Crazy world of the Atari 7800

[Fred the Fop]

Well, I may have been a bit hyperbolic.
But, lets face it, the large majority of Neo Geo games were beautiful.

[Unknown_K]

The 7800 wasnt that big of a leap from the 2600 to bother with when it came out. I would rather buy a colecovision then get a 7800. The controllers were funky too (played with them at kmart or some other store when they were on display).

[gaterooze]

Originally posted by Puzzle
I would like to point out that the C64-screenshot you have there is from Double Dragon 2.
The first game in the series (on the C64) had quite good graphics, but the controls left a lot to be desired.

Nope, the c64 screenshot is *definitely* from the first DD. I remember it well. The sprites were actually made up of two sprites, one for the legs and one for the torso, so it had an interesting effect of disembodiment when they minced around.

DD2 on c64 had much bigger, bolder (and blockier) graphics, which on a whole I thought looked better. The game was better, anyway (on c64, that is -- the original was better in the arcade).

[Antiriad]

Funnily enough, like with the C64 Double Dragon 2 on the Amstrad looked better than the previous one


Same as with the Amiga version, which was a piss poor conversion of the shitty Atari ST version.


Bit better eh?

[tin]

and the 64 version of DD2 had the famous infinite spinny legs!!! yeah!!

[Hammy]

i have an atari 7800, its honestly sh** the games are basicly 2600 games, its got a cool controler, and it can play 2600 games too.. but that's all folks

as for double dragon, get the megadrive version, i played it a long time ago and it was an exact conversion allthough this game might be rare now ( i cant find it anywhere exept ebay )

[s2325]

New upload with unifinished Toki [ Show youtube player ] I think "music" is just placeholder. Main hero may be unrecognizable:

[Anubis]

Took you 13 years to post it... incredible...

[idrougge]

Haha, why is the screen taller than it's wide?

[s2325]

Maybe it's for minimizing these slowdowns.

[Lucidphreak]

I'm an atari lover (other than the ST for the most part - gag) and always liked the more generic games for the 7800.. Liked the controller too - and also liked the fact that you could play atari 2600 stuff. Theres still a homebrew community as well. After I get my a600 this week I will be putting a 7800 on my list to buy...

[Anubis]

LOL, last night was reading something about Atari 8bit, and looky here in Analog Issue 21 - page 8: https://archive.org/details/analog-c...ng-magazine-21



Best part:

Is a new video game machine what consumers want
right now? Atari thinks so. They believe that the
video game business is very much alive and is just
like any other consumer entertainment business, such
as the record or movie industry. Business cycles and
creativity fluctuate in a cyclical fashion. The introduc-
tion of the Atari 7800 is not just a marketing whim
but, rather, is part of a "well-planned strategy" of a
series of new products that extends through the end
of 1985. Atari cites that, during the first four months
of 1984, 20 million game cartridges were sold — and
over half were purchased at full retail.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Lucidphreak

Theres still a homebrew community as well..

Definitely..
The homebrew community of the 7800 is one of the best.
PacManPlus alone has made some incredible games that really show what the 7800 could have done...
(Bentley Bear by PacManPlus shows how it would have handled a Super Mario type of game..)

It's a great system with some great games..

But also a great example of "it's the software."
It didn't die because it's hardware couldn't keep up.
It died because of the choices of games available.

Fun system..

desiv
(OK, not including a Pokey for sound on the main board was a terrible decision... :-)

[s2325]

The 2600 used the TIA chip for sound. GCC originally planned to develop a new sound chip ("Gumby") for the 7800, but unfortunately, it was omitted from the final design. The 7800 already included a TIA for backward compatibility with the 2600, so they stuck with the TIA for sound, but they added an audio pin to the cartridge slot so that games which needed better sound could include their own sound chips in the cartridge. Ballblazer and Commando were the only games (released by Atari) which took advantage of this, and both used POKEY chips.

from atariage

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by desiv

Definitely..
The homebrew community of the 7800 is one of the best.
PacManPlus alone has made some incredible games that really show what the 7800 could have done...
(Bentley Bear by PacManPlus shows how it would have handled a Super Mario type of game..)

It's a great system with some great games..

But also a great example of "it's the software."
It didn't die because it's hardware couldn't keep up.
It died because of the choices of games available.

Fun system..

desiv
(OK, not including a Pokey for sound on the main board was a terrible decision... :-)

I think you are being fairly generous here ;-)
If it had been released when it was actually completed (1984) maybe it could have gotten a better foothold before the Master System and most of all NES began their global domination tour. By 1986, it was a poor system by many standards even if it wasn't pushed to its limits by the early games.. (no console ever is)
And yes, the sound was simply one generation behind the competition.

[Lucidphreak]

Old conversation - and I'm not sure I should be talking about atari much on an Amiga board (lol) - but the guy above who said the games werent much better than atari 2600 games ... Idk... Thats kind of a stretch. I'm not all technical on the 7800 - but I at least *think* that the graphics were on par with the atari 8 bit computer line weren't they?? I know lots of bad ass stuff was done on c64 as compared to atari8 - but even still - its a long way from comparing the 7800 to the 2600.......

Kind of wordy. But I think everyone will get what I'm trying to say...

[eXeler0]

Its ok, this thread is about retro gaming in general :-)
Anyway, objectively speaking the graphics hardware in the 7800 was much better than in the 2600, the sound however was as crappy as they didn't want to repeat the compatibility problems of the 5200.
As I said.. if it hadn't been for the crash in 83 and released in 84 it might have made a dent.. as it is, it was largely overlooked once released in 86.
You could say poor timing killed it and the poor software didn't help.


Skickat från min HTC One via Tapatalk

[Cherno]

James Rolfe (the Angry Video Game Nerd) and Mike Matei played Ninja Golf in this video

[ Show youtube player ]

[desiv]

Here's a decent compare video...
[ Show youtube player ]

It is highly biased to show the best of the 7800 games (the author admits that).

But I think it does a decent job of showing that the 7800 could have held it's own with the NES on a pure hardware platform level.

It's all about the games, and there were just many more great games on the NES (and I'm not even an NES fan really... But I realize it had many more great games..)

desiv

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by desiv

Here's a decent compare video...
[ Show youtube player ]

It is highly biased to show the best of the 7800 games (the author admits that).

But I think it does a decent job of showing that the 7800 could have held it's own with the NES on a pure hardware platform level.

It's all about the games, and there were just many more great games on the NES (and I'm not even an NES fan really... But I realize it had many more great games..)

desiv

In a "tech-specs" side by side, the 7800 looks pretty decent compared to the NES, with sound and number of games being the biggest faults..
That Ninja Golf game (previous post) looked like its worth checking out ;-)