Why was Karateka so bad?

[Video 61]

On 3/1/2022 at 7:09 PM, RickR said:

"Fight Night" is another with horrible controls.  That one was bad even on the original computer version, so I'm not sure what they were thinking in porting it over. 

hi rickr,

its another apple port. but not all apple ports are bad. lode runner on the XEGS is one also.

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[Video 61]

On 3/1/2022 at 2:49 PM, Silver Back said:

Thanks @Video 61. That's sort of what I was looking for! 

We all know that most people don't want to make bad games, but creating retail games is a business and there are contracts where you may have to make a game that your not experienced in, or maybe there's technical difficulties, or deadlines and ship dates that can't be pushed back. These are usually the reasons for bad games and I was wondering if this was ever discussed for Karateka. 

Again thank you for providing the information that you could remember. 

hi silver back,

 

 you are welcome.

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[Video 61]

12 hours ago, RickR said:

Bingo!  And also on par with the SMS, which also had better controllers, games, and marketing than the 7800. 

I don't think Atari understood at all that some of these bad games could seriously HURT their chances of success.  You mentioned Fight Night vs. Punch Out!, which is completely fair.  If your game stinks and theirs is fun, DON'T release yours like that. 

I've said it before about 2600 Pac Man.  Sure it's ok and a decent game.  But it planted that seed of "is this the best this system can do?" that caused an Atari kid like me to move on.  Almost every other system (especially the 400/800) had a better version of Pac Man (or clone), so why am I still wasting my time with the 2600?  That was the thought process of 13 year old RickR at the time. 

 

hi rickr,

 

 jack simply hated games, and did the least possible he could with them. he could care less what people thought of his games, terrible shame.

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[Video 61]

10 hours ago, CrossBow said:

I disagree on Crossbow. It was on the games I saw in the Sears catalogs back in the day that made me want the 7800 and as soon as I saw it available at my local Service Merchandise, I scrounged up the allowance and mowed lawns to get it. I was NOT disappointed with the game at all and used it as one of the showcase games for how the graphics were impressive on the system to my friends back then. But I never had the light gun because I never knew back then that the XE lightgun was the one to use and always expected to see a 7800 branded lightgun released. As a result, I only played this game with joystick controls and I actually find it to be quite responsive that way. I have tried to play the game with a light gun since, but the lack of accuracy did not sit well with me. However, Alien Brigade is pretty much a light gun required game as that is the only way I've managed to beat that game.

 

hi crossbow,

 

 if you ever played the XEGS version you would never play the 7800 version again. if you ever played the 2600 version, which should have been a light gun game, but joystick control is very good, you would never play the 7800 version again, at least that is the way it is with me.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

 

[Video 61]

7 hours ago, Scott Stilphen said:

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/36432-i-officially-like-karateka/

From Mike Feldman: "Jack Sandberg was the lead programmer on the Karateka and Hat Trick Atari projects. I believe Jon Turner was lead on Choplifter. I was their boss at the time and I remember doing the PC version of Hat Trick that Jack ported to the 7800.  As the leader of the team at Ibid Inc who did these games, all I can say is the specs were tightly controlled by Atari -- they bought the rights to the game and subcontracted the conversion out to us. There was no room to improve, change or modify. The Tramiels (especially Jack's son) kept us on a very short leash.  I do remember that we had to create the development environment from scratch. We had had a lot of experience with C64s and Apples so we were familiar with the 6502. At that time, we wrote most of our stuff in Forth. This gave us the advantage of being able to develop debug on a PC and then port the results to the Atari. Forth is fairly portable and has the advantage of easily integrating with assembler code. The final product was probably mostly assembler, but the main control loops were written in Forth.  I vaguely recall having some kind of card that plugged into the cartridge slot that allowed us to download stuff our binaries and we also burned eproms and mounted them into blank cartridges. We also had a PAL 7800 and a PAL TV with some adaptation so it worked on US current.  I do not remember the work on these games as enjoyable. The environment was difficult, the 7800 is a pretty limited machine and the client was equally difficult. I clearly remember one trip out to Silicon Valley (we were Hartford based) where Len Tramiel spent an hour yelling at me because he didn't like the shade of blue used in the Choplifter sky."

