Why Atari 5200 was considerate a fail?

[mr_me]

Regarding the chipset being from 1979, so was the colecovision graphics chip.  Which graphics system is better discussions can be found in other threads.

 

On 4/12/2021 at 2:38 PM, MrTrust said:

 

And Pitstop as well.  These were pretty popular games at the time; one has to wonder why there wasn't more effort made to get them to the 5200.  Of course, most of the viable games have since been ported over, and it's doubled the available library.  I get that's a different proposition from doing it in '82, but still, there were a lot of quality titles left on the table there.

The 5200 had Pole Position and it works pretty well with the analog joystick.  A lot of people like pit stop but it wasn't going to outsell pole position, not even close.  The other two epyx cartridges came out in 1984 on colecovision after the 5200 was discontinued.  Atari and Coleco would have had no say with third party publishers like Epyx making cartridges for their systems.

[christo930]

On 4/12/2021 at 9:27 AM, zzip said:

.   Presumably they could have rejected both proposals and stayed the course with the 5200.  Worse they were planning a console with the Amiga chips.   

That would have been incredible.  The Amiga blew away all the consoles of the time in terms of graphics and sound.  But it's hard to see how they could have sold it at a reasonable price at the time. The A1000 sold for over $1200 (1285) USD in 1985. You would not have needed as much RAM with a cartridge based system, but it still would have needed a decent amount of RAM for the video and also for sound (as I understand it, the sound chip needs samples).

[zzip]

7 hours ago, christo930 said:

That would have been incredible.  The Amiga blew away all the consoles of the time in terms of graphics and sound.  But it's hard to see how they could have sold it at a reasonable price at the time. The A1000 sold for over $1200 (1285) USD in 1985. You would not have needed as much RAM with a cartridge based system, but it still would have needed a decent amount of RAM for the video and also for sound (as I understand it, the sound chip needs samples).

Yeah, that's exactly the problem.  Maybe closer to 1990 an Amiga-based console could have been a counter to Genesis/SNES, but if it's true that they were looking to make an Amiga chip-based console in 1985,  I just don't see how that would have worked.

[MrTrust]

8 hours ago, mr_me said:

The 5200 had Pole Position and it works pretty well with the analog joystick.  A lot of people like pit stop but it wasn't going to outsell pole position, not even close.  The other two epyx cartridges came out in 1984 on colecovision after the 5200 was discontinued.

 

But they came out in '83 for the 8-bits, and those are the versions that would have been converted.  I just chose Epyx as an example; I could have said Sierra On-Line, Synapse, Roklan, et cetera, all of the above.  The point is even in '82 and '83, there was a much deeper bench of existing games that could have been ported over to the 5200 with minimal investment in development.

 

Yeah, 5200 already had Pole Position.  Colecovision already had Turbo in '82.  You can have more than one game in the same genre on the same console.  If "it'll be redundant with an existing title on the platform" was a enough reason not to produce a game, every console prior to '89 would have like 15 games.  Why bring Gorf over to the 5200?  It's already got Space Invaders and Galaxian.  Why do James Bond 007 if there's already Moon Patrol?  Why make K-Rrazy Shootout if there's already Berzerk?  I could go on; I think the point is made.

 

9 hours ago, mr_me said:

Atari and Coleco would have had no say with third party publishers like Epyx making cartridges for their systems.

 

Then how did Choplifter! end up on the 5200?  They licensed it from Broderbund (as I already said), like they could have done with many many other games that had already been produced for the 8-bit machines if the other publishers weren't interested in bringing them over on their own, and like they did eventually do on the XEGS.  I'm not an idiot (or at least, not this particular kind of idiot); I'm not saying Pitstop and Jumpman Jr. might have "saved" the 5200.  As I already explained at length, I think any console that wasn't the 2600 or the NES was doomed prior to '89, and any console that wasn't the Genesis/Mega Drive or SNES was doomed prior to '95 simply due to features of the market that no company could predict or overcome.

 

We're speculating on things that might have gone differently.  If there was anything that might have gone differently in the 5200's favor, and that had anything like a realistic chance of happening, getting a bunch of popular games that were not mere graphical upgrades of existing 2600 titles would be it.  Thought experiment:  It's 1983 and you can only get one console for Christmas and all you have is a 2600.  Your mind's not 100% made up, but you're pretty sure the 5200's not going to be your choice.  Now, what's more likely to change your mind, the availability of Shamus, Gateway to Apshai, Jumpman Jr., Necromancer, B.C. Quest for Tires, Rally Speedway, Jawbreaker, Oil's Well, and Satan's Hollow, or a centering spring on the joystick?  For my money, it is definitely not the latter.  That's nowhere near an exhaustive list, either; those are just the cartridge games I could think of that only need 16k and you wouldn't have to resort to bank switching

 

If your answer is "none of that would convince me, I'd just get a 600XL instead", then sure.  Fair enough.  But if you had one of those, or a C64, much of what ended up on the CV would have been redundant also, unless you're that one guy who just couldn't do without home versions of Space Fury and SubRoc.  Yes, I'm aware licenses cost money and so does manufacturing cartridges, but there's near unanimous agreement that, even in '82, Pac-Man, Missile Command, and Centipede were not going to cut it as system sellers, so this would have been on relatively low-cost way of shoring up the game selection, especially if you were not going to have the vaunted Donkey Kong.  Fortunately, we have all of those now and more besides, so the 5200 today is very competitive with the CV as a retro system.

