2nd gen and back

>>3966723
Can anyone explain in a nutshell what exactly happened to Atari? Why did they put all their stake in ET? Did they really bury the games in the desert?

>>3966726
Entire books have been written about it. But in a nutshell, cocaine and hubris.

>>3966726
Read "Zap! The Rise and Fall of Atari", it's free on the Internet, was written directly after the fall and puts it pretty succinctly. Basically, >>3966746 is absolutely right.

>>3966795
I'm lazy though, so what they thought they were untouchable and all doped up?

I have a Vectrex, Colecovision, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, 5200 etc. They all have their unique charms. Coleco is actually a pretty strong system graphically for third gen and there's several RPGs on Intellivision. Vectrex is probably my favorite though. Its novelty can't be reproduced.

>>3966798
It's a really short book, but yes. Once warner bought them they lost all direction. They were given some of the worst leadership imaginable, and you have to keep in mind that nobody knew how the fuck to sell video games at that point to begin with. That combined with clueless leadership and a shit-ton of operating budget was a disaster waiting to happen. For the ET example, they assumed licensed property (note that ET is a warner property too) = money in the bank, and learned the hard way that that is definitely not the case. The people in charge towards the end didn't play video games, and didn't know what made them fun, or why they sold. They approached them like the record industry, which warner also managed to fuck up after major success.

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I really enjoy the TI-99, this is my favorite game for it, game play is good, and artwork is just killer.

>>3966826
Rough. Still, I guess it made lots of room for others to pop up you know?

I figure eventually someone would have anyway but, damn that was like video GAYMES that almost died mang.

>>3966860
Yeah, I love Atari but their blunders allowed the Japanese to come and show us what was up, so it all worked out.

>>3966861
And now look at us, we've come full circle, except the problem is after years of trials and tribulations, wins and losses, good and bad games, the corporate heads who don't give a shit about what makes a game good have managed to turn it into a formula that masses will eat up.

>>3966884
Haha, absolutely true however unfortunate. At least it's still largely a western problem, the Japanese still churn out some good stuff.

>>3966893

They're being wrecked by mass dev migration to phone "games". Expect that situation to go tits-up in about a decade (or less) too.

>>3966939
Also unfortunately true. We shall see. At least we have our decades of good stuff to play forever?

>>3966826
Pretty much this, except E.T. is a Universal property and not owned by Warner. Warner figured that since E.T. was such a huge phenomenon that not only would every kid want the game (that part was right) but that by dropping a shitload of money for the game rights they might be able to sway Steven Spielberg to come work for Warner Bros. They ended up dropping millions of dollars for the rights to E.T. and just like Pac-Man they made more copies of the game than there were Atari 2600 consoles with the expectation that people would buy the console just to play E.T.

This pretty perfectly reflects the mindset of the Warner management at Atari that the games themselves didn't matter and the programmers were no more important than the assembly line workers putting the hardware together. That's the whole reason 3rd party game devs exist.

>>3966952
Ah my mistake, thanks for the correction.

>>3966939
>>3966893
I think that's what I enjoyed most about the "retro" era. Felt like from PS2 onward the mainstream was just far less...chancy. I mean don't get me wrong, we got some SHIT, some awful awful games for sure, but we also NEEDED those awful games, to learn from them, think of how much FPS games have blurred into the same cover based, stay out of fire to heal, sprint optiony type deals now. I miss when people did things that were off the wall, because even if the game was bad, there were little gems to em that you could pick out and say "This worked, this was nice."

Everything feels samey, safe, boring, I can play the moderns of CoD, Battlefield, and MoH in a row, and get this sickly feeling that I was playing the same game. The bad made the good stand out that much more as well, it was good shit when you rented a cart of CD of whatever, slapped it in your childhood console, and the thing was just fucking awesome.

>>3966726
>Did they really bury the games in the desert?
They did. They were dug up a few years ago and morons were buying them for outrageous prices.

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I have a XEGS console. I consider it a 2nd gen console, because is closer to the 5200 than the 7800. I love it. The AV output is perfect, and the homebrew scene is quite big because it has all the 2600/5200/400/800 library combined.