I have some more info about Karateka on my site: http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/easter_eggs/7800/78karateka.html

hi scott,

the reason why the tight leash atari had on programmers was rom space, period. choplifter, 32k, no ram, no second screen.

this played out on just about every game but commando. there were a few successes getting by jacks cheapness like impossible mission had ram, looked great, but alas. the bug.

by the time atari figured out the 7800, it was to late.

32k and 48k from a combined ram/rom hobbled many games.

there were some success like desert falcon, pole position II, and food fight, but there are only so many limited size games like that, that can carry a platform.

the plug in board the programmers are discussing is the one most likely that plugs into the atari ST. i got one. it allows you to program a 7800 game, and watch it in action because the board plugs into the cart port on the 7800.

the information atari had for programmers was built from scratch from what atari themselves figured out. they got no help from GCC because of how jack treated them.

i once pointed out to a atari engineer that on the 7800, there is a 32k window for the 2600, he was stunned. you can program a 2600 game on the 7800 in a full 32k, no banking needed.

so jacks atari was flying blind with the 7800, and by the time they figured it out, i say it was when commando was released, game over.

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[7800 Pro Gamer]

7 hours ago, Video 61 said:

the information atari had for programmers was built from scratch from what atari themselves figured out. they got no help from GCC because of how jack treated them.

It was horrible how he treated GCC and it made little sense from a business standpoint. GCC cranked out games and product like nobodies business, and had they been treated right they could have really done a ton for he 7800 in the early years.

If you don't have first hand information then Steve Golstons panels and interviews on YouTube have been very enlightening, at least for me.  

Edited March 3, 2022 by Silver Back

[dauber]

I only tried 7800 Karateka in the last few years...and I instantly understood the flak it got. Holy God, it's amazingly horrible. I can only suspect that whoever worked on it also worked on Touchdown Football and Fight Night; they all had a similar vibe in terms of playability and the action on the screen not reflecting what you actually do on the controller.

[CrossBow]

9 hours ago, Video 61 said:

hi crossbow,

 

 if you ever played the XEGS version you would never play the 7800 version again. if you ever played the 2600 version, which should have been a light gun game, but joystick control is very good, you would never play the 7800 version again, at least that is the way it is with me.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

 

Not played the XEGS version but I have played the 2600 version. And we will have to agree to disagree on this one. Again with joystick controls I got to be really good at it back in the day because I could exactly place the cursor where it needed to be and just strafe it left and right in most screens to clear away stuff and each scene I had a particular spot where to place the cursor initially and had a pattern for most of the them along with the timings for the enemies being memorized as well back then. I do find the 2600 version to be very impressive graphically given the hardware and I honestly never even knew the 2600 version existed back then. But at the time I owned my 7800 I didn't pay attention to 2600 game releases anymore either and was strictly all in on the 7800 at that time.

 

[Justin]

10 hours ago, Video 61 said:

i once pointed out to a atari engineer that on the 7800, there is a 32k window for the 2600, he was stunned. you can program a 2600 game on the 7800 in a full 32k, no banking needed.

 

@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? 

[Justin]

2 hours ago, Silver Back said:

If you don't have first hand information then Steve Golstons panels and interviews on YouTube have been very enlightening, at least for me. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

[Justin]

 

 

 

[7800 Pro Gamer]

Thank you @Justin for posting those.  I'm still learning how to do things on these forums and a lot of times I'm posting on my breaks at work so I try to get thoughts down quickly. 

[Video 61]

9 hours ago, Silver Back said:

It was horrible how he treated GCC and it made little sense from a business standpoint. GCC cranked out games and product like nobodies business, and had they been treated right they could have really done a ton for he 7800 in the early years.

