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How powerful was the cancelled Atari Panther compared to the Atari ST/Amiga?


Leeroy ST

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1 minute ago, ColecoKing said:

zzip

XEGS and 5200 don't have the same ram, XEGS has 64k.

 

 



Here I reuploaded them:

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5200 is on left CV is on right

As you can see the 5200 generally wins in comparisons with the CV.
 

Wow the CV version of Pitfall II doesn't look much better than the 2600 version!

 

I've played Miner 2049er on bother,  I thought it was about even on both platforms.

 

I think I prefer Zaxxon on CV, the Atari version always felt kinda sparse to me.

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33 minutes ago, zzip said:

I can't see the pics you posted (no permission),  but I have tried a number of CV games.    I'm not an expert on CV hardware like I am on the Atari 8-bit hardware, so I honestly don't know which is superior,  but judging from the games I've played,  some shine on Coleco, others shine on 5200.   One that comes to mind is Mr. Do.   Though technically not on the 5200, the 8-bit version blows the CV version away.

 

So I think with the right games, the 5200 was perfectly capable of competing against CV,  as you said it's flexible hardware with a lot of tricks up its sleeve.  If the tech was good enough for the XEGS in 87, it was good enough for the 5200 in 82.  Just release better controllers to satisfy that criticism,  not an entirely new console!    Weren't they working on a 2600 adapter for the 5200 too?

The atari 5200 was technically better.  It could put more sprites on a scanline, had way more colours, hardware scrolling.  The colecovision had a bit better resolution which made screenshots look better, but the choppy scrolling in games like zaxxon and the sprite flicker was a problem.  The reason why colecovision outsold the atari 5200 was because it had donkey kong while the atari 5200 pack-in was breakout. 

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^That and the negative opinion of its controllers and the price took too long to drop.

Also it helped that Coleco gave away a Cabbage Kid with Coleco purchase in 83 thing exploded overnight.

To be fair to Warner I don't blame them for hesitating to drop the 5200 price as they were racing commodore to the bottom in computers. But as I said previously on the last page the CV didn't really have much of an advantage over the 5200. Shifting sprites per line on the fly is what gave 5200 games like Ball Blazer and Star Raiders which would be difficult to do on the CV at the same speed and color.

Coleco did have better exclusives earlier on though. Games only on the CV and not on the 5200

It had Frenzy, the sequel to the popular Berzerk.

Paid for console exclusivity for Gateway to Asphai, which is funny because it was released on Atari computers but not the 5200.

It also had the Smurf license which was a big deal and made a Smuf licensed game exclusively for the CV. Ok, there was a 2600 release but it may as well be a different game.

Even got the Rocky license just in time during the franchises peak with Rocky III featuring Stalone and Mr.T and a nice little theme jingle on the title screen.

It also had another dozen games, reportedly Coleco had guys view projects waiting to be published on in development and if they looked promising they were told to make a deal. Usually this produces mixed results but Coleco seemed to hit the jackpot for its first year.

The 5200 had only a handful of exclusives.

They had taito's Space Dungeon, Astro Chase, and the sequel to miner 2049er, and then only maybe 5-6 more exclusive games, most of them released late.

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1 hour ago, ColecoKing said:

^That and the negative opinion of its controllers and the price took too long to drop.

Also it helped that Coleco gave away a Cabbage Kid with Coleco purchase in 83 thing exploded overnight.

To be fair to Warner I don't blame them for hesitating to drop the 5200 price as they were racing commodore to the bottom in computers. But as I said previously on the last page the CV didn't really have much of an advantage over the 5200. Shifting sprites per line on the fly is what gave 5200 games like Ball Blazer and Star Raiders which would be difficult to do on the CV at the same speed and color.

Coleco did have better exclusives earlier on though. Games only on the CV and not on the 5200

It had Frenzy, the sequel to the popular Berzerk.

Paid for console exclusivity for Gateway to Asphai, which is funny because it was released on Atari computers but not the 5200.

It also had the Smurf license which was a big deal and made a Smuf licensed game exclusively for the CV. Ok, there was a 2600 release but it may as well be a different game.

Even got the Rocky license just in time during the franchises peak with Rocky III featuring Stalone and Mr.T and a nice little theme jingle on the title screen.

It also had another dozen games, reportedly Coleco had guys view projects waiting to be published on in development and if they looked promising they were told to make a deal. Usually this produces mixed results but Coleco seemed to hit the jackpot for its first year.

The 5200 had only a handful of exclusives.

They had taito's Space Dungeon, Astro Chase, and the sequel to miner 2049er, and then only maybe 5-6 more exclusive games, most of them released late.
 

Atari had possibly the biggest license of them all in pacman.  It could have been a system seller for the new atari 5200.  Instead they rushed out and promoted the atari 2600 version disappointing millions of customers.  Atari had some of the biggest arcade licenses of the day Defender, Joust, Robotron, Pole Position, dig dug, missile command, asteroids, centipede.  Atari also had some huge movie licenses with indiana jones and et.  Only Donkey Kong really compares for coleco, but donkey kong was huge, including it as the packin, compared with breakout for the 5200.

