How 2600 reaches 90s when better consoles fail

[MrBeefy]

 

Awww the Virtual Boy...

 

But if it's terrible, How come I want one?

 

Come on people Why? WHY?? haha

 

Seriously if anyone has one for sale cheap,...Do let me know...A few years back a guy at work was supposed to sell me a Virtual Boy his wife owned. But he never came through...I even bought some games figuring I'll get one eventually...

 

I want one as well and will buy it as cheap as him plus one more dollar, but no more than one dollar.I don't see the Jr. getting much love but that's what I grew up on until we got an NES. My uncle had a 7800 for awhile and all I remembered about that was Pole Position and Food Fight. I resurrected the Jr. from a damp basement and a dust bunny the size of a small platter.

[Loxx O)))]

I didn't read every post but I imagine the 7800 being backwards compatible with it possibly helped.

[fiddlepaddle]

I always wonder how did Atari 2600 reach 1990s when 5200, Intellivision, Colecovision didn't

Well...

 

MY Colecovision reached the 1990s, and the 2000s, and the 2010s, and it's still going strong.

 

That CV and the VCS are generally what I STILL spend my game time on, even though I have all the systems mentioned so far (except SuperVision, Game Master, or MegaDuck).

 

and by the way, I REALLY LIKE the Virtual Boy; it just doesn't have enough games (plus they do seem to go bad sometimes).

[Turbo-Torch]

I'm going to be an idiot and admit that I had a Virtual Boy, and I loved it. I bought it on clearance and only had a few games for it, but I played the hell out of it. As far as I was concerned, it only had 2 flaws. The first was the small library of games and the second was that it ate batteries. I corrected the battery issue by finding a power supply that worked and wiring it to the battery connectors. I had it for years, but finally traded it for a Gameboy Advance. Since then I've thought a lot about how much fun I had with a system that everyone thought was a failure.

 

The VB is the only Nintendo product you'll find in my game room. Love that system and rank it up there with the Vectrex. I remember being very impressed with the display setup in Toys R Us, and then almost overnight, they dropped from $200 to $20 bucks with stores having mountain shaped displays of them. I quickly bought one along with most of the available games. I recall the included Duracell batteries lasting well under 1 hour, so I bought the official ac adapter which also cost next to nothing.

 

Seeing what they sell for now, I wish I had bought a bulk lot of about 1,000 of them.

[Keatah]

After a long afternoon I prefer games on the simpler side. And I like the games I grew up with, thankfully many have stood the test of time. When the VCS first came out on 9/11/77 it was a finished and polished consumer product. It fit the times, it was advanced and provided a canvas for the art to be pushed to new territories. It was durable. It worked. And it was fun sitting my ass down in the beanbag with a pile of carts on one side and a load of junkfood on the other.

 

Another quality often overlooked is the strict timing most VCS games have. This leads to an almost mechanical aura for the games. Slowdowns and variable framerates are minimal, if they happen at all. This would seem to originate from a mechanical movement inside the console. To a kid that concept was quite novel.

 

Not interested in AAA titles from PS4 that force one to sit through daily and day-zero updates. Not interested in farting around with recalcitrant niche hardware. Though I do love complex PC games and recreational fractal rendering - a topic for another thread.

[Flojomojo]

Awww the Virtual Boy...

 

But if it's terrible, How come I want one?

 

Come on people Why? WHY?? haha

 

Seriously if anyone has one for sale cheap,...Do let me know...A few years back a guy at work was supposed to sell me a Virtual Boy his wife owned. But he never came through...I even bought some games figuring I'll get one eventually...

It's not terrible, it's just awkward, impractical, limited, and dated. I enjoyed mine for the brief time I had it (clearance sale from Blockbuster Video, sold to Starland at a small profit).

 

It's less crazy than owning a reel-to-reel film projector or a full size arcade machine. I wouldn't mind having that stuff either, but their bulk and unreliability speak louder to me.

 

I liked Red Alarm best. 3D-ish wireframe retro-style shooter!

