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

[Lost Dragon]

So, with the likes of Rob Nicholson, Guildo H. and Jeff Minter having given their thoughts on how the Panther shaped up next to the existing 16-bit systems and Atari's claimed technical specifications, what is this thread now actually about?. 

 

The Tramiel family and their handling of previous attempts to capture the lions share of the console market?. 

 

If it is.. and the reasoning for the XEGS being introduced are to be covered, it should be made clear the reasoning differed on both sides of the Atlantic. 

 

As i said before, Bob Gleadow Atari UK M. D convinced Atari the XEGS, not the 7800 was (initially) the right system to replace the aging 2600 here in THE UK, as publishers needed the ability to put games out on cassette and disk. 

 

The reasoning in the USA:

 

We come again to that perpetual question: is Atari intent on killing the

8-bits?

 

One way to answer that would be to give you a tour of our warehouse.  If you

could see the number of 8-bit computers and software in inventory, you'd

know we are highly motivated to keep the line going.

 

 

Regarding the new XE Game System, which on the first glance is a slap in

the face to those who know how powerful the 8-bitters are -- this system is

purely a strategic move on our part.  In order to keep the 8-bit line going,

we must do two things:

 

 

1. Get the computers available in more stores, and

2. Get new software developed for them.

 

 

Software is not being developed by and large because of problem #1.  So

which stores do we go to?  The mass merchants, who sold the bulk of the

hundreds of thousands (not, unfortunately, millions) of Atari 8-bit

computers out there, are currently retreating from the computer business.

K-Mart carries NO computers.  Ditto for Montgomery Wards.  And for J.C.

Penney's.

 

 

On the other hand, these same stores are doing a fabulous business in game

systems like Nintendo, Sega, and, of course, Atari.

 

 

The solution, from a business point of view, was to develop a product that

would be appealing to the mass merchants (and also to the public which buys

there), one that also accomplishes the corporate objective of revitalizing

the 8-bit line.

 

 

So what we have with the XE Game System is essentially a 65XE in disguise.

Internally it contains 64K of RAM, the standard OS and BASIC in ROM, two

joystick ports, SIO port, etc.  It is completely compatible with the current

8-bit line, including software.

 

 

Physically it is more appealing to those who don't want a computer but who

do want to play games.  The main console simply has the 4 console keys from

the XE (Start, Select, Option, and Reset), plus the cartridge port and

connectors.  The keyboard is a separate unit which plugs into the console.

 

 

When someone buys the XE Game System, they get the complete package --

console, keyboard, light gun, and 3 programs (including a new version of

Sublogic's Flight Simulator including scenery, all on a single cartridge).

 

 

We expect stores to do a great business in these.  We'll make available the

current library of cartridge software, plus we're converting some disk

programs into cartridge format for this system.  As time goes by, we expect

to see dramatic increases in sales for 8-bit software -- hopefully, this

will also include practical applications as well as games.  This should in

turn encourage developers to create new titles for the 8-bits.

 

 

Once things get moving again in the mass merchants, the current supply of

8-bit computers should also get moving through the dealers -- after all,

they make a better value than the game systems, and take up less space.

 

 

So, those few of you out there who are looking at Atari management as the

evil group who are plotting to quash the 8-bit line, you have it all wrong.

We're trying hard to keep things moving forward.  Without the distribution

and the software, no amount of advertising and new hardware development

could work.  The XE Game System is our best hope to keep things moving.

--

--->Neil Harris, Director of Marketing Communications, Atari Corporation

 

The distinction between the 2 was sadly never made clear in the last historical article about it in Retrogamer magazine i read, as the writer and advisors seemed unaware Atari had announced then canned the 5200 for a UK release and had shown the 7800 at London, then Gleadow announced an explained the change of plans. 

Edited September 12, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[empsolo]

That makes sense as after the Price Wars of 83-85, big box retailers stopped carrying computers due to fears of getting burned on placing expensive orders for computers only for the manufacturers to start slashing prices to boxout the competition and leave the retailers with little room to make a profit even if sales were hot. Video Games, on the other-hand, stopped following the trends of yearly toy sales and became more of an evergreen product that sold all year round.

