Thanks for watching! Here are some other interesting videos: Why I LOVE Atari! th-cam.com/video/YE7FbLzMA4Q/w-d-xo.html MUST-SEE Unreleased Jaguar Games! th-cam.com/video/msc2uKVpgI8/w-d-xo.html 5 Minute History: The Atari 2600 th-cam.com/video/H8vaXOKJxKQ/w-d-xo.html
Mit dem atari 2600 + der ja jetzt neu auf dem Markt ist ....und den ich zu weihnachten 🎄 bekommen habe ....kann ich nur sagen 7800 spiele rein und spaß haben
@@GregsGameRoom and with stuff like the YM2151, 4 mb cart storage, extra 6502 (maybe?) or an arm chip (Riki and vikki did that) it blows the NES with weak stuff like the MMC5 out of the water.
@@litjellyfish famicom was 83. RF only with horrible controllers and you couldn’t get different ones since they were wired in. 7800 came out the next year (EU was 1986) whereas the NES with composite came out in 1985 and was inferior.x
Atari only commerically released 59 games originally back in the day. Thank God for the homebrew community. The homebrew community and atariage homebrewers have almost doubled the 7800 library, especially Bob Decrenzo aka pacmanplus. Also, I appreciate how original titles that were canceled back in the days before being commerically released like Plutos and Sirius have been finished and released by homebrewers. P.s , Homebrew games like 1942 and Ricky And Vicky really look impressive on the 7800.
Very cool. I did not know there were Homebrew projects like these games. What was great about classic arcade-type games is that because they were limited in hardware, the devs had to focus on creating fun\challenging games with limited game mechanics. These days, such limitations do not exist, so it is easy to over-design a game with every idea that comes to mind. Games can get bloated with too much stuff that drags the game down. Back in the 8-bit era, there are stories of devs working in assembly lang having meetings attempting to find a handful of bytes in their code to fix a 2k game. Not to suggest every 8-bit game provided 100s of hours of fun and were better than what exists today, but it's clear some great games were created with limited resources, and they hold up today, just like classics in movies, music, TV, etc.
at 17:43 you go all the way to the right hand wall and then go left again when the plunger thing comes up. once you hit it you can then go up, right, and up to the exit. thanks for a great video. i really enjoyed this 🙂
I really love playing homebrews on my 7800 and have a handful of the actual cartridges. I have one from Homebrew Heaven that is called Merlain. It is actually a text adventure and the physical cartridge is made from translucent green plastic. I am just happy to see the 7800 getting new looks.
Nice video. 2 things that would have made the 7800 vastly better / more successful. 1. Adding Pokey on board, but in a stereo layout with 1 TIA and 2 Pokey channels for each left and right, or a mixer to have all 6 channels mono like with Commando. 2. Atari not being stingy and allowing larger cart sizes for games. Most new games are not really any better coded, but they are not restricted with things like Atari saying "This game needs to be 8KB" when the programmers wanted to use the largest cart size. The same goes with Atari years later and the Jaguar with games like AVP when Atari wanted it to be on a 2MB cart and the programmers had to beg for it to be on a 4MB cart.
The Tramiels were about making money, more so than producing great games. But at times that was true of the original Atari, too. Supposedly top brass was fully warned that 2600 Pac-Man would suck unless the programmer was given more memory to work with. The request was turned down, with disastrous results. The game sold millions of copies, but hurt the company and the industry.
@@mrmojorisin8752 No, it wasn't just Pac Man that hurt the company. It was pretty much any successful video game that did because the retailers ordered too many video games.
@@DerpDerp3001 Atari profited tremendously from games like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Missiles Command, and others. Pac-Man and ET were different stories. Overproduction did not plague the company through 1981. And I’ll bet even Pac-Man was profitable; it just left millions of consumers disappointed and less likely to buy games in the future.
@@mrmojorisin8752 This retailer glut was because because of retailers over ordering they thought the video game industry was growing much bigger than it actually was, only 60% of Atari games during 1983 were actually sold because over overhype. Refer to “The True Causes of the Video Game Crash of 1983: It Had Nothing to Do with E.T.” for more information.
@@DerpDerp3001 Very familiar with that analysis as well as many others. I’m only making the point that the industry was very profitable through ‘81 and into ‘82. Overproduction became a problem in ‘82 and was crazy by ‘83. The piece you cite isn’t water tight; if nothing else, ET was a reflection of the state of the industry, if not the “cause” of the crash. And I agree with the points made in the original post.
Very impressed and to a degree surprised that some of these games blow away their Colecovision and NES counterparts; thinking especially of Q*Bert, Popeye, and Burgertime. Had the 7800 been released as planned (mid-1984) and with support, the history of the hobby might have been very different….
