Misguided criticism of the Atari 7800

[ApolloBoy]

So Buy a NES.

 

Atari is all about the Arcade games.

 

That's what I love about the 7800. Arcade Quality conversions without the flicker and annoyingly bad controllers of the SMS/NES.

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Well, everyone here keeps asking for arcade conversions, and it gets tiring IMO. I wanna make unique games for the 7800, not a port of Moon Patrol or Zaxxon...

[Clint Thompson]

I disagree about the NES having bad controllers. Very practical and for the most part comfortable and durable.

 

The 7800 needs a good-sized RPG... that'd rock!

[Great Hierophant]

If you consider that the Atari has a normal screen resolution of 160x200 pixels. I know it can also do a 320x200 resolution, but very, very few games took advantage of this. Now, 160x200 is 32000 pixels. The NES does 256x240 pixels, totaling 61440 pixels. Almost double the pixels. Note that the NES's pixels are not especially squarish when stretched by a TV screen. Its just there are simply more of them on both axes.

 

Ballblazer was a definitely a sorry port by Pony, remember how many crappy ports they inflicted. However, it could have been much better if they livened up the sound and modeled the graphics on tiles at a higher resolution like the NES version of Elite.

 

I own a Cuttle Cart and have a hard time convincing myself to buy a Cuttle Cart II because there are so many good NES exclusive games (i.e. non-arcade ports.) There aren't any good 7800 exclusives in my opinion.

 

Commando is better on the 7800 than the NES, if only for the sake that the NES version shows a lack of command of the NES's graphics hardware and its glitchy as hell. But Galaga and Xevious on the NES are superior arcade ports, looking and sounding awfully close to the real thing (far better than the ports of Joust and Defender.)

 

Almost all of Nintendo's early releases for the NES (black box style), are first generation games except for Super Mario Bros., which looks like a first generation game but plays like a second generation game.

 

Donkey Kong Country's graphics were originally rendered on very powerful, for the time, CGI computers and downsampled to resolutions the SNES could handle. They look good on a composite TV but do not scale very well to an RGB monitor. They could easily be modeled on today's graphics hardware.

 

That article about the MMC3 is cool as it seems designed to repeate Nintendo's hype. The MMC3 could double the amount of ROM (on each bus) that the NES could address with the earlier and equally popular MMC1 chip. It could also do it faster. The IRQ counter allowed for a more flexible system of split-screening but that is about all that it was used for. It does not extend the graphics capabilities of the NES at all. The MMC5 can, however, to a small extent. The only NES games that used the MMC5's capabilities were Koei's later strategy games, perhaps the games designed to be least impressive graphically (although they look far better than Koei's earlier strategy titles.)

 

Diagonal scrolling can be done without a memory mapper, an example is Raid on Bungeling Bay. Having mirroring control makes it easier to do though.

[ninjarabbit]

My 2 gps:

 

2 things killed the 7800 more than anything else.

 

-Lack of focus from Atari. Atari was also pushing the 2600 and it's computers while pushing the 7800 not to mention the public still had a sour taste from the 5200 had come out relatively recently. This means you have to divide you marketing and production in more directions instead of getting behind one or two things and the results in the video game industry are ussually bad. This is a lesson Sega would learn years later.

 

-Lack of a killer ap. You can get away with not having a lot of games as long as you have high quality games, with the N64 as an example. But at some point you are going to need that one game that everyone has to have, the 7800 didn't have that one must have game. That really hurt in comparison to the NES which had dozens of 4 and 5 star games available during the 7800's lifespan.

[EricBall]

There's nothing limitting a 7800 game from having 240 active lines. How many of those would be visible depends on the TV.

 

NES mappers are mostly just different varieties of bankswitching, which has been done since the 2600 days. Some of the complexity is handling the PPU address bus and making the most efficient use of the address space. Yes, some mappers had additional tricks (MMC3 & MMC5), but that wasn't their primary purpose.

[LU8]

As was said above, the software has to suit the hardware. The GCC team that developed the 7800 console also wrote it's initial games (and excellent titles for the 2600 & 5200) and titles like Dig Dug, Ms Pac Man and Pole Position II were very good. Much of GCC's titles, and the games 5200 Gremlins and 2600 Solaris were already written in 1984, even the 2600 jr was ready for 1984, just as the 7800 was.