>>3967408
>it has all the 2600/5200/400/800
not this meme again. the XE is amazing but it definitely does not have every single game on the 2600.

>>3967416

ok,ok it has 70% of the library and 25% of the 5200 ports of the 2600 games

>>3967424
it has most of the big-name games made by Atari and some from Activision and Imagic but there's a huge amount of other third party games that came out on 2600 and went mostly unnoticed. There's also a bunch of great red label 2600 stuff that came out during the 2600's second wind in the mid to late 80s (side by side with the XE line) that didn't get A8 ports, and some of those are the best games on the console.

The 2600 is great and the XE is great, I don't see why people feel the need to pit them head to head and feel like they need to choose one over the other.

>>3967456

i didnt insult the 2600. I just said the XE is great because it has AV output and has most games of the 2600/5200. But if i could get an original 2600 i would do it right away. Sadly where i live getting 2600 games or flashcarts is almost impossible

>>3966726
They refused to make console games any differently than arcade games. It's fun to go to an arcade and drop a few bucks to try to beat a stranger or friend's high score. It's not worth $20 or whatever it was per cartridge to have a repetitive game that is over in five minutes where your only competition is yourself. There's a reason every millennial knows the ending to Super Mario Bros yet most have never seen the second stage of Donkey Kong.

They also kept the 2600 as their cash cow for too long. Management wouldn't discontinue it when the 5200 came out or give the 5200 any dev support. Nobody's going to upgrade to a system that only had games you already owned especially when the console you already have is still getting all the hot new games. Supposedly they were going to do the 7800 release right, but then Jack Tramiel bought the company and focused it on home computers. The only home computer company that actually survived is Apple and even they nearly went belly up at one point.

It also didn't help that Atari never recognized that to baby boomers video games were just a fad that largely ended in 1983 and that the real money is in getting kids hooked for life which Nintendo was able to successfully do. I mean Atari had one last shot with the Jaguar and its only quality game that wasn't wildly inappropriate for kids was a sequel to Tempest.

>>3966826
It didn't help that they only allowed like 2 months for development of E.T. The guy that made it has said that while it sucks he's quite proud of what he was able to do with such an unrealistic deadline.

>>3967505
>They refused to make console games any differently than arcade games.

That's not really true. While single player focused games would eventually prove to be the way forward, the particular issue with Atari was their absolute lack of anything resembling quality controls or quality anything. The Pac-Man port was infamously terrible, it was barely functional and while a lot of people bought it (Pac-Man was HUGE back then) a lot of people also returned it and overall it was a big stain on Atari's reputation. Then came ET which was also an utterly abysmal game based on a very popular property, and destroyed what little customer confidence Atari still held.

>>3967564
>absolute lack of anything resembling quality controls or quality anything
this was thanks to their WB management who didn't understand that in order for games to sell and for people to keep wanting to buy them they need to be good.

>The Pac-Man port was infamously terrible
Once again thanks to Warner. They were presented with a Pac-Man prototype, and instead of letting development continue to the point where the game was ready to be released, they decided to just go ahead and publish the prototype so they'd be in stores by Christmas.

Atari had some amazing programmers and developers but their new WB bosses didn't see them as anything more than a cog in the machine. You'd think a company that makes movies would know "in order for your product to sell it needs to be something that people like" but oh well.

If I were to get into Atari games, would the Flashback be a good starting point? I know it's not the original system, but is there anything particularly wrong with those machines?

As an alternative, are there any disadvantages or issues to be aware of if I were to obtain a 2600 Jr or a 7800 to play 2600 games?

>>3967613
Some of the flashbacks are good, a number of them are using NES SOACs though and the emulation is really inaccurate. I don't know exactly which ones those are as I've never owned a flashback.

I'm not sure about the Jr, but for the 7800 there are a handful of games that don't work on it, but it depends on which revision of the 7800 you have. No games that I know of will just flat-out not work in any 7800 at all. The games that have issues are robot tank, dark chambers, space shuttle, burgertime and a few others. Also the 7800 cartridge slot doesn't like certain 2600 games (particularly imagic ones) and may require some force to get in the slot.