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^Have you tried playing Pacman with a 5200 controller? Considering how well the 2600 version sold, which benefited by the large install base and cheaper game prices, Atari made the right move. The 5200 version was released the same year anyway and wasn't even a major seller on the system. From what I recall MS.Pacman actually did more to pick up sales.

But the 5200 still sold over 1 million units when they unveiled the 7800, which wasn't to bad compared to the CV's 1.5 million by october 1984, so it's really wasn't that big of a deal. The 2600's radically cheap price and stubborn userbase plus the refusal to discontinue it by Atari Inc. made it really hard to sell consoles. CV had great press and did shake-up the market but that started to decrease even before the crash even though many people believe otherwise, and the 5200 was discontinued before that.

When you have the sales figures for the 5200 & CV over 2 years with only 2.5 million consoles sold between the two, it is actually really really bad. Even Mattel had double the performance in less time.

I could only see Pacman becoming a force to be reckoned with on the 5200 if the 2600 was discontinued and it was Atari's new main platform.

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1 hour ago, ColecoKing said:


I could only see Pacman becoming a force to be reckoned with on the 5200 if the 2600 was discontinued and it was Atari's new main platform

Now that's what I'm talking about.  But millions of people actually went out to buy atari 2600 consoles just for pacman.  This happened only a few months before the atari 5200 came out.  Huge missed opportunity for the long term for some quick sales.

 

The 5200 controller does take some getting use to.

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14 hours ago, mr_me said:

Atari had possibly the biggest license of them all in pacman.  It could have been a system seller for the new atari 5200.  Instead they rushed out and promoted the atari 2600 version disappointing millions of customers.  Atari had some of the biggest arcade licenses of the day Defender, Joust, Robotron, Pole Position, dig dug, missile command, asteroids, centipede.  Atari also had some huge movie licenses with indiana jones and et.  Only Donkey Kong really compares for coleco, but donkey kong was huge, including it as the packin, compared with breakout for the 5200.

Yeah I agree.   When the 5200 came out, Pac-man seemed old hat and Donkey Kong was all the rage,  even though Pac Man was still huge just months early.   Wonder how much the 2600 cart contributed to that vs. the craze fizzling on its own.

 

And Yeah, Coleco had DK, and Zaxxon, but a lot of their arcade licenses were lesser known games,   Atari or third parties like Parker Bros had most of the big arcade hits locked up.   I don't think I've ever seen Carnival, Frenzy, Venture or Cosmic Avenger in any arcade.   And Mouse Trap and Ladybug machines were not that common either, at least not where I lived.

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I never changed my argument

 

lol. Let's go back

 

On 9/3/2020 at 4:48 PM, zzip said:

Jack didn't want Atari Games.

Lol, wrong, couldn't afford them.

 

On 9/3/2020 at 4:48 PM, zzip said:

But Nintendo isn't going to stop competing because Atari needs to wait for more cash.

Stupid statement showing low intellect, you can't compete without money.

 

On 9/3/2020 at 3:37 PM, zzip said:

  Videogames were more an afterthought to Jack,

Proven wrong through numerous articles, 5200 support for no reason other than to cater to gamers had no profit margin, tons of partnerships in America to launch 30 games in US at launch, could have dropped 7800 but want it and the console vision and continued negotiations, hired a guy at ST launch year to be in charge of video games, found new partners to support the 2600 as well.

 

 

On 9/4/2020 at 10:45 AM, zzip said:

At the end of the day, it makes no difference, they lost their videogame edge to Nintendo because they weren't out there competing.

Except they were, you just won't accept it.

 

On 9/4/2020 at 10:45 AM, zzip said:

I remember those early days well.   They were all about the ST.  The 8-bit owners weren't happy and felt ignored because of slow pace of new development. 

Yes, the ST that came with a boatload of game support and in the same year new models added to the 8-bit computer line with more games and other software.

 

On 9/4/2020 at 10:45 AM, zzip said:

Consoles were virtually ignored.   Then after a couple of years they shocked the world by announcing a 2600Jr.  

Yeah that's not how that happened at all, 7800 was announced to return, 2600jr redesign to look similar to the 7800 to create the "atari family of consoles" released in the market before Nintendo and spend a great deal on newspaper and TV ads as they were doing the best they could to produce what they could, even sold out all the 7800's made in 1986 but could only make 100,000. Don't forget supporting the 5200 starting from 85.

 

On 9/4/2020 at 10:45 AM, zzip said:

Yeah eventually they had to fund new developments,  but at the start they where selling games from 82, 83 ,84  for their "new" systems.  If they truly wanted to be players in the videogame market, they would have been working on obtaining new IPs in the meantime.  