[mr_me]

Choplifter was licensed from Dan Gorlin, Broderbund did have the trademark.  Coleco did also manufacture cartridges for other publishers in some cases.  Colecovision Turbo required you buy the steering wheel peripheral and is a very different game to Pole Position.  Pit Stop is a bit of a Pole Position rip-off, still a good game but an opportunity to reach those that didn't buy the steering wheel.

 

The fact is that it's the publishers and the developers that decide what platforms to go with.  By 1983 Colecovision had the larger install base and is the main factor in those decisions.

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by mr_me

[zzip]

1 hour ago, MrTrust said:

even in '82, Pac-Man, Missile Command, and Centipede were not going to cut it as system sellers, so this would have been on relatively low-cost way of shoring up the game selection, especially if you were not going to have the vaunted Donkey Kong.  Fortunately, we have all of those now and more besides, so the 5200 today is very competitive with the CV as a retro system.

Pac-man was a very hot game and would have had the potential to be a system seller...  But I suspect Atari did a lot to deflate the Pacman bubble when it released the weak 2600 version earlier that year.

 

Maybe if Atari had released 2600 Pac-man around the same time the 5200 came out-   There would still be pent up demand for a home version of the game.    I think that would have caused more 5200's to fly off the shelves as many gamers opted for the better version.   Instead the way they did it caused many people to buy the 2600 version not knowing a new console with better Pacman was coming, and Atari expecting people to buy the game twice.

 

That would be the equivalent of people buying Cyberpunk for PS4 with all its problems, only to have a PS5 version with none of the problems release, but you have to pay full price again for the PS5 version.   That would not go over well to say the least!   We didn't have the internet to compain about games in 82,  but I think consume.

 

Delaying the 2600 version would also give them some time to fix some of the glaring issues to make it at least look like they tried

[Ricardo Cividanes da Silva]

I think Atari simply made a mistake with 5200. That was simple to launch 5200 with Pac Man cart, like Coleco made with Donkey Kong, seizing the opportunity. Pac Man was not totally burned  in 1982 and was able to compete with ColecoVision and Intellivision, but...BreakOut???

The Atari 5200 was launched ahead of time.

[Atariperson23]

Horrible controls, tough competition with consoles like the Coleco and Intellivision, only 69 games released, and those games were basically all arcade ports and 2600 games with better graphics, not to mention the console was too big and not backwards-compatible with the 2600. And it was basically a console version of the Atari computer. Just a poor-quality console all around.

[MrTrust]

3 hours ago, mr_me said:

Choplifter was licensed from Dan Gorlin, Broderbund did have the trademark.  Coleco did also manufacture cartridges for other publishers in some cases.  Colecovision Turbo required you buy the steering wheel peripheral and is a very different game to Pole Position.  Pit Stop is a bit of a Pole Position rip-off, still a good game but an opportunity to reach those that didn't buy the steering wheel.

 

This is a little hair-splitting, don't you think?  Dan Gorlin, Broderbund, whatever.  Point is they licensed the game from the rights holder.  They could have manufactured the cartridges for other publishers like Coleco did, or they could have licensed them, like they did themselves in some cases.  We could argue this minutiae all day; the fact remains the 5200 game selection could have been much larger than it was.

 

3 hours ago, mr_me said:

The fact is that it's the publishers and the developers that decide what platforms to go with.  By 1983 Colecovision had the larger install base and is the main factor in those decisions.

 

Apples and oranges.  All the games I mentioned already existed on the 8-bit line and were already compatible with 16k machines.  It's a much simpler process to port them over than to write whole new versions for the CV.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Maybe if Atari had released 2600 Pac-man around the same time the 5200 came out-   There would still be pent up demand for a home version of the game.    I think that would have caused more 5200's to fly off the shelves as many gamers opted for the better version.   Instead the way they did it caused many people to buy the 2600 version not knowing a new console with better Pacman was coming, and Atari expecting people to buy the game twice.

 

That would be the equivalent of people buying Cyberpunk for PS4 with all its problems, only to have a PS5 version with none of the problems release, but you have to pay full price again for the PS5 version.   That would not go over well to say the least!   We didn't have the internet to compain about games in 82,  but I think consume.

 

Well given the way gamers bitch and moan about every big ticket game that comes out today being a broken and incomplete mess that needs to get patched after the fact, only to keep coughing up the money for them on release day time and again, I'd wager they could get away with exactly that.  Didn't people pay full price to play GTA 5 on first-person mode when the PS4 version came out?

 

I don't know that the analogy quite works, though.  In reality, that's how it works, of course, but did they expect people to see it more like buying Abbey Road on vinyl, and then on 8-track, and then again on cassette tape?  That sounds ludicrous in retrospect because we know better in 2021, but forty years ago, what other analog did they have?  We know they didn't follow a "this gen-transition period-next gen" paradigm, so it's plausible.

 

[zzip]

15 minutes ago, MrTrust said:

Well given the way gamers bitch and moan about every big ticket game that comes out today being a broken and incomplete mess that needs to get patched after the fact, only to keep coughing up the money for them on release day time and again, I'd wager they could get away with exactly that.  Didn't people pay full price to play GTA 5 on first-person mode when the PS4 version came out?

There are certain developers that can do no wrong in the gaming community.  Rockstar is one of them, so gamers keep buying copies of GTA V without complaining.

CD Projekt Red was another developer that could do no wrong, but that reputation probably changed after Cyberpunk.  We will see.