Colecovision was released in 82. Atari 7800 in 86. It should be better but it wasn't. Burgertime on Coleco was awesome. 7800s is good too but its a modern homebrew version so of course cant compare. It doesn't blow away the colecovision though I wouldn't say that. Nothing on the 7800s original released games comes even close to the NES library. NES was released in 85 a year before 7800. NES was a smash hit 7800 not even close. That being said I still like the Atari. Love em all.
@@thisisrob8750 You seem oblivious to the fact that the 7800 was completed and sitting in warehouses, ready to be shipped to stores, midway through 1984. Not 1986. Two years was an eternity for videogames back then. Burgertime on CV played okay but suffered distracting flicker. If modern tech was used to make the 7800 homebrew, yes, no comparing. But I don’t know that to be the case. Comparing 7800 first releases to NES is utterly irrelevant; the goal of those first 7800 releases was simply to replicate early 80s arcade games like Joust and Ms. Pac, which were still popular games in ‘84, and they were superb. But again the larger point: had the 7800 been released in ‘84 instead of being shelved by Jack Tramiel, it would have succeeded, Atari would have been entrenched in the US market, and we’ll never know what Nintendo might have done.
@@litjellyfish Jepp sound and fat pixels made it fall flat on its face, the only two games having good sound in the original lineup were using the pokey chip integrated on the modules. The fat pixels, nowadays they cause a sore eye and frankly spoken many games on the 5200 and atari 8 bit home computer system look way better because of it (and better colors), but I rather doubt that was such a big issue back then on blurry CRTs most people had! I think the sound chip of the 2600 recycled was the biggest issue people back then had with it. Nowadays it is a combination of sound and blocky pixels!
Had the 7800 came out in the early 84 and had Atari did more love to the games line up the 7800 would had but neck to neck with NES and Master System later in the late 80s. But sadly only the homebrew fans will take up the job of making this old Atari 7800 what WOULD had been.
@@jackiechun6540 Even though NEs has many classic games, let's not kid ourselves. NES got it's greatest games during the second half of it's lifespan. Early games weren't that good for the most part. Especially launch games (Black Box games...) If 7800 had launched in 1984 with this kind of games, Nintendo would've had to fight with nails and teeth to keep lead in videogame market. Videogame landscape would've looked a whole lot different, because maybe if Atari had battled against Nintendo during that time, maybe Sega would've had doubts to enter console business and would've joined with either one of those to produce games only. And maybe we would've seen Sonic to be released in Nintendo. Who knows.
@@LoganHunter82 people that don't know video game history and then like to talk about it are cringe. There was a sega system before the master system.
@@GregsGameRoom If Atari hadn’t kept focusing on arcade games, the 7800 could’ve been a hit! Like, if scrapyard dog released earlier (and maybe with more effort) or Atari could’ve added a POKEY into the Atari 7800 so every game could have the 5200 sound for music.
There is a version of Super Pac-man on the Atari 8-bit computer too. I believe it was an unpublished, but complete "lost" prototype that was discovered and released at some point. There is also Jr. Pac-man with the scrolling playfield on the Atari 8-bit too, and both look and play just about as good as these 7800 versions.
I love seeing homebrew games for the Atari 2600, 7800 and even systems like the Dreamcast 😊 if you find anymore new games for these older systems I'd love to watch another video of it if you decide to make one my man! 👍👍 Great video and you have a great channel! I just found your channel recently and I really enjoy your content.
While it's obviously impressive to see what could have been, had the 7800 released anywhere _near_ when they originally intended it to (it could have prevented the video game crash), there's really no beating the sheer legitimacy factor of forcing the gobsmackingly ubiquitous 2600 hardware to run an honest to goodness great port. There will never be another console that was so incredibly (and accidentally!) ahead of its time, and yet on paper it was barely functional as a gaming console. It's just so special.
If the 7800 featured Pokey sound (native not in carts like Ballblazer) and was released at the time when the C64 was the hottest games machine, it would have been a hit I’m sure. But by the time it had its proper release in the late 80s, the world had moved on to the next gen. People didn’t want to play golden oldies and helicopter simulators in 1989 - They wanted games like Wonder Boy III the Dragon’s Trap and Super Mario Bros. 3.
the nes also used addtional chips in most of the carts that look really amazing. it also didn't have great hardware in console. Alof of stuff people think the NES did were done by mapper chips and other special chips in the carts.
It was kind of hard going back to Galaxian after playing Galaga, but one thing I do still like are the sound effects. "Galax-see-an! Galax-see-an! A-wooga-wagga-wigga!"
So with Atari Age now banning arcade ports because of copyright issues, are we going to be able to find the ROMs for these games elsewhere for cheap or even free?
On the Slide Boy stage with the piston, it looks like you have to slide toward the piston from the bottom right and hit the piston while it's up, then you can go up.
