Bard's Tale and the Coco

[jhd]

Back when it was new, I remember seeing the advertisements for Bard's Tale. I very much wanted to play the game, but, sadly, I was  Coco user. This title was seemingly ported to every other computer on the market (except the Atari 8-bit series?). The ZX Spectrum version was even released on cassette.  

 

Anyway, I was playing the NES version this past weekend, and it occurred to me that the Coco could have handled a version with reduced graphics -- in terms of gameplay, Bard's Tale is not that much more complex than Dungeon's of Daggorath (a full-party vs. one character, a broader range of weapons and armour). 

 

I wonder if the Coco did not receive a port because of its (relatively) small market share or more because of technical limitations (or was EA just unaware of the platform's existence, having never actually published anything for it).  

[zzip]

18 minutes ago, jhd said:

Back when it was new, I remember seeing the advertisements for Bard's Tale. I very much wanted to play the game, but, sadly, I was  Coco user. This title was seemingly ported to every other computer on the market (except the Atari 8-bit series?). The ZX Spectrum version was even released on cassette.  

 

Anyway, I was playing the NES version this past weekend, and it occurred to me that the Coco could have handled a version with reduced graphics -- in terms of gameplay, Bard's Tale is not that much more complex than Dungeon's of Daggorath (a full-party vs. one character, a broader range of weapons and armour). 

 

I wonder if the Coco did not receive a port because of its (relatively) small market share or more because of technical limitations (or was EA just unaware of the platform's existence, having never actually published anything for it).  

I'm sure it's market share, same with the lack of Atari 8-bit version.   As you mentioned, the game is not that technically advanced.   As I recall, it displays a picture or a first-person maze in a tiny window, and stats on the rest of the screen. 

 

The more advanced systems got prettier graphics, the 8-bit systems got bare-bones graphics.

[JamesD]

Keep in mind that Tandy wouldn't carry 3rd party products for a long time, and the CoCo only sold in Radio Shack stores.
Tandy also stopped publishing # of each machine sold around 1980, and published sales in $ instead.

To this day, nobody really knows what market share the CoCo had, though Tandy did claim it was their top seller according to an article in Rainbow Magazine

[jhd]

 

I realise that hard data on market share is unavailable, but I think that we can safely assume that sales were below the C-64, the Atari 8-bit series, and probably the Apple II series. A cursory review of the relative amount of coverage in multi-platform magazines of the 1980s (or even counting the number of specialist periodicals published for each system) supports this conclusion. 

 

 

[JamesD]

1 hour ago, jhd said:

 

I realise that hard data on market share is unavailable, but I think that we can safely assume that sales were below the C-64, the Atari 8-bit series, and probably the Apple II series. A cursory review of the relative amount of coverage in multi-platform magazines of the 1980s (or even counting the number of specialist periodicals published for each system) supports this conclusion. 

 

 

C-64 outsold everything else for sure, and Apple II sold around 7 million machines, but things get hazy after that.
Most of the machines that sold big numbers, did so largely based on price including the C64.  The Apple II is the only exception.

Atari didn't sell nearly as well as people think.  There are some articles from magazines where Atari execs express frustration over sales.   
It was too expensive at first, didn't really compete well in the business or education markets that Apple dominated, and it was more expensive than the C64.
3rd party software was scarce at first, and C64 software titles quickly surpassed those for the Atari.
They must have sold several million machines, but was it 3?  4?  5?  More?   A lot of people want to say 5, but I think that's just because they like the number.

Support for the CoCo in multi-platform magazines was horrible compared to CoCo specific magazines. 
Rainbow Magazine which had over 260 pages per issue for some time (it topped out at around 300 pages in some issues), Color Computer Magazine, Hot CoCo, a couple Australian magazines, etc... exclusive to the CoCo.
Compute!, one of the only multi-platform mags to support the CoCo, had a formula for making games, and it usually involved user definable text characters, which the CoCo didn't have.  Compute! purchased Hot CoCo or Color Computer Magazine (not sure which), discontinued it, and then fulfilled subscriptions with Compute! which only had 1 or 2 horrible CoCo games per issue that paled in comparison to what the original magazine published.  Compute! put extra effort going into Apple versions with articles dedicated to code to print hi-res text on a graphics screen, or for making sound, just so they could create an Apple port of a game published in a following issue.  But the CoCo?  They refused to support 32K, and Extended BASIC.  CoCo support was dropped after a rather short period.