 

18 minutes ago, MrTrust said:

I don't know that the analogy quite works, though.  In reality, that's how it works, of course, but did they expect people to see it more like buying Abbey Road on vinyl, and then on 8-track, and then again on cassette tape? 

If you bought Abbey Road on vinyl , you bought a masterpiece that most people were satisfied with.   If you buy it again on 8-track or cassette, then you were doing so for your own convenience and not feeling tricked into it by the label.

 

But we knew they botched the 2600 Pacman back then,  nobody was expecting arcade-perfect Pacman on the 2600, but we knew the system could do a better job than what they gave us.  (And when Ms Pacman came out, it proved us right.)    So people saw the 5200 come out a few months later with a much better Pacman-  well the conspiracy theories about why 2600 version was so bad practically wrote themselves.  

[christo930]

6 hours ago, MrTrust said:

 

 

 

 

Then how did Choplifter! end up on the 5200?  They licensed it from Broderbund (as I already said), like they could have done with many many other games that had already been produced for the 8-bit machines if the other publishers weren't interested in bringing them over on their own, and like they did eventually do on the XEGS.  I'm not an idiot (or at least, not this particular kind of idiot); I'm not saying Pitstop and Jumpman Jr. might have "saved" the 5200.  As I already explained at length, I think any console that wasn't the 2600 or the NES was doomed prior to '89, and any console that wasn't the Genesis/Mega Drive or SNES was doomed prior to '95 simply due to features of the market that no company could predict or overcome.

 

We're speculating on things that might have gone differently.  If there was anything that might have gone differently in the 5200's favor, and that had anything like a realistic chance of happening, getting a bunch of popular games that were not mere graphical upgrades of existing 2600 titles would be it.  Thought experiment:  It's 1983 and you can only get one console for Christmas and all you have is a 2600.  Your mind's not 100% made up, but you're pretty sure the 5200's not going to be your choice.  Now, what's more likely to change your mind, the availability of Shamus, Gateway to Apshai, Jumpman Jr., Necromancer, B.C. Quest for Tires, Rally Speedway, Jawbreaker, Oil's Well, and Satan's Hollow, or a centering spring on the joystick?  For my money, it is definitely not the latter.  That's nowhere near an exhaustive list, either; those are just the cartridge games I could think of that only need 16k and you wouldn't have to resort to bank switching

 

If your answer is "none of that would convince me, I'd just get a 600XL instead", then sure.  Fair enough.  But if you had one of those, or a C64, much of what ended up on the CV would have been redundant also, unless you're that one guy who just couldn't do without home versions of Space Fury and SubRoc.  Yes, I'm aware licenses cost money and so does manufacturing cartridges, but there's near unanimous agreement that, even in '82, Pac-Man, Missile Command, and Centipede were not going to cut it as system sellers, so this would have been on relatively low-cost way of shoring up the game selection, especially if you were not going to have the vaunted Donkey Kong.  Fortunately, we have all of those now and more besides, so the 5200 today is very competitive with the CV as a retro system.

You're just making this a tautology. That because what happened, happened and what didn't happen, didn't happen, therefor nothing could have changed it.  And then, because Sony came along and dethroned Sega, that happened and so therefore no console that is not the PSX could have even theoretically changed the outcome.

 

But we are stuck looking at a history which, from our point of view, is set in stone.  What happened is what happened and we cannot change it because it happened in the past and we cannot affect the past.  But the past could have been different, it just wasn't.

 

Had the 5200 been done completely differently, it might very well have changed things.  Having good versions of older (we're talking a year or 2) games was not a bad strategy.  The Atari 2600 versions often were so different from the arcade game, that a good port of the arcade game is more or less a different game. Take Defender. It's just a different game with different strategies and different play mechanics.  A lot of people who bought the 5200 bought a copy of Centipede or Ms Pac Man. They are some of the more common cartridges. 

 

People who wanted to upgrade were not doing it because of some abstraction of having the latest and greatest tech, it was to get a more authentic arcade experience.  People who really liked Centipede could now play a pretty authentic home version which both looks and plays like the real thing.  The fact that Atari more or less got these games practically for free (since they already existed as 8-bit games) is just a cherry on top. Plus, it's not like they weren't making more current games.  Had the 5200 really taken off, Atari would have moved more of their people to work on 5200 games, so there would have been more of them and fewer new 2600 games.

 

I don't think there was a lot of competition/crossover between the 5200 and the 8-bit line.  I don't think these were aimed at (or bought by) the same people.  To the people getting these older arcade games in the new 5200 format, they were new for them because they didn't have a $1000 A800 or a $500 A400 and more importantly, weren't going to buy one.

 

 

What good is a bunch of great conversions if you cannot really play them because the stick is so bad or is broken? Frogger is an abomination as is Q Bert. Most digital games don't work well with the joystick.  I remember as a kid going into 2 different Sears stores with my parents (who were in Sears for their own purposes, not for me to look at/purchase video games)  and looked at the 5200 kiosks and both times the clerk told me the joysticks were broken.  Yes, the joystick sucking, I think, would dissuade me and most people from buying the system.  Yeah, you can buy 3rd party, but you're already shoveling out nearly $300 for the system plus full retail for the games.

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by christo930
correcting an error

[MrTrust]

1 minute ago, christo930 said:

You're just making this a tautology. That because what happened, happened and what didn't happen, didn't happen, therefor nothing could have changed it.  And then, because Sony came along and dethroned Sega, that happened and so therefore no console that is not the PSX could have even theoretically changed the outcome.