Personally I'd say if you wanna get into 2600 games, just get a 2600. The 7800 is nice but it's not the number one best way to play 2600 games.

>>3967613

flashback 2 is probably the closest one in terms of hardware to the original 2600. other versions have more games and inalambric controllers but they feel more like emulators in a box. They are not bad if you dont feel like getting an original 2600.

>>3967674
>>3967678
Thank you both for the input.

I was mainly asking about the 7800 as then I could get its games as well as a bonus (unless its own games are too hard to find, I mean)

>>3966859
>TI-99
What's that? Some obscure predecessor to the /4 and /4a? Put your trips back on underage gramps

>>3966825
>Vectrex is probably my favorite

This anon knows! This makes me want to play Solar Quest on my Vec

>>3966726
I still don't understand why they produced more copies of E.T. than the number of Atari 2600 consoles that were already made.

>>3969687

because they probably thought that ET would be a system seller, so if they started to ran out of consoles, they would produce more to compensate.

>>3968509

is a calculator.

>>3969698
B-but then wouldn't it just be better to wait till they ran out of ET, and then just built more of both?

>>3969708

are you suggesting that Atari headquarters had rational people? Theres a reason why the arcade division and the homeconsole one split up after the crash. Not to mention all the guys who had a brain moved to Activision at the time.

>>3969687
>I still don't understand why they produced more copies of E.T. than the number of Atari 2600 consoles that were already made.

They presumably also had a stock of consoles to sell as well.

>>3969708
>B-but then wouldn't it just be better to wait till they ran out of ET, and then just built more of both?

No, absolutely not. Not every consumer who would have bought your product will keep checking back over and over until it is in stock again, some will settle for something else. This is especially true if it is during something like christmas shopping season, people won't gift their children an IOU just because Atari couldn't keep their stock up.

>>3969729
Is that why Activision turned to shit? Because all the people at Atari are in charge now?

>>3969730
But if they don't have the console to play it why would they buy the game.

>>3969732

Activision turned to shit into the 00's when all the original Atari staff members retired. Activision was to Atari like Rare was for Nintendo.

>>3969738
So the dudes who joined Activision were the ones who were like, CORPORATE HEADS ON TOO MUCH COKE WE NEED TO SAVE OURSELVES

AKA the ones with brains?

>>3969735
They would buy the console just to play the game. Not familiar with the term "system seller"?

>>3969745
They made more than consoles existed.

I was saying, why not wait till they needed to make more ET, rather than wait till they needed to make more consoles. Seems like it would be quicker and cheaper to make more ET than whole consoles.

>>3969742
The "good" Atari staff were the ones doing coke, the corporate heads from Warner were actually very straight edge and widely considered the reason for Atari's downfall.

>>3969752
But someone said cocaine was part of their downfall.

>>3969750
>They made more than consoles existed.

Where do you get that idea from? They made more games than people had consoles at their homes, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a console stock on warehouse plus every retailer big and small stocked to the ceiling on the things. The guys were retarded when it came to video games, but nobody questions they knew how supply worked.

>>3969754
Sort of but not ultimately. They were very unprofessional in the early days which got them into some trouble but in the end it was the execs from Warner not knowing shit about video games what did them in.

>>3969761
Someone else said it. >>3969698

>because they probably thought that ET would be a system seller, so if they started to ran out of consoles they would produce more to compensate.

That's what gave rise to me saying, wouldn't it just be better to not make as much ET? The way it was worded made me think they had more consoles than ET.

>>3969698
>calculator
Literally retarded

>>3969772
That would have been incredibly stupid, you can't just snap your fingers and have a new batch of consoles on shelves ready for sale.

>>3969781

oh shit i confused it to the TI.89

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHIqyIIcz7Q

>>3969783
Well yeah, that's why I was confused, I was trying to wrap my head around why they would make more carts than consoles existed.

Still, making more than people owned was a risky as fuck move.

>>3969790
Has no one made a-maze-ing for TI calculators? Inconceivable.

