"Directors Comment" here where I leave some new information for people rewatching the videos as a treat. So this was the first video where I did any real editing and I desperately needed the practice. It took a long time to get done but today Im proud to say I could of done it much quicker. Still, compared to my past videos where I barely did any edits at all this one was huge. I only ever expected it to get like 100-300 views like my previous videos. So the fact that it blew up to 3.5-4k so quickly was shocking to me and honestly scary. But most of you guys have left awesome, funny and supportive comments so thank you! I plan on doing more Fun Facts videos for other Atari consoles and more on the 7800 eventually but I like the idea of using the advertisement throughout the video. Overall while I feel my speaking and audio are weak, I'm pretty proud of this as an absolute first effort.
I sure did love playing Robotron, Joust, and Xevious on my old 7800, I never knew anyone else who had one back then 😂 Being broke, the price was great and I did love those arcade ports at the time
It was priced competitively well. In my research it appears it started pretty low and got more expensive over time as they sold off the initial stock they inherited and had to produce more consoles, but all the games were about half if not a third of the NES prices. Thanks for watching! Oh and I was the only kid I knew with a 7800 too lol
Absolutely it's long over due, especially with all the work of the fantastic homebrew developers at AtariAge and elsewhere. Thanks for checking out the video!
7800 is definitely the best of both worlds! The homebrew stuff is truly incredible and worth checking out. Developers are even making things available digitally now for people to enjoy on emulator and flash carts such as PacmanPlus and MuddyFunster. You can look into that more at the AtariAge Forums if you're so inclined. Thanks for watching!
that song is great/hilarious hahahah "Seventyeighthundredz EVERYwhere" just... I don't think it rolls off the tongue quite as much as they wanted it to haahahaha Great vid man, very informative and entertaining.
I love that song for how awful it is. It's great in ways they never intended! Represents the 7800 well honestly. Thanks. It's the first video that I did heavy editing in. I know everything is off a bit but it gets better from here. It was a great learning experience. Thanks for watching!
@@TheAtariNetwork I saw you mention that in your description and diddn't wanna be too hammy with compliments but nah man your editing is looking very good -- I would suggest you not be so hard on yourself but it seems to be working for ya hahaha ( but seriously, don't lol )
@@sebytheman thanks for the compliment. I honestly never did a video like this before and it was a lot of fun. I wish I could speak more naturally for the voiceover but it comes with time I'm sure. I just have the grand visions for these videos and I'm not quite there yet but that's ok. I'll do more like this but they are time consuming and I have a 9-5. So I'll continue with 1-2 playthroughs a week, mess around with some other stuff here and there and maybe 1 of these a month.
@@TheAtariNetwork Perfectly valid! I get it, I'm working on some lofty projects myself and it's hard to be new at things haha -- you're on the right track to fill the 7800 niche tho!
Agreed OP - it's like the marketing folks said "What's the best outcome we can get from this ad campaign?", Ooh, I know! Wouldn't it be great if the product sold so well there were 7800s everywhere?!!. Scriptwriter points at him (Key-and-Peele-Gremlins-2-style): "It's in the ad!"
The 7800 was a good console but it needed more 3rd party support that could provide more original games opposed to remaking older arcade classics. Ninja Golf is proof the 7800 could of had its own game franchises similar to the NES having Mega Man or Castlevania.
It desperately needed 3rd party support. But the issue was that a lot of developers didn't want to upset the NES and they probably wouldn't of made a lot of money or sold a lot of copies on the 7800 especially around 89-90. So it was one of those catch 22 things, they needed a bigger audience, they need more games to get a bigger customer base and they needed more customers to get games.
@@TheAtariNetwork it's too bad they didn't. As I said with a game as well done as Ninja golf the 7800 was capable of pulling an original title and franchise. That game alone should of had a sequel and made into a Shinobi type mascot with a comedic golf twist
Oh God that commercial was so bad. That was the first time I ever really saw an Atari product before. By that time I had both an Nes and Master System. I wouldn't get my first Atari anything until my Jaguar in 1994. Addendum- The Atari 7800 was the first backwards compatible console in America. It was not the first ever made. That would be the Sega Mark 3/Sega Master System in Japan. The Japanese version of the Master System and its all white cousin the Mark 3 could play all Mark 1 and 2 games including Sega's My Cards without an expansion.
Thank you for watching! The commercial was something else that's for sure. Atari Jaguar is an interesting first Atari console and might be even less supported than the 7800 was. We're brothers from another console generation lol I don't know how I missed the Sega mark 1 through 3 thing. I'll have to look into that and make a correction. Thank you.