I was just telling someone why don't they make fan made TurboGrafx-16 ports of some Pacman games.With Atari Pacman, Baby Pacman, Pacman Jr, Pacman plus,KC Munchkin and Ms.Pacman 2 using Turbo Blaster.
These are great! I want to try a few out! The 7800 is such a fantastic system. I always loved the look. I think with a few tweaks and if it's release wasn't delayed it would have done much better.
The 7800 was such a well engineered machine, and deserved more success. It could easily give contemporary hardware like the Commodore 64 & Nintendo NES a run for their money, and could produce some impressive high resolution graphics. Shame it lacked a devent sound chip.
@@marcellachine5718 yes so in the end is was for the consumer a newer system right? And as such is should have been on par or better than previously released systems? Sounds pretty true to me but please tell me of above statement is still untrue from your pov
The sprites always seemed too blocky and the sound literally was awful! I think both factors played heavily into it why it could not hold a candle to the NES! if they had included the pokey chip and would have improved the sprite resolution slightly they probably could have had a winner! Nobody will ever know why they did not include the pokey chip upfront, they had the designs and chips, instead they went for the dreadful 2600 sound instead! But they made the same underpowered sound mistake on the ST line!
Heh I saw how you have to solve the Slide Boy level. You gotta get on that far right wall to the right of the thing that goes up and down, then bump into it while going left while it's extended, which will stop you enough to then go up, to the right, and out. The up/down animated thing is the key.
Great video, I'll have to check some of these out! I had a 7800 as a kid, and it's capable of so much, it's a shame it never really got a chance! Some of these look really fun, and I definitely want to try some of those dungeon crawlers, and the ninja and wizard platform games look cute.
Ok, so I know I am extremely biased towards the 7800 since it was my first retro system after all, and one I can code for. I've created It's Cyrus Time 3 (and later on, It's Cyrus Time 4. Ecernosoft from the future here) for it however it never got finished since not enough people cared and people were complaining about it not working on the dragonfly cart, something I don't have.Atariage is a very bizzare place, after all. BUT- in 1984 when it came out, there was NO HOME SYSTEM SELLING FOR
Here’s the best homebrews I’ve found: BlocDrop, Dual pac man, Asteroids deluxe, Knight Guy series, Ms Pac Man (graphics hack with better sprites), Foggie, Bonq. A lot of these are by Ken Siders and Rob DeCrecenzo
It's fantastic to see so many homebrewers supporting the console with new games, because we really only got a select few games that showed off what the console was capable of. Sadly, it wasn't around long enough for us to ever see it pushed to it's absolute limits. We still haven't seen that happen outside of the technical marvel that is Rikki & Vikki, but I love how most of these are still taking advantage of the consoles' power in some way. There are far too many homebrew games that don't do that, such as the homebrews that have been released for the Jaguar. I understand that it would be much harder and more time consuming to develop something taking full advantage of the Jaguar, but I have no interest in seeing 8 or 16-bit games on the Jaguar when it can do way the hell more then that.
These are great games, put them on cartridges. These ones I picked 1942, arkanoid( would be excellent if it can be used with paddle controller), bonk, froggy, ghosts'n'goblins ( hopefully have the c64 sound track it was the best of all), popeye, all pacman games( done as a compilation on one cartridge) and don't forget to release this in Australia.
So many great homebrews for the 7800, both classic and the newer ones as well. I think games like Beef Drop and b*nQ are just absolute gems. Popeye, although superb in quality, needs just a bit more polishing as far I'm concerned. Overall, it's amazing that new titles are still being produced for a system that came out over 35 years ago! 👍 Classic gaming for the win!
Wasn't the 7800 very similar to the Atari 8-bit computer line? I wonder how close the 7800 was in hardware to the XL or XE systems, especially in the graphics. And if it had better capabilities at all, or if any of these games originated in the computer line.
Worse sound.. the skimped on the sound, and left the developers the option to add the better pokey chip on the modules, which only 2 games did, graphics were better but the but it lacked resolution compared to for instance the nes, hence the sprites are blockier. The real successor to the Atari 8 bits were the Amigas, same design team, Atari almost got their hands on the Amiga hardware but given Tramiel gave them a shitty contract to cover the last development costs (which basically would have screwed them out of anything) they searched for other options to pay Atari off and found them with Commodore.
I have a love/hate relationship with the Atari/Intellivision/Colecovision scene. On the one hand, it's nice to see new games being made. On the other, it sucks to know that I'll never be able to play the full versions of these games, since I can't afford to spend $30+ on an actual cartridge, and 99% of them will never have the full ROMs released.
IKR... I have been looking to play The Cure for CV and The Sorrow of Gadhlan for Intellivision for awhile now but don't think it will ever happen. Zookeeper and Galagon for 2600 are so much fun. I'd love to play more than the demos.