Edited September 12, 2020 by empsolo

[mr_me]

Depending on the retailer, big box stores continued to sell both video game and computers through 1984.  In 1985 you'd only see the commodore 64/128 at places like sears and montgomery ward, but no video game consoles.

 

5 hours ago, empsolo said:

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?

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

The atari 7800 has no scrolling registers because it doesn't have a background to scroll.  The atari 7800 had a very different graphics architecture from other third generation systems.  It did not have a tiled background but had a large number of sprites that can be various sizes.  You could build a background from sprites and move them essily.

 

Mappers on msx and other systems of the 1980s was about having cartridges larger than the system could physically address.  Typically 64k but much of that space was taken up by system rom or other hardware leaving much less for programs.  The mapper cartridge was essentially a bank switching mechanism to give the system more rom or ram than it could otherwise address.  An msx cartridge based game doesn't need much ram but a game on disk or tape needs lots of ram to load the program in order to run.  Same goes for the xegs.

 

The nes has a 32k program address limit for it's cartridges.  It uses similar bank switching techniques for larger cartridges.  What was different about the nes was that the graphics system was also connected to the cartridge and had a seperate 8k address space.  Cartridges typically used 8k of graphics patterns and that could also be bankswitched for more.  Later cartridges would put ram instead of rom for the graphics and along with more advanced chips or even processors, more advanced graphics effects were possible; at the cost of more expensive cartridges.  Other systems like the msx had no way of writing directly to the graphics ram from the cartridge.

 

The atari 7800 being a completely different graphic architecture had certain advantages.  It could display more sprites, larger sprites with no flicker.  They could use those sprites to animate backgrounds that would be difficult to do on an nes without an advanced cartridge that came years later.  Things like first or third person driving and flying games. The atari 7800 could have used cartridges that showed off its unique capabilities.

 

With a $300k marketing budget to launch the atari 7800, I wouldn't think atari corp was expecting to sell many in 1986.  Now that small marketing budget could be because they didn't have manu units sell.

Edited September 12, 2020 by mr_me

[Lost Dragon]

A few other UK historical points. 

 

1.The original plan for Sega with the Master System was for Ariolasoft to distribute it here and Sega would maintain strict control over software prices and who obtained a licence to make games for it, Ariolasoft aiming for an Xmas 1984 release. 

 

2.Atari UK marketing support manager, Ronald Whitehouse, was keen to point out Atari UK would be taking a completely different approach, they wanted 7800 software development to mirror that of games software for their home micros, no licence, no publisher to veto products. 

 

The aim being to have 7800 games developed faster and sold cheaper than those on the Sega system. 

[Lost Dragon]

As  for subject of the ST getting games support:

 

June 1995 sees Atari UK Sales and Marketing Manager, Rob Harding, saying that over 100 UK software houses were now ST developers and Atari had sold around one third of it's 520 ST machines to businesses software development companies, another third to companies specialising in utilities and intergrated packages and the remaining third to entertainment software houses. 

 

Somewhat surprising comments as Harding had also been quoted as saying:

 

"We are definitely moving away from games software to more serious applications-games is almost a dirty word at Atari now". 

 

 

It's the mixed messages from Atari over the years that makes it such an issue to follow their stances. 

Edited September 12, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[elmer]

5 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

June 1995 sees Atari UK Sales and Marketing Manager, Rob Harding, saying that over 100 UK software houses were now ST developers and Atari had sold around one third of it's 520 ST machines to businesses software development companies, another third to companies specialising in utilities and intergrated packages and the remaining third to entertainment software houses.

 

I presume that you mean 1985 and not 1995 (by which time the ST didn't exist)?

 

Sure, in 1985 game companies were definitely interested in the ST ... as a 16-bit and 80-column-capable game development machine to replace their older 40-column development systems.

