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

[zzip]

2 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Found some more varied talk from UK developers regarding the STE Blitter:

 

Jez San, (Argonaut) :As I understand it, the Blitter is virtually unusable. 

 

 

Glen Corpes (Bullfrog)  The Blitter's not as good as it could be. 

 

 

 

Wayne Smithson (Blood Money) The Blitter is pretty useless as well because there's no barrel shift of any kind, you still have to shift the graphics. 

 

And apart from the odd shoot-em-up, the hardware scrolling will hardly be used. 

 

 

Jeff Minter:I wouldn't mind using the hardware scrolling just because it's there

 

John Brandwood (Ocean Software):I think the Blitter and hardware scrolling are the best parts  (of the STE) and the machine (ST) was desperate for those. 

 

Andy Pennell (HiSoft) The Blitter is nice 

I don't think it's useless,  I owned both an STfm and STe, and there was clearly a difference when it came to blits.    But was it as good as it could be?  IDK, possibly not.  It's hard to find a good tech discussion of what the ST blitter can and can't do vs other blitter implementations. 

 

Atari used to show off a demo of flying bird sprites on systems with and without blitter, and the difference in performance was significant.    So unless they were doing something shady like purposely crippling the program when running without blitter,  it showed that the blitter made a huge difference for software sprites.

[Lost Dragon]

On 9/10/2020 at 5:15 PM, empsolo said:

I still don't get how in the world Atari UK was dismissive of the CD-ROM. Did they not pay attention to what was happening in the PC Clone market and understand that CD-ROMs were going to break open the market rather quickly with the multimedia revolution?

Found the Gleadow quotes.. 

 

 

Bob Gleadow :CD-ROM simply lacks software development support, software available for ST CD Drives included such useful items as "The Swiss telephone directory and a spares list for the Boeing 757"...Atari would support any developer who wanted to move to CD, but at present (June 1990),multimedia was an immature concept.. A buzzword. 

[Lost Dragon]

8 minutes ago, zzip said:

I don't think it's useless,  I owned both an STfm and STe, and there was clearly a difference when it came to blits.    But was it as good as it could be?  IDK, possibly not.  It's hard to find a good tech discussion of what the ST blitter can and can't do vs other blitter implementations. 

 

Atari used to show off a demo of flying bird sprites on systems with and without blitter, and the difference in performance was significant.    So unless they were doing something shady like purposely crippling the program when running without blitter,  it showed that the blitter made a huge difference for software sprites.

Just put them up as an idea how the key UK developers might have reacted to any ST Console with a Blitter included, even though the concept was just to have the vanilla ST hardware in a console case. 

 

It seemed to split the UK Commercial games development community. 

[Lost Dragon]

12 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

I don't know about that, the ST was made from the get go to be a powerful but cheap way to get a computer to the mass market. Corner cutting at all, so I wouldn't believe evolution was to blame for the STE's issues since it was already based on a machine that had compromises in the first place. 

Les Player was Atari UK Technical Manager and responsible for  kick starting software development in the UK and Europe on a number of levels. 

 

 

Sadly no longer with us, he's the first Atari source i have ever seen saying that even sources within Atari weren't sure what the exact STE specifications were going to be. 

[zetastrike]

5 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Just put them up as an idea how the key UK developers might have reacted to any ST Console with a Blitter included, even though the concept was just to have the vanilla ST hardware in a console case. 

 

It seemed to split the UK Commercial games development community. 

I always thought the lack of STe games was due to the vanilla ST being out for 4 years already.  Devs didn't see the need to spend time making games that a fraction of ST owners would get to use.  I understood development of games for the AGA chipset faced the same barriers.

[zzip]

2 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Bob Gleadow :CD-ROM simply lacks software development support, software available for ST CD Drives included such useful items as "The Swiss telephone directory and a spares list for the Boeing 757"...Atari would support any developer who wanted to move to CD, but at present (June 1990),multimedia was an immature concept.. A buzzword.

For 1990, he wasn't exactly wrong,  there weren't many CD-ROM applications apart from reference materials.   But they should have been more forward looking because multimedia CD-rom was a thing by 93

[Lost Dragon]

6 minutes ago, zetastrike said:

I always thought the lack of STe games was due to the vanilla ST being out for 4 years already.  Devs didn't see the need to spend time making games that a fraction of ST owners would get to use.  I understood development of games for the AGA chipset faced the same barriers.