[zzip]

2 hours ago, JamesD said:

Atari didn't sell nearly as well as people think.  There are some articles from magazines where Atari execs express frustration over sales.   
It was too expensive at first, didn't really compete well in the business or education markets that Apple dominated, and it was more expensive than the C64.
3rd party software was scarce at first, and C64 software titles quickly surpassed those for the Atari.
They must have sold several million machines, but was it 3?  4?  5?  More?   A lot of people want to say 5, but I think that's just because they like the number.

My impression was that Atari computers did fairly well until about 1983 when the C64 got released.    That's based on the number of ports they got, and the amount of coverage they got in gaming and computer magazines.    By 85 they weren't getting so many ports, and the magazines were starting to ignore them.

[JamesD]

4 hours ago, zzip said:

My impression was that Atari computers did fairly well until about 1983 when the C64 got released.    That's based on the number of ports they got, and the amount of coverage they got in gaming and computer magazines.    By 85 they weren't getting so many ports, and the magazines were starting to ignore them.

What exactly is fairly well?
The Wiki says:
"Atari sold about 700,000 computers in 1984, compared to Commodore's two million.^[54] As his new company prepared to ship the Atari ST in 1985, Tramiel stated that sales of Atari 8-bit computers were "very, very slow". They were never an important part of Atari's business compared to video games, and it is possible that the 8-bit line was never profitable for the company despite selling almost 1.5 million computers by early 1986."
That leaves only 800,000 machines sold from 1979 to 1983, or 200,000 per year on average.
Someone shared sales numbers for carts Atari released for the machines (there should be a thread about it).   Sales weren't blockbuster numbers.
There's a reason so many Atari prototypes exist of almost finished games that were cancelled.  They weren't making money.

One of the references in the Wiki was to Antic magazine which happened to point to the same page as another article that said 1984 had been Antic's most challenging year.
That got me curious. 
The Dec 1984 issue of Antic has 116 pages.
The Dec 1984 issue of Rainbow Magazine has over 300 pages.
The Oct 1984 issue of Color Computer Magazine (no Dec issue scanned) is 102 pages.
Hot CoCo Magazine wasn't out yet, but it topped out at just over 100 pages.
 

[zzip]

15 hours ago, JamesD said:

What exactly is fairly well?
The Wiki says:
"Atari sold about 700,000 computers in 1984, compared to Commodore's two million.^[54] As his new company prepared to ship the Atari ST in 1985, Tramiel stated that sales of Atari 8-bit computers were "very, very slow". They were never an important part of Atari's business compared to video games, and it is possible that the 8-bit line was never profitable for the company despite selling almost 1.5 million computers by early 1986."
That leaves only 800,000 machines sold from 1979 to 1983, or 200,000 per year on average.
Someone shared sales numbers for carts Atari released for the machines (there should be a thread about it).   Sales weren't blockbuster numbers.
There's a reason so many Atari prototypes exist of almost finished games that were cancelled.  They weren't making money.
 

Selling fairly well compared to the competition?   Nobody was selling massive amounts of home computers prior to about 1983

[JamesD]

33 minutes ago, zzip said:

Selling fairly well compared to the competition?   Nobody was selling massive amounts of home computers prior to about 1983

The TRS-80 Model I sold several hundred thousand units by 1980.
Apple II sales didn't really take off until the II+, and Visicalc were introduced. 
In 1981, Apple sold over 210,000 machines, matching sales numbers of the TRS-80 Model I.
Prior to that, Atari was outselling the Apple II about 4 to 1, but numbers were well behind the TRS-80.
But by 81 the Model I was discontinued, and there were no sales numbers for the Model III, Model II, CoCo, etc... so the info is incomplete.
Tandy said the CoCo was always their best seller somewhere around 1987, so it wasn't doing poorly.

[zzip]

19 hours ago, JamesD said:

The TRS-80 Model I sold several hundred thousand units by 1980.
Apple II sales didn't really take off until the II+, and Visicalc were introduced. 
In 1981, Apple sold over 210,000 machines, matching sales numbers of the TRS-80 Model I.
Prior to that, Atari was outselling the Apple II about 4 to 1, but numbers were well behind the TRS-80.
But by 81 the Model I was discontinued, and there were no sales numbers for the Model III, Model II, CoCo, etc... so the info is incomplete.
Tandy said the CoCo was always their best seller somewhere around 1987, so it wasn't doing poorly.

Well I did say "home" computers, and this is a thread about a game.    My school bought a bunch of TRS-80 Model X's, but I can't say I ever met anyone who owned one at home,  other schools bought Commodore PETs,  Alot of those Apple also went to schools, but the price tag made it a tough sell to home users.