No, I'm not, and if you had gone back and actually read my posts you'd see that.  If you go back and do it now, you're not going to see it because you're already committed to this line of argument, so I'm happy to just let this point go if you are.

 

21 minutes ago, christo930 said:

Having good versions of older (we're talking a year or 2) games was not a bad strategy.

 

Well, every console that had this as a primary focus was dead by '84, and just about every third party game company that supported those consoles had either pulled out of the market or gone out of business around that time, and we don't have any other case of this being a successful strategy ever since, so I would like to know what reason there is to think that it wasn't a bad strategy.  If it wasn't, you'd think at least one outfit could have made it work.

 

22 minutes ago, christo930 said:

People who wanted to upgrade were not doing it because of some abstraction of having the latest and greatest tech, it was to get a more authentic arcade experience.  People who really liked Centipede could now play a pretty authentic home version which both looks and plays like the real thing.

 

Well, maybe that's why you bought it, or bought a Colecovision or Vectrex instead, but generally speaking, people buy new consoles because there are games on it that they have to buy that console in order to play.  Was Pitfall! an authentic arcade experience?  Was Demon Attack? Was Yar's Revenge?  Were River Raid, Atlantis, Adventure, H.E.R.O, Montezuma's Revenge and stop me any time here authentic arcade experiences?  No.  They were hit games developed for the hardware and not inferior versions of coin-ops.  Galaga was a more authentic arcade experience on the NES than Contra or Double Dragon.  Did masses of people prefer it to the non-authentic games?  No.

 

The kinds of arcade games that all these early 80s consoles were built to play were on their way out of fashion in '84.  People were moving on to either more sophisticated computer games that needed lots of RAM and floppies, or were starting to move on to bigger, more elaborate arcade games that the home consoles of the time weren't fit to try and ape.  Maybe the 7800 was to some extent, but we all know what ended up on that system for the most part.  At the end of the day, people buy games, not experiences.  Pac-Man for the 2600 was very much not an authentic arcade experience, and more people bought that than they did 5200s and Colecovisions and Intellivisions combined.  And if people really, truly cared about that extra marginal bit of arcade fidelity as much as people insist that they did, then these things would have sold.  They didn't.

 

The crash happens, and two years later, the NES is in over a million homes in North America.  Why?  Because Super Mario Bros. was on it; not because Donkey Kong was more arcade-accurate than the CV version.

 

1 hour ago, zzip said:

If you bought Abbey Road on vinyl , you bought a masterpiece that most people were satisfied with.   If you buy it again on 8-track or cassette, then you were doing so for your own convenience and not feeling tricked into it by the label.

 

But we knew they botched the 2600 Pacman back then,  nobody was expecting arcade-perfect Pacman on the 2600, but we knew the system could do a better job than what they gave us.  (And when Ms Pacman came out, it proved us right.)    So people saw the 5200 come out a few months later with a much better Pacman-  well the conspiracy theories about why 2600 version was so bad practically wrote themselves.

 

Sure, but the point is not about how people reacted, rather how Atari expected them to react.  The conspiracies may write themselves, but if Todd Frye is to be believed, and it's hard to see what reason he would have to lie about it now, they just didn't give a shit about it being accurate.  You want high-resolution graphics?  Buy the high-resolution machine.  You want to hear both the guitars on Abbey Road?  Buy a two-channel Hi-Fi.  I mean, yeah, it's a ridiculous proposition, but they might not exactly be blamed for thinking it at the time.  Like I said, there was no history or other real comparison then.

[phuzaxeman]

2 hours ago, MrTrust said:

No, I'm not, and if you had gone back and actually read my posts you'd see that.  If you go back and do it now, you're not going to see it because you're already committed to this line of argument, so I'm happy to just let this point go if you are.

 

 

Well, every console that had this as a primary focus was dead by '84, and just about every third party game company that supported those consoles had either pulled out of the market or gone out of business around that time, and we don't have any other case of this being a successful strategy ever since, so I would like to know what reason there is to think that it wasn't a bad strategy.  If it wasn't, you'd think at least one outfit could have made it work.

 

 

Well, maybe that's why you bought it, or bought a Colecovision or Vectrex instead, but generally speaking, people buy new consoles because there are games on it that they have to buy that console in order to play.  Was Pitfall! an authentic arcade experience?  Was Demon Attack? Was Yar's Revenge?  Were River Raid, Atlantis, Adventure, H.E.R.O, Montezuma's Revenge and stop me any time here authentic arcade experiences?  No.  They were hit games developed for the hardware and not inferior versions of coin-ops.  Galaga was a more authentic arcade experience on the NES than Contra or Double Dragon.  Did masses of people prefer it to the non-authentic games?  No.

 

The kinds of arcade games that all these early 80s consoles were built to play were on their way out of fashion in '84.  People were moving on to either more sophisticated computer games that needed lots of RAM and floppies, or were starting to move on to bigger, more elaborate arcade games that the home consoles of the time weren't fit to try and ape.  Maybe the 7800 was to some extent, but we all know what ended up on that system for the most part.  At the end of the day, people buy games, not experiences.  Pac-Man for the 2600 was very much not an authentic arcade experience, and more people bought that than they did 5200s and Colecovisions and Intellivisions combined.  And if people really, truly cared about that extra marginal bit of arcade fidelity as much as people insist that they did, then these things would have sold.  They didn't.

