Justin

Famicom was ready in 1983, Atari 7800 had an extra year. Compare Excitebike to Pole Position II. Had the Atari 7800 seen and maintained nationwide release in 1984 there SHOULD have been that additional period between 1984-1986 where further development would've been laid down. New mappers and memory chips and new cartridge boards with added RAM should've been developed, the new sound chip should've been developed, the 7800 should've been running rings around what the Famicom / NES could do by 1986 in hardware and software. Imagine owning the Atari 7800 and not being on good terms with GCC and sending them on their way. It's almost like owning the Atari Lynx and throwing piss on EPYX. Imagine if somebody had been smart enough to keep both of these relationships and get both houses together developing games for both systems through the end of the systems' lifecycles. ABSOLUTELY CORRECT TAKE @Scott Stilphen The 5200 should've been skipped, or at best, released on time in 1979 instead of the 400, and should've been the main Atari video game system during the peak years of the 2600, the system that would've received Space Invaders, Missile Command, Asteroids, Pac-Man, E.T., and maybe even Tempest? The 7800 should've incorporated the MARIA chip with POKEY and maybe even a Yamaha sound chip etc. and given us the very best of the Atari world, and should've been released in 1982, or at the latest, available nationwide by Thanksgiving 1983. The Atari 7800's May 1984 release was already later than it should've been. The lack of foresight with the controllers is an especially egregious move. After seeing the NES, Atari should've seen the "2 buttons and a D-Pad" NES controller and acted swiftly to develop their own. I could never understand why Atari chose to release the 7800 with the CX24 Pro-Line Joystick other than chaos and laziness. GCC delivered the 7800 to Atari without controllers or any finalized styling. I have paperwork somewhere showing Atari was evaluating four controllers to release with the Atari 7800, all of which already existed, one of which being the horrid Atari 5200 Joystick. Too lazy and unimaginative to come up with something new. "Let's just throw in a 2600 Pro-Line controller made to use two buttons". Lazy, stupid and uninspired. If Atari had been smart they'd have developed an "NES Advantage" style joystick for the 7800, maybe even as the pack-in controller, and positioned the Atari 7800 as the 8-bit Neo Geo of the mid-1980s. "Only Atari can bring the arcade experience home to you with games like Ms Pac-Man, Asteroids, Dig Dug, Centipede, Galaga, Food Fight, and Pole Position II - all playable on Atari's true-to-life arcade joystick with real arcade buttons". That, plus Nintendo had unreasonable expectations and demands of Atari which would've contributed to Atari failing anyway. @Scott Stilphen ALL TRUE. Imagine if Atari had continued to support and advance the 7800 during the first few years the way Nintendo did with the NES through the development of mappers, more RAM, incredible cartridges that could've supported incredible games, something not unlike a 1980s version of the Board or VersaBoard. It's like Nintendo and Sega were out there doing games like Super Mario Bros, Zelda and Fantasy Star and Atari wanted to keep making single-screen games on 32K cartridge boards. Hurrrr durrrr "Business Is War" though 🥴

My new High Score: 32,010

Let me know if you need help getting set up! We are all happy to help you out here!