These are the games that the system should've had during it's original run. Maybe it wouldn't have died so quickly. I know how much the system lacks in power compared to some other systems of that time, but Atari 7800 has a place in my heart and at least to me, the system deserved more love than it got. And it's too bad they stuck with the original soundchip and not with POKEY, which was optional for developers to include in game cartridges. Which they never used (except LucasFilm Games with "BallBlazer") P.S. You just earned a sub 👍
9:40 : well, no... Galaxian wasn't forgotten, not by my generation. Galaga was the sequel. Similar to the development of Phoenix and the subsequent Pleiades arcade games.
If Atari hadnt put it into cold storage and later rolled it out with half-hearted support as an "also ran", gaming history might have been quite different.
I NEED the whistling and ticking sound in 1942... the music here sounds fruity. ALL home conversions Q*Bert missing the loud THUMP when Coily jumps off the side... the arcade machine had a kicker to make it sound like he fell into the bottom of the cabinet lol.
Only the very first tune that plays only for a few seconds in Frogger is copyrighted. The rest are not. Modern versions are the only ones that get it right. None of the Parker Bros or Siera online versions from back in the day have it. The "Official Frogger by Sega" for the Atari 2600 supercharger is the only version back in the day to get all the music right.
It's a shame that at the time, Nintendo held all the best artists/developers in exclusivity. Leaving the 7800 with what was left. Also had the 7800 had a bigger push and used mappers as well, I think it would have been a different story.
Wait… How is it that the music on that 1942 game sounds good? The sound chip on the original 7800 was atrocious. This music actually resembles FM synthesis, like the 6502 chip on those Atari Gauntlet/Paperboy/Marble Madness arcade cabinets.
Thanks for watching! Here are some other interesting videos:
Why I LOVE Atari! th-cam.com/video/YE7FbLzMA4Q/w-d-xo.html
MUST-SEE Unreleased Jaguar Games! th-cam.com/video/msc2uKVpgI8/w-d-xo.html
5 Minute History: The Atari 2600 th-cam.com/video/H8vaXOKJxKQ/w-d-xo.html
Great video
Mit dem atari 2600 + der ja jetzt neu auf dem Markt ist ....und den ich zu weihnachten 🎄 bekommen habe ....kann ich nur sagen 7800 spiele rein und spaß haben
The 7800 was a more capable console than most realize. I'm glad that people are still developing for it.
Strictly speaking it was more powerful than the NES without MMC chips!
@@GregsGameRoom and with stuff like the YM2151, 4 mb cart storage, extra 6502 (maybe?) or an arm chip (Riki and vikki did that) it blows the NES with weak stuff like the MMC5 out of the water.
SEE!?!?!!?!???!! Someone has realized the truth.
Capable. Well depends on how you see it. NES was released in 83 and this in 86
@@litjellyfish famicom was 83. RF only with horrible controllers and you couldn’t get different ones since they were wired in. 7800 came out the next year (EU was 1986) whereas the NES with composite came out in 1985 and was inferior.x
Atari only commerically released 59 games originally back in the day. Thank God for the homebrew community. The homebrew community and atariage homebrewers have almost doubled the 7800 library, especially Bob Decrenzo aka pacmanplus.
Also, I appreciate how original titles that were canceled back in the days before being commerically released like Plutos and Sirius have been finished and released by homebrewers.
P.s , Homebrew games like 1942 and Ricky And Vicky really look impressive on the 7800.
Very cool. I did not know there were Homebrew projects like these games. What was great about classic arcade-type games is that because they were limited in hardware, the devs had to focus on creating fun\challenging games with limited game mechanics. These days, such limitations do not exist, so it is easy to over-design a game with every idea that comes to mind. Games can get bloated with too much stuff that drags the game down. Back in the 8-bit era, there are stories of devs working in assembly lang having meetings attempting to find a handful of bytes in their code to fix a 2k game. Not to suggest every 8-bit game provided 100s of hours of fun and were better than what exists today, but it's clear some great games were created with limited resources, and they hold up today, just like classics in movies, music, TV, etc.
I meant to mention this a year ago, but on the slide game hit the ram from the right side.
at 17:43 you go all the way to the right hand wall and then go left again when the plunger thing comes up. once you hit it you can then go up, right, and up to the exit. thanks for a great video. i really enjoyed this 🙂
Thanks! Realized that after looking at the room a bit more.
I really love playing homebrews on my 7800 and have a handful of the actual cartridges. I have one from Homebrew Heaven that is called Merlain. It is actually a text adventure and the physical cartridge is made from translucent green plastic. I am just happy to see the 7800
getting new looks.
Yeah they get pretty creative with the cartridge shell sometimes!
Oh man I spent countless hours with Arkanoid!! Loved that game!!!
I really only played the Atari ST version for any length of time.