 

IIRC, the big game companies really didn't support the ST much until late 1987 or 1988 by which time its price had dropped, and it had sold enough units to be a viable market.

[Lost Dragon]

31 minutes ago, elmer said:

 

I presume that you mean 1985 and not 1995 (by which time the ST didn't exist)?

 

Sure, in 1985 game companies were definitely interested in the ST ... as a 16-bit and 80-column-capable game development machine to replace their older 40-column development systems.

 

IIRC, the big game companies really didn't support the ST much until late 1987 or 1988 by which time its price had dropped, and it had sold enough units to be a viable market.

Phone autocorrect, yep 1985.

 

Good spot,appreciated. 

Edited September 12, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

After listening to an interview with Michael Katz and hearing his thoughts on Jack Tramiel, i spent some time listening to R. J Mical this afternoon, but there was only talk of sitting across the table from Jack, hearing of Jack's reputation. 

 

If I'm blunt, i wasn't that impressed by R. J as a speaker. 

 

He spoke with passion and at length, but the story of how Morse came up with the concept of the Handy seemed off and he gave a very simplistic account of the financial issues that drove Epyx under, Stephen Landrums account was far more open and made clear the deal with Atari was just one of many factors involved. 

 

[ColecoKing]

The NES vs. 7800 Power and games argument is muddled by gaming journalists summarize without any background information and just assume it's basic knowledge and will stick. Such as NES was stronger, 7800 was released late and weak couldn't run a game like Ice Climbers, Nintendo took over the market in 5 seconds and had all the games because American developers all went bankrupt and didn't exist no more. Sega was super strong and was super cool and there was a "console war" between NES and Sega master system which, what do you know, never happened. But that was the story pushed since the late 90's.

The 7800 was always the stronger system from the get go and was made with architecture inspired by higher-end arcade machines doing all kinds of effects while the NES was looking at the arcade cabinets that dominated japan which the most popular where B class arcade cabinets that the NES was made to play, and the modular design of the system was built with increase in technology in mind. This is why the NES started out with games like Mappy to games like Star Force to games like Contra and so on.

The NES chips helped produce better graphics yes, but one thing people dismiss is the fact this only worked for certain type of games primarily SHMUPS and Scrolling platforms. Once you got out of that zone the chips really don't do much of anything. This also applies to SEGA which could produce great screenshots but many of the more detailed games ran slow and had very bland backgrounds with a couple of sprites on screen at a time. Sega relied on pure GPU power which gave it extremely detailed sprites and static background elements but outside the GPU was still mostly a SG-1000 in almost every other facet.

Look at a game like Exerion, it was only released for the NES, that would be the type of game the 7800 could easily run. The NES port resulted in less sprites at once than in the arcade, with a large drop in detail, the bottom half of the screen that gives the illusion your ship is flying through an environment is downgraded to the point where moving left and right sometimes doesn't even scroll the background, and there is at least one or two levels where the bottom half of the screen are just a bunch of rectangles that don't move at all.

Here are some comparisons of game differences:

Xevious has the NES win in sprite detail but lose in environment because you can build terrain with an infinite amount of sprites at any size on the 7800 and instead you have a very flat look for the terrain on the NES version.




In Commando you have better sprite detail once again on NES but the 7800 can handle more enemies on screen without flicker.





You then have the flight simulator comparison where the 7800 can have a limited open world environment with the sprites scaling smoothly as the plane moves up, down, left, or right, and objects like rock towers or garages are cleverly made clusters of sprites creating 3D graphics without polygons. However, the car that drives by at the start of the first gif is made of polygons and does shift based on where you place the plane instead of gluing to you and turning in conjunction with the plane like a 2D tree in an N64 game, a major difference between faking it and making it.





There really isn't a comparable title for the NES since the system can't handle sprites the same way or come close using sprites to create the same ground as you see in the gifs. The closest I can find is F15 Strike Eagle, which came out late in the systems life.