My new High Score: 20,240

Today's updates from our friends @Atari Creep and @nosweargamer : Regarding @nosweargamer's discussion on "Could the Original Intellivision Assets Be Sold?" - Yes, that's one possibility! From my personal experience, here are the different scenarios I see potentially playing out: 1. The Amico project is split off from Intellivision and sold to some other group or entity, who would likely make some changes and release the Amico without the Intellivision branding. In this scenario, rights to the Intellivision name and original "Blue Sky" software are retained by their current owners. (By retaining the original Intellivision name and software, this leaves the door open for future projects that could arise down the road, such as another Intellivision Lives! release or Intellivision Flashback) The Amico would be in the hands of new owners, who could potentially get it in Costco and Sam's Club for $69 with a bunch of built-in games, or sell it overseas. 2. Intellivision and its IP assets stay together - and is sold as a whole to a new buyer. In this example, Intellivision is bought by a new buyer - could be a single person, could be a Bitcoin billionaire, could be a Swiss banker, could be Atari or Microsoft, who knows. The entirety of Intellivision IP from the original system, the "Blue Sky Rangers" games, plus the Amico hardware and new game titles would be theirs to do whatever they want with. They could continue with the Amico and put more money into it. They could cancel the Amico and put the Amico games out on iOS and Nintendo Switch. They could make the games playable on an Intellivision website online. Atari could buy Intellivision and make all original games and Amico games playable on the Atari VCS. Who knows. It's less likely that Intellivision would stay together 100%. The IP could stay together potentially, but a new buyer likely wouldn't want their existing debt or commercial real estate commitments which are a different thing entirely. 3. Intellivision and its IP assets are broken up and sold off piecemeal - with different assets sold to multiple buyers. (In this example, one group may buy the Amico project, another group may buy the rights to the Intellivision name, a 3rd group could buy Astrosmash, a 4th group could buy Night Stalker, Atari Age could buy Shark! Shark!, etc.) 4. Intellivision avoids bankruptcy through a new tranche of funding, with major shareholders (Tommy Tallarico for example) selling their ownership to a new investor / entity and walking away from the project. One new investor group or entity could acquire controlling interest of Intellivision by buying out a couple of the larger shareholders, without having to purchase 100% ownership in the company. 5. Intellivision stays together and avoids bankruptcy through a new tranche of funding, by diluting their stock and bringing on a new majority shareholder - likely a group. For example, let's say Intellivision as it currently exists is divided into 100,000 shares of Intellivision stock, and let's also say for example that Tommy Tallarico owns roughly 20% of that stock, or roughly 20,000 shares. Intellivision could avoid bankruptcy by bringing on a new investment group or angel investor - let's call him "Cousin Steve" - by creating ANOTHER 100,000 shares of Intellivision stock, and offering those 100,000 shares to "Cousin Steve" for $5 Million plus some loan guarantees. Now there are 200,000 total shares of Intellivision stock (not just 100,000 as there was just a moment ago) meaning the total number of existing shares of Intellivision stock have doubled. This means that Tommy Tallarico's hypothetical 20,000 shares no longer represent 20% ownership in Intellivision, but have now been DILUTED to represent only a 10% ownership in Intellivision. They own the same number of shares, but those shares now make up less ownership of the company than they did before - but at least it's still ownership in something that will now have a fighting chance at survival, rather than owning a greater share of a project that is dead. "Cousin Steve" gets 100,000 shares or half the company and likely controlling interest and certainly a seat on the board. "Cousin Steve" would likely also require that staff and salaries are cut in half, and the majority of their commercial real estate entanglements are dropped. 6. Intellivision ceases operations and nobody is really sure what's going on with the assets for a long time. This is more likely than you think. There is the possibility that nobody comes to the rescue here. It's. possible that nobody wants to invest a substantial enough amount of money into Intellivision to each much of anything, and the public (particularly the classic gaming community) is left uncertain of who exactly owns what assets from Intellivision. A nasty bankruptcy could ensue.

Terrific interview @Silver Back thank you for sharing! I know @RickR recently made this suggestion to you, and I'm going to second it - You should strongly consider creating a Blog page here on Atari I/O. Your content has been outstanding. Posting to a Blog is hardly any different than a regular forums post, and just as easy. A Blog gives you your own branded space within Atari I/O that you can do whatever you want with. It's much easier than developing a website from scratch (believe me on that! 😰) you can export your Blog posts elsewhere via ATOM and RSS syndication, and you can have your own .com domain name and point it to your Blog if you'd like. We would love to see you have your own Blog space here that you can post to when you feel inspired. There are lots of other Atari I/O Members with their own Blogs and creator spaces that would be happy to help get you started and offer tips and tricks for making your Blog incredible. Here are a few Blog pages from other active Atari I/O Members to check out as an example of what you can do:

Maybe a new goal for this year! Consider joining just to follow along. You could even play along with the PC versions of the game if you'd like, but the scores won't be able to be counted in the Final Standings. I need to get my hands on a VCS too, and an Evercade VS System 🙂

Fresh update and perspective from @nosweargamer:

Second attempt, doing a little better this time. My High Score: 16,430

I own an AV Famicom, which is the Japanese equivalent to the 2nd generation NES that was released in the United States with the "dog bone" NES control pad, the exception being that the Japanese AV Famicom lacked the "hump" the US version had to support the substantially larger cartridges, and the AV Famicom had terrific AV output for a nice picture. @MaximumRD may recall a video I used to have giving an overview of this system on my old YouTube channel. I never understood the aesthetic appeal of the original Famicom. The games are absolute classics, and the Disk System is really neat, but I've never liked the styling of the original Famicom. The red and white are very, very ugly to me, beyond unattractive. It looks like a cheap toy, and the white plastic looks cheap, gets dirty and turns yellow. I can see why Atari engineers were going to rebody the Famicom, likely in the Atari 2600 Jr. shell. I've preferred owning the original North American NES, and the 2nd generation AV Famicom from Japan.