Which is false because those games were popular enough to hold things up until more games came. Hard to work on new ips when when the establishment of new staff after the buyout and new gaming studios and the launch of the new console with limited quantities made was less than a year a part.

 

On 9/4/2020 at 1:10 PM, zzip said:

In the meantime Atari panicked and started working on the 7800.  

Bullshit statement, zero basis. It was a natural replacement to a console that was bleeding money and had similar price to its computer parents due to price cuts making it a lost cause in the eys of Warner, though I don't agree they should have canned it as I said many times before.

 

On 9/4/2020 at 1:10 PM, zzip said:

These are excuses.   The game industry isn't going to pause and wait for Atari to get enough income from ST.  

And Atari can't spend money they don't have derp.

 

On 9/4/2020 at 1:10 PM, zzip said:

Tramiel Atari wasn't serious about gaming at the time.  Sorry, they just weren't.

Dozens of articles scans posted from 85 and 86 show you are nutty.

 

On 9/4/2020 at 1:10 PM, zzip said:

Instead they stopped completely, and only started again when they "rediscovered" the 2600..

You mean they stopped producing games for consoles during a transactions where the brand was being brought by a different company and then the period after the buyout may add another window of delay as they hire new staff and get the new company together and during that time the 2600 just happened to sell in the meantime?

 

ZOMG.

 

Anyway these were all your original arguments, at least in relation to the 7800 and everything else that has been posted by you have been backpedalling, changing your arguments completely, or adding new topics that weren't even in the original discussion. All people have to do is view the thread in chroniclogical order to see the dishonesty.

 

Speaking of, all you seem to be is a very confused Nintendo fan that doesn't understand how things work even if its explained to you over and over again in simplicity. You are a fan of your Contra games and the 7800 didn't have contra so you say Atari didn't care about games and dind't try despite them actually doing everything they could to produce as many consoles and games as possible since its release.

 

You say the ST was all that was focused on and they didn't care about games yet they had guys go out and get a shitload of games prepared for the launch of the ST which helped the ST get a lead earlier on above the AMIGA for game and made it hard for Atari ST to not be seen as a gaming device in the US.

 

They spend money salvaging the 5200 to cater to the gamers with no profit margins and reissued games for it they though they could sell and produced new titles that weren't released.

 

Sorry man you just have no idea what you're talking about and are desperate to try and convince yourself that the facts didn't happen. But the facts did happen and you're just a bitter Nintendo fan pretending that they even remotely care about any form of Atari and ignoring countless evidence form that time period showing you're wrong because your feelings are hurt. Waahh wahhh. 

 

You wouldn't even try half as hard for the Sega Master System which had less marketshare, because you clearly have a vendetta against Atari in general, not just Jack, and while Jack had done many stupid things you are just freaking nuts. 

 

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11 hours ago, mr_me said:

Now that's what I'm talking about.  But millions of people actually went out to buy atari 2600 consoles just for pacman.  This happened only a few months before the atari 5200 came out.  Huge missed opportunity for the long term for some quick sales.

 

Maybe if they had released Pac-man at the same time as the 5200 version, then many prospective buyers would have bought the 5200 for the "good" version.   

 

13 hours ago, ColecoKing said:

But the 5200 still sold over 1 million units when they unveiled the 7800, which wasn't to bad compared to the CV's 1.5 million by october 1984

That's the difference they panicked over?   It was obvious that all the buzz was around DK that year.   Atari just needed to make sure they had the hottest games for Christmas 83.   If I recall right,  Christmas 83 was when stores were full of Adams that people didn't want and not many vanilla Colecovisions so they had an opportunity there.

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On 9/9/2020 at 9:23 PM, Torr said:

basically.... what empsolo said.

 

Ahh, spoken like someone who had no idea what they are reading and can't follow the subject.

 

On 9/9/2020 at 7:49 PM, empsolo said:

What do you mean not relevant? Dude, this wasn't the early 1980's anymore. Single screen games weren't going to fucking cut it. BY 1986, the focus in Japan had been shifted to platformers

 

That wasn't even the argument you made last time. You were using the excuse of the NES being made TO BE modular to dismiss the fact that the base system wasn't that strong and that later graphics needed help to run on it. Has nothing to do with single-screen games. The point was the 7800 without help could match the NES for a few generations of co-processors before the gap widened which would be much later. Which goes with my other point that the 7800 didn't need to spend as much money as Nintendo (they couldn't anyway even if they wanted to) for power, where their machine was already powerful enough for a long period of time. Outside scrolling-tile specific games.

 

On 9/9/2020 at 7:49 PM, empsolo said:

You bitch about the fact that Nintendo had such a stranglehold on the market and then in the next breath whine about the fact that the 7800 couldn't do these games anyway. 

 

The 7800 could do the games before Nintendo had a stranglehold. You're talking about games like SMB3 that came out in fucking 1990 dude, use your head.