I love hearing about the 7800. We had the 2600 like many others. I knew of the 5200 but didn’t want to spend the money on a new system. My older brother talked me into going in on the Nintendo Entertainment System. So other than seeing the 7800 in the Electronic Game Magazine it was off my radar for decades. Long story; short I have 2 working 7800 consoles and I am building a collection of original games and homebrews. Keep the videos coming.
I learned something new from this video-I didn’t know that Nintendo had gobbled up arcade game licenses and locked them to the NES. The ports on the 7800 were mostly older arcade games. But I feel, more than anything else, the commercial failure of the 7800 was primarily due to Jack Tramiel’s ownership of Atari and the business decisions that he made. This is why I also have a love/hate relationship with the ST. I stayed faithful to the Atari brand and upgraded my Atari computer from 800->XL->XE->ST, but the ST line being a Tramiel product always bothered me (plus the hardware quality sucked-mushy keyboards anyone?). I learned recently that the design engineers of my beloved 800 created the Amiga, so I recently acquired an Amiga 500 from a friend. But I digress 😊 Thanks for diving into the 7800. It is a system that I only found out about just a few years ago, so I am very much learning. Your videos have been most helpful in my education.
The ST was what Jack bought Atari to create, well essentially. He wanted to compete with Commodore in the computer space and crush them for ousting him off the board and out of his own company. The 2600 Jr and 7800 were essentially just cash cows for his company and both were financially successful believe it or not. But the ST was his baby through and through. At least according to my research. Thanks for watching it's much appreciated!
It came a few decades after the fact but I feel like Rikki & Vikki is the vindication the 7800 needed for the longest time to show it was no slouch compared to it's contemporaries. It's just a shame we never saw the hardware really stretched and put to task when it needed to the most.
I think you are being unfairly harsh towards the Tramiels and Atari Corp by saying they didn't care about quality. Jack Tramiel didn't care about video games, but that's not the same thing. The Tramiel era of Atari was full of quality computers and software and Jack wanted to go up against the Macintosh and Amiga, not the dead game consoles of past competitors. He changed his mind about the 7800 too late. I think it was a huge mistake to cancel all their video game projects, but it was understandable at the time. If Jack Tramiel could have predicted the future with Nintendo and Sega coming into the picture, the 7800 could have been first to the US market and things would have been very different. Another part of that mistake was not taking advantage of the marketing that had already been done with the Cloak & Dagger movie. In a parallel universe somewhere, Nintendo and Mario are nothing, while Bentley Bear and Jack Flack are the most popular video game mascots in history.
Maybe it came across a bit harsh, but let me explain a bit. I was focusing solely on the Atari 7800 and it's software at the time. He wanted top notch and competitively priced computers and computer software to compete with his prior company and others. That I think is well known from people who was there or looked into that era of Atari. However I've done a ton of research just out of love of the 7800. This includes panels with former GCC employees, interviews with Michael Katz and contracted developers on 7800 software, and a conversation I had with a person who met and worked with Jack a handful of times. The conclusion I came to is the 7800 was a (profitable) way to finance the line of ST computers along with the 2600 Jr and re-releasing those games. He was not interested in making sure 7800 software was tested and given a lot of development time. He felt that video games were for young children and they'll buy and like whatever he puts out. But here's the kicker. I'm glad Jack Tramiel ran Atari at the time. I doubt many other owners would've even released and supported the 7800 like he did. It probably would've never seen the light of day. And you've given me a great idea for a new video! Something like "In defense of Jack Tramiel and the Atari 7800". Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
@@serqetry do you mind if I put your comment in that video? Some people don't like the idea of what they say being posted front and center but I really want to highlight it. And not to tear it or you apart but to show as motivation for that video and to preface it. I can always black out the username but it's out here publicly anyway lol.
@@TheAtariNetwork Sure! No need to black out. I'm pretty vocal about my feelings on Atari. I also agree with you that the 7800 release was largely done to support the success of the ST line. The XE and XEGS were part of the same strategy. Atari history is fascinating, especially the Tramiel era... my personal favorite. I really wish it did not all come to an end with the Falcon and Jaguar.
I'm so thankful for the current homebrew developers! The 7800 was so underutilized and now we can still have a chance to see it shine! Especially since the 7800+ just released
The NES was itself a 1983 system it just so happened to be weirdly designed in such a way that it's tile graphics system was exposed in the cartridges which made enhancement chips possible.
