Largest 7800 game.

[Trip_Cannon]

I searched through the older posts but couldn't find the answer to this question that I'm sure has been asked and debated before, but which game is the largest, in terms of megabits, for the 7800?

 

I've heard before that it was Fatal Run. But then I heard again that the 7800 couldn't go above 1 meg in memory and any of the "Super" carts were clocked at 1 meg.

[+Mitch]

Alien Brigade and Crossbow are the two largest released games, each checking in at 144kilobytes Which is like 1.1 something megabits.

 

Going larger would not be a problem, Atari just never produced games that large.

 

Mitch

[DracIsBack]

I've heard before that it was Fatal Run. But then I heard again that the 7800 couldn't go above 1 meg in memory and any of the "Super" carts were clocked at 1 meg.

 

As Mitch noted, the two largest are ALIEN BRIGADE and CROSSBOW (144K each) thought there are quite a lot of 128K titles ... RAMPAGE, XENOPHOBE, COMMANDO, SCRAPYARD DOG, MIDNIGHT MUTANTS, NINJA GOLF, IKARI WARRIORS, DOUBLE DRAGON, PLANET SMASHERS and FATAL RUN are all 128K games (1 megabit).

 

"Super" cart is really not much more than marketing hooey.

 

Neither CROSSBOW and ALIEN BRIGADE are marked as "SUPER GAMES" but both are larger than any Super carts. In fact, only three SUPER CARTS are even 128K in size ... IMPOSSIBLE MISSION, SUMMER GAMES and WINTER GAMES. Some, like BALLBLAZER are only 32K.

 

As for the "maximum" size, 7800 carts didn't typically go above 128K for the same reason that few include a POKEY sound chip (COMMANDO and BALLBLAZER) or extra RAM (only a half dozen or so games have additional RAM memory in the cartridge, including JINKS and TOWER TOPPLER).

 

The reason? Jack Tramiel was cheap and didn't want to pay to manufacture games that were large or had extras like memory, sound chips or battery backups.

 

There's nothing technically preventing the 7800 from playing 2 megabit, 3 megabit, 4 megabit games etc ... except that Tramiel would never pay to develop or build them.

[Video]

Wasn't BallBlazer called Super cart because of the Pokey? But for real, the Super Cart was probably called that because they were bigger than the typical 4-16 k size of games on the 2600 at the time.

[Cousin Vinnie]

Super Cart was a term they used to make games sound cool. They pretty much slapped this on everything that wasn't an old arcade port during the early years.

 

CV

[SteveW]

Planet Smashers is the same size as Midnight Mutants? Why? There's not even remotely the amount of graphics in Planet Smashers as there are in Midnight Mutants. PS has always seemed pretty limited in comparison to the other late releases like Midnight Mutants, Fatal Run, and Alien Brigade.

[DracIsBack]

Planet Smashers is the same size as Midnight Mutants? Why? There's not even remotely the amount of graphics in Planet Smashers as there are in Midnight Mutants. PS has always seemed pretty limited in comparison to the other late releases like Midnight Mutants, Fatal Run, and Alien Brigade.

 

Heh - all depends on the programmer, I guess.

 

One thing in PLANET SMASHERS favour though - it does have 8 big boss creatures.

[SteveW]

I think the farthest I got into the game was about the third boss. But then, wouldn't you know it, my ears started bleeding from the laser fire sound effect, and I had to turn it off and go to the emergency room.

[Cousin Vinnie]

I think the farthest I got into the game was about the third boss. But then, wouldn't you know it, my ears started bleeding from the laser fire sound effect, and I had to turn it off and go to the emergency room.

 

Amen brother!

 

CV