systems like the 2600 and 7800 and XEGS had better support over there...Atari was an American company that all but forgot about it's American public until the Lynx and Jaguar showed up, and even then it was half-ass support. Count yourself lucky for being an Atari fan in Europe(Germany), you had the support that us American's only dreamed about! Of course I'm glad that they bought Atari and at least saved it from an earlier grave, but they should have supported the people in their own back yard a little better... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted July 14, 2001 Author Share Posted July 14, 2001 I think US stores and fans had a bit to do with that too. If the system didnt sell like hotcakes the seconds it hit the shelves stores got nervous and stopped carrying the system (like the XE for instance). And there was absolutely no patience from the fans either, if 10 hot new titles didn't come out every other month they started to ***** . I guess we got too spoiled or the US market was just tough. The Europeans seemed to give Atari a bit more time to get things together and there wasn't as much competetion (or maybe it just wasn't as fierce). Jackoroo probably sensed this and went to where the fan base was shifting... Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted July 17, 2001 Share Posted July 17, 2001 Count me among those who were bitter for the lack of support. I clearly remember buying an Atari ST and then having one heck of a time trying to find any software or peripherals for it. Very few stores carried Atari ST computers and of them, many complained about how long it took to get any hardware from Atari. I remember driving all over Connecticut trying to find a Mega ST2 when a friend wanted to purchase one. I also recall how long it took Atari to release updates to the operating system and how difficult it was to obtain them (as they were programmed on six chips, I believe). I think if you had enough memory you could just load the OS into RAM. In those days the only thing that kept the ST useful were the die hard fans and companies like ICD making hardware and software. Woops, I'm getting off on a rant. I think the Tramiels had some great products that they managed to market right into the ground. Somehow I managed to purchase nearly every one of them, but I never learned my lesson. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted July 17, 2001 Share Posted July 17, 2001 I wrote: Atari financed the Amiga (in so many words), the reply I got follows... And Atari didn't really finance the Amiga. They just borowed Amiga Inc. some money, which Amiga Inc. could have payed back in Amiga chipsets. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg[/QB] That would be "loaned" if your using proper English, not "borowed." Gee, you know, it's really strange, but where I come from and in the ENTIRE english speaking world, if some one loans you money, or one company loans another company money, that's called FINANCING. It's just a much more sophisticated and professional way of saying "They 'borowed' them some money"-also, that's spelled b-o-r-r-o-w-e-d. When you get a car loan, your getting it financed. When you get a loan for a house or a "morgage," your getting financing. Any time anyone gives or recieves a loan, it is a "financing" arrangement. So, Atari FINANCED the Amiga computer or "chipset." Detect any sarcasm? GOOD! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted July 18, 2001 Share Posted July 18, 2001 I really appreciate your corrections, because that's the only way I can improve my foreign language skills. But after you noticed how bad my English was, you probably should have known better than to expect me to find the sarcasm in your statement when I'm not even able to find the correct meaning of all the words. But you are right about the financing. What I meant to point out was just that Warner-Atari probably wasn't taking more interrest in Amiga Inc. than Tramiel-Atari did, which is how I understood your first comment. The loan to Amiga Inc. seems to be more of a favour to a some former Atari employees rather than a planned 'investment' in the technology. And since you were so kind to correct my spelling errors, I can't let this chance pass to help you to improve your spelling too. Before you go to pay a voodoo priest to course the 'Tremiel' family for ruining Atari, you might want to look up the spelling of their name. You wouldn't want some innocent people to get hurt, would you? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted July 18, 2001 Share Posted July 18, 2001 I was unaware that English was not your native tongue, so your mistakes are very reasonable and I actually congratulate you in your superb use of the language, all things considered. Unfortunately, you are in better command of the language than many "uneducated" Americans. About my misspelling of "Tramiel," as you can see, I do know how to spell it correctly, no, I did not look it up, I merely went back to my earlier posts to see how I had spelled it incorrectly, and realized my mistake. I have always known the proper spelling of their name, those were only "typos" that were made in haste. In the future I will endeavor to proof-read my posts to avoid such mistakes. As far as your incorrect spelling of the word "borrowed," I thought it only to be a "typo" on your part anyway, and was being sarcastic in a light hearted way. Hence, my admittance of said sarcasm. As far as the Amiga-Atari association, I was not attempting to suggest why it fell apart, only that it had, and that I had heard many years ago that the Tramiel family turned it down in favor of their own engineer's efforts with the ST line of