The advantages above could have resulted in many firstperson and scaler games to run better on the 7800 than the NES. If Atari had discontinued the 2600 like they should have gaining a good piece of the market more developers would have been attracted to the console including western arcade and computer studios that would have brought these type of games over, which were very popular at the time because it was the closest you could get to 3D at home without buying an expensive ACORN computer or a Sharp X68000 if you lived in Japan. Strangely both of those powerful devices launched the same year I thought Acorn was older. Also games like Space Harrier from Japan or a port of Exerion could have happened.

Putting SMB3 or Mega Man 4 next to Scrappy Doo Dog will of course be different than comparing Smash TV to Robotron, or F15 Strike Eagle to Super Huey or Hornet.

But power isn't everything you need to have the marketshare to convince the developers to make the games and many would have if 7800 was only console on store shelf. Nintendo even let Atari have its IP for games later on, the people were there but the lack of consoles sold held people back even 2600 got some new developers on board, should have never happened and not to knock on fans of VCS it's time was over you could play your games on BC with the 7800 sorry.

Didn't happen though, and some of the more powerful games took a bit long to make because difficult to program for, not enough third parties to help with templates and kits. Also 7800 Ms.Pacman was killer app should have been pack-in game.

When you look at what really happened you realize that the 2600 started and killed Atari. Lynx was the only system where they went back to selling millions of units again also based on same 6502 in 7800 but much better architecture for graphics. Should have created a cable to play Lynx on the TV with higher resolution and expanded sound based on if your TV had stereo or not.

[ColecoKing]

Going into the Panther and Amiga, Amiga had a big problem. Amiga eventually passed the Atari ST and had many ,many gaming software but near all the games weren't big hits, they had a ton of games and nothing that stood out or had a major impact on consumers. The closest you got was Turrican and Team17 and this was something Atari didn't have to deal with as they had their big IPS and also games like Dungeon master and others selling good numbers.

Sega had the same problem as the Amiga, they had Sonic which only worked due to bundles and a massive marketing campaign, then the sequel dropped in sales 60%. A lot of games people love to talk about on the Genesis that didn't really sell well or attract people during the time they were new. Nothing that really kept buyers attention due to low longevity.

Some of Jaguars most popular games were upgraded versions of their IPs which the Panther could do pretty as well. I think the Panther could play a game like Tempest 2000 and Defender 2000 so that would work well. Add in some original games in addition and it would sell. Panther would have to have a 1991 release to have a chance though and have a similar price to the SNES or lower.

Alternatively Atari could have canned the Panther and still switch to the Jaguar but make the Jaguar play games on CD from the start. Atari's cartridge choice actually hurt their game schedule especially the Amiga ports. CD-roms were becoming more popular in the industry and even the 3DO figured that out. Atari kept cartridges because they wanted to charge more for games to increase the profit margin but if you don't have enough money to make a high quantity of cartridges that idea doesn't hold water.

There's a difference between selling 12,000 cartridges at $80 and 120,000 CD's at $30 or $40.


3DO sales software 1996

GEX (Crystal Dynamics) estimate 1 million copies
FIFA International Soccer (Electronic Arts) 400,000(?)


Platinum titles (over 250,000)

Crash N' Burn (Crystal Dynamics)
Super Street Fighter II Turbo (Panasonic)
Need For Speed (Electronic Arts)
Road Rash (Electronic Arts)
Return Fire (Prolific Publishing)
Slam N' Jam 95 (Crystal Dynamics)
ShockWave (Electronic Arts)
Myst (Panasonic)



Gold Titles (over 100,000)

Killing Time (Studio 3DO) -
Samurai Showdown (Crystal Dynamics) -
Foes of Ali (Electronic Arts) -
Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels (Electronic Arts) -
Primal Rage (Time Warner) -
Blade Force (Studio 3DO)
ShockWave 2 (Electronic Arts)
Wing Commander 3 (Origin Systems)
Star Fighter (Studio 3DO)
Po'ed (Any Channel)

Jaguar sales 1995

AVP 52,000
Doom 33,000
Tempest 33.000
Wolf 3D 27,000
Iron Soldier 21,000
??????????????????