Nice video. 2 things that would have made the 7800 vastly better / more successful. 1. Adding Pokey on board, but in a stereo layout with 1 TIA and 2 Pokey channels for each left and right, or a mixer to have all 6 channels mono like with Commando. 2. Atari not being stingy and allowing larger cart sizes for games. Most new games are not really any better coded, but they are not restricted with things like Atari saying "This game needs to be 8KB" when the programmers wanted to use the largest cart size. The same goes with Atari years later and the Jaguar with games like AVP when Atari wanted it to be on a 2MB cart and the programmers had to beg for it to be on a 4MB cart.
The Tramiels were about making money, more so than producing great games. But at times that was true of the original Atari, too. Supposedly top brass was fully warned that 2600 Pac-Man would suck unless the programmer was given more memory to work with. The request was turned down, with disastrous results. The game sold millions of copies, but hurt the company and the industry.
@@mrmojorisin8752 No, it wasn't just Pac Man that hurt the company. It was pretty much any successful video game that did because the retailers ordered too many video games.
@@DerpDerp3001 Atari profited tremendously from games like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Missiles Command, and others. Pac-Man and ET were different stories. Overproduction did not plague the company through 1981. And I’ll bet even Pac-Man was profitable; it just left millions of consumers disappointed and less likely to buy games in the future.
@@mrmojorisin8752 This retailer glut was because because of retailers over ordering they thought the video game industry was growing much bigger than it actually was, only 60% of Atari games during 1983 were actually sold because over overhype. Refer to “The True Causes of the Video Game Crash of 1983: It Had Nothing to Do with E.T.” for more information.
@@DerpDerp3001 Very familiar with that analysis as well as many others. I’m only making the point that the industry was very profitable through ‘81 and into ‘82. Overproduction became a problem in ‘82 and was crazy by ‘83. The piece you cite isn’t water tight; if nothing else, ET was a reflection of the state of the industry, if not the “cause” of the crash. And I agree with the points made in the original post.
Very impressed and to a degree surprised that some of these games blow away their Colecovision and NES counterparts; thinking especially of Q*Bert, Popeye, and Burgertime. Had the 7800 been released as planned (mid-1984) and with support, the history of the hobby might have been very different….
Still graphically with those fat pixels is lags behind NES
Debatable.
Colecovision was released in 82. Atari 7800 in 86. It should be better but it wasn't. Burgertime on Coleco was awesome. 7800s is good too but its a modern homebrew version so of course cant compare. It doesn't blow away the colecovision though I wouldn't say that. Nothing on the 7800s original released games comes even close to the NES library. NES was released in 85 a year before 7800. NES was a smash hit 7800 not even close. That being said I still like the Atari. Love em all.
@@thisisrob8750 You seem oblivious to the fact that the 7800 was completed and sitting in warehouses, ready to be shipped to stores, midway through 1984. Not 1986. Two years was an eternity for videogames back then. Burgertime on CV played okay but suffered distracting flicker. If modern tech was used to make the 7800 homebrew, yes, no comparing. But I don’t know that to be the case. Comparing 7800 first releases to NES is utterly irrelevant; the goal of those first 7800 releases was simply to replicate early 80s arcade games like Joust and Ms. Pac, which were still popular games in ‘84, and they were superb. But again the larger point: had the 7800 been released in ‘84 instead of being shelved by Jack Tramiel, it would have succeeded, Atari would have been entrenched in the US market, and we’ll never know what Nintendo might have done.
@@litjellyfish Jepp sound and fat pixels made it fall flat on its face, the only two games having good sound in the original lineup were using the pokey chip integrated on the modules. The fat pixels, nowadays they cause a sore eye and frankly spoken many games on the 5200 and atari 8 bit home computer system look way better because of it (and better colors), but I rather doubt that was such a big issue back then on blurry CRTs most people had!
I think the sound chip of the 2600 recycled was the biggest issue people back then had with it.
Nowadays it is a combination of sound and blocky pixels!
Had the 7800 came out in the early 84 and had Atari did more love to the games line up the 7800 would had but neck to neck with NES and Master System later in the late 80s. But sadly only the homebrew fans will take up the job of making this old Atari 7800 what WOULD had been.
@@jackiechun6540 Even though NEs has many classic games, let's not kid ourselves. NES got it's greatest games during the second half of it's lifespan. Early games weren't that good for the most part. Especially launch games (Black Box games...) If 7800 had launched in 1984 with this kind of games, Nintendo would've had to fight with nails and teeth to keep lead in videogame market. Videogame landscape would've looked a whole lot different, because maybe if Atari had battled against Nintendo during that time, maybe Sega would've had doubts to enter console business and would've joined with either one of those to produce games only. And maybe we would've seen Sonic to be released in Nintendo. Who knows.