computers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffy Arensmeyer Posted July 20, 2001 Share Posted July 20, 2001 quote: Originally posted by Gunstar: That would be "loaned" if your using proper English "That would be "loaned" if YOU'RE using proper English. you're = conjunction of two words; you and are People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. ò¿ó [ 07-20-2001: Message edited by: Jeffy Arensmeyer ] 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack-Ass Tramiel Posted July 25, 2001 Share Posted July 25, 2001 The fact that Atari now belongs to a French game software publisher makes sense, since it is in Europe where Atari managed to succeed somewhat throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. Thus, the name Atari is more reputable there than here in the U.S.. I think Infogrames "gets it" as to what should be done with the Atari brand: Brand it with quality game software, and don't bother wasting time and money on hardware development. I see Infogrames using the Atari name to expand its company to compete against the other big French game software company, UbiSoft, in the international marketplace. My prediction is that Infogrames will do good with Atari now, and will have the name for decades to come. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted July 25, 2001 Author Share Posted July 25, 2001 I hope your right. But a new system would be nice too... Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toptenmaterial Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 I read a recent post by someone said they had a copy of DK 5200.... I'm wondering if been released as a homebrew since the last time this thread was active? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HammR25 Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 The 8-bit computer version was converted. The rom can be found in the zip in this thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/71774-8-bit-to-5200-conversions-where/page__view__findpost__p__880438 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari Joe Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 I love ATARI more than anything else but I'm sorry Eduardo takes the cake here with his DONKEY KONG ARCADE for COLECOVISION. That's the best port of any arcade game I've ever seen in my life. I cant wait until his CV2 is done. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toptenmaterial Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 The 8-bit computer version was converted. The rom can be found in the zip in this thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/71774-8-bit-to-5200-conversions-where/page__view__findpost__p__880438 Thanks. Do you know if it made it onto a cart? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted May 28, 2011 Author Share Posted May 28, 2011 Oddly enough DK JR was listed on some upcoming 5200 game lists from Atari. I wonder if there was a different copyright agreement on that one or if it was an error. BTW: Holy old thread bump! Tempest 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toptenmaterial Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 (edited) Is this yours dude? Sweet! @Tempest: I googled "atari 5200 donkey kong" and this was the very first thing that came up! Edited May 28, 2011 by toptenmaterial Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HammR25 Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 The 8-bit computer version was converted. The rom can be found in the zip in this thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/71774-8-bit-to-5200-conversions-where/page__view__findpost__p__880438 Thanks. Do you know if it made it onto a cart? You can have one made but you'll need to get the artwork from someone else. http://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=951 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toptenmaterial Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 The 8-bit computer version was converted. The rom can be found in the zip in this thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/71774-8-bit-to-5200-conversions-where/page__view__findpost__p__880438 Thanks. Do you know if it made it onto a cart? You can have one made but you'll need to get the artwork from someone else. http://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=951 $25 is quite reasonable! Thanks for the link. Now all I need is a working 5200! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tz101 Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 I recently paid the AA store to make mine, for only $25 plus shipping. I supplied the ROM file and .jpg of the label for Albert. The game plays great. Do a Google search for "5200 Donkey Kong label image" and some nice artwork comes up. Just make sure the one you send to Al is fine resolution or it will come out blurry on the final product. 400/800/5200 DK is the only home version that has all 4 arcade levels (intro, intermissions, and the pie factory are missing from all the others), but that is about to change on the Colecovision and Intellivision platforms. Many thanks to the home brewers making this all possible. Now, if someone would only rework the VCS version... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 (edited) If you look in the 5200 section I made a thread witha ton of high-res labels to use when making 5200 carts. Here it is. Start from the last page. The high-res labels start in the middle somewhere. http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/57214-the-atari-5200-label-thread/page__hl__5200+label Allan Edited May 28, 2011 by Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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