 

The crash happens, and two years later, the NES is in over a million homes in North America.  Why?  Because Super Mario Bros. was on it; not because Donkey Kong was more arcade-accurate than the CV version.

 

 

Sure, but the point is not about how people reacted, rather how Atari expected them to react.  The conspiracies may write themselves, but if Todd Frye is to be believed, and it's hard to see what reason he would have to lie about it now, they just didn't give a shit about it being accurate.  You want high-resolution graphics?  Buy the high-resolution machine.  You want to hear both the guitars on Abbey Road?  Buy a two-channel Hi-Fi.  I mean, yeah, it's a ridiculous proposition, but they might not exactly be blamed for thinking it at the time.  Like I said, there was no history or other real comparison then.

Good write up.  I personally wished they phased out the 2600. I remember we used to make fun of the under $50 bucks Atari 2600 while the NES was selling like hotcakes. 

[mr_me]

14 hours ago, MrTrust said:

 

This is a little hair-splitting, don't you think?  Dan Gorlin, Broderbund, whatever.  Point is they licensed the game from the rights holder.  They could have manufactured the cartridges for other publishers like Coleco did, or they could have licensed them, like they did themselves in some cases.  We could argue this minutiae all day; the fact remains the 5200 game selection could have been much larger than it was.

 

 

Apples and oranges.  All the games I mentioned already existed on the 8-bit line and were already compatible with 16k machines.  It's a much simpler process to port them over than to write whole new versions for the CV.

...

Dan Gorlin isn't a publisher and wasn't interested in developing on other platforms.  Broderbund is a publisher that was less involved with development.  Atari developed choplifter on the atari computers and ported it to the 5200. Choplifter by the way is really good on the 5200 because of the analog controls.  Epyx developed the games on the atari computers.  For Atari to port an atari computer epyx game, they'd have to license the game, title, and code from Epyx and contract the epyx programmer to port that code.  That wasn't going to happen.

Edited April 17, 2021 by mr_me

[phuzaxeman]

22 hours ago, christo930 said:

 

 

 

What good is a bunch of great conversions if you cannot really play them because the stick is so bad or is broken? Frogger is an abomination as is Q Bert. Most digital games don't work well with the joystick.  

 

Frogger plays great on the keypad.  Qbert worked fine for me as kid too.  All my 5200 scores on atari age competitions are with a stock stick on a tube TV.  I completely disagree that digital games don't work well on the 5200 stick.  When you can complete all intermissions on a stock 5200 stick on Pacman and Ms Pacman it shows that a lot of it is the user as well.  I won't deny the reliability of the sticks but in terms of actual playing, I never had an issue tbh. 

[zzip]

On 4/16/2021 at 6:03 PM, MrTrust said:

but if Todd Frye is to be believed, and it's hard to see what reason he would have to lie about it now, they just didn't give a shit about it being accurate.

And there's also the story that comes up from time to time that Atari had some kind of policy against having black backgrounds because they wanted the games to look more colorful?   It's hard to know what's true because every insider gives a slightly different version of events.

 

At any rate-  Atari had shown before Pac-man that they would go for arcade accuracy to the extent the VCS allowed.   Berzerk comes to mind,  Phoenix too was a decent effort.   Of course there were things like Defender...  but I'm not sure how much more arcade-like that game could be on VCS hardware (not enough buttons for a start)

 

Also Atari's game ports on the 8-bit line were reasonably arcade accurate,  so they seemed to care.   When a game diverged from the arcade on the VCS, we assumed it was for technical reasons.   But by that point we had seen enough of what the VCS was capable of to know that Pac-man's biggest flaws where not technical, but design choices.

 

And it doesn't make sense from a business standpoint-  they could botch lesser known games like  Phoenix or Vanguard and nobody would care.   But those had decent ports.   Pac-man is the one that everyone was watching and it should have been the one game they absolutely had to get right,  and they didn't even try! 

[zzip]

On 4/16/2021 at 6:03 PM, MrTrust said:

The kinds of arcade games that all these early 80s consoles were built to play were on their way out of fashion in '84.  People were moving on to either more sophisticated computer games that needed lots of RAM and floppies, or were starting to move on to bigger, more elaborate arcade games that the home consoles of the time weren't fit to try and ape.  Maybe the 7800 was to some extent, but we all know what ended up on that system for the most part. 

This is definitely true.   "We have the best arcade ports" was the marketing war of 1982,  and that kind of strategy might get them through 83.   But by 1984, a lot of arcades were folding, and all the buzz in the videogame press was about games releasing on computers.   So when Atari announced the 7800 in 84, most of the titles seemed old hat (but with great graphics).

 

By the time it actually released in 86 with the same launch titles, they were really outdated.

 

Now I believe the 7800 was supposed to get Ballblazer AND Rescue on Fractalus, and those games were supposed to be exclusive to Atari platforms.   That definitely could have helped,  but Atari botched the Lucasfilm partnership too.

[+Cafeman]

On 4/17/2021 at 3:13 PM, phuzaxeman said:

Frogger plays great on the keypad.  Qbert worked fine for me as kid too.  All my 5200 scores on atari age competitions are with a stock stick on a tube TV.  I completely disagree that digital games don't work well on the 5200 stick.  When you can complete all intermissions on a stock 5200 stick on Pacman and Ms Pacman it shows that a lot of it is the user as well.  I won't deny the reliability of the sticks but in terms of actual playing, I never had an issue tbh. 