@@LoganHunter82 people that don't know video game history and then like to talk about it are cringe. There was a sega system before the master system.
I would have loved a world where Mario was taking on Bentley Bear as a compeititor's mascot years before Sonic existed.
Great Video! The Atari7800 is one of my favorite retro consoles. The Homebrews on it are amazing!
Another Atari console that didn’t see it’s full potential.
@@GregsGameRoom If Atari hadn’t kept focusing on arcade games, the 7800 could’ve been a hit! Like, if scrapyard dog released earlier (and maybe with more effort) or Atari could’ve added a POKEY into the Atari 7800 so every game could have the 5200 sound for music.
There is a version of Super Pac-man on the Atari 8-bit computer too. I believe it was an unpublished, but complete "lost" prototype that was discovered and released at some point. There is also Jr. Pac-man with the scrolling playfield on the Atari 8-bit too, and both look and play just about as good as these 7800 versions.
Even though I moved on to the NES after my 2600, it's pretty cool to see people developing for the 7800
17:37 you needed to get into the other side of the block and run into it while it's up, and all you need to do is go up, right, up.
Roach in space 1 was a 2600 homebrew
Ah, I’ll have to do 2600 Homebrews too.
8:49 Music name: "Inu no Omawarisan" ("The Doggy Policeman").
Some of those games do have an extra sound chip in it for better sound,because on a stock 7800 it can never sound that good.
I love seeing homebrew games for the Atari 2600, 7800 and even systems like the Dreamcast 😊 if you find anymore new games for these older systems I'd love to watch another video of it if you decide to make one my man! 👍👍 Great video and you have a great channel! I just found your channel recently and I really enjoy your content.
Thank you! Yeah I’m always on the lookout for awesome homebrew games.
While it's obviously impressive to see what could have been, had the 7800 released anywhere _near_ when they originally intended it to (it could have prevented the video game crash), there's really no beating the sheer legitimacy factor of forcing the gobsmackingly ubiquitous 2600 hardware to run an honest to goodness great port. There will never be another console that was so incredibly (and accidentally!) ahead of its time, and yet on paper it was barely functional as a gaming console. It's just so special.
If the 7800 featured Pokey sound (native not in carts like Ballblazer) and was released at the time when the C64 was the hottest games machine, it would have been a hit I’m sure. But by the time it had its proper release in the late 80s, the world had moved on to the next gen. People didn’t want to play golden oldies and helicopter simulators in 1989 - They wanted games like Wonder Boy III the Dragon’s Trap and Super Mario Bros. 3.
the nes also used addtional chips in most of the carts that look really amazing. it also didn't have great hardware in console. Alof of stuff people think the NES did were done by mapper chips and other special chips in the carts.
I really like the 7800 , fun video!
Never showed it’s true potential.
5:30 - When you got to level 2 of that game, the music is the Tam Lin Reel. That's amazing.
It was kind of hard going back to Galaxian after playing Galaga, but one thing I do still like are the sound effects. "Galax-see-an! Galax-see-an! A-wooga-wagga-wigga!"
I don't believe the sound effects are realistic because it had the same sound chip as the Atari 2600.
So with Atari Age now banning arcade ports because of copyright issues, are we going to be able to find the ROMs for these games elsewhere for cheap or even free?
On the Slide Boy stage with the piston, it looks like you have to slide toward the piston from the bottom right and hit the piston while it's up, then you can go up.
Surprising that Burgertime for 7800 is not leaps and bounds better than the Colecovision version.
I was just telling someone why don't they make fan made TurboGrafx-16 ports of some Pacman games.With Atari Pacman, Baby Pacman, Pacman Jr, Pacman plus,KC Munchkin and Ms.Pacman 2 using Turbo Blaster.
Low accessibilty to development tools for that console...same reason why you don't see homebrew SNES games but several for Genesis and NES.
@@thecurmudgeon7350 Someway people can port NES games to Turbo Blaster.
I played Popeye all the time! lol
Used to play it at the roller rink.
These are great! I want to try a few out! The 7800 is such a fantastic system. I always loved the look. I think with a few tweaks and if it's release wasn't delayed it would have done much better.
The 7800 was such a well engineered machine, and deserved more success. It could easily give contemporary hardware like the Commodore 64 & Nintendo NES a run for their money, and could produce some impressive high resolution graphics. Shame it lacked a devent sound chip.
Yes but it was a newer system than both NES and C64 so why should it not ?
@@litjellyfish again not particularly true. The 7800s hardware was finished by the middle of 83, it was shelved for 2 years when things crashed.
@@marcellachine5718 yes so in the end is was for the consumer a newer system right? And as such is should have been on par or better than previously released systems? Sounds pretty true to me but please tell me of above statement is still untrue from your pov
it could have kept up by including sound and memory chips on the cartrige itself, much like the NES did.