 

On 9/9/2020 at 7:49 PM, empsolo said:

1. As homebrew devs have noted MAPPER chips are definitely doable

 

And how long did that take, and when will it be finished and how efficient will it be for a full game with effort? You didn't have much time back in the 80's to spend 1-3 years on mappers. You still can't do anything more than a basic mapper type anyway since there's no connection to Maria. This is nothing more than a desperation argument, you still can't do anything to a 7800 cartridge to get a game that looks like SMB3 and you know it, stop trying to distract from the real conversation with this segway to "act" as if the major enhancements are doable when they aren't with this irrelevancy. 

 

On 9/9/2020 at 7:49 PM, empsolo said:

as companies in both Japan and the US began to design and publish their own side scrolling action game? 

 

You mean that genre that was already being explored on consoles late before the crash and already on computers in increasing droves? You keep acting like the NES dominated overnight it didn't. SMB didn't sell 5 million units out the gate and have the NES move 10 million consoles in 2 years. 

 

On 9/9/2020 at 7:49 PM, empsolo said:

or incompetence as Atari should have been focused developing newer and more exciting games and not giving the consumer bullshit like Scrapyard Dog in 1990.

 

Good thing Atari had other relatively popular games at the time and not just Scrapyeard dog, even though one would assume that based on the dishonesty in your argument.

 

On 9/9/2020 at 7:49 PM, empsolo said:

The JRPG genre was birthed on the Famicom

 

So all those Jrpgs that existed before the Famicom or at the same time didn't exist? The ones that can be easily looked up in a few minutes? lol. 

 

This is also another distraction, Jrpgs didn't generally sell on the NES in the US what a pointless segway. 

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On 9/9/2020 at 7:50 PM, ColecoKing said:

Sure, Sega had the same style and failed to make a mark like Atari but it helped create a familiar environment that helped the Mega Drive later. Atari's development goals would work more competing with computers than with home consoles.

 

You mean the same Sega drive that had Ms.Pac Man as one of the few handful of games that sold over 1 million copies on the console? Which came out after Altered Beast which was bundled with the console and sold within spitting distance?

 

Master System proved that it was the media narrative and the third-party game lock-in policy that hurt the competition, not the "games" Nintendo was offering which Sega basically had the same of plus some computer derived games like the original dungeon crawler Phantasy Star that has been brought up in this thread a few times. In addition the 2600 sold more than double (most likely) the SMS and 7800's sales put together from 86 onward, and what kind of games do you think were on those?

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12 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

l

On 9/3/2020 at 4:48 PM, zzip said:

Jack didn't want Atari Games.

Lol, wrong, couldn't afford them.

But Tramiel did get the arcade games.  Realise he didn't buy any companies, he bought intellectual properties, contracts, inventories, and property leases.  He did not get any staff, no programmers, no factory workers in this deal.  Tramiel got the entire Atari back catalog, iconic arcade games like Missile Command, Centipede, Asteroids,  Tempest.  The truth is Tramiel didn't want any of the video games home or arcade but Warner wouldn't separate them.  Warner wanted to stay in video games and continued to make new arcade games but wanted nothing to do with consumer electronics.

 

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Yeah I agree.   When the 5200 came out, Pac-man seemed old hat and Donkey Kong was all the rage,  even though Pac Man was still huge just months early.   Wonder how much the 2600 cart contributed to that vs. the craze fizzling on its own.

 

And Yeah, Coleco had DK, and Zaxxon, but a lot of their arcade licenses were lesser known games,   Atari or third parties like Parker Bros had most of the big arcade hits locked up.   I don't think I've ever seen Carnival, Frenzy, Venture or Cosmic Avenger in any arcade.   And Mouse Trap and Ladybug machines were not that common either, at least not where I lived.

You're right, Donkey kong was a little newer than pacman and was very popular and definitely a system seller for colecovision.  But pacman had legs and was enormously popular especially with casual gamers, more so than donkey kong.  MS. pacman was a huge hit and was just a tweak of pacman essentially the same game.

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5 minutes ago, mr_me said:

You're right, Donkey kong was a little newer than pacman and was very popular and definitely a system seller for colecovision.  But pacman had legs and was enormously popular especially with casual gamers, more so than donkey kong.  MS. pacman was a huge hit and was just a tweak of pacman essentially the same game.

Ms Pac Man seemed to have more longevity than Pac Man.   It wasn't as popular at first, but stayed popular much longer.

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29 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

Ahh, spoken like someone who had no idea what they are reading and can't follow the subject.

Don't worry dude, I know that you "know all". You've made that clear.

Time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time again!!!

 

To get back to the point I made regarding you in general,..

You come here for input, yet every piece of input (or at least ALMOST every piece, I'm sure you'll dig something up to argue even THIS pointless point!) you refute and then find 9 or 10 jpegs and a paragraph or two to explain why someone's input was wrong.

 

You know it all. Awesome. Now write your damn book already!!!

Or really you have no book to write and you just love to act contrary on the internet.

 

Don't worry, we got our farms tended to, loads of food for trolls like you.

