Atari 5200 What is wrong with it?

[peteym5]

Came across this on YouTube. Thought it would make an interesting discussion here on Atari.IO. I know there are now many solutions an alternatives to the original 5200 controllers. Many people are selling repair kits, offering to repair controllers, and these thumbpad controllers. With these, do you believe the 5200 is now a worthwhile system?

 

 

 

[peteym5]

Here is part 2.

 

[- Ω -]

That was then, this is now.  Since that time, there have been three major items to come out for the 5200 that makes it a nice RETRO GAME MACHINE for the modern era and those who suffer from the middle age nostalgia bug.  Sure, the price point was off back THEN, the joysticks sucked back THEN.  Hell, by today's standards the video sucked too, but today is different.

1) The Atari 5200 is now going for LESS than many retro gaming machines because of it's old reputation, meaning not as many people are nostalgic for it, so prices are lower.

2) There are modern-day solutions to those demon joysticks from hell.

3) There is the modern UAV modification which makes the video crystal clear with popping colors and contrast.

4) You can download and play most of the games FOR FREE and put them on a multicart. 

Sure, you'll have to make a modest investment if you modernize a 5200, but you'll have a ton of the most popular games that were available at the time, and many later day conversions and ports as well.  After those three aftermarket investment, you'll HAVE IT ALL.

 

This first video shows the UAV modification to modernize the video output.

 

This second video show one of the best (my opinion) joystick upgrades for the 5200 currently available on the market today.

 

[Atari 5200 Guy]

I guess I was a lucky owner.  I never had issues with the controllers.  I do now from age and my hands don't belong to an eight year old no more but they are still more comfortable than the 7800 controllers us USA gamers got. I still say it is a unique system that tried to do something different. I enjoy playing mine all the time.  

I have noticed the system goes for a less amount of money than other systems but some games for it go for a ridiculous amount of money.

[RickR]

3 minutes ago, Atari 5200 Guy said:

they are still more comfortable than the 7800 controllers us USA gamers got

Yes they are, and they also kick the Plimptons off the lousy Intellivision controllers. 

[- Ω -]

One thing I like about the Atari 5200 is the nice classy styling.  Actually, I like it so much that I'm considering promoting it to the entertainment center in living room this summer.  

[Atari 5200 Guy]

2 hours ago, RickR said:

Yes they are, and they also kick the Plimptons off the lousy Intellivision controllers. 

I liked Mr. Plimpton but hated those intellivision controllers.  It's a shame, too, because the games were fun.  I just couldn't get over the controllers.

 

[peteym5]

I believe that Atari Engineers made a series of mistakes starting with mapping the control chips at different memory locations and not including a compatible 400/800 OS that will make games easier to port as long as they do not require a keyboard. The other mistake is of course the controllers. If the PIA remained with 4 port. Atari and other companies would had been able to port a huge library of games over to the 5200 back in 1982. Just make all the stuff take input from the console or controllers. I do not see any probably with the 32K cartridge port, and could had even included an adapter to play 400/800 games. The system would had cost about the same and would be been serious competition to Coleco and Intellivision. 

 

[Atari 5200 Guy]

7 hours ago, peteym5 said:

I believe that Atari Engineers made a series of mistakes starting with mapping the control chips at different memory locations and not including a compatible 400/800 OS that will make games easier to port as long as they do not require a keyboard. The other mistake is of course the controllers. If the PIA remained with 4 port. Atari and other companies would had been able to port a huge library of games over to the 5200 back in 1982. Just make all the stuff take input from the console or controllers. I do not see any probably with the 32K cartridge port, and could had even included an adapter to play 400/800 games. The system would had cost about the same and would be been serious competition to Coleco and Intellivision. 