The general consensus in the article i quoted individuals talking about the Blitter was that the STE was simply too little, too late. 

 

Wayne Smithson went onto say the extra colours were a waste of time, nobody would notice, it would of been nice to have 32 colours on-screen. 

 

 

Jeff Lawson (Flair Paint) couldn't see people bothering with the Blitter and hardware scrolling, said the machine needed a 68030 chip to beat the Amiga

 

 

Glen wanted 256 colours on-screen, but said the increased colour range on the STE would allow for more subtle shading. 

 

 

Jez said the colour palate bits were in a strange order, which made it more difficult to access different shades. 

 

 

John said stereo sound was a waste of time, users wouldn't notice.. 

 

 

Ian Hetherington (Pysgnosis) is quoted as saying Atari had managed to fill the gap between the ST and Amiga by no more than seven to 10 percent with the STE, but it was what the ST should of been.. 

 

 

Steve Bak said he wouldn't even look at it, until it had sold several hundred thousand units. 

[Leeroy ST]

I don't know why people here are confused a computer company who's first product was a cost cutting measure with some premium assets, as in the whole point of being an entry level computer with power of an expensive alternative but with a mass market price, was not initially interested in CD-ROM. Which at that time was expensive. 

18 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Les Player was Atari UK Technical Manager and responsible for  kick starting software development in the UK and Europe on a number of levels. 

 

 

Sadly no longer with us, he's the first Atari source i have ever seen saying that even sources within Atari weren't sure what the exact STE specifications were going to be. 

 

In the UK, which make sense since this wouldn't be the first time Atari did that.

 

28 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Found the Gleadow quotes.. 

 

 

Bob Gleadow :CD-ROM simply lacks software development support, software available for ST CD Drives included such useful items as "The Swiss telephone directory and a spares list for the Boeing 757"...Atari would support any developer who wanted to move to CD, but at present (June 1990),multimedia was an immature concept.. A buzzword. 

 

Issue is we have too much UK perspective and not enough US perspective. I heard back in the day through a contractor that worked with several companies including Atari that CD-ROM was costly and that's why it was cut. Maybe UK was given the talking point of low development support but that goes against some of the press I read when the A1200 came out as well, almost everyone said Atari was delaying because CD was too costly. Sadly a lot of those are lost.

 

To be fair, Bob isn't wrong either talking point or otherwise, there wasn't much support in 1990 but it was clearly picking up though. 

[zzip]

5 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Wayne Smithson went onto say the extra colours were a waste of time, nobody would notice, it would of been nice to have 32 colours on-screen. 

 

5 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Glen wanted 256 colours on-screen, but said the increased colour range on the STE would allow for more subtle shading. 

These were my feelings as well,  more on-screen colors would have been preferable,  especially seeing how in 1989, VGA had been out for two years with 256 colors on screen.   This showed how Atari was delivering too little too late.

 

7 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

 

Jez said the colour palate bits were in a strange order, which made it more difficult to access different shades. 

This is true,  probably to maintain backwards compatibility.

 

10 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

John said stereo sound was a waste of time, users wouldn't notice.. 

Stereo aside,  the DMA sound sounds so much cleaner than the Yamaha, especially when playing digital samples

[Lost Dragon]

10 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

I don't know why people here are confused a computer company who's first product was a cost cutting measure with some premium assets, as in the whole point of being an entry level computer with power of an expensive alternative but with a mass market price, was not initially interested in CD-ROM. Which at that time was expensive. 

 

In the UK, which make sense since this wouldn't be the first time Atari did that.

 

 

Issue is we have too much UK perspective and not enough US perspective. I heard back in the day through a contractor that worked with several companies including Atari that CD-ROM was costly and that's why it was cut. Maybe UK was given the talking point of low development support but that goes against some of the press I read when the A1200 came out as well, almost everyone said Atari was delaying because CD was too costly. Sadly a lot of those are lost.

 

To be fair, Bob isn't wrong either talking point or otherwise, there wasn't much support in 1990 but it was clearly picking up though. 

I can only comment on the era i lived through and my country coverage, if there's US Press out there with quotes from others than the Tramiel family regarding the ST CD, i would love to see it. 

 

All I can offer is the opposing viewpoints from Gleadow to those from Tramiel. 