We also luckily have some actual educated people refuting you and that is REALLY bringing some interesting things to light.

 

Keep up the good work, and keep spreading the new word!

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3 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Ahh, spoken like someone who had no idea what they are reading and can't follow the subject.

 

That wasn't even the argument you made last time. You were using the excuse of the NES being made TO BE modular to dismiss the fact that the base system wasn't that strong and that later graphics needed help to run on it. Has nothing to do with single-screen games. The point was the 7800 without help could match the NES for a few generations of co-processors before the gap widened which would be much later. Which goes with my other point that the 7800 didn't need to spend as much money as Nintendo (they couldn't anyway even if they wanted to) for power, where their machine was already powerful enough for a long period of time. Outside scrolling-tile specific games.

 

 

The 7800 could do the games before Nintendo had a stranglehold. You're talking about games like SMB3 that came out in fucking 1990 dude, use your head.


 

Dude, that wasn't my fucking point. My point was that Nintendo was able to take the time and the effort to invest in newer hardware to bring the best and newer games to the system for their audience. That is why I brought up the fact that the NES was designed from the ground up to be modular, that Nintendo understood that as a time passed on, newer systems might eclipse the Famicom and so to stay relevant the Famicom was designed with modularity in mind to stay competitive. A businesses and tech strategy that worked since the Famicom was able to stay competitive with the PC Engine in 1989/90.

 

7800 could do the games, despite 90% of those games needing mapper chips to run or designed with mapper chips in mind.

 

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And how long did that take, and when will it be finished and how efficient will it be for a full game with effort? You didn't have much time back in the 80's to spend 1-3 years on mappers. You still can't do anything more than a basic mapper type anyway since there's no connection to Maria. This is nothing more than a desperation argument, you still can't do anything to a 7800 cartridge to get a game that looks like SMB3 and you know it, stop trying to distract from the real conversation with this segway to "act" as if the major enhancements are doable when they aren't with this irrelevancy. 

I believe the centerpiece of my argument was SMB2, a 1988 game that utilized both horizontal and vertical scrolling that was made possible with the help of the Famicom Disk System and the MMC3 chip. Also companies that weren't first party publishers made their own custom chips all the time in the 80's. Take a look Namco's 163chip that are used on games like Romance of the three Kingdoms and the first Megami Tensei games, Konami with their VRC series of chips, Sunsoft's FME-7 chip that are used in Batman:Return of the Joker and Mr. Gimmick. To say that companies in the 80's didn't spend their time on developing mappers is a bullshit argument. Atari Corp was extremely lethargic and penny pinching when it came to developing any sort of chip that could bring a game like Riki and Viki to life on the 7800.

 

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You mean that genre that was already being explored on consoles late before the crash and already on computers in increasing droves? You keep acting like the NES dominated overnight it didn't. SMB didn't sell 5 million units out the gate and have the NES move 10 million consoles in 2 years. 

Explored =/= genre being perfected or being brought to the public in the way was on the home consoles of the mid to late 80's. As gaming articles of the time had noted, what made SMB1 popular during the NES's test launch in NYC and the West Coast test launch was the common refrain that kids and teens had never seen a side scrolling platformer that was this expansive and complete before. It sported 32 levels levels of challenge platforming difficulty that also encouraged players to explore the world around them for hidden secrets and power ups. You are right that SMB1 didnt get get 5 million sales or push the NES to 10 million sales in 85-86. However, the NES only had three months on being on sale nationwide after the test launches in NYC and LA. Despite this, the NES the only console to crack thier launch target of half a million units sold, which was also the target of Sega's MasterSystem and the 7800. Both of which bottomed out at 125,000 units despite being released nationwide from the getgo in 1986. And I think we can safely say that 1 million units sold in 1986 was on the back of SMB1's growing popularity in the NYC-Boston area and population centers like LA and San Francisco, Atari's backyard.

 

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Good thing Atari had other relatively popular games at the time and not just Scrapyeard dog, even though one would assume that based on the dishonesty in your argument.

I use scrapyard dog because it was the only platformer on the system and was a piss poor attempt at introducing that genre to the system. Scrapyard Dog is the epitome of laziness when it came to developing games for the 7800 by a first party.

 

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So all those Jrpgs that existed before the Famicom or at the same time didn't exist? The ones that can be easily looked up in a few minutes? lol. 

Character driven, turn based games with class changes didn't really exist before Enix's Dragon quest 1. If they did, they were an extremely niche genre. Popular RPGs in Japan that had existed before DQ1 largely existed in the form of either clones of Wizardy, Black Onyx, or weird top down dungeon crawlers like Falcom's Xanadu on the MSX and PC-8801.

 

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This is also another distraction, Jrpgs didn't generally sell on the NES in the US what a pointless segway. 

Sales were decent enough that Final Fantasy got games on the SNES along with 59 other JRPGS. So the JRPG genre on the NES was popular enough, atleast marginally here in the US and had exploded in Japan, to warrant more games in the genre starting in 1992.