 

I don't get it. I wouldn't call it a mistake.  Were mistakes made? Yes. It was released to the public even when R&D said it wasn't ready.  It was trying a couple of new concepts with the first being a computer converted into a console. The 5200 was the first to try this.  The second was the analog controller.  The movement of address locations made sense; to avoid the unauthorized games that plagued the 2600. It was a means to keep that from happening again. Atari didn't want just anyone making games for the 5200.

The 5200 is not limited to 32K.  It can handle up to 48K before bankswitching is required.  That is printed in the field service manual for the system.  The adapter would have been cool but it would have had to do a couple of things: 1) remap all #D0 access to #C0 access on the fly, 2) provide support for the analog controllers or have joystick ports for using 2600 controllers.

I've had all three: 5200, Colecovision, and Intellivision.  After owning and spending a decent amount of time on each one I can say the 5200, IMO, I like much better. All three have fun games, no doubt, but the Intellivision controllers were too small and the ColecoVision controllers were a bit too large and off balance.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

On 3/29/2022 at 6:54 PM, - Ω - said:

2) There are modern-day solutions to those demon joysticks from hell.

Most people don't like them. I wouldn't play a 5200 without them 😉 

[Scott Stilphen]

16 hours ago, peteym5 said:

I believe that Atari Engineers made a series of mistakes starting with mapping the control chips at different memory locations and not including a compatible 400/800 OS that will make games easier to port as long as they do not require a keyboard.

 

They made the same mistake when they changed the OS for the XL computers and dozens of games were instantly incompatible:

http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/easter_eggs/a48/a48xlxe.html

[Scott Stilphen]

9 hours ago, Atari 5200 Guy said:

I don't get it. I wouldn't call it a mistake.  Were mistakes made? Yes. It was released to the public even when R&D said it wasn't ready.  It was trying a couple of new concepts with the first being a computer converted into a console. The 5200 was the first to try this.  The second was the analog controller.  The movement of address locations made sense; to avoid the unauthorized games that plagued the 2600. It was a means to keep that from happening again. Atari didn't want just anyone making games for the 5200.

I call it a mistake, and one of Atari's costliest.  Look, the 400/800 hardware was the best to have been created from the 1970s, and was years ahead of its time.  As much of a fan of the VCS that I am, the 400/800 hardware was designed to be the true successor to the VCS and should have been released as a console in 1979 as originally planned.  Had it been, we wouldn't be talking about the Intellivision or Colecovision.  But taking a superior concept and making an inferior one out of it is always a mistake.  The home computer 'boom' was still a few years away and the home video game market had yet to reach its peak (pre-crash).  Not that the crash still wouldn't have happened, because the reshuffling of address locations did nothing to prevent 3rd-party companies from making games for the 5200 (Activision, CBS Electronics, Parker Brothers, etc).  Look at the thousands of programs that were created for the Atari 8-bit computers :)  Atari released the 400/800 computers without any documentation on how to program it, but much like the VCS, people figured out how to do it.  Hell, Nintendo had a lockout chip in their NES, and Atari (Tengen) figured out a work-around for it.

Atari wasn't breaking new ground with the 5200 analog controllers, they were trying to reinvent a wheel that didn't need to be.  Atari's Marketing was calling the shots at that point, and for some inexplicable reason, they 'feared' the Intellivision with its 16-position joypad.    They took one look at it, and made the correlation that the 'advanced' Intellivision controller with its keypad was something Atari needed to surpass.  The problem was, people in Marketing aren't gamers; they just look at 'numbers'.  To them, a controller that offered 360 degrees of movement beat one with 16 degrees of movement.  Had they all be ushered into a room and been forced to spend the day playing both Atari's games and their competitor's, they would have realized (maybe...) how awful Intellivision's controllers were, and how much worse an analog joystick was for games that were designed for digital joysticks.  But that's a 'what if', alternate universe discussion, because in this universe, that didn't happen.  The membrane keypad tech was used in earlier systems (Intellivision, Odyssey2, etc).  Atari's mistake was in trying to improve it (again, trying to reinvent a wheel that didn't need to be).  