 

 

Still trying to find Commodore UK Boss interview i had where he talks of being lumbured with the CDTV from his Commodore bosses in the states.

 

 

 

Atari badly needed UK developers to get behind the STE, if even it's internal staff didn't know it's final specs, how were they supposed to nurture such support? 

Edited September 18, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

Just now, zzip said:

 

These were my feelings as well,  more on-screen colors would have been preferable,  especially seeing how in 1989, VGA had been out for two years with 256 colors on screen.   This showed how Atari was delivering too little too late.

 

This is true,  probably to maintain backwards compatibility.

 

Stereo aside,  the DMA sound sounds so much cleaner than the Yamaha, especially when playing digital samples

I found John's comments odd. 

 

I went from Pokey and SID to AY on ST and even with chronic tinnitus, i sure noticed ?

[Leeroy ST]

2 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Still trying to find Commodore UK Boss interview i had where he talks of being lumbured with the CDTV from his Commodore bosses in the states. 

From what?

[Lost Dragon]

2 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

From what?

I swear i had an old file where Commodore UK Boss talked of how his hands were tied regarding the CDTV in terms of pricing, software support and basically it was pushed on them by the US arm. 

 

Can't rember if i deleted it or where it came from. 

[ColecoKing]

zzip

But why would they think the 7800 would be successful if the 5200 wasn't? They were screwing over the Atari loyalists who bought the 5200 at launch. A good number of them were going to lose trust in Atari. That is just a terrible PR move. Good thing the internet didn't exist in those days :)

They were also working on a BC adaptor for 5200. They could throw that thing in as a holiday bundle for future Christmas seasons and help shift stubborn 2600 owners.

Because it was more powerful. This is not unlike the situation with the Jaguar but the news press ate it up and it's also why the full name is 7800 Prosystem because it is a Pro gaming systems with super powers. One old add had Superman trying to bend 7800 and it said: "even super man can't break this beast" or something corny like that.

5200 as I showed before was strong enough for the time, was more capable than CV. Quoting myself

"5200 is often said to have been cancelled because of the controllers but it was due to the computer wars that Warner wasn't smart enough to jump out of. The computer war lost them more money than the crash by a wide margin. It was ahead of its time in several ways and was clearly the most powerful home consoles on the market in 1982. CV can only display 4 sprites per scanline while the 5200 doesn't have a limit, 5200 can add more colors through tricks that aren't difficult to pull off like overlapping players or generating two halfs of a sprite as two different sprites and displaying them together to create a single character. Only the former the CV can barely due and takes up to much memory.

CV doesn't even have hardware collision detection, it has to be coded by software. 5200 had higher color palette, several graphic modes, hardware scrolling and can shift sprites from line to line which allow for the 3D style viewpoints in certain games, while the best the Coleco can do in that regard is Dukes of Hazard which is anything but smooth.

It is definitely ashame they didn't keep the console going."

There is reason why Coleco didn't get a port of Ballblazer but every other new system at the time did including home computers. So power was not needed but Warner needed something to use as an excuse to put out a new console and bury the old one and so they used the power excuse.

[zzip]

2 minutes ago, ColecoKing said:

Because it was more powerful. This is not unlike the situation with the Jaguar but the news press ate it up and it's also why the full name is 7800 Prosystem because it is a Pro gaming systems with super powers. One old add had Superman trying to bend 7800 and it said: "even super man can't break this beast" or something corny like that.

It was only more powerful when it came to sprites.   sound was a big step down,  it had less RAM than the 5200,  the same CPU at the same speed.  When I play a 7800 game, I usually don't feel like I'm playing on a system superior to the 5200/8-bit because the sound is a big turn-off.

 

  But looking at Atari's actions, I do think they believed that more power would sell more consoles,  but history has shown that having the right games is far more important than having the most power.   That's why I say they were on the wrong track with the 7800,  as the rest of your post shows, the 5200 is perfectly capable to take on CV, and it just needed the right games to show that off.   Save the Maria technology for a future console that actually has a leap in other areas too.

[elmer]

 

31 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

I found John's comments odd. 

 

I went from Pokey and SID to AY on ST and even with chronic tinnitus, i sure noticed ?

 

Because *most* gamers/users didn't have a stereo TV or monitor back then ... the Beeb didn't broadcast NICAM stereo until 1991!

 

If you're going to pick quotes from that article, you might as well post the whole thing ...