Agreed.  It is possible that people with the opinion that the sticks were unusable had crappy busted sticks that were indeed unusable.  But among myself and 2 close friends, we bought new systems and new sticks and the accusation simply was not true.  We all had our own 5200's, and we played every game just fine with the stock sticks.   I never used the keypad for Frogger. You press the direction you want to go and press the button once for each hop .  That solution gives movement accuracy.  Q*bert truly benefited from the analog stick with true diagonals.  You just hold the button in to move (no repetitive presses like with Frogger), and release the button to safely stop (like on the edge next to a disc).   We could play Pac-Man endlessly with those sticks (there is a bug on the key levels where the ghosts stay blue until you eat them).  I don't remember problems playing Berzerk or Mario Bros or really anything.       I will say that I believe the version of CX52 I owned may have not been the original model. Mine had nice thick rubber around the sticks, which acted as a centering mechanism very well. 

 

However, I do remember my 2600 stick failing. Certain directions and the button started to wear out, but I probably used and abused those longer. And forget about the Colecovision and Intellivision sticks! I never got used to those and prefer good-condition 5200 sticks by far.  Basically all the systems after 2600 had somewhat disappointing controllers. It took Nintendo and SEGA to introduce easy-to-hold gamepads later on. 

 

I've probably responded to this type of discussion 20 times over the past 20 years.  I wasn't aware the sticks were so awful on 5200 until the 2000's internet told me, although I do concede that the sticks stop functioning quickly and need constant maintenance.   But in the 2 years in the 80's I had my 5200 hooked up, we never had a failed stick and never did any maintenance to them.   Eventually they did become problematic of course, but it took years.   And - when we went to the department stores, the hooked-up 5200 sticks were usually in worse shape than my own, but they did still work. 

 

 

[MrTrust]

On 4/17/2021 at 6:16 AM, mr_me said:

Epyx developed the games on the atari computers.  For Atari to port an atari computer epyx game, they'd have to license the game, title, and code from Epyx and contract the epyx programmer to port that code.  That wasn't going to happen.

 

Well, it did happen with a bunch of games on the 7800 and the XEGS.  So, it's not impossible; they could have done it if they had decided to.

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

It's hard to know what's true because every insider gives a slightly different version of events.

 

This is true, and they all have an incentive to tell the stories in suh a way as to minimize their own "culpability".  Rob Fulop has apparently said a similar thing about the A8 Space Invaders.  Easy excuse, sure, but these were big licenses; at least some brass would have had to put eyeballs on them at some point in development.  You'd think they'd at least have made some simple editorial changes if they did care; it's not like it takes a major rewrite to change the colors for crying out loud.

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

At any rate-  Atari had shown before Pac-man that they would go for arcade accuracy to the extent the VCS allowed.   Berzerk comes to mind,  Phoenix too was a decent effort.   Of course there were things like Defender...

  

Was Phoenix even done in-house?  Eh, neither here nor there; the arcade ports were a mixed bag.  One has to wonder if the fidelity of the better ones was due to Atari's editorial policy, or on the initiative of the individual designers and programmers.  I suspect the latter.  HSW, for example, cut his losses on Star Castle and apparently lied his way into getting Yar's Revenge approved instead.  If another guy had gotten the project and delivered a hobbled SC, would Atari have still published it?  Sounds like they would.

 

Quote

Now I believe the 7800 was supposed to get Ballblazer AND Rescue on Fractalus, and those games were supposed to be exclusive to Atari platforms.   That definitely could have helped,  but Atari botched the Lucasfilm partnership too.

 

Yeah, and there's a playable prototype ROM for it out there.  Of course, they also brought Impossible Mission out for it, but it was broken and apparently cut down to save on chips.

 

There was a pretty big handful of computer ports for the 7800, and some of them were even good (though many were not)!  Then they got some originals like Ninja Golf and Midnight Mutants.  Not bad games, but way too little too late at that point (the Genesisnwas on its way by then), and we didn't see hide nor hair of 'em around here.  Given the prices of them today, they must have gotten low print runs and poor distribution.

 

What they needed by '84 was a bunch of games built for their hardware that would be new and exciting on their own merit.  I guess, theoretically, they'd have hipper arcade licenses if the company hadn't split, but I don't know if Xybots and Paperboy would have been enough on their own assuming they could have even produced competent ports for the 7800.  That Pit Fighter prototype doesn't inspire much hope in that direction.  Also, banking on the arcade stable didn't do much for Sega at the time.

[zzip]

14 hours ago, MrTrust said:

This is true, and they all have an incentive to tell the stories in suh a way as to minimize their own "culpability".  Rob Fulop has apparently said a similar thing about the A8 Space Invaders.  Easy excuse, sure, but these were big licenses; at least some brass would have had to put eyeballs on them at some point in development.  You'd think they'd at least have made some simple editorial changes if they did care; it's not like it takes a major rewrite to change the colors for crying out loud.

Yeah that's the annoying thing,   a few tweaks to Pac-man could have made it passable (the colors, get rid of the eye, make pac-man sprite more round and less diamond shaped) - These could be changed in an afternoon and require no additional memory/storage.

A few more slightly bigger changes could have made it good enough that most people wouldn't complain- fix the music/sound effects, give pac-man up/down animation, add in fruits instead of square pellet)  These would have required more storage, and might have pushed it to a bigger ROM.   But seeing that most games post Pac-man did get 8K ROMs,  wouldn't it be worth granting 8K to their biggest license?