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6 hours ago, Torr said:

Don't worry dude, I know that you "know all". You've made that clear.

 

To get back to the point I made regarding you in general,..

You come here for input, yet every piece of input (or at least ALMOST every piece, I'm sure you'll dig something up to argue even THIS pointless point!) you refute and then find 9 or 10 jpegs

 

This is the story of a sore loser who would rather shift history for entertainment than look for accuracy or any evidence that's actually helpful to finding answers which is what normal people do when they look back to try and understand history.
 

You aren't interested in the subject, this is why you call actual articles form the time in history nothing more than "Jpegs" and then says I act as if I "know it all" because people with emotions, such as yourself, would rathert create their own vision of what happened than well, what actually happened.

 

You are considering me refuting false narratives as a negative instead of realizing they are wrong or pieces are missing and if there is another version of the story they would be able to produce the same historical evidence showing what was wrong or what was missing they haven't. I'm the only person who had made their argument based on articles, I can't add "feelings" to a book because of a bunch of babies as harsh as I may seem. 

 

You're basically upset I am dismissing emotional whining by posting historical facts that contradict that and am trying to get people to actual help look for answers, instead I have primarily two people who would rather argue with ZERO evidence making it harder to find actual information, and the only thing that has happened is me FINDING EVEN MORE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE to counter their claims with as I keep trying to put it through their skulls not only resulting in more historical evidence that no one else in this thread outside Lost Dragon (though mostly on another subject) has put out, but even picture of items data from that time period

 

If that upsets you instead of whining in a HISTORICAL thread in a discussion about HISTORY, you can go back to watching Operah or whatever you do or go to a topic that you might actually be interested in.

 

I know this must be hard seeing as this isn't the first time you've complained for the same flawed reason. But you can at least try to use your head for once. And I'm sure you still won't "get it" and will still argue that me trying to find "evidence" for history to confirm what happened in history is "wrong and me being a know it all" so I guess all those historians are just like me, crazy looking for the facts, and instead we should write books about WHY WE CAN'T HANDLE JPEGS WAHH.

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3 hours ago, empsolo said:

Dude, that wasn't my fucking point. My point was that Nintendo was able to take the time and the effort to invest in newer hardware to bring the best and newer games to the system for their audience.

This is a dishonest argument, Nintendo produced weak hardware that took years to get where they got later, and if it wasn't for the NA crash their console would have been vastly outdated with new machines, and even when they got to the US their machine was still weaker than a machine that was supposed to release 2 years earlier for another 2 years. Their domination in japan was basically unchallenged and their formula as a result gave them enough time to figure out new ways to push enhancement chips starting around the time they were exploring going into America. By 86 onward it became more normalized and no longer took time and effort outside a couple harder to make MMC's that were only in a few games. 

 

Atari already had the hardware and with the little money they had they did the best they could to push the 7800 on shelves and pushed for releasing as many games as quick as they could. Two completely different situations, and one that Atari really couldn't do anything about as the third party lock-in and media refusing to touch Sega and Nintendo at the end of 1987 had given Nintendo a fast lane to the 25-30 million units they would sell and that would be before some of the more popular and major games that used advanced mappers, MMC's, and other techniques that people often cite. That wasn't a competition Atari could win and was one of the reasons the ST consoles was pondered because it actually had more software.

 

Nintendo literally had a combo of being lucky and having policies that were clearly unethical. When they launched in the test market of 1985 and in 1986-late 1987 they were weaker than their primary competitor in the US in every way but tile-based scrolling, but Atari didn't have the games to show that in 1986 (outside games showing that it can handle sprites and have faster games) and when that did show in 1987 as Atari started putting out more games Nintendo started evening the odds than surpassing them at the end of the year going into 1988 in some areas, and then beating them in most areas during 1988.

 

Nintendo literally jumped in at the right time with a ton of money with a policy that would lock-out 95% of third party developers from putting games on the 7800/Sega until late-1998 when it was way too late and no sane developer who didn't run from Nintendo would put their games on two consoles that weren't selling. No need to overshine their shoes which a lot of people like to do. (also the NES was not competitive graphically with the PC Engine in 1989 japan lol what? it wasn't even competitive in 1988. The best they could hope for is lazy developers not pushing the console due to NEC bringing in every ally developer in the country but those games weren't that popular)

 

3 hours ago, empsolo said:

7800 could do the games, despite 90% of those games needing mapper chips to run or designed with mapper chips in mind.

I would say most games that were on the NES from 1983-1987 could be done on the 7800 outside some games that had some powerful set-ups in 1987. You also have to consider the 7800 is much stronger than an MSX people have proven the MSX could run variations of many NES games and some were cross ported and the 7800 doesn't have the MSX weaknesses. 

 

3 hours ago, empsolo said:

To say that companies in the 80's didn't spend their time on developing mappers is a bullshit argument. Atari Corp was extremely lethargic and penny pinching when it came to developing any sort of chip that could bring a game like Riki and Viki to life on the 7800.