There's no doubt that the NES graphics were great for their time and there's a reason people are replicating the style to this day. Nintendo was also smart in providing resources and increasing cartridge capabilities throughout the NES lifespan. In theory the 7800 could've done much of the same but it just wasn't something the company was really interested in investing much into. Which is a shame because I feel the hardware and capabilities were never truly tapped in its retail life. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@TheAtariNetwork Could it though? The NES had a weird design feature that made the mapper chips possible, the program code and tile graphics data were on separate ROM chips in the cartridge and the PPU (picture processing unit) read the tile data directly from the ROM in the cardridge rather than transferring it to internal video like other systems of the day. This meant that the tile map system was accessible from the cartridge and you could put hardware in that swapped between ROM banks to expand the number of possible tiles or messed with the tile data on the fly to create animated tiles. The Battletoads cartridge for example has a chip in the cartridge that animates background tiles in order to create paralax scrolling.
@@atomicskull6405 a few original 7800 retail games used bank switching and a lot of homebrew use additional chips and hardware. I shouldn't say it could do much of the same that would be incorrect but the cartridges could've been expanded to allow for larger games and bankswitching was something that could've been explored more. But the 7800 hardware was vastly different and just couldn't do some things the NES could. 7800 was a lot weaker in some ways but it has its advantages too. Thanks for responding!
Oh that's very interesting. Now remember Jack Tramiel handed things over to his son at some point in the early 1990s. And continuing to maintain backwards compatibility with their prior consoles would really limit what they could do moving forward. Plus I wonder if they did any research into how often thats used. Most companies today have researched that people say they want it but it's hardly ever used by anyone. Would they still go the Jaguar route but actually have documentation and support for developers that they were lacking? Because they couldn't afford to give developers support like Sony and Nintendo did do to lack of fund so with a more successful company maybe they can? Idk great topic though
In my opinion, giving companies final say over who gets to make games for their console is the worst thing that could have happened. You can argue that it kept many crap developers from creating crap games, but how many great games never got made because the authors were little guys and couldn't go through the licensing process? If that idea had been in use during the Atari 2600 days, Activision would never have been formed, and some of the greatest Atari 2600 games wouldn't exist. If you don't believe me, try to imagine what using a computer would be like today if you could only get authorized software for it. How much of the software that you use on a daily basis wouldn't exist? Almost certainly, emulators wouldn't be allowed to exist, at least not without you having to buy every title that you run on them.
Yeah you can argue that but the video game crash in America was caused by poor quality titles by both Atari and third parties and Nintendo's strategy of locking out the NES and approving and licensing titles worked. And it probably could've worked for Atari but honestly you could argue that if the console was open maybe we would've seen more games in the Tramiel era. It's certainly something to think about thank you for bringing it up! Do you all agree with him or do you think Atari was right to keep the platform locked down to a degree?
That's Dragon's Havoc and it's available over at AtariAge right now. It's incredibly fun but not for everybody as the power system works completely off being accurate rather than picking up items. It was the fifth game I beat in my man vs 7800 series and Revontuli (the developer) sat down and talked to me and Vinnie about it so that's the audio for the video. Thanks for watching!
@7800ProGamer oh wow! Badass. I'll check it out soon. Sounds like a great game. Perhaps this will push me into the home brew world! It's a door I haven't opened yet. Looking foward to it.
If you got anything out of this video and want to learn more about the 7800 in the future, including hard to find cheats, playthroughs of all the games, more facts and lots of other information, then please subscribe. It helps the channel to get seen by more people and helps to spread the joy of the 7800 and its homebrew community! Along with educating gamers on a part of gaming history that has been overlooked! My 7800 Buyers Guide can be found here. Check it out for more information on the 7800 and recommendations on consoles, controllers, games and homebrews! th-cam.com/video/_Nx5hNN11tE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=mtB--7RjByFaJNsm
It definitely should have. But it was more acceptable back then. Heck the TV in my bedroom until 94 had the two screws and that was it. Oh and it was black and white lol
@@TheAtariNetworkthose were the days, yeah it was a while before we had anything but a coaxial input (or prongs before that lol) I had a tg16 in 1990 and remember having to connect it through a vcr to use the rca cables.
AtariAge has always been the go to place. Not only their store but on the forums as well. Some users sell their own games on the forum like Frankodragon and SiO2 among others. Outside of that Video61 Atari Sales is often overlooked for reasons I won't get into, but they're a reliable place to get certain homebrew games. And of course theirs Good Deal