The Atari 7800 is More POWERFUL than the NES?

So while the 2600 was an extremely successful console in its early years, Atari wouldn’t have the same luck with their future ones. Case in point, the Atari 7800 failed to compete against the NES. Not many people wanted to buy this console because of Atari’s poor reputation, and mediocre lineup of games. Speaking of games, they didn’t look all that impressive compared to the NES.

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Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
2:00 Intellivision
3:06 Atari 5200
5:30 GCC
6:17 Video Game Crash of 1983
7:23 Atari 7800
11:20 Hardware Issues
12:34 Third Party Support
13:08 Bentley Bears Crystal Quest
14:42 Conclusion
15:39 Outtro

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#atari #atari7800 #atari5200 #pojr

[DumbBunny]

A teensy bit of correction:
The 7800 DID make that June 1984 release in very limited numbers (maybe 10, 000 units?) if you’ve ever seen 7800 games like Ms. Pac Man with a more colourful label, that’s the 1984 release. When Tramiel took over, there was debate between him and Warner Communications over who should pay GCC and so the system had to be put on hold while they worked everything out.

[ericbass]

The 7800 could have been a competitive system. It was supposedly capable of handling over 100 sprites without flicker or slowdown, but they cheaped out on the sound, opting to route it through the same sound chip as the 2600. This would be like Nintendo choosing to reuse the sound chip from the NES on the Super NES. It just resulted in the games looking a lot better than either the 2600 or 5200, but sounding really out of place.

[ridiculous_gaming]

As many 7800 fans know, there are some expertly currently created titles for this system that look and run incredibly well...the same goes for new games on the dated Atari 2600 hardware. Also, licensing rules of Nintendo, back then, kept most games off competitor's systems. Even the Sega Master System suffered from this.

[MCastleberry]

The 7800 was probably doomed to get stomped out by the NES anyway, thanks to being shelved and then getting a wider release once the NES already had a foothold and rejuvenated the console market... but sticking with the 2600 sound chip did it no favors lol I actually got a 7800 as a kid (Christmas of '89, so you can imagine my disappointment when I got an Atari at the absolute height of Nintendomania), and yeah, Mario Bros was still fun... but good lord did it sound awful.

[robintst]

I think the most unfortunate thing about the 7800 was it only had 59 official games, people haven't really gotten to see what it can do until more recent years with homebrew and independent developers having a go at it with modern development tools.

[cygnusz]

NES / Famicom games largely looked so good due to additional chips that could be added onto cartridges. This is a big reason why Nintendo pushed for FDS in Japan, it allowed for much larger games at lower production costs. Of course Atari did the same. My point being, a discussion on the technical capabilities of console hardware needs to acknowledge the very important role of add-on chips. Just comparing the base specs of the 7800 and NES doesn't give the full picture as to why NES games largely so much more impressive.

[jimbox]

The sound chip was a big mistake on the 7800 imo. Also by the time it came out people had their fill of Pacman, Galaga, Centipede, etc. One game that looks and plays good on the 7800 I didn't see mentioned was Commando. It is very close in quality to the NES version.

[Windom]

I was overjoyed to get a 7800 for Xmas of 87. It was my first console and I had yet to be spoiled by NES. The system came with Pole Position 2. Because it was backwards compatible with 2600, my cousins who were older gave me hand me downs of their 2600 games. Also thought that was badass at the time. Pitfall and Food Fight owned.

[davy_K]

7800 was a powerful sprite shifter and could for example host a game like Robotron really well, but NES had hardware features that compensated for its weaknesses - that was very much a Nintendo hallmark - still is to some degree. I still have my 7800 but I just wish it had POKEY on board and composite out at least - I have to run it through a VCR to get a decent image even on a CRT. Its port of Asteroids is superb. I own an Asteroids machine but I still enjoy the 7800 port! Centipede, Joust and Food Fight are very good too. But that type of game was well past its time when the NES appeared. Games like SMB1, Metroid and Zelda changed everything and while the 7800 might have been able to host those games, the developer pool just wasn't around to produce games like that for it. Nintendo deserve a huge amount of credit for moving home gaming on from arcade ports. I loved my 2600 and all things Atari - I still do - but I knew when it was time to move on when the NES appeared.