 

 

 

1 hour ago, zetastrike said:

I always thought the lack of STe games was due to the vanilla ST being out for 4 years already.  Devs didn't see the need to spend time making games that a fraction of ST owners would get to use.  I understood development of games for the AGA chipset faced the same barriers.

 

This!

 

Adding STE colors was easy, but redesigning major game features to take advantage of something that only a few customers could take advantage of ... that just wasn't going to happen in 1989.

 

 

1 hour ago, zzip said:

But was it as good as it could be?  IDK, possibly not.  It's hard to find a good tech discussion of what the ST blitter can and can't do vs other blitter implementations.

 

It can't shift/rotate graphics (unlike the Amiga), which means that it is a lot less useful for drawing sprites, and that you still need to store multiple pre-shifted copies of the sprite data in memory (unlike the Amiga).

 

Yes, if you had the memory available to store pre-shifted sprites, then it was a LOT faster to use the blitter than drawing sprites in software ... but it's still not as useful as the Amiga's blitter.

[zzip]

4 minutes ago, elmer said:

Because *most* gamers/users didn't have a stereo TV or monitor back then ... the Beeb didn't broadcast NICAM stereo until 1991!

It had RCA ports for audio out,  I just plugged mine into a portable stereo that had audio-in.   The ST monitor sound was terrible anyway, and this sounded a lot better even for the Yamaha.

[ColecoKing]

zzip

It was only more powerful when it came to sprites. sound was a big step down, it had less RAM than the 5200, the same CPU at the same speed. When I play a 7800 game, I usually don't feel like I'm playing on a system superior to the 5200/8-bit because the sound is a big turn-off.

But looking at Atari's actions, I do think they believed that more power would sell more consoles, but history has shown that having the right games is far more important than having the most power. That's why I say they were on the wrong track with the 7800, as the rest of your post shows, the 5200 is perfectly capable to take on CV, and it just needed the right games to show that off. Save the Maria technology for a future console that actually has a leap in other areas too.

5200 was perfectly capable but 7800 was vastly more powerful, sound has no relation to power, arcade identical ports, 3D titles, flight simulators, it was much more powerful than the 5200. But it wasn't necessary. Also promised 7800 at launch was different than 7800 we got later, Pokey was to be distributed to developers at no cost, game score saving cartridge, and more.

I say before 5200 was stronger than CV more capable, 7800 was strong, but would have been stronger with an extra year. 5200 ALREADY had games showing off it was stronger gap would have only widened if 5200 stayed on.

Warner lost money but again they could have fixed this by releasing the cheaper redesigned 5200 with FIXED CONTROLLERS!!!! But they did not do that they kept the same controllers which pissed off consumers and allowed further bleeding in money.

Until today I still haven't found anything from staff as to why they promise so much for redesigned 5200, yes you lost ports but you received a so called faster system that would be cheaper, fixed controllers, and bigger games. Never happened.

Liars were literally on fire already they throw more oil on themselves.

The original sales of 5200 were good and were 3x faster than the 2600 first 3 years in one year they said. Software sales were highest other than 2600 that year, keeping the pace they would have made enough money to slide through the crash release 7800 in 1985.

They suffered negative results at first but had the chance to fix software sales drop, controller negativity, game size issue, all solved with redesigned 5200 which released not even full year after launch! they could have solved everything quickly!

Who are these people running these companies I swear.

[zzip]

12 minutes ago, ColecoKing said:

Who are these people running these companies I swear.

I swear they spent more time copying what each other was doing than figuring out what their customers actually wanted!

 

Atari: "Mattel just released a console that has bad controllers with a keypad, we need to make sure we have bad controllers with a keypad for our next console!  Make them extra bad!  show them who's king!"

 

"Mattel just announced a keyboard, Coleco has a  2600 adaptor", we need to release a keyboard, 2600 adaptor, trackball, steering wheel, etc"

 

Consumers:  "why do I need to buy all this crap just to play games?  no thanks"

[ColecoKing]

^Luckily most Coleco games don't need Keybad and controller is much better to use than Mattel Dpad disc thing that can cut my finger with long use.

But yes they copy each other, cold war style. People would go to jail or be sued for stealing secrets or hiring each others engineers likely contribute to that. Even international consoles have keybad (pun) on their consoles and in one case, I think it was hing kong, none of the games used it except one and all were pause button.