The sprites always seemed too blocky and the sound literally was awful!
I think both factors played heavily into it why it could not hold a candle to the NES!
if they had included the pokey chip and would have improved the sprite resolution slightly they probably could have had a winner! Nobody will ever know why they did not include the pokey chip upfront, they had the designs and chips, instead they went for the dreadful 2600 sound instead!
But they made the same underpowered sound mistake on the ST line!
Heh I saw how you have to solve the Slide Boy level. You gotta get on that far right wall to the right of the thing that goes up and down, then bump into it while going left while it's extended, which will stop you enough to then go up, to the right, and out. The up/down animated thing is the key.
I am curious what the sound is playing the sounds in most of the games you demo'd, for the 2600 sound chip is too inferior for many of the tunes.
Great video, I'll have to check some of these out! I had a 7800 as a kid, and it's capable of so much, it's a shame it never really got a chance! Some of these look really fun, and I definitely want to try some of those dungeon crawlers, and the ninja and wizard platform games look cute.
I've come to realize the graphics on the 7800 are simular to the 8 bit computers of the time like the Commodore 64 and Atari 400 and 800.
Yes, I had Super Pac-Man for the Commodore 64. There is a demo version for the Atari 5200 that was uncovered and released to the community as well.
Loved qbert. I had a German version of a qbert watch my oma bought in Germany for me for Christmas. Man I wish I still had it
Ok, so I know I am extremely biased towards the 7800 since it was my first retro system after all, and one I can code for.
I've created It's Cyrus Time 3 (and later on, It's Cyrus Time 4. Ecernosoft from the future here) for it however it never got finished since not enough people cared and people were complaining about it not working on the dragonfly cart, something I don't have.Atariage is a very bizzare place, after all.
BUT- in 1984 when it came out, there was NO HOME SYSTEM SELLING FOR
Did it not release in 86?
@@litjellyfish bope
Nope. It released in 86 for europe
Did best there which is why many think it came out in ‘86
Note- I have finished the game.
Here’s the best homebrews I’ve found: BlocDrop, Dual pac man, Asteroids deluxe, Knight Guy series, Ms Pac Man (graphics hack with better sprites), Foggie, Bonq. A lot of these are by Ken Siders and Rob DeCrecenzo
It's fantastic to see so many homebrewers supporting the console with new games, because we really only got a select few games that showed off what the console was capable of. Sadly, it wasn't around long enough for us to ever see it pushed to it's absolute limits. We still haven't seen that happen outside of the technical marvel that is Rikki & Vikki, but I love how most of these are still taking advantage of the consoles' power in some way. There are far too many homebrew games that don't do that, such as the homebrews that have been released for the Jaguar. I understand that it would be much harder and more time consuming to develop something taking full advantage of the Jaguar, but I have no interest in seeing 8 or 16-bit games on the Jaguar when it can do way the hell more then that.
These are great games, put them on cartridges. These ones I picked 1942, arkanoid( would be excellent if it can be used with paddle controller), bonk, froggy, ghosts'n'goblins ( hopefully have the c64 sound track it was the best of all), popeye, all pacman games( done as a compilation on one cartridge) and don't forget to release this in Australia.
Arkanoid seems like such a natural fit for the 7800…
I'm in love with Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest. They would have had their marquee mascot character right there.
Arkanoid looks great. Nightstalker was called Dark Caverns on the Atari 2600 which was made by Mattel who owned Intellivision.
So many great homebrews for the 7800, both classic and the newer ones as well. I think games like Beef Drop and b*nQ are just absolute gems. Popeye, although superb in quality, needs just a bit more polishing as far I'm concerned. Overall, it's amazing that new titles are still being produced for a system that came out over 35 years ago! 👍 Classic gaming for the win!
Popeye did seem a little hard but then again the 8-bit computer version might have been too easy.
@@GregsGameRoom It's definitely something. I'm just not sure if it's the difficulty level or the game timing in general.
Apple Snaffle is great and Froggie too!! GnG in my opinion is very similar to the C64 version.
That was awesome that somebody ported Berserk (with the "arcade" audio)
One of the best games on the 2600
Burger time was one of my favorite games I'm 44 so I got see the end of the real arcade and the beginning of the mortal combat games
YOU do realise POW refers to a Prisoner Of War ?
Decided to pre order the 7800+.
Wasn't the 7800 very similar to the Atari 8-bit computer line? I wonder how close the 7800 was in hardware to the XL or XE systems, especially in the graphics. And if it had better capabilities at all, or if any of these games originated in the computer line.
Worse sound.. the skimped on the sound, and left the developers the option to add the better pokey chip on the modules, which only 2 games did, graphics were better but the but it lacked resolution compared to for instance the nes, hence the sprites are blockier.