 

In the home segment of systems also capable of playing games with color graphics,  Atari did seem like the one to beat, until the C64 came along.   Commodore's price war plus the uncertainty of Tramiel's Atari accusation killed whatever momentum the Atari 8-bit line had.   From 1979 to 1983, the home computer market was a small market,  so it would be easy to be the best seller in this segment while still losing money. 

[JamesD]

5 hours ago, zzip said:

Well I did say "home" computers, and this is a thread about a game.    My school bought a bunch of TRS-80 Model X's, but I can't say I ever met anyone who owned one at home,  other schools bought Commodore PETs,  Alot of those Apple also went to schools, but the price tag made it a tough sell to home users.

 

In the home segment of systems also capable of playing games with color graphics,  Atari did seem like the one to beat, until the C64 came along.   Commodore's price war plus the uncertainty of Tramiel's Atari accusation killed whatever momentum the Atari 8-bit line had.   From 1979 to 1983, the home computer market was a small market,  so it would be easy to be the best seller in this segment while still losing money. 

Look at old issues of 80 Micro if you think TRS-80's weren't in the home.

The price war, plus the intro of the C64, and the NES killed any momentum Atari had by 1984.  The Atari's main advantage had been as a games machine, and that advantage was now gone.
The intro of the Mac (84), Atari ST (85), and Amiga (85) made GUI's, Mice, lots of RAM, full keyboards, and built in 3.5" floppy drives the new norm on the high end, leaving price as the main driving factor for most 8 bits.
Atari bumped the 8 Bit up to 128K RAM with the 130XE intro in 1985, but any sales bump it might have caused was countered by the competition's upgrades.

The Bard's Tale came out in 1985.
You have to think if there were strong software sales the Atari 8 bit would have been supported, but companies were dropping platforms that had slow sales.
The Bard's Tale could have looked really good on the CoCo 3, and Atari 8 bit.
 

[Tempest]

1 hour ago, JamesD said:

The Bard's Tale came out in 1985.
You have to think if there were strong software sales the Atari 8 bit would have been supported, but companies were dropping platforms that had slow sales.
 

I had heard that EA dropped the Atari 8-bit due to rampant piracy.  Not sure if that's true or just and excuse.

[JamesD]

1 hour ago, Tempest said:

I had heard that EA dropped the Atari 8-bit due to rampant piracy.  Not sure if that's true or just and excuse.

Well, that's possible, but piracy was rampant on other platforms they supported.  Apple disk copying parties were a big thing.
Maybe piracy was rampant, or maybe sales were just bad, or maybe they just thought Atari people would upgrade to the ST, or maybe it was all of the above.
After seeing that info with Atari cart sales, I have to think bad sales numbers were a big part whether or not it was due to piracy.  Even Atari cancelled a bunch of games that were almost finished.
 

[zzip]

16 hours ago, Tempest said:

I had heard that EA dropped the Atari 8-bit due to rampant piracy.  Not sure if that's true or just and excuse.

I think they did, and then there was a letter writing campaign.  Trip Hawkins, the EA founder had a letter published in Antic in 86 I think, Where he said they had heard from a lot of Atari owners and he presented a list of games he said they would be bringing to Atari.   Most of the games on his list got released, but the one that never did was Adventure Construction Set.

[zzip]

18 hours ago, JamesD said:

Look at old issues of 80 Micro if you think TRS-80's weren't in the home.

I'm sure some people did have them at home,  but I don't think they were in homes in large numbers.   They weren't covered much by the general computer magazines at the time

 

18 hours ago, JamesD said:

The Bard's Tale came out in 1985.
You have to think if there were strong software sales the Atari 8 bit would have been supported, but companies were dropping platforms that had slow sales.
The Bard's Tale could have looked really good on the CoCo 3, and Atari 8 bit.

85 was probably the worst year to be an Atari 8-bit owner.   Seemed like very little was coming to the platform at the time.  Third Party software support did get a little better after that when it became clear that Atari was sticking around and still supporting and selling the 8-bit line.   I think Bard's Tale would have been slightly challenging on the Atari 8-bit,  most likely they would have done a straight port from the Apple II graphics using artifacting, losing two colors in the process

[Hwlngmad]

1985 was a very strange time for computers with cheap 8 bit options (Atari, C64, Apple, CoCo 2) or expensive 16 bit machines coming up (Atari ST, Amiga 1000, various Macs).  Virtually there was no middle ground between the two.

[JamesD]

57 minutes ago, zzip said:

I'm sure some people did have them at home,  but I don't think they were in homes in large numbers.   They weren't covered much by the general computer magazines at the time

80 Micro started out with 148 pages in the very first issue, and it had as many as 484 pages, why would a TRS-80 person buy a general computer magazine?