If you don't have first hand information then Steve Golstons panels and interviews on YouTube have been very enlightening, at least for me.  

hi silver back,

 

jack was your typical asset stripper, he cannot see past the end of his nose, let alone tomorrow. that being said, he was good to me, he even listened a few times. alas if only he acted upon the same advise that he got daily from others to.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[Video 61]

8 hours ago, dauber said:

I only tried 7800 Karateka in the last few years...and I instantly understood the flak it got. Holy God, it's amazingly horrible. I can only suspect that whoever worked on it also worked on Touchdown Football and Fight Night; they all had a similar vibe in terms of playability and the action on the screen not reflecting what you actually do on the controller.

hi dauber,

 yep, load time. plus being apple ports.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

 

[Video 61]

8 hours ago, CrossBow said:

Not played the XEGS version but I have played the 2600 version. And we will have to agree to disagree on this one. Again with joystick controls I got to be really good at it back in the day because I could exactly place the cursor where it needed to be and just strafe it left and right in most screens to clear away stuff and each scene I had a particular spot where to place the cursor initially and had a pattern for most of the them along with the timings for the enemies being memorized as well back then. I do find the 2600 version to be very impressive graphically given the hardware and I honestly never even knew the 2600 version existed back then. But at the time I owned my 7800 I didn't pay attention to 2600 game releases anymore either and was strictly all in on the 7800 at that time.

 

hi crossbow,

 

 but at least you hit what you aimed for. the 7800 version by the time it fires, the boulder in in another place.

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[Video 61]

7 hours ago, Justin said:

 

@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? 

hi justin,

 

 yes. and i am checking into the fact that actually the 7800 may have a 48k window.

i am wondering if GSS wanted to release 2600 multi carts on the 7800?

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[7800 Pro Gamer]

@Video 61

17 minutes ago, Video 61 said:

jack was your typical asset stripper, he cannot see past the end of his nose, let alone tomorrow. that being said, he was good to me, he even listened a few times. alas if only he acted upon the same advise that he got daily from others to.

Forgive my ignorance but would you mind expanding on the nature of your relationship with Jack tramiel?  I'm just curious as I've been doing a lot of research on the 7800 and the business of Atari under him. 

[Video 61]

18 hours ago, Silver Back said:

@Video 61

Forgive my ignorance but would you mind expanding on the nature of your relationship with Jack tramiel?  I'm just curious as I've been doing a lot of research on the 7800 and the business of Atari under him. 

hi silver back,

 

 not much of a relationship. the office secretary accidentally sent my call that was going to john scruch to jacks office. he answered it, and i said who is this, i was looking for john scruch.

jack responded, i am jack tramiel, i apologized and and was going to hang up and try again, but he said wait who are you, i responded, he said yes i know of you, then we spoke for at least 15-30 minutes, maybe more, not sure. i was so shocked he wanted to talk.

 he was very polite, sounded a little lonely. we talked atari of course. in fact, i was having a hard time getting off the phone so that i could recall up john.

spoke to him a few more times in the future, he actually broke into a few calls to say hi and how are things going.

later on i was told that jack said, what ever he wants, let him have it within reason.

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

 

   

[Scott Stilphen]

On 3/3/2022 at 1:02 AM, Video 61 said:

the information atari had for programmers was built from scratch from what atari themselves figured out. they got no help from GCC because of how jack treated them.

Isn't that ironic, considering how Kassar treated GCC and funneled nearly every valuable title for development to them (because he has a financial stake in the company) and how he basically forced Atari's CED programmers to hand over all their source code to GCC to help jump-start their game development for the VCS, 800, and 5200.... but when Atari's programmers asked GCC to share their knowledge or software tricks, they got nothing.  That's a good example of karma in action.

Then you have Jack take over Atari and refuse to honor Warner Atari's previous commitments and contract with GCC, and by the time he capitulated and paid GCC and released the 7800, it was 2 years later and the 7800 was already outdated compared to the current systems on the market.  It was 2 years old and needed to have its own 'killer app' within a year of being released for it to have any chance to survive, and all Atari had was the initial titles GCC had designed 2 years prior, and with Jack laying off most of the company's employees, and the few in-house game designers that remained being reassigned to work on the ST, they had no in-house game development to support the 7800.