 

The shame was that the GCC team left in 1984, their work on the 7800 and it's games ties in with what was fashionable in 1983/84. Have a look at the sorts of games played in the 1983 film Joysticks. You could put 7800 Dig Dug in an arcade cabinet of the time and it would have been perfect.

 

I would have liked to have seen what GCC could have written for the 7800 if they had been allowed to stay with the 7800 program and the 7800 was catered for in the manner that the 2600 was (both in software support and marketing).

 

The 2600 had some impressive side scrollers in Pitfall & Pitfall II, and who would have thought it could have managed a game like Secret Quest? But it did.

 

Klax on the 7800 has excellent colors and is an example of the original type of game that should have been tried more on the 7800. It was a promising platform not trully catered for. It might have been the next 2600 if it was given a chance. Unfortunately it didn't even get the special carts the 2600 jr did in the latter stages of its life.

 

For the record the joypad is my favorite controller, and the 7800 was very hard to find in shops. Indeed the first time I heard of it was reading on the back of a 2600 box saying the game was compatible with 2600/7800!.

 

It would have been cool to see Crystal Castles on the 7800.

[mos6507]

If you consider that the Atari has a normal screen resolution of 160x200 pixels.  I know it can also do a 320x200 resolution, but very, very few games took advantage of this.  Now, 160x200 is 32000 pixels.  The NES does 256x240 pixels,

 

I know this is splitting hairs, but the 7800 doesn't limit itself to 200 vertical scanlines, does it? Isn't it like the 2600 and the 8-bit in allowing as many scanlines as you think will fit on the screen?

 

There aren't any good 7800 exclusives in my opinion. 

 

I kinda feel the same as far as CCII but Robotron is awesome on the 7800. But then again, if you want Robotron you can always fire up MAME or any other Williams/Midway emu package.

[DracIsBack]

Donkey Kong Country's graphics were originally rendered on very powerful, for the time, CGI computers and downsampled to resolutions the SNES could handle.  They look good on a composite TV but do not scale very well to an RGB monitor.  They could easily be modeled on today's graphics hardware. 

 

Very true. My main point is that Nintendo spent the money, and invested the time and effort to figure out how to make graphics like than on the SNES.

 

Tramiel would have hired the cheapest developer, given a couple of months to develop and told them it had to be on a 48K cart.

[JB]

Donkey Kong Country's graphics were originally rendered on very powerful, for the time, CGI computers and downsampled to resolutions the SNES could handle.  They look good on a composite TV but do not scale very well to an RGB monitor.  They could easily be modeled on today's graphics hardware. 

I think you mean SGI.

[Xebec's Demise]

You get hints of the 7800, Lynx and Jaguar showing off what they can do ... the scaling in BLUE LIGHTNING, the underwater sequence in TOWER TOPPLER

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Do you have some screenshots of some of the absolute best graphics from a 7800?

[DracIsBack]

You get hints of the 7800, Lynx and Jaguar showing off what they can do ... the scaling in BLUE LIGHTNING, the underwater sequence in TOWER TOPPLER

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Do you have some screenshots of some of the absolute best graphics from a 7800?

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I made a fake commercial a few years ago. Check it out:

 

http://homepage.mac.com/markrathwell/iMovieTheater3.html

[Xebec's Demise]

That's pretty good. Is the music original? It fits perfectly.

 

I am guessing that the underwater sequence in TOWER TOPPLER is the screenshot in your avatar and the beginning of the video?

[DamageX]

heh, that music is from The Equalizer

[DracIsBack]

Yes, the EQUALIZER is correct.

 

I wanted something from the timeline of the 7800 (Equalizer was on from 1985-9) that was funky and I always liked that theme song.

[DracIsBack]

Of course, there's only one way to truly answer the question:

 

Will someone out there program a Mario or Castlevania clone to prove the 7800 could do it?

 

In order to even consider doing something of this scale I'd have to be provided with the full, well commented, source code for the game. ('cause the game isn't just the graphics, it's the gameplay. And that isn't trivial to reproduce.)

 

Not to ressurect this old tired thread, but I was thinking about this yesterday: Is there any place on the net where source code fro 7800 and/or NES games could be found?

[supercat]

I think if you look at Midnight Mutants you'll see about the best the 7800 can do.  I'd guess that MM pushed the 7800 to its limits (or very close to them).  But still, if you look at it, the graphics just look 'muddy'.  Compare MM to Legend of Zelda and see what I mean.