 

I think the execs were definitely the problem.  The had the attitude that just having the name would guarantee sales.

 

14 hours ago, MrTrust said:

Was Phoenix even done in-house?  Eh, neither here nor there; the arcade ports were a mixed bag.  One has to wonder if the fidelity of the better ones was due to Atari's editorial policy, or on the initiative of the individual designers and programmers.  I suspect the latter.  HSW, for example, cut his losses on Star Castle and apparently lied his way into getting Yar's Revenge approved instead.  If another guy had gotten the project and delivered a hobbled SC, would Atari have still published it?  Sounds like they would.

It might have been the programmers.  But on the other hand,  I can't think of many Atari published arcade ports that were terrible outside of Pacman and arguably Defender.  The quality of Atari releases improved post-Activision, and improved again post-Pacman/ET.   Later weird ports were usually due to 2600 limitations rather than a lazy effort.

 

15 hours ago, MrTrust said:

What they needed by '84 was a bunch of games built for their hardware that would be new and exciting on their own merit.  I guess, theoretically, they'd have hipper arcade licenses if the company hadn't split, but I don't know if Xybots and Paperboy would have been enough on their own assuming they could have even produced competent ports for the 7800.  That Pit Fighter prototype doesn't inspire much hope in that direction.  Also, banking on the arcade stable didn't do much for Sega at the time.

They had Gauntlet and Marble Madness too, and a bunch of other fairly big titles.    But I also think post 84 arcade ports were less important and having great original content was more important.    I don't think the Tramiel Atari invested enough in the games division to make it work.   In another timeline where Warner keeps Atari and the 7800 releases on time,  I think it would be likely they'd release more relevant and quality titles.   Warner had a much much better video game marketing organization than Tramiel ever did.  But who knows what would be left of it after the crash and layoffs?

[MrTrust]

9 hours ago, zzip said:

But seeing that most games post Pac-man did get 8K ROMs,  wouldn't it be worth granting 8K to their biggest license?

 

I think the execs were definitely the problem.  The had the attitude that just having the name would guarantee sales.

 

This is one that's hard to get a straight answer on.  Some sources say the 8k ROMS weren't available at the time, but there's other evidence to contradict that.  Strangely, Frye himself seems to insist he never asked for 8k and it was never discussed, but then other guys who were reportedly there at the time say he did ask for it.

 

Either way, it looks like they weren't looking to pony up for the larger ROM if they didn't need to.  So, I would conclude they were making the calculation that they were going to have a bestseller no matter what, so why not cut corners and maximize revenue?  Sales numbers would say they weren't wrong, but theoretically, they burned up a lot of good will with it.  I remain skeptical about the magnitude of the effect.

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

It might have been the programmers.  But on the other hand,  I can't think of many Atari published arcade ports that were terrible outside of Pacman and arguably Defender.  The quality of Atari releases improved post-Activision, and improved again post-Pacman/ET.   Later weird ports were usually due to 2600 limitations rather than a lazy effort.

 

I always thought Asteroids was pretty hideous on the 2600 and doesn't really play right, but for some reason it gets a pass.  I don't see people getting all lathered up over the magical anti-gravity eggs in 2600 Joust.  Battlezone looks and plays nothing like the arcade game even though they could have theoretically made it more accurate.

 

But that's all a priori assumed not to be out of laziness, so I guess it's okay.  I don't know; Atari's not the only outfit that made arcade ports for the 2600, and many of those were pret-ty rough as well.  Parker Brothers published Star Wars, but they also did Tutankham, for example.  Seems like there was a pretty wide latitude being given for arcade accuracy back then, individual impressive showings notwithstanding.  The intersection of expectation and result really made the hate for Pac-Man particularly enduring.

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

They had Gauntlet and Marble Madness too, and a bunch of other fairly big titles.    But I also think post 84 arcade ports were less important and having great original content was more important.    I don't think the Tramiel Atari invested enough in the games division to make it work.   In another timeline where Warner keeps Atari and the 7800 releases on time,  I think it would be likely they'd release more relevant and quality titles.   Warner had a much much better video game marketing organization than Tramiel ever did.  But who knows what would be left of it after the crash and layoffs?

 

Well, they kinda' sorta' did get Gauntlet on the 7800, and it was not so good.  But yeah, we're on the same page on this one.  The curious thing is how steadfastly everyone in the console/handheld business, aside from Nintendo and Sega for a few years in the 90s, seemed to refuse to learn this lesson.   Generals fighting the last war, I guess.

[Goochman]

Not sure if you were around when Atari Pac Man was coming out, but it was  MONTHS of anticipation.  No other game from that period had so much run up and hype as Pac Man and when it got delivered it was an unpolished turd to the majority of folks who bought it day 1.  Next up came ET which was highly anticipated but didnt have the run up like Pac Man did.

[zzip]

11 hours ago, MrTrust said:

This is one that's hard to get a straight answer on.  Some sources say the 8k ROMS weren't available at the time, but there's other evidence to contradict that.  Strangely, Frye himself seems to insist he never asked for 8k and it was never discussed, but then other guys who were reportedly there at the time say he did ask for it.