[Video]

2600 had a wide array of awesome games appealing to most tastes in games, it was cheap, games were cheap in stores, and could be had for sub $1 from friends, neighbors, family, yard sales etc.

 

As for "the best" hardware not making it as long, market saturation, price, and convenience have more to do with it than how good something is. Look at gameboy, vs lynx, game gear, etc. Gameboy had shitloads of games, cost less, and batteries last forever comparatively.

 

And virtual boy was awesome! Screw off

[pacman000]

Well...

 

MY Colecovision reached the 1990s, and the 2000s, and the 2010s, and it's still going strong.

 

That CV and the VCS are generally what I STILL spend my game time on, even though I have all the systems mentioned so far (except SuperVision, Game Master, or MegaDuck).

 

and by the way, I REALLY LIKE the Virtual Boy; it just doesn't have enough games (plus they do seem to go bad sometimes).

Wait, does this mean you have a Bit Corp Gamate? If so that's cool.

[CDS Games]

After a long afternoon I prefer games on the simpler side. ....Another quality often overlooked is the strict timing most VCS games have. This leads to an almost mechanical aura for the games. Slowdowns and variable framerates are minimal, if they happen at all. This would seem to originate from a mechanical movement inside the console. To a kid that concept was quite novel.

 

This is so spot on Keatah. I don't have loads of time anymore...I can't devote hours and hours or stay up all night playing intricate strategy or exploring games. I want to go in, unwind for a few short games, and get out. Atari fills that niche perfectly.

 

And the timing issue...man ain't that the truth. I've felt it's been a problem since the mid-80s without ever knowing exactly why. You couldn't deny that the C64 was a better machine, but man could those games get choppy at times. I would try to write my own (bad) BASIC games and was completely frustrated why they didn't have the speed of the Atari games! And as computers continued to get better, that lag never went away if (like me) you always lagged years behind in computer tech.

[Keatah]

Freedom of the Framebuffer, a dangerous thing. Framebuffers allow the programmer to update the screen whenever they want and that is detrimental to smooth action unless some mechanism enforces and ensures updates occur on schedule. I'm sure you don't have to "update" the VCS screen at 60FPS, but then you get visible flicker. And both gamers and developers alike avoid it like the plague.

 

Programs began to get larger and larger and it started taking real visible and noticeable time for the CPU to work through computing game elements and activity.

 

And the VCS had only one thing going on. Running the game itself in binary. No other interpreted languages to get in the way or steal time away. No complex BIOS or babysitting of custom chips.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Star Castle Arcade uses a framebuffer, which is updated not in sync with 60Hz. This was necessary because there wasn't enough CPU time.

[Serguei2]

How did 2600 complete against NES and Sega master system?

 

I remembered NES and SMS games are expensive at this time.

Edited November 15, 2017 by Serguei2

[+GoldLeader]

How did 2600 complete against NES and Sega master system?

 

I remembered NES and SMS games are expensive at this time.

 

I'll take a guess on this one...

 

Everyone I know already had an Atari by the time of NES, etc., So there was an installed user base already out there and on occasion we still bought games for it...

 

But as for the existence of the 2600 Jr. etc.; it sold for less than the price of 2 NES games...So some people added one to their collection. Of these, some may have been bought because they'd played 2600 before (like at a friend's house), or maybe had a broken light sixer and wanted to play some games they still had...I figure it was selling some units here and there based on nostalgia and curiosity...

[Serguei2]

Also, at this time, people started renting nes, sms and games.

 

That's how NES became so popular.

[fiddlepaddle]

Wait, does this mean you have a Bit Corp Gamate? If so that's cool.

 

Yah...found it in three separate locations of a tarp (game, battery cover, 4in1 cart) at the Capital Flea Market in San Jose around 2000. I didn't know anything about it for a few years, but it looked interesting. The batteries were corroded crusty in it and it took me quite a bit of time sorting through all sorts of junk to find the game (only one), but I got it cleaned up and working.

[ubersaurus]

How did 2600 complete against NES and Sega master system?

 

I remembered NES and SMS games are expensive at this time.