But the 2600 adapter make sense, Coleco Gemini sold well so it make sense why everyone and they dad also made one easy money and you kill Atari's advantage. Atari could counter with 5200 better games upgraded ports.

Except Atari did not do such a thing, instead they kill 5200 after remodel that was more of the same instead of fixing problems.

Don't forget that Atari 5200 was in prototype made so you can take 8-bit cartridge and slide it right in but nope, make it incompatible in final version because ??????????????

Atari sold only 500,000 less than CV by October 1984 before holiday season. That is 1 million in 2 years compared to CV 1.5 million and they never fixed any problems across those two years? It's basically the gold standard in incompetence. They released remodeled 5200 with none of the promised changes I mentioned before so you just have a thinner 5200 with the same controllers and two less controller ports? Turn up the hype!

[ColecoKing]

ST had many times to be better than the Amiga but decided that many advantageous of the Amiga were pointless. Amiga sound even without CD smashed the ST, the graphics for video games took some time at first but were always much more capable so after fake advantage of ST for a few years everyone went to Amiga and never looked back. Commodore never took full advantage of it's gaming prowess. Better than SNES no chip needed for 3D, tons of rotating sprites on screen, class A audio. Commodore let that slip buy.

[zzip]

9 minutes ago, ColecoKing said:

But the 2600 adapter make sense, Coleco Gemini sold well so it make sense why everyone and they dad also made one easy money and you kill Atari's advantage. Atari could counter with 5200 better games upgraded ports.

It makes sense, but they seemed to be in a war to see who could produce the most peripherals.   I mean there's always going to be some people who want a steering wheel, or track-ball for the arcade experience,  but I wonder what percentage of the owners bought these things?  Was this the best focus when they were having trouble selling the consoles themselves?   Would most 5200 owners rather have a trackball or better joysticks?  I suspect the latter.

 

13 minutes ago, ColecoKing said:

Don't forget that Atari 5200 was in prototype made so you can take 8-bit cartridge and slide it right in but nope, make it incompatible in final version because ??????????????

I think it had to do with how games were licensed back then.   Notably Donkey Kong, but there are probably other examples.    If the 5200 took 8-bit carts, it could play DK and that would have violated their license agreement.   Remember that Atari ended the NES deal because they were furious that the Adam was seen playing DK at a show, and Nintendo didn't stop them.

[ColecoKing]

ZZip

Trackball was shortly after launch there was no sacrifice for trackball over joysticks, redesigned 5200 came out after and they still didn't fix the controller.

I think it had to do with how games were licensed back then. Notably Donkey Kong, but there are probably other examples. If the 5200 took 8-bit carts, it could play DK and that would have violated their license agreement. Remember that Atari ended the NES deal because they were furious that the Adam was seen playing DK at a show, and Nintendo didn't stop them.

The 5200 is a 400 8-bit computer it's the same cartridge that works on the same machine except it now plugs into the TV. If what you said was true why did the XEGS not have that problem? Don't forget the XEGS can play ALL library of 8-bit machines including those who Atari needed permission from to put on and no one came and attack Atari for using their games and the regulations were no different.

It's like Commodore not making their game consoles compatible with ever Amiga CD when nothing was stopping them.

[mr_me]

While computer vs game console licensing can be problematic, it's not the reason the atari 5200 and atari 800 are not cartridge compatible.  The atari computer division and the home video game division were seperate business units.  The concern was that a compatible home console would hurt computer sales.  The computer division people had enough weight in the company to ensure the 5200 was not compatible.  Warner/Atari had a lot of internal problems working against itself.

 

The atari 5200 was created in response to Intellivision.  Intellivision was taking market share due to its awesome controllers and the great gameplay those controllers allow.  There's nothing wrong with atari 5200 controller design other than it was poorly implemented due to cost saving changes.  I never heard of someone cutting their thumb on the very comfortable intellivision disc.  And the colecovision controller being an improvement over intellivision is very debatable.

[ColecoKing]

Where do you get that the computer division stopped the 5200 being compatible when the original version of the console in prototype was compatible? They helped produce the customization for the console shell so they would have already known about the prototype you're saying they just change their mind for no reason?

Also of course 5200 was made to fight Intellivision, later Coleco after it was announced before launch, but that doesn't change the fact 5200 was stronger than both.