Nintendo made the same dumb decision but had worse excuses like security and several others that they weren't concerned about when they were attempting to work with Sony and Philips on CD SNES. Lucky SNES improved Nintendo perception with gamers after Sega dropped the ball with the Mega Drive which contributed to N64 hype otherwise it would have sold as badly as it did everywhere else and would have been Jaguar 2.0

Edited September 12, 2020 by ColecoKing

[empsolo]

Point of order on Commando. I think its unfair to use Commando in comparisons since the NES version was done by Micronics, who was infamously bad at coding games, instead of in house by Capcom. There are better examples to use in these comparisons like say SNK's Guerilla War and Iron Tank or even the NES port of Smash TV.

Edited September 12, 2020 by empsolo

[Lost Dragon]

Back on actual topic of The Panther (and I will duplicate this comment in the actual Panther thread).. 

 

In the look at Lynx Rolling Thunder section in Frank Gasking's GTW book, Chuck Ernst briefly talks about spending 3 months getting up to speed on the Panther, doing debugging. 

 

Atari gave him a development kit, essentially a 7800 with more Ram and slightly faster CPU, Chuck said Panther was supposed to be Atari's next Bleeding Edge console, but it was a mess and pretty much didn't do anything it was supposed to do. 

 

Atari' apparently said "we're going to get our asses kicked by the Super Nintendo, it has scaling and other crazy technology" 

 

Chuck also talks of how the coin-op Atari gave them for Lynx Rolling Thunder only had 8 levels, not 10,as it was an early prototype and the chip reader they needed to rip artwork directly from the arcade Roms was broken and Atari refused to pay the $1,200 to replace it, feeling it was cheaper to have an artist recreate it by hand. 

 

Thanks go to Frank for yet more Panther insights. 

Edited September 12, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[ColecoKing]

Empsolo

It wouldn't really change much, Smash TV NES still had issue with characters on screen creating a sluggish experience and stilted sprites in order to get as many as it could on the screen. Commando as badly programmed as it may be is a game that has less overall detail which should mean that it still should have been able to handle better. You see the same thing with Ikari Warriors and other games of similar type.

Guerilla war flickers within the first few seconds of the level.

Edited September 12, 2020 by ColecoKing

[Leeroy ST]

19 hours ago, empsolo said:

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. 

 

No, you forget what you typed this was your original quote:

Quote

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

Atari had no such figures, and I'm skeptical of the Sega one due to the source but even if it's true that doesn't apply to Atari and the 7800, which didn't release their initial targets. But they did report they sold everything they could manufacture which wasn't too high a number.

 

20 hours ago, empsolo said:

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?

Mega Man 1 came out in 1987 and even Scrap Yard dog can look better than R&V. I don't know why you keep bringing up the game as any sort of graphical example.

 

20 hours ago, empsolo said:

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. 

None of this means anything and the point completely flew completely over your head, the point was the MSX could run NES like games and the 7800 is STRONGER than the MSX, meaning it doesn't have the same weaknesses it did (or the console it's derived on the Colecovision as they are very similar) so some of the issues the MSX faced would be less significant or non-existent. You basically proved that point with your paragraph on MSX issues and what the MSX lacked that impacted what kind of games it could run.

[Leeroy ST]

5 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

Back on actual topic of The Panther (and I will duplicate this comment in the actual Panther thread).. 

 

In the look at Lynx Rolling Thunder section in Frank Gasking's GTW book, Chuck Ernst briefly talks about spending 3 months getting up to speed on the Panther, doing debugging. 

 

Atari gave him a development kit, essentially a 7800 with more Ram and slightly faster CPU,

Might as well use a LYNX devkit at that point.

[Leeroy ST]

On 9/11/2020 at 8:27 PM, mr_me said:

That's not proof.  Their 5200 actions suggests they are not interested in supporting their 7800 game system

You mean the system still, under negotiation in 1985? Hard to support something you don't have yet.

 

On 9/11/2020 at 8:27 PM, mr_me said:

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)."