It's not a bullshit argument, the vast majority of developers didn't you're forcing your imagination on what actually happened especially for the relevant time period of 86-87. Also I don't get this Riki Viki thing the 7800 has m ore technically impressive games than that without mappers which goes back to my point that they didn't even need them for a time to compete.

 

4 hours ago, empsolo said:

Explored =/= genre being perfected or being brought to the public in the way was on the home consoles of the mid to late 80's. As gaming articles of the time had noted, what made SMB1 popular during the NES's test launch in NYC and the West Coast test launch was the common refrain that kids and teens had never seen a side scrolling platformer that was this expansive and complete before. It sported 32 levels levels of challenge platforming difficulty that also encouraged players to explore the world around them for hidden secrets and power ups.

Using the term explore and SMB1 is interesting.

 

Doesn't matter though it wasn't new and that was the point and the claim, that it was new it wasn't. Whether it's more complete is not relevant otherwise you could add the fact it was arguably the most heavily packed in game of all time until Wii Sports and it's two sequels didn't even reach half-way their SMB1's full LTD. Considering the NES only sold 1 million consoles by the end of 1986 and the 2600 outsold it in 85-86 it wasn't as powerful as people claim it's way overhyped. Not saying it wasn't a major title but you are acting like the game shook things up so bad that pretty much no one was buying any other type of game when that wasn't even close to happening.

 

4 hours ago, empsolo said:

However, the NES only had three months on being on sale nationwide after the test launches in NYC and LA. Despite this, the NES the only console to crack thier launch target of half a million units sold, which was also the target of Sega's MasterSystem and the 7800. Both of which bottomed out at 125,000 units despite being released nationwide from the getgo in 1986. And I think we can safely say that 1 million units sold in 1986 was on the back of SMB1's growing popularity in the NYC-Boston area and population centers like LA and San Francisco, Atari's backyard.

This whole thing is wacky.Atari never had a launch target of 1 million sold and I'd like to see evidence Sega did as well. Atari sold out every 7800 THEY COULD make so that's a load of bull. 2600 on the other hand did much better. Also no we can't safely say anything NES had more games than SMB1 and SMB1 was bundled with most systems in 86 so you were getting the game one way or another and that would increase in later years and have another pack-in with a duck hunt game later on as well. Sure it was probably a factor but it also probably helps that Atari could only produce 100k 7800's with the money they had, and Sega was having problems to the point they would go to Tonka the next year.

 

4 hours ago, empsolo said:

I use scrapyard dog because it was the only platformer on the system and was a piss poor attempt at introducing that genre to the system. Scrapyard Dog is the epitome of laziness when it came to developing games for the 7800 by a first party.

Except it wasn't lazy considering the difficulty of making that type of game and the fact the Lynx version looked vastly superior.

 

Also the context of your quote was they weren't making new excited games and implied they only release games like scrapyard dog, both of which are wrong.

 

4 hours ago, empsolo said:

Character driven, turn based games with class changes didn't really exist before Enix's Dragon quest 1. If they did, they were an extremely niche genre. Popular RPGs in Japan that had existed before DQ1 largely existed in the form of either clones of Wizardy, Black Onyx, or weird top down dungeon crawlers like Falcom's Xanadu on the MSX and PC-8801.

You're using subjective qualifiers now that weren't in your original argument.

 

4 hours ago, empsolo said:

Sales were decent enough that Final Fantasy got games on the SNES along with 59 other JRPGS. So the JRPG genre on the NES was popular enough, atleast marginally here in the US

No they weren't, they sold terribly to the point on the SNES a ton of games that released on the NES including "Dragon Quest" stopped releasing games in the US and FFIV required a ton of paid ads and journalist bribery and that still only did ok, causing them to skip releasing V, and when VI got here Square aid the sales in the US were not good. 

 

Even after 1997 it was only Final Fantasy games that were big hits, the rest were doing moderate sales (barely) based on the game to a niche or were just unknowns nobody cared about and flopped. It really was relatively recently that Jrpgs games started selling decently across more Ips but most of them are still niche but more names have presence since the 2000's onward than before where it was nothing than only Final Fantasy. In the US of course.

 

 

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zzip

That's the difference they panicked over? It was obvious that all the buzz was around DK that year. Atari just needed to make sure they had the hottest games for Christmas 83. If I recall right, Christmas 83 was when stores were full of Adams that people didn't want and not many vanilla Colecovisions so they had an opportunity there.



Atari didn't panic over Coleco sales, they were losing money on the 5200 and it wasn't selling. I'm sure they wanted to win as well so they went back to the lab for a new console with BC for VCS. Would have worked to if Atari Jack didn't keep the damn thing alive.

Mr_me 5200 pacman released close to the 2600 version but didn't even receive half the attention, it seems people wanted to play Star Raiders on it instead.

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8 hours ago, mr_me said:

But Tramiel did get the arcade games. 