I get that you're a fan of the 5200, but you're in the minority.  History has already judged the system for what it is - a mistake.  No amount of revisionism will change that.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

On 3/31/2022 at 8:01 AM, Scott Stilphen said:

I get that you're a fan of the 5200, but you're in the minority.  History has already judged the system for what it is - a mistake.  No amount of revisionism will change that.

Hopefully I don't step on toes (not trying to BTW) but here goes.  

If I didn't defend the console like I continue to do then I wouldn't be known as the 5200 Guy here.  I learned a lot about the system over the decades from malfunctioning systems I'd find in the wild.  I'd repair them, get them to where the controllers at least try to respond, and try to play the games that came with those systems.  The controls would be erratic, buttons would fail again, it was a learning experience. My first conclusion was maybe the 5200 wasn't as good as I remembered it but hold that thought.

After communicating to Video 61 sometime after 1998 about a 5200 I found, again, in the wild. By the end of the phone conversation I learned the truth behind the 5200.  It had an iron curtain and one I never seen.  The 5200 I received on Christmas Day as a kid never gave me any trouble until it literally blew a resistor by 1987.  For 5 years solid, every day that machine got used.  The one I had was well cared for and appeared to be a solid system. 

Many times after that, when I would find 5200 systems in the wild, my perception of the 5200 slightly changed.  I always chalked up the poor controller conditions to neglect or misuse.  I never, never, knew the 5200 had such a dark history to it until shortly after 1998.  The joysticks would work, some had torn boots, a few people tried to repair only to end up destroying the flex circuit, but all of them...the buttons no longer worked without a lot of cleaning.  But once working again the systems I found worked great. This issue was something I never experienced with my original 5200.  I have no clue why other than using it day after day kept it from failure.  That's the only theory I came up with.

I know it is in the history books as a failure.  I've heard from reliable resources just how much the system cost Atari in the end having to replace blown TV sets, controllers, consoles, all of that adds up quick.  Do I think it is the perfect system?  No.  I don't.  In 1982 it was my first game console and an Atari I kept asking for. I couldn't complain. I was one of the lucky few. The system I have now, with 4 controllers, is a pain in the rear to keep in working order.  If it is not used at least weekly the controllers start to fail.  It is not a system that will manage to last for generations to come.  I just don't see it happening.  But...my love and passion for the system are all I have to offer it.  When it works it has a hell of a library of games to enjoy.  It's library also documents a huge amount of what arcade games were popular in the early 1980s.  

I know I can't change its history.  I have retreated to that much and I have accepted its poor history.  It should have never been released as the public received it. But if I can find a way to combine its history with my history to encourage finding a way to enjoy the system and share it with other gamers then I will or would like to try.  I am simply holding up to my claim that I will defend it to my last breath.  There is a lot that I don't yet know about the system's history.  From a business perspective it bombed, for an 8 year old kid it was best the ride of my life.

[Keatah]

I clearly remember the Atari 400/800 being the perfect arcade companion and alternate computing platform, and used it right alongside my Apple II+ and //e back then. We all know the super hits that were.. like Defender, Star Raiders, Centipede, Galaxian, Qix, Pole Position, and so many more.

I soured on the 5200 after getting one and rapidly discovering the software was essentially the same as what I had on the 400/800. Really soured. And upset at the money I spent on it. Combine that with ratbaggy controllers and weird switchbox (which tied me to one TV), and I wasn't spending a lot of time on it. Certainly not enough time to develop nostalgia like I did with other unique platforms.

Today the best part of the 5200 is the styling and futurism about it. That's still memorable and desirable. And in a big expansive living room entertainment center it fits well. On a small shelf not so much.

Since I do vintage gaming almost exclusively via emulation, I rely on Altirra to bring me the 8-bit goodness. When playing I sometimes don't even know the 400/800 vs 5200 version of any game. But I do gravitate away from the analog controller versions. Prefer the crisp digital switching of plain'ol switches.