 

He was hired for Entertainment electronics and products, and a later source directly says video games.

 

On 9/11/2020 at 8:27 PM, mr_me said:

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)"

None of that says Tramiel wasn't interested in buying video games it just says he got it free, and it doesn't mention Atari games, likely because he couldn't afford to buy it.

 

Also a random outlet saying he "wasn't expected to go ahead with Atari's previous announced system" is nothing more than an assumption based on the actions at the time. That outlet likely didn't know the 7800 was in negotiation at the time. The negotiations would have literally just started as your quote is from July 1984 so the 5200 was the only product on the shelf at the time which was likely remaining inventory after discontinuation from Warner. 7800 was announced and unveiled the same year and July ius only 7 months into the year.

 

Negotiations for the 7800 would have literally just begun with Jack discovering that GCC wasn't paid and Warner likely having no interest in helping out and starting talks. Which would include the 7800 any anything else to help with a console studio and the warehouses that housed the original units that were intended to ship as well as software deals. 

 

This should be obvious by the date of your post as negotiations wouldn't start to end until the end of 1985. If anything 5200 could be argue to be a stop-gap but the thing you omitted is the fact the console was supported, including with never before released titles and recirculated titles, until 1987 which was when the XEGS came out, another console based on the 8-bit computers. If anything it's more likely they used it to see if there was interest for 8-bit titles which would explain why they put out games like Rescue on Fractalus and many of the recirculated games were shared on the 8-bits. Of course we don't know for sure but it makes more sense than what you thought. 

 

 

 

[mr_me]

1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

You mean the system still, under negotiation in 1985? Hard to support something you don't have yet.

Tramiel actually intended to sell atari 7800 consoles in 1984.  He had a warehouse full of them that cost him nothing.  His plan was to blow them out at $50, cartridges at $10.  GCC said no.  Warner had nothing to do with it.

1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

None of that says Tramiel wasn't interested in buying video games it just says he got it free, and it doesn't mention Atari games, likely because he couldn't afford to buy it.

Again, Tramiel didn't buy any companies he bought assets.  He didn't want the atari arcade division but got the intellectual property of the atari arcade division for free.

[turboxray]

10 hours ago, ColecoKing said:

The NES vs. 7800 Power and games argument is muddled by gaming journalists summarize without any background information and just assume it's basic knowledge and will stick. Such as NES was stronger, 7800 was released late and weak couldn't run a game like Ice Climbers, Nintendo took over the market in 5 seconds and had all the games because American developers all went bankrupt and didn't exist no more. Sega was super strong and was super cool and there was a "console war" between NES and Sega master system which, what do you know, never happened. But that was the story pushed since the late 90's.

The 7800 was always the stronger system from the get go and was made with architecture inspired by higher-end arcade machines doing all kinds of effects while the NES was looking at the arcade cabinets that dominated japan which the most popular where B class arcade cabinets that the NES was made to play, and the modular design of the system was built with increase in technology in mind. This is why the NES started out with games like Mappy to games like Star Force to games like Contra and so on.

The NES chips helped produce better graphics yes, but one thing people dismiss is the fact this only worked for certain type of games primarily SHMUPS and Scrolling platforms. Once you got out of that zone the chips really don't do much of anything. This also applies to SEGA which could produce great screenshots but many of the more detailed games ran slow and had very bland backgrounds with a couple of sprites on screen at a time. Sega relied on pure GPU power which gave it extremely detailed sprites and static background elements but outside the GPU was still mostly a SG-1000 in almost every other facet.

Look at a game like Exerion, it was only released for the NES, that would be the type of game the 7800 could easily run. The NES port resulted in less sprites at once than in the arcade, with a large drop in detail, the bottom half of the screen that gives the illusion your ship is flying through an environment is downgraded to the point where moving left and right sometimes doesn't even scroll the background, and there is at least one or two levels where the bottom half of the screen are just a bunch of rectangles that don't move at all.