Another quick reminder - All Club VCS Members are invited to share their high scores on our Atari VCS Scoreboard, and lets make sure these Recharged Squad Challenges continue on into the future: https://forums.atari.io/forum/135-atari-vcs/ For more info on how to post to the scoreboard, take a look at other posts as an example and check out this thread:

The only proper Ambassador Class starship design. Absolutely gorgeous. Lines perfectly halfway between the Excelsior Class and the Galaxy Class. I think it was either Rick Berman or Ronald D. Moore who was quoted as saying that they wish they'd saved "Yesterday's Enterprise" to be the story for "Star Trek: Generations" - retaining the Tasha War & Guinan angle, and diving deeper into the story. Instead of the Enterprise-C coming through the rift, it would be the Enterprise-A and the original crew, bringing the casts of the original show and TNG face to face in an epic film. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the crew of the Enterprise-A would be sent back through the rift to their likely demise, but would die with honor defending the Klingon ship from Roman attack, leading to peace between the Federation and Klingon Empire. It would've been a much bigger film and a far more meaningful death than Kirk dying on that bridge.

Thanks @Silver Back! Here are some of those panel discussions with Steve Golson for everybody to enjoy:

@Video 61 Wasn't this how you released Save Mary! and Shooting Gallery 20 years ago? An Atari 2600 game for the Atari 7800 running in 2600 Mode?

You should watch the movie "Boiler Room"

That's a great point. I've usually played it with the light gun, but the controls always felt not as responsive as they should have. Were you playing using the CX40 Pro-Line Joystick? I'll have to give "Crossbow" another play from a fresh perspective using a crisp joystick. ABSOLUTELY, same here! I always loved that graphic of the volcano with the lava flowing from it. Even seeing it on the back of the poster made me think "WOW, Nintendo could never do graphics like this!" To be clear, I always thought "Crossbow" on the 7800 looked great, and it was an exciting game that came from the arcades that would make Duck Hunt and Wild Gunman "look like a baby's toy". But when I actually bought it and played it I thought the light gun felt sloppy, and the lack of responsiveness hurt the experience of the game for me. Atari's fault. My point exactly. Did any kid know the XE light gun was supposed to work on the Atari 7800 also, or where to even find one? It did not look like it matched the 7800 AT ALL. They should've released the XE light gun in the red color as originally shown, then it would've appeared like an accessory for any Atari system. I agree. Again, Atari should've spent more time on the software end of things to tighten up this accuracy to be on par with "Duck Hunt" etc.

E X A C T L Y ! ! ! THIS IS EXACTLY RIGHT @RickR!!! I've ALWAYS felt this way, and I loved the Sega Master System too! But I know how I felt as a kid when it seemed like Nintendo had this massive presence everywhere, and even Sega had really sharp marketing for the SMS, and Atari had nothing. They gave us nothing. "The Fun Is Back" commercial and that's about it. I spoke about this in my post about creating my own Atari 2600 / 7800 Strategy Guide in 6th grade as being a big reason why I felt I needed to create that. Atari wasn't supporting us with any marketing, any goodies, anything at all, even their most loyal fan base. I felt this way as a 5-8 year old kid playing 2600 & 7800, and later on in middle school when I began my journey in Classic Gaming. It's almost as though Atari were one giant liquidation sale not interested in seriously competing with Sega Master System or Nintendo. ABSOLUTELY!! With Atari, Inc. under Warner Communications, Atari got lazy and greedy with releasing games before they were ready or properly play tested. Both Pac-Man and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial could've been so much better with SIMPLE, MINOR CHANGES or just a little more time and effort - as shown with Nukey Shay's Pac-Man 8K hack which is spectacular! It's not like these were obscure games, Warner allowing all of these PILLAR TITLES to be released with little quality assurance really HURT Atari's chances of success. WIth Atari Corp. under Jack Tramiel it was a different story. Jack was all about "Power Without The Price" and "Business Is War". Building a business on a competitive advantage of being a low-cost alternative is a valid one. Members Mark and Kirkland products at Sam's Club and Costco are one example of this. "Power Without The Price" may have worked to a degree with the Atari ST being a viable, lower-cost alternative to the Apple Mac. A "Jackintosh" we used to call it. However, I think taking that approach with their home video games SERIOUSLY undermined the success of all Atari home video game systems after 1984. Atari video games went from being the world's premiere name in video games, to being a bargain-bin discount off-brand. All of the big red bins at Kay-Bee toys filled not only with clearance 2600 games made from before the crash, but new 7800 games as well. Pricing the Atari 7800 at half the price of the NES and SMS, and making games that were half as complex HURT Atari's image. "Low cost off-brand" is what came to mind for many people during the NES era. They had made Atari the Kirkland of video games. I also don't think it helped that Atari continued the 2600 as long as they did. I can understand Warner's Atari coming up with a smaller, cost-reducing Atari 2600 in 1983, to be released in 1984, but Tramiel's Atari continuing the 2600 through the end of the decade and into the 1990s put old Atari 2600 games on toy shelves right next too the NES, SMS, even TurboGrafx-16 and Genesis. I love the 2600 but the average consumer would've seen a side-by-side comparison on the store shelves and would've decided that "Atari was old and outdated". Then, once that image was engrained in people's minds, Atari releases the incredibly gorgeous and magically advanced Atari Lynx at a price twice that of the Nintendo Game Boy. "Power without the price - but twice the price of Game Boy from the Kirkland of Video Games" was definitely one factor in the limited success of the Atari Lynx. NOT GOOD. This is spot-on. You're absolutely right. The wild thing is the Grass Valley guys who came up with the 2600 "Stella" went on to create the 400/800 to be the next generation Atari video game system to be ready by 1979. It would have been the machine to first have games like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Asteroids and Missile Command, and it would've been what went up against the Intellivision and to a degree the ColecoVision. Sadly Atari saw an opportunity to make it into a computer and nixed the home console version all together. Imagine if instead of the 400/800, they had released a console version of the ANTIC technology first, in 1979, using the existing Atari CX40 Joysticks and CX30 Paddle Controllers, potentially a detachable add-on keyboard later on, and had gotten that system out before the 2600 exploded in popularity with Space Invaders. It would've been an entirely different story. Games like E.T. would've had more memory and on screen text. Games like Pac-Man would've been released as about the same graphically as the 400/800 but without the keyboard.