That wasn't the context of the quote, Atari games was mentioned and they didn't grab Atari Games because they weren't affordable.

 

8 hours ago, mr_me said:

 The truth is Tramiel didn't want any of the video games home or arcade but Warner wouldn't separate them.

Proven false by their actions of the 5200 and the hiring of Michael Kaz very early on. Unless you have direct evidence of such a thing. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

That wasn't the context of the quote, Atari games was mentioned and they didn't grab Atari Games because they weren't affordable.

 

Proven false by their actions of the 5200 and the hiring of Michael Kaz very early on. Unless you have direct evidence of such a thing. 

 

 

That's not proof.  Their 5200 actions suggests they are not interested in supporting their 7800 game system but only making quick sales.  They didn't grab the arcade division staff and they didn't grab the home video game division staff or the home computer division staff either because they didn't want any of them.  They did grab all the assets including arcade game IP but not because they wanted them, it was because warner wouldn't seperate them.

 

Michael Katz was hired in november 1985 "as executive vice president of marketing, responsible for the management of the sales and marketing functions for Atari's domestic lines of computer hardware and software (replacing the departed James Copland in the role)."

 

"Tramiel and his partners financed the transaction with $75 million.  According to an analysis reported by the WSJ, Tramiel was effectively paying about $150 million for about $325 million of net assets. (WCI Annual Report; NYT, WashPost, WSJ)"

 

Tramiel priced the deal on the value of the home computer assets and got the video games for free.  That's all atari video games including the arcade IP.  Tramiel was most interested in the leases for manufacturing facilities including Atari Taiwan manufacturing for their new computer.

 

"1984 July 5: Among products Tramel Technology chairman Jack Tramiel was expected to abandon were the 5200 video game machine, which went out of production in February, and the slow-selling model 600XL Atari computer. Mr. Tramiel also said, "We'll sell what we have (in inventory)," which included the model 800XL computer.  But he wasn't expected to go ahead with Atari's previously announced plans for a new video game machine, the 7800 ProSystem, and a higher-priced computer that would run some software made for the International Business Machines Corp. personal computer. (WSJ 7/6)"

Edited by mr_me
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5 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

 

It's not a bullshit argument, the vast majority of developers didn't you're forcing your imagination on what actually happened especially for the relevant time period of 86-87. Also I don't get this Riki Viki thing the 7800 has m ore technically impressive games than that without mappers which goes back to my point that they didn't even need them for a time to compete.

Riki and Viki is one of the more basic scrolling platformers for the 7800. If that game requires a mapper chip to run, what does that say about Mega Man 1, Castlevania 1, or any other "basic scroller" from 1985/86?

 

Quote


    I would say most games that were on the NES from 1983-1987 could be done on the 7800 outside some games that had some powerful set-ups in 1987. You also have to consider the 7800 is much stronger than an MSX people have proven the MSX could run variations of many NES games and some were cross ported and the 7800 doesn't have the MSX weaknesses.

 

Half of Konami's cartridge catalog on the MSX uses memory mappers to make them work due the woefully limited RAM on the MSX. Others like Snatcher outright require the SCC sound cartridge to let them even boot. Other like Parodius, King's Valley2, and Salamander have an SCC chip embeded into the cartridge. That was the reason why the MSX could run games that the Famicom could but with massive cutbacks on games like Gradius or Contra. But here's the the thing, games like Gradius chug when scrolling due the MSX CPU being taxed to its breaking point because the CPU is forced to calculate in software what the rest of the system cant do natively while juggling things like hit detection, sprite generation, and scoring. They absolutely required either a RAM cartridge, Mapper Chips, or were designed for the MSX2 because of severe hardware deficiencies that the MSX when it came to native support for scrolling.  Something that is an issue with the 7800, because of the fact that 7800 has no hardware scrolling registers for that games are designed with fast scrolling in mind. A game like a Gradius, or a Salamander or an Arumana no Kiseki, or a Contra are going to absolutely require.

 

5 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

 

This whole thing is wacky.Atari never had a launch target of 1 million sold and I'd like to see evidence Sega did as well. Atari sold out every 7800 THEY COULD make so that's a load of bull. 2600 on the other hand did much better. Also no we can't safely say anything NES had more games than SMB1 and SMB1 was bundled with most systems in 86 so you were getting the game one way or another and that would increase in later years and have another pack-in with a duck hunt game later on as well. Sure it was probably a factor but it also probably helps that Atari could only produce 100k 7800's with the money they had, and Sega was having problems to the point they would go to Tonka the next year.

 

 

This is what happens when you don't read. I said that Sega had a target of a half million units sold by 1986. In Sega's case it had a target between 400,000 and 750,000 units. Neither console would break 200,000 units sold. Its frustrating for Atari as how outside Atari bragging to reporters that systems "sold out," we have no primary or secondary sources for what Atari's initial target sales were for the launch of the 7800 unlike Nintendo and Sega's half million.

 

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