Here are some comparisons of game differences:

Xevious has the NES win in sprite detail but lose in environment because you can build terrain with an infinite amount of sprites at any size on the 7800 and instead you have a very flat look for the terrain on the NES version.




In Commando you have better sprite detail once again on NES but the 7800 can handle more enemies on screen without flicker.





You then have the flight simulator comparison where the 7800 can have a limited open world environment with the sprites scaling smoothly as the plane moves up, down, left, or right, and objects like rock towers or garages are cleverly made clusters of sprites creating 3D graphics without polygons. However, the car that drives by at the start of the first gif is made of polygons and does shift based on where you place the plane instead of gluing to you and turning in conjunction with the plane like a 2D tree in an N64 game, a major difference between faking it and making it.





There really isn't a comparable title for the NES since the system can't handle sprites the same way or come close using sprites to create the same ground as you see in the gifs. The closest I can find is F15 Strike Eagle, which came out late in the systems life.




The advantages above could have resulted in many firstperson and scaler games to run better on the 7800 than the NES. If Atari had discontinued the 2600 like they should have gaining a good piece of the market more developers would have been attracted to the console including western arcade and computer studios that would have brought these type of games over, which were very popular at the time because it was the closest you could get to 3D at home without buying an expensive ACORN computer or a Sharp X68000 if you lived in Japan. Strangely both of those powerful devices launched the same year I thought Acorn was older. Also games like Space Harrier from Japan or a port of Exerion could have happened.

Putting SMB3 or Mega Man 4 next to Scrappy Doo Dog will of course be different than comparing Smash TV to Robotron, or F15 Strike Eagle to Super Huey or Hornet.

But power isn't everything you need to have the marketshare to convince the developers to make the games and many would have if 7800 was only console on store shelf. Nintendo even let Atari have its IP for games later on, the people were there but the lack of consoles sold held people back even 2600 got some new developers on board, should have never happened and not to knock on fans of VCS it's time was over you could play your games on BC with the 7800 sorry.

Didn't happen though, and some of the more powerful games took a bit long to make because difficult to program for, not enough third parties to help with templates and kits. Also 7800 Ms.Pacman was killer app should have been pack-in game.

When you look at what really happened you realize that the 2600 started and killed Atari. Lynx was the only system where they went back to selling millions of units again also based on same 6502 in 7800 but much better architecture for graphics. Should have created a cable to play Lynx on the TV with higher resolution and expanded sound based on if your TV had stereo or not.

Wow. You are literally touched in the head. The 6502 performance is hindered by Maria on the 7800 directly, and indirectly when trying to create/manage more complex DLs for more detail. Rikki & Vikki runs in high res mode, scrapyard dog runs in that low-res 'fat pixel' mode, and a lot of 7800 games draw even fatter pixels for performance reasons. The 7800 is limited in how much detail it can show per line/ per screen because the convoluted nature of Maria. Platformers literally dominated the 8bit and 16bit generations (and there are games on the NES use 16bit game design asthetics/mechanics ). Xevious is a moronic example of what the NES can do for shmups, not to mention ignoring all the negatives of the 7800 port. Also, NES games run at 60hz (with scrolling too). Do yourself a favor and stay in your lane (the 7800 subforum) if you gonna spew bias nonsense.  

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

[Leeroy ST]

9 hours ago, mr_me said:

GCC said no.  Warner had nothing to do with it.

Not only did you prove my point but you saying Warner had nothing to do with it is false since it was there fault GCC said no and wanted additional negotiation with Jack.

 

9 hours ago, mr_me said:

Tramiel actually intended to sell atari 7800 consoles in 1984.  He had a warehouse full of them that cost him nothing.  His plan was to blow them out at $50, cartridges at $10.  GCC said no.  Warner had nothing to do with it.

Again, Tramiel didn't buy any companies he bought assets.  He didn't want the atari arcade division but got the intellectual property of the atari arcade division for free.

Considering the value he couldn't afford Atari games even if he actually wanted them. 