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Forget the consoles. This was the shit until Commodore 64 came out three years later.

>>3966726
They didn't? Even with ET, Atari did well until the NES came out. Nintendo, Namco, Konami, Irem, and Taito all made games for Atari. Namco and Atari were basically one entity in the US for at least a decade.

>>3967613
The Flashback 2 is real Atari hardware condensed onto a small board, that's the only one worth buying, and is still cheap. The 2600 Jr. is adorable af and really cheap, you can even still find them brand new for like $100. I got mine on eBay recently for ~$20 and it still had the plastic on the metal part. 7800 is a really cool machine, but they're stupidly large and there's only a couple 7800 games that are really worth playing (the ones that are are fucking awesome though). I would recommend a cheap Jr. if you're looking to get into the Atari 2600 scene.
>>3968265
Most Atari stuff is very easy to find because they manufactured way too much and never sold any of it. You can get shrink-wrapped 7800 games for like $20 if you wanted. 7800 overall is pricey to collect for because there's way fewer hardware units around than the billion 2600 models in the wild.

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>>3970548
The Atari 8-bit line was the best hardware that Atari ever put out. They were on the right track when they decided to make the 5200 a consolized Atari 800 but it really should have just played the same cartridges and been cross compatible.

I think if Atari had relased pic related in 1986 and not tried to stagger support between the XEGS and the 7800 they might have actually given the NES some decent competition in the US.

>>3970568
Everyone else says they did.

>>3970568
>Nintendo, Namco, Konami, Irem, and Taito all made games for Atari
Not entirely accurate. They licensed their arcade games to Atari (or other third parties like Coleco and Parker Bros) but there really weren't any Japanese companies actually developing games for the 2600.

>>3971528
Konami and SEGA did, but that's all I can think of, and they were arcade ports (unsurprisingly.)

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>>3971528
That's not entirely true. Konami briefly dabbled into Atari VCS and Colecovision development a few years before the launch of the NES in North America. Their VCS games even had a stylized packaging design.

Sega also published a few games on the VCS before they launched the Master System.

>>3971539
Sega did their own publishing (and Konami did for 3 games) but they outsourced development to smaller companies. Sega used Beck-Tech and Syndein Systems, I'm not sure about those 3 games that were actually published by Konami but eventually Konami just started licensing out to Coleco (Time Pilot, Roc n Rope) and Parker Bros (Gyruss, Super Cobra, Tutankham, Frogger).

>>3970568
>They didn't?

What? Crash and burn? All accounts from the time state the holiday season ET was released was pretty bad for Atari compared to the previous one, and at that point retailers figured video games were dead and didn't even want to waste floor space on them. The reason ROB and the Zapper exist and came with the NES is so Nintendo could pass it off as a robot/gun toy instead of a game console to retailers, that's how bad things were.

>>3971573
Oh damn, this is interesting. I've never even heard of that joystick made by Konami, but that certainly would lead me to believe they did their own development for the games they did actually publish.

Also it's a real bummer that scramble didn't come out on the 2600, the VCS port of super cobra was pretty rough.

>>3971578
Ah gotcha, thanks anon.

>>3967456
>here's also a bunch of great red label 2600 stuff that came out during the 2600's second wind in the mid to late 80s (side by side with the XE line) that didn't get A8 ports, and some of those are the best games on the console.

WHY?!?!?!!??!

Why did Atari port so few of the later 2600/7800 games to the XE?

>>3972529
Honestly their whole strategy regarding the XE just perplexes me. From what I understand the console sold out on its initial production run and then Atari just sort of...stopped making it. Only something like 30 games came out for it. I guess they were more focused on the 7800, I don't know if it was making them more money or had sold more units or what.

Either way, we're missing out on what no doubt would have been amazing ports of Solaris, Secret Quest and Off the Wall.

>>3971578
>>3971584
Konami developing their own VCS games for the U.S. market doesn't seem that far-fetched, considering they developed lots of games specifically for the west during the NES and 16-bit console eras, especially lots of late NES releases based on licensed properties like Monsters in My Pocket and Zen the Intergalactic Ninja.