Somewhere I have a list of all the 2600 games and their sizes.   8K games started appearing some time in 82, but after Pac-man.   (Summer/Fall I guess?)  Even E.T. was 8K.   I didn't believe that at first, but I checked it against the rom sizes and it was true.    Maybe 8K wasn't available at the time Pac-man released, but it was only weeks away.   Might have been worth the delay.

 

11 hours ago, MrTrust said:

Either way, it looks like they weren't looking to pony up for the larger ROM if they didn't need to.  So, I would conclude they were making the calculation that they were going to have a bestseller no matter what, so why not cut corners and maximize revenue?  Sales numbers would say they weren't wrong, but theoretically, they burned up a lot of good will with it.  I remain skeptical about the magnitude of the effect.

Yeah definitely sounds like a case of short-term profit at the expense of quality and reputation.   It didn't have to be that way,  Nintendo and Sony both chase quality first party titles and it has served them well in the long-run.   In fact there was a recent uproar because Sony supposedly refused to green-light Days Gone 2,  not because the original didn't sell well, but because it didn't have a high enough metacritic score.

 

11 hours ago, MrTrust said:

I always thought Asteroids was pretty hideous on the 2600 and doesn't really play right, but for some reason it gets a pass.  I don't see people getting all lathered up over the magical anti-gravity eggs in 2600 Joust.  Battlezone looks and plays nothing like the arcade game even though they could have theoretically made it more accurate.

 

But that's all a priori assumed not to be out of laziness, so I guess it's okay.  I don't know; Atari's not the only outfit that made arcade ports for the 2600, and many of those were pret-ty rough as well.  Parker Brothers published Star Wars, but they also did Tutankham, for example.  Seems like there was a pretty wide latitude being given for arcade accuracy back then, individual impressive showings notwithstanding.  The intersection of expectation and result really made the hate for Pac-Man particularly enduring.

I've never been much of a fan of 2600 Asteroids either, but everyone raves about it, so what do I know?  I think it was also released before Activision when all 2600 games were very blocky and people just assumed the visuals were the best the 2600 could do?

Battlezone is one of the most gorgeous 2600 titles.  It's clear it wasn't lazy even if it resembles the arcade game in spirit only.   The gravity is way off in all of the home versions of Joust vs the original.   Alot of people say they prefer the lax gravity of the home versions to the arcade because of the amount of flapping you need to do in the arcade.   I always assumed Joust was one of those games that pushed the 2600's limitations too much, but could be wrong, it might just be a bad port.

 

 

[MrTrust]

9 hours ago, zzip said:

In fact there was a recent uproar because Sony supposedly refused to green-light Days Gone 2,  not because the original didn't sell well, but because it didn't have a high enough metacritic score.

 

Ohhhhhoho, wow.  Yes, that sounds like a great idea; give the semi-literate peanut gallery even more influence than they already have.  The user score is plenty high, so who cares what the critics have to say about it?  Presumably, the problem with Pac is that it sold a ton of copies to people who were not happy with it.  If they had liked it, then the critics' bellyaching would be just that.

 

9 hours ago, zzip said:

I've never been much of a fan of 2600 Asteroids either, but everyone raves about it, so what do I know?  I think it was also released before Activision when all 2600 games were very blocky and people just assumed the visuals were the best the 2600 could do?

Battlezone is one of the most gorgeous 2600 titles.  It's clear it wasn't lazy even if it resembles the arcade game in spirit only.   The gravity is way off in all of the home versions of Joust vs the original.   Alot of people say they prefer the lax gravity of the home versions to the arcade because of the amount of flapping you need to do in the arcade.   I always assumed Joust was one of those games that pushed the 2600's limitations too much, but could be wrong, it might just be a bad port.

 

Way off, indeed.  They never land, not even on the egg waves. They just hover around endlessly.  I don't know if it would technically be possible to have them land or not on a standard 8k cart, but who knows?  Point is, people not only tolerate it, but some even say it makes for an interesting twist.  Battlezone, sure, is fine, but they could have incorporated the proper tank controls, which are kind of the essence of the original game.  Otherwise, it's just prettier Robot Tank. It's been done since, and it's a big improvement if you ask me.

 

My thing with the whole debate is make up your minds, people.  I've been told 18,000 times, very sternly that arcade fidelity was the criteria for judging these ports and that's why people were so mad.  Okay, if that's true then why are all these others acceptable.  Well, the 2600 has limits, of course, and anyway, they're good games in their own right.  Okay again, then is Pac-Man not a good game?  If it isn't, who gives a shit that he has an eye and the walls are brown?  It would still be a bad game anywah.  If it is a good game, same question if all these others are going to get away with huge inaccuracies.

 

 

[zzip]

13 hours ago, MrTrust said:

My thing with the whole debate is make up your minds, people.  I've been told 18,000 times, very sternly that arcade fidelity was the criteria for judging these ports and that's why people were so mad.  Okay, if that's true then why are all these others acceptable.  Well, the 2600 has limits, of course, and anyway, they're good games in their own right.  Okay again, then is Pac-Man not a good game?  If it isn't, who gives a shit that he has an eye and the walls are brown?  It would still be a bad game anywah.  If it is a good game, same question if all these others are going to get away with huge inaccuracies.

I think it's because Pac-man was a cultural phenomenon.   People fell in love with it in a way that they didn't for Battlezone, Asteroids or Joust -  the music, the sound effects, the cute cut-scenes, the ghost personalities.    Atari didn't give us ANY of that stuff, and that's why the port hurt so much.   The other games people didn't have as deep an emotional connection with, so they let things slide