 

[mbd30]

18 hours ago, empsolo said:

Point of order on Commando. I think its unfair to use Commando in comparisons since the NES version was done by Micronics, who was infamously bad at coding games, instead of in house by Capcom. There are better examples to use in these comparisons like say SNK's Guerilla War and Iron Tank or even the NES port of Smash TV.

I don't think Commando was actually ported by Micronics despite very much looking like one of their ports. (Trojan is another early Capcom game that reminds me a lot of Micronics in terms of janky graphics despite not being by them. But they did develop Ghosts n Goblins and 1942 for Capcom.)

 

You might be mixing up Commando with Ikari Warriors which was Micronics.

 

 

[mbd30]

I went from Atari 2600 to 7800 in the 80s because of its backwards compatibility. The 7800 may have had some technical advantages but it didn't matter when the games weren't there. Maybe Nintendo's monopolizing tactics were a factor but that's the way it was. I was playing games like Ms. Pac-Man and Dig Dug when much more exciting stuff was on the NES. I was happy when I finally got a NES in 1989.

 

Unfortunately I didn't have some of the more NES-like games such as Commando and Xenophobe or I may have been a little happier with the 7800. The controllers still would have been uncomfortable and awful though.

 

[Leeroy ST]

1 minute ago, mbd30 said:

I went from Atari 2600 to 7800 in the 80s because of its backwards compatibility. The 7800 may have had some technical advantages but it didn't matter when the games weren't there. Maybe Nintendo's monopolizing tactics were a factor but that's the way it was. I was playing games like Ms. Pac-Man and Dig Dug when much more exciting stuff was on the NES. I was happy when I finally got a NES in 1989.

 

Unfortunately I didn't have some of the more NES-like games such as Commando and Xenophobe or I may have been a little happier with the 7800. The controllers still would have been uncomfortable and awful though.

 

One thing about the 7800 is that it's a clearly the best looking console of the 3, but may have the worst controller of the 3 unless you are like me and had a bar-style table to place the controllers on which is what they seemed to be designed for. Definitely not meant to be in your hands. Maybe your knees.

 

But that was fixed if you got the alternative controller that released later, which had a joystick on a gamepad made for your hands which you can optionally screw off for access to a Dpad, but for most 7800 games the joystick is better imo. Overall though I didn't really like the controllers from any of the consoles at the time.

[empsolo]

1 hour ago, mbd30 said:

I don't think Commando was actually ported by Micronics despite very much looking like one of their ports. (Trojan is another early Capcom game that reminds me a lot of Micronics in terms of janky graphics despite not being by them. But they did develop Ghosts n Goblins and 1942 for Capcom.)

 

You might be mixing up Commando with Ikari Warriors which was Micronics.

 

 

Judging by their work on 1942 and Ghosts and Goblins, I had assumed that Micronics had been involved in nearly early Famicom game published by Capcom. But no, this is a bad Capcom port job and it shows. Luckily things would get better with 1943 and Gun.Smoke.

[mr_me]

3 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Not only did you prove my point but you saying Warner had nothing to do with it is false since it was there fault GCC said no and wanted additional negotiation with Jack.

GCC might have had a royalty deal with Warner regarding Atari 7800 consoles and cartridges, with the patents and copyrights staying with GCC.  Considering the deal they made with namco, royalties sound likely. Even if it were a sale of 7800 patents and copyrights to Warner the IP remains with GCC until they are paid and Warner was no longer in the consumer electronics business.  Whatever contract Warner had with GCC, Tramiel didn't take it.  Warner's plan was to sell atari 7800 consoles at $150 and cartridges at $25 to $30, there's plenty of money for everyone.  At $50 a console and $10 a cartridge, there's almost no money in it for GCC and no reason to accept Tramiel's offer.  Now Tramiel has nothing invested in the 7800 consoles and cartridges sitting in the warehouse, he got them for free, and he has plenty of other unsold stock that he can liquidate.  His offer to GCC shows that he is not serious about video games.

 

 

3 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Considering the value he couldn't afford Atari games even if he actually wanted them. 

What value?  Tramiel got all the arcade IP for free.