It targeted a different market segment. Those were the high end new consoles, and were more expensive. The 2600 was focused on the low end of the market - it was cheap, new games were cheaper than new games on other consoles, old games were still plentiful on the aftermarket, etc. it's the same tactic INTV used for the Intellivision, but since the 2600 had a much more dominant market position from the get go it took longer to run out of steam than Intellivision did.

 

Nobody competed directly with the NES in the mid-late 80s and came out ahead, at least in North America (and Japan).

[NE146]

I remember when I first went out to college (1987) and went to KB Toys at the mall for the first time to see what NES games were for sale.. what struck me was that they still had newly released VCS games mixed in also.. in particular Stargate and Jr. Pacman. Each of them was about 15 bucks. I suspected if they were new, that they'd probably be more "advanced" by that point. So even though by that time I long moved past the VCS (and even the 5200), I bought them anyway.

 

Since I didn't have a VCS in the dorm, I could not try until a year later. But when I did I was blown away because they were indeed 'advanced' as I suspected. For me that was reason enough for the VCS to continue to exist... the games were still getting better! Heck, it's still being pushed further even today.. which is crazy

Edited November 16, 2017 by NE146

[+SmittyB]

I don't know about actual 2600s but here in the UK I've known a lot of people who had the TV Boy clone systems just because it was an incredibly cheap way to get into video gaming.

[Shawn]

I can remember going into Consumers Distributing in the early 90's and buying NES games with higher sticker prices than the Atari Jr. console was selling for at the same time. They did keep selling though and as mentioned above, when you have a 15 year install base to back you up that doesn't exactly hurt.

[Video]

Kind of wish some modern companies would have this mentality. Ps2 never dropped below $100 to my knowledge. How many people would still buy a last gen console for $50 with so many great cheap games available?

 

Of course, I guess people still buy them at 3/4 the price of a current gen so...

[pacman000]

$50 in 1990 is equal to about $95 today.

 

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=50.00&year1=199001&year2=201701

[gliptitude]

Based on the 90's timeframe, I think the real question is how did the 2600 survive and coexist with the NES.

 

The 2600 previously coexisted with technologically superior consoles and computers for years. But the NES was the first decisively superior console to successfully accomplish the same universal appeal and access as the 2600. It was a huge fad and practically everyone had one. Everything between 2600 and NES could be considered specialized to the average consumer and required an initiation that 2600 and NES didn't. The NES and 2600 were toys that a kid could recognize, as well as females and old people - not just teenage boys.

[spacecadet]

Based on the 90's timeframe, I think the real question is how did the 2600 survive and coexist with the NES.

 

It didn't really. Nobody was making the choice between those two. I'm sure I didn't even know the 2600 was still on sale in the late 80's, and I was a heavy console gamer at the time. The 2600 in 1990 would have been something like the original Volkswagen Beetle in 1990, which was also still being made. It was just kind of out there for anybody who'd buy it, and the people buying it were probably mostly poor and/or didn't know any better.

 

I think the interesting thing about it is that Atari let the system become commoditized, which is something every manufacturer since then has tried really hard to avoid. I'm sure the reason they did it is because they had no choice; their later stuff just didn't sell. But it was not considered in the same class as any of the current consoles, and basically no marketing was done for it from the mid-80's on that I remember. If someone bought it, it's because they saw it sitting on a shelf for $50 at K-Mart and just thought it was a cheap way to play some games. Maybe they needed a last minute Christmas present for a little kid or something. (I wonder how many kids got an Atari 2600 in the mid to late 80's and were disappointed AF.)

[Shawn]

Kind of wish some modern companies would have this mentality. Ps2 never dropped below $100 to my knowledge. How many people would still buy a last gen console for $50 with so many great cheap games available?

 

Of course, I guess people still buy them at 3/4 the price of a current gen so...

 

The Wii sold for under $100 when they made that stripped down red version didn't they? Not that it was worth it as they stripped it down too far removing the wifi.

[Mister-VCS]

I saw 2600JR comsoles in a warehouse in Chemnitz (East-Gerrmany, Europe) in Spring 1992.