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The Atari 2600 and 7800 both use 228 chroma clocks/line, IIRC. The Nintendo uses 227.5. A consequence of this is that on the former systems chroma artifacts stay in the same place every line and every frame, while on the latter system the chroma artifacts alternate lines and frames. This improves the graphic output considerably except when the screen is scrolling at a rate of exactly one pixel per frame, and even then it's still probably better in most ways than the 7800.

 

I would expect that a game which took advantage of artifacting might manage to produce better graphics than one which didn't, but I don't know of any 7800 games that do. Does anyone else know?

 

Also, it's been ages since I read the 7800 specs. Can the Maria clock out enough data to put up a full screen of 4-color 8-pixel wide tiles in 320 mode if there are no other sprites that need to be drawn?

[EricBall]

Not to ressurect this old tired thread, but I was thinking about this yesterday: Is there any place on the net where source code fro 7800 and/or NES games could be found?

I'm not aware of any 7800 source code repositories other than what's available for the few homebrews etc. No significant disassemblies (DanB started on Robotron, and I think someone extended Distella for the 7800.)

 

I did go looking for source code / disasm for SMB but wasn't able to find much more than some VB clones. The big N has a big legal dept and probably discourages that kind of activity.

[EricBall]

I would expect that a game which took advantage of artifacting might manage to produce better graphics than one which didn't, but I don't know of any 7800 games that do.  Does anyone else know?

Tower Toppler (especially the water levels)

Also, it's been ages since I read the 7800 specs.  Can the Maria clock out enough data to put up a full screen of 4-color 8-pixel wide tiles in 320 mode if there are no other sprites that need to be drawn?

Hrmm. Maybe. Let's see (worst case), 455 cycles/line minus 7 * 4 cycles for the CPU after WSYNC, minus 9 cyles DMA start, minus 13 cycles zone end = 405 cycles for the display list. You've said 4 color (2 bit per pixel) 320 mode, i.e. 320B (although 7800 Graphics Modes shows that 320B has some quirks.) So that's 4 pixels per byte, or 2 bytes per tile at 9 cycles per tile. And there'd be 40 tiles per line (41 if you are scrolling), so you'd need at least two 5 byte headers at 12 cycles per header.

2 * 12 + 41 * 9 = 24 + 369 = 393 < 405

So, yes, it looks like you would have the cycles, but that's all that you could do. (Well, you might be able to stick in one 8 pixel wide direct sprite, but that's it.)

[Bruce Tomlin]

Not to ressurect this old tired thread, but I was thinking about this yesterday: Is there any place on the net where source code fro 7800 and/or NES games could be found?

I'm not aware of any 7800 source code repositories other than what's available for the few homebrews etc. No significant disassemblies (DanB started on Robotron, and I think someone extended Distella for the 7800.)

I think of "source code" as being the original source code, as opposed to reverse-engineered disassemblies, even ones that would be more readable than the original code.

 

So far, I think only the NTSC BIOS source (a not so great but mostly readable photocopy) and pre-release Desert Falcon with HSC support have showed up.

[supercat]

So, yes, it looks like you would have the cycles, but that's all that you could do.  (Well, you might be able to stick in one 8 pixel wide direct sprite, but that's it.)

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Cool. Means if I ever got by Dodgson cart working again I might be able to do Wormy for the 7800 in 320B mode. BTW, it needs exactly 40 columns, not 41. The game was written for a CGA, and uses simulated 8x8 character drawing (320x200x4 colors) to draw things quickly. Most of the motion in the game is done by manipulating the character set, so if memory allowed it should be possible to make Wormy run nice and zippy. The primary requirement would be recopying the shape data for thirty-two characters each frame. Since the character shapes would be 16 bytes each, that would be 512 bytes. If the code uses a tight loop:

LOOP:
 LDA CSROM0,X
 STA CSRAM,X
 LDA CSROM0+128,X
 STA CSRAM+128,X
 LDA CSROM0+256,X
 STA CSRAM+256,X
 LDA CSROM0+384,X
 STA CSRAM+384,X
 DEX
 BPL  LOOP

That's 41 cycles/loop, times 128 loops. That's 5248 cycles, or 69 scan lines. A little over where I'd like to be, though maybe the top part of the screen could be in lower-color mode. Would the CPU get any time during the displayed part of the frame?

 

I suppose things could probably be improved slightly if one took advantage of the fact that only 15 of the 32 characters will ever be on screen at once Would be a little more complicated than always copying all 32 characters, but the cycle saviings could be worth it.