The real successor to the Atari 8 bits were the Amigas, same design team, Atari almost got their hands on the Amiga hardware but given Tramiel gave them a shitty contract to cover the last development costs (which basically would have screwed them out of anything) they searched for other options to pay Atari off and found them with Commodore.
The part one of A Roach in Space is for the Atari 2600 🙂
FGF !!! Fun Game Friday ! Awesome!
Kinda!
I have a love/hate relationship with the Atari/Intellivision/Colecovision scene. On the one hand, it's nice to see new games being made. On the other, it sucks to know that I'll never be able to play the full versions of these games, since I can't afford to spend $30+ on an actual cartridge, and 99% of them will never have the full ROMs released.
IKR... I have been looking to play The Cure for CV and The Sorrow of Gadhlan for Intellivision for awhile now but don't think it will ever happen. Zookeeper and Galagon for 2600 are so much fun. I'd love to play more than the demos.
@@feenix219 I can't even find a ROM for Haunted House 2 for the Atari 5200.
The 7800, in the right hands, is an excellent console.
Has there been any word if the home brew cars will work on the new Atari2600+
Dungeon Stalker is a clone of "Night Stalker" for the Intellivision
Nice! Great to keep a cool machine alive like this... seems to me that some of the game have been ported using the C64 version as a basis?
Ugg and Wrong Way disappear when you lure Coily off the pyramid
Wizard's dungeon looks fun.
OMG I LOVE FRENZY!!!
These are the games that the system should've had during it's original run. Maybe it wouldn't have died so quickly. I know how much the system lacks in power compared to some other systems of that time, but Atari 7800 has a place in my heart and at least to me, the system deserved more love than it got. And it's too bad they stuck with the original soundchip and not with POKEY, which was optional for developers to include in game cartridges. Which they never used (except LucasFilm Games with "BallBlazer")
P.S. You just earned a sub 👍
Thanks! The 7800 was certainly underutilized.
Incredible how 1942 on the 7800 looks LEAGUES better than the stuttering NES version
Ghouls n Ghosts #1 imo
You should have more subscribers pal. Stellar content!
Thank you!
Yes I did have Super Pac Man on my Commodore 64. I think they made about every 80s arcade game foe it. Lol😂
thank you good sir!
Awesome gaming times!
I want that beef drop game bad!
Great video 👍
Very nice video, keep up the good work!
9:40 : well, no... Galaxian wasn't forgotten, not by my generation. Galaga was the sequel. Similar to the development of Phoenix and the subsequent Pleiades arcade games.
0:40 That plane hitting you from behind, that's 1942. That is how the game plays. It's supposed to do that because that is what the arcade does.
They need to homebrew the 5200 supersystem
I haven't seen any SCREEN SCROLLING games, like ADVENTURE ISLAND or MARIO BROS 1, could it be that this Atari didn't support parallax scrolling
If Atari hadnt put it into cold storage and later rolled it out with half-hearted support as an "also ran", gaming history might have been quite different.
I NEED the whistling and ticking sound in 1942... the music here sounds fruity. ALL home conversions Q*Bert missing the loud THUMP when Coily jumps off the side... the arcade machine had a kicker to make it sound like he fell into the bottom of the cabinet lol.
Can you tell me where I can find these games thanks
Someone needs to do a ET that will turn out becoming the greatest game ever
Never using super speed in Super Pac-Man was painful to watch.
Only the very first tune that plays only for a few seconds in Frogger is copyrighted. The rest are not. Modern versions are the only ones that get it right. None of the Parker Bros or Siera online versions from back in the day have it. The "Official Frogger by Sega" for the Atari 2600 supercharger is the only version back in the day to get all the music right.
Why has Dungeon Stalker the Wizard of Wor in it?!? 😮
It's too bad the Knight Guy and Ninja Guy weren't 7800 games early in its life. They look better than a lot of the stuff that released on the 7800.
That's a baron of hell you showed a picture of
It's a shame that at the time, Nintendo held all the best artists/developers in exclusivity. Leaving the 7800 with what was left. Also had the 7800 had a bigger push and used mappers as well, I think it would have been a different story.
The red guys in the last game look like elmo to me.
Still no scrolling eh?
Dude, those are not hot dogs, they are tomato slices.
Nope.
Wait…
How is it that the music on that 1942 game sounds good? The sound chip on the original 7800 was atrocious. This music actually resembles FM synthesis, like the 6502 chip on those Atari Gauntlet/Paperboy/Marble Madness arcade cabinets.
cartridge probaly includes a POKEY chip. There was no reason to not have one built into the console. Unfortunate.
Whut
These games are trash. The intellivision homebrews seem way better and intellivision came out in the 70s. Atari 7800 is a crap machine.
Kinda disappointing. I think even the Coleco homebrews look better than these 7800 games.
Are there any flash carts for the 7800? I’d love to play some of these on original hardware.