[turnaround]

The 7800 system still have it's charm. The neighbor got the 7800 and I genuinely enjoyed playing the games. His dad got him something like 8 games. Xevious was awesome on it, as was ball blazers. I wanted the NES but it was too expensive when it first came out with the ROB robot.

[AthleticDesign]

Bentley Bears Crystal Quest seems technically accomplished and a fun, well-designed game, but in my opinion Rikki & Vikki is by far the best-looking 7800 game out there. It uses 320 resolution and has an extremely attractive and original visual style that I can't see the NES replicate.

[thedrunkmonkshow]

On a side note, there actually is a version of Ballblazer that got released in Japan for the Famicom but when you compare it to the 7800 version side-by-side it pales in comparison both graphically and sound wise. If more games had enhancement chips on the 7800 just like the overwhelming majority of NES/Famicom games do then we can start to have a real conversation but with so few games on the 7800 that's mostly designed around it's standard hardware we'll never know. I am glad to see homebrew developers pushing the limits because that Crystal Castles looks really impressive and better than Wonderboy on the SG1000 and almost as good as Wonderboy on Master System.

[robertdecrescenzo]

Thank you so much! I am honored that you featured my game in your video. Just so you know there were excellent sound and graphics people involved as well (Bobby Clark and Illya Wilson, respectively). The game uses the Pokey sound chip.

[phlaelym]

The problem with the 7800 was definitely its sound capabilities compared to the NES and Master System. Atari should have put in a dedicated sound chip for newer (7800) games, and the sound chip from the 2600 for when those games were used. By the mid-80s I doubt that would have added much to the cost - they could have used unsold 2600 for the parts.

[jeenkzk]

Great video as always! We had a 5200 when I was real little and we played the heck out of it! I do remember the controller wearing out. It was to the point I was using a fork to get the start button to work. My parents bought it when the price went down and then a couple of months later we found out that it was discontinued. When we got an NES, we never looked back though.

[JH-pero]

The 7800 had some potential to do good ports of games from the home computers, I think - games like Ballblazer and other stuff you would find on the C64 or Atari 800; if Atari had been run by a risk-taking visionary, they could have run around scooping up all that IP to flesh out the 7800 library in 1984 - after the crash a lot of companies folded. They could have been the owners of games like "Castle Wolfenstein" and recruited EA and Epyx to make exclusives if they were really thinking ahead and moved to reinvest in gaming instead of computers.

The video didn't get into the technical detail, but a big part of the resolution and color difference comes down to the ways in which the different architectures were cheating to get results. The NES followed the pattern common to arcade games of using tiled graphics to build the entire screen, which is a good way to save RAM, but means that most of your games will be side or top scrolling camera, not first person or detailed stills. The 7800 has a more flexible method that allows for a mixture of sprite and bitmap data with color and resolution varying per scan line. This follows the ideas of the 2600, 800/5200, and later the Amiga. It predisposes the graphics to focus on making single screen "playfields" with bespoken detail, versus being expansive scrolling worlds made of repetitive tiles, although clearly scrolling and tiling can be done.

There were also some plans to ship other sound chips for 7800 games, scrapped along with the other Tramiel cuts. Any issues with the controllers could be improved on during the lifecycle. A properly supported 7800 would have been very competitive, even if it had to specialize in different types of games.

[maestro-zqgu]

I really don't understand the mentality of using the same old sound chip for your newest console. They really dropped the ball on that one. That's a HUGE thing.

[retronemesis]

If the 7800 had a decent sound chip and came with the PAL controller instead, it might have been a contender. A good pack in like Ninja Golf or Alien Brigade and a zapper would have sealed the deal.

[chevtrukman]

I am getting my first Atari at age 43 tonight! So excited. Mint 7800 in the box with all inserts and pamphlets. Still has the clear protector on the silver parts of the console and controllers. I am buying it from the original owner who still has the original sales receipt from 1989! It will look nice sitting on my old cabinet tv.

[skipbreakfast]

The 7800 and and 2600 had the same sound chip. Ballblazer had the audio chip from the Atari 8-bit computers (and 5200) in the cartridge.