 

Either that, or else can the MARIA get data out of external ROM without copying it to RAM first? If so, that'd be the way to go. There are about 48 character shapes, of which 32 are animated. There are eight character sets, so they'd take up 6144 bytes total. Too much to fit in RAM, but well within the capacity of a ROM.

[EricBall]

That's 41 cycles/loop, times 128 loops.  That's 5248 cycles, or 69 scan lines.  A little over where I'd like to be, though maybe the top part of the screen could be in lower-color mode.  Would the CPU get any time during the displayed part of the frame?

You'd only have a little over 62 scan lines, or 7068 CPU cycles.

Either that, or else can the MARIA get data out of external ROM without copying it to RAM first?  If so, that'd be the way to go.  There are about 48 character shapes, of which 32 are animated.  There are eight character sets, so they'd take up 6144 bytes total.  Too much to fit in RAM, but well within the capacity of a ROM.

Question - are there more than 128 distinct shapes? 'Cause if there aren't then you can simply store the 40x25 character map in RAM.

 

But why use character mode at all? Why not just make each worm a sprite?

[Vic George 2K3]

Pretty good commercial. Atari should've come up with something like that when they had the chance to do so.

 

The lack of good third-party supporters, in part because of Nintendo's third-party licensing system, was also what helped kill the 7800.

[supercat]

Question - are there more than 128 distinct shapes?  'Cause if there aren't then you can simply store the 40x25 character map in RAM.

There are 32 characters that are used for animating the worm, of which at most 15 can be on screen at once (12 may be on screen in arbitrary combination, then one head front, one head-body join, and one tail back). There are about 16 other non-animated characters shapes (walls, mines, gold bags, power-ups, etc.). Each of the worm characters has eight variations. The non-animated characters have only one each.

 

If the MARIA can read graphics from ROM, it would be a simple matter to have eight character sets and simply change the 20 display lists for the rows containing worm segments to change character sets from one frame to the next. Duplicating the non-animated characters would be somewhat wasteful, but not too bad. The other approach would be to copy the animated part of the character set between frames. If I only copy the 240 bytes that are actually needed, this might be workable.

But why use character mode at all?  Why not just make each worm a sprite?

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Well, there's one worm [which actually looks more like a centipede] and it's animated along its entire length. I would think 38 8x8 sprites on a scan line in 320B mode would be even more of a bandwidth drain than 40 8x8 tiles.

[Stella'sGhost]

Interesting topic.

 

I'll tell you what I think about this cause I'm bored.

 

I never even saw a 7800 unit in the stores, even after the 1986? re-release. People were not aware of its existance around where I am, near Toronto, Canada. I'm sure there were consoles but I don't remember seeing any. The 2600 was very popular over here during all the 80's because I remember seeing Atari 2600 games for sale EVERYWHERE over here up until around 1990 or so.

 

So, marketing was lame, however its deeper than that. Nintendo was managed like an empire, the owners had run the company on a philosophy of excellence for 100 years before the NES was released. The amount of time Nintendo put into video games was far greater than Atari did. The whole mentality of Nintendo was different from Atari. I think under Nolans vision and leadership Atari was heading in the right direction, after he left, things just werent the same.

 

Nintendo never had management issues, it had been run brilliantly by the same family for a century, it's in the development and planning that Atari failed, as well as some bad luck I think.

 

All of this is evident in the hardware as well. The NES is simply a better machine to develop on, and Nintendo had the money and drive to do it. Atari, as great as the 7800 could have been had it had a better design, internally, I think due to the way the company was manged, could not have competed with Nintendo's "war-like, take no prisoners" approach.

Edited July 7, 2005 by Stella'sGhost

[DracIsBack]

I never even saw a 7800 unit in the stores, even after the 1986? re-release. People were not aware of its existance around where I am, near Toronto, Canada. I'm sure there were consoles but I don't remember seeing any.

 

Canadian distribution of the 7800 was limited. It was at K-Mart, Toy City (remember that!) and Toys R Us. The XEGS was in fewer spots and the 2600 was in more chains ... largely due to legacy (people had old 2600s and a demand for games), established brand and price point.

 

Atari Canada actually discontinued the 7800 quicker than Atari US. I had a devil of a time getting the "NES-like" games that they came out with later. I think Tower Toppler and Dark Chambers were among the last games released here. Everything else, I had to order from Atari US, even though they appeared on Canadian price lists.