Less than 60 titles were officially released for the 7800, between 1984-1991 (7 years), and there's not a single 'killer app' in the bunch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atari_7800_games

From that list, only 10 are noted as being developed by Atari Corp.:

Galaga*
Xevious*
Asteroids*
Centipede
Barnyard Blaster
Crack'ed
RealSports Baseball
Tower Toppler
Planet Smashers
Meltdown

Wikipedia being what it is, is not 100% accurate because the first 3 were definitely done by GCC.  Perhaps as a result of Tramiel paying off GCC's contract, Atari didn't legally need to credit GCC in the manuals for the games they did.  Other than the handful of 3rd-party titles that were released by Absolute, Activision, and Froggo, I don't think Atari credited any 3rd-party developers for the titles they released.  Regardless, 59 titles over 7 years is pathetic (less than 1 per month on average).

As far as the 7800's hardware, a POKEY chip should have absolutely been incorporated.  You had a system which was basically a 'super' VCS, with improved graphics on par with the 800, and the ability to move a lot of sprite around w/o the dreaded flickering (thanks to the Maria chip), but with the original 1977 TIA sound chip.  The 800 and 5200 incorporated the POKEY chip, so it's truly baffling why the 7800 didn't.  In hindsight, Atari should have released something like the 7800 in 1982, not a re-release of the 400 in a different case (the 5200), so the 7800 was already a bit dated in 1984.  Plus Atari already had previewed the NES as early as 1983 and had the opportunity to release it under their name; they saw the future, and ignored it.  So why did the 7800 even get to the point of nearly being widely released in 1984?  Again, Kassar had a personal investment with GCC, so why look into a licensing deal with Nintendo when they already had GCC developing a new system for them?

Granted, there have been some excellent homebrew games released for the 7800.  Robert DeCrescenz has done more to keep interest in the 7800 than anybody else by far, but without a serious hardware investment made to improve games to be equal to what's found on the NES, as PenguiNet did with Rikki and Vikki, it's pointless to think it ever had a chance to compete with the NES.  And no, the 7800XM wasn't going to change that.  Everything the 7800XM promised to offer could easily been included inside the cartridge, and already has been, with the XBoard (which was created in 2006! - http://www.x-game.se/products/xboard.htm) and VersaBoard (which was created in 2013).

[Justin]

9 minutes ago, Scott Stilphen said:

by the time he capitulated and paid GCC and released the 7800, it was 2 years later and the 7800 was already outdated compared to the current systems on the market

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.

 

12 minutes ago, Scott Stilphen said:

Perhaps as a result of Tramiel paying off GCC's contract, Atari didn't legally need to credit GCC in the manuals for the games they did.

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.

 

15 minutes ago, Scott Stilphen said:

As far as the 7800's hardware, a POKEY chip should have absolutely been incorporated.  You had a system which was basically a 'super' VCS, with improved graphics on par with the 800, and the ability to move a lot of sprite around w/o the dreaded flickering (thanks to the Maria chip), but with the original 1977 TIA sound chip.  The 800 and 5200 incorporated the POKEY chip, so it's truly baffling why the 7800 didn't.

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.

 

20 minutes ago, Scott Stilphen said:

Plus Atari already had previewed the NES as early as 1983 and had the opportunity to release it under their name; they saw the future, and ignored it.  So why did the 7800 even get to the point of nearly being widely released in 1984?  Again, Kassar had a personal investment with GCC, so why look into a licensing deal with Nintendo when they already had GCC developing a new system for them?

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".

 

29 minutes ago, Scott Stilphen said:

Again, Kassar had a personal investment with GCC, so why look into a licensing deal with Nintendo when they already had GCC developing a new system for them?

That, plus Nintendo had unreasonable expectations and demands of Atari which would've contributed to Atari failing anyway.