It's unreal. YESS!! @RickR @Video 61 I remember seeing both "Crossbow" and "Fight Night" in the Sears Catalog when they were new (that I posted about here) and thinking they looked like great 7800 games. Five years later when I began my journey as a Classic Gamer, I got a new 7800 game from Lance that came with the poster inside, and got my hands on an "Atari Advantage" poster for the first time. So much of my early (pre-internet) Classic Gaming journey came from Brochures - finding "clearance" Atari games at Kay-Bee Toy Stores etc., opening them up and discovering those beautiful Atari brochures inside. I loved flipping through the pages as all of those lost memories came flooding back, and I learned more about some of these games for the first time. Atari didn't do much for the 7800 or 2600 in the later years, but the Atari Advantage posters were an exception for both. Looking at the back of the Atari Advantage poster, seeing all of the neat games for the 2600 & 7800 that I still had yet to get ahold of. This is a case of "I remember remembering something about Atari", which happens often when I reflect on my early days in Classic Gaming circa 1993-1994. That was nearly 30 years ago, but even then, my original Atari experiences of the early-mid 80s' were already a decade in the past. So I have memories from 1993-1994 of remembering and rediscovering Atari things from the 1980s that I had totally forgotten about. "Crossbow" and "Fight Night" were examples of this. Of course I had never forgotten about games like "Asteroids", "Missile Command", "Space Invaders", "Ms. Pac-Man" and all of the pillar titles. But "Crossbow" and "Fight Night" were more or less lost memories and not top of mind. I remember in 1993-1994 seeing the Atari Advantage poster for the first time, and remembering games like "Fight Night" and "Crossbow" being out years before. Even by then I had not played them. I thought "okay, so 'Fight Night' is the Atari 7800 version of 'Punch Out!' which should be awesome! And 'Crossbow' looks like a light gun game, probably a more mature, more arcade-like version of 'Duck Hunt' which should be awesome." Sadly I was disappointed with both. Graphically they looked pretty decent, but controls were NOT GOOD and I had one of those moments where I felt like "Yeah, I can see why everybody seemed to dump Atari for Nintendo, the NES games are so crisp and have great control and are fun to play". Oh well. You can see "Fight Night" on the left page and "Crossbow" on the right page, both for $29.97 from Sears. I think "Crack'ed" is another game that would've benefited greatly from improved controls / Light Gun. @Video 61 Totally agree. I realize this would be copyright infringement etc. but I'd love to see someone release an improved / hacked version of Crack'ed to use the Light Gun, the same way others such as Thomas Jentzsch have released games like "Missile Command TB" for use with the Atari Trak-Ball. The Atari 7800 experience should be at least on par with the NES, and improved controls and controllers are a big part of that. You see that on the hardware end with your improved 7800-Compatible Grip-Stik and CX-30 Evolved Paddle Controllers. Crisp, responsive control makes all the difference, it's our connection to the game!

Here's my very first attempt: My High Score 7,130

YES!! Let's have fun with this! 👍 🥳 🥳 🥳

@Video 61 This is absolutely correct!! The answer is simple. It's because Atari allowed it to be. No "Atari Seal of Quality" or serious QA measures taken at that time, too many games shipped - that should have undergone another few rounds of testing. There is no game without control over it. Poor controls, lagging controls, poor controller hardware, it all adds up to a ruined experience. Atari should've been taking more acute action to assure crisp, responsive controls on EVERY Atari game for every Atari system before they ship out to store shelves. They could start with packaging the Atari 7800 with something far better than the CX24 Atari ProLine Joystick or even the CX78 Atari Control Pad.