 

29 minutes ago, Scott Stilphen said:

but without a serious hardware investment made to improve games to be equal to what's found on the NES, as PenguiNet did with Rikki and Vikki, it's pointless to think it ever had a chance to compete with the NES.  And no, the 7800XM wasn't going to change that.  Everything the 7800XM promised to offer could easily been included inside the cartridge, and already has been, with the XBoard (which was created in 2006! - http://www.x-game.se/products/xboard.htm) and VersaBoard (which was created in 2013).

@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 🥴

 

[Video 61]

9 hours ago, Justin said:

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 🥴

 

hi justin, scott,

 

you have to remember, by the time jack got atari, everyone thought games were dead. activision killed off that stupid myth, pitfall II, kung fu masters, ghost busters and others, sold like crazy for me. and my customers came in daily asking when is atari going to release any games.

but jack was very busy with the atari ST, and have gotten rid of most of the programmers, he was in no shape to compete in games. and he was never serious about competing even when he resurrected the 7800.

jacks way of doing business was selling off whats in the warehouses world wide. so in some warehouses, there were millions of 7800 games just sitting. pure profit.

so for jack, games were just a side line, he hated them anyways. i got the two hour lector on the evils of video games also.

so little money and time was invested in the 7800. i got a letter one time, where atari promised 25 games by 1987 i think it was. many never came, a few came years later.

and the technology was there. jack had warehouses full of stuff like pokey chips, ram, and video chips. the great thing is that the cart shell had a lot of room for cart boards, that could be packed with goodies.

but the atari ST came first. and even then, cost cutting caused its eventual demise.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[7800 Pro Gamer]

There's something I always liked about the 7800 graphics. It's hard to explain but even as a kid I could see the blocks and segments that a lot of NES games were built out of. The 7800 felt like the characters and environments were actually something drawn rather than put together. I have to admit that I looked forward to the times my parents said we could play the NES together because the games felt more epic, but I enjoyed my time with the 7800 and liked the look of the games. 

But it's evident from the library, from the atarian magazine of the time, and from first hand accounts of people's experience with Atari and Jack during his reign that it was never a priority or seen it's true potential. 

I think that's why a lot of us old Atari guys was floored by Rikki & Vikki.  Homebrew developers are putting out excellent games all the time and was edging more and more towards the 7800s potential. But Rikki & Vikki was the first time I said yes I knew this could be done. It was the first time I saw something that would've made my 8 year old NES friends jealous.  

 

 

[Scott Stilphen]

21 hours ago, Justin said:

Nintendo had unreasonable expectations and demands of Atari which would've contributed to Atari failing anyway.

Atari and Nintendo met several times.  They first met in April 11th, 1983 in Japan while the NES was still being developed.  This memo, dated June 14th, 1983, outlines the deal: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/documents/nintendo_famicom_6-14-83.txt

The memo mentions the Maria chip was being developed at the time:

"On 4/15/83, Messers Kassar, Groth, Moone, Bruehl, Paul, Henricks, Remson, and myself met in Mr. Groth's office to view the videotape and discuss what we had learned from the meeting on the 11th and what we knew to-date on the MARIA chip being developed by General Computer. As both systems were seen as being in the same price range with graphics capabilities superior to the 2600 and comparable (and in some features, superior) to the 5200, it was felt that we needed to see what could be done with both machines for an intermediate priced game machine .... the 3600."

Atari and Nintendo met again in Japan on May 17th, 1983.  Atari felt the 7800 was the superior machine at the time, probably because all they saw running on the prototype NES at the time were incomplete versions of Donkey Kong Junior and Popeye, although the Maria was still not finalized.  So Atari's plan was to stretch out the negotiations with Nintendo until the Maria chip was done and then make a decision.

As for any unreasonable expectations and demands of Atari, the contract offer seems pretty straightforward.  Nintendo obviously wanted to keep tight control of the custom chips used in the NES, and didn't want to see the rampant piracy and 'shovelware' problem the VCS had, but they relaxed some of their demands later in the negotiations.

As we all know, Atari dragged out the negotiations long enough that Nintendo saw that Atari was clearly hurting from the crashing market and at some point decided they would release the NES themselves in the U.S. w/o Atari, which they did in 1985.

Dan Oliver mentions the Tramiels had a meeting with Nintendo in July or August 1984:

http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/articles/olivers_travels/olivers_travels.html

By that point, Nintendo was looking for software for the NES.  The previous year, HAL Laboratory had ported 4 games to the NES:

Defender II (Stargate)
Joust (Frank Cifaldi found and released the prototype for this last year)
Kangaroo
Millipede (Atari Games was commissioned to do this, and Ed Logg programmed it).

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/263324-kangaroo-for-the-nintendo-famicom-by-hal-laboratory/

This unconfirmed info from "Gazimaluke" is interesting:

"I heard that Richard Frick who was Director of Software development at Atari at the time was the source of the information that Kangaroo had been ported to the NES. Since I am researching the history of Sunsoft I am interested in finding out if this is true.

I contacted Richard and asked him about it. What he told me was that when Jack Trimel took over Atari in 84 they cleared out some warehouses. And during that process Richard saw a cart marked Kangaroo. And I guess since he was Director of Software development he could see the difference between a Atari 2600 cart and a NES cart. But this was basically all he knew about it."

From Frank Cifaldi:

"Both Joust and Millipede on the Famicom have a 1983 copyright, but came out much later (1986/1987 I think) I believe HAL made both of them on commission for Nintendo specifically for the Atari pitch, and when that fell through they were sat on for a while."

So Atari missed their chance to lock in exclusive U.S. rights to the NES for 4 years, with an additional 4-year option, for $5 million dollars.  Considering all the money Atari pissed away under Kassar developing products that were never released, $5 million was a no-brainer of a deal.  Unfortunately, Kassar and his cronies had no brains.  Plus they were thinking of an 'intermediate' console to be released prior to the 7800, the 3600?  

[7800 Pro Gamer]

I may be mistaken but the 3600 is the 7800 just under a different name. Justin posted interviews from Steve Golson of GCC who worked on the 7800 and made a point that it was called 3600 until pretty late in the project. I could be wrong it could've been a different number but I know the scope of the project was altered a bit while he worked on it. 

But I could be mistaken. In hindsight Atari should've jumped on the NES, but there was a crash recently, Atari was bleeding money, and maybe they just didn't trust Nintendo or believe in what they were showing at that point. And I think it's pretty obvious why Jack Tramiel wouldn't jump on it given his history. And warner probably didn't give a shoot because they just wanted out from Atari at the time. 

[Scott Stilphen]

Yes, the 3600 was an early name for the 7800.  Here's a photo of a prototype 3600 pcb that's very similar to a 7800 pcb, aside from the lack of an expansion port and different locations for the chips: https://consolevariations.com/variation/prototype/atari-3600-atari-7800-prototype

But the memo does mention the possibility of another machine priced between the 7800 and NES, the 3600.  Perhaps that was a mistake on Don Teiser's part and that he was talking about another machine (the 3200/Sylvia)?  The 3200/Sylvia/Super Stella was discussed as early as 1981 within Atari.  But with Atari's irrational fear of the Intellivision (which at best had like 10% of the video game market at its peak) and the impending Colecovision, Atari stopped work on the project and instead rushed out the 5200.

Speaking of the 5200, I came across this news blurb in the June 1983 issue of Video Review that mentions Atari not being able to keep up with demand for the 5200.  That's something I don't think I've ever heard about before.  All I can say is, I'm in PA and I don't recall any trouble with getting one.  A friend of mine had a 5200 when it was first released (late fall 1982) and I had one in early 1983 (which by then was revised to the 2-port model).  Neither one had to be back-ordered - stores like Kmart had them.  The same issue also mentions Atari apparently had plans for a computer add-on device similar to the VCS Graduate, which is just a crazy idea considering the 5200 was originally a reskinned 400 computer with analog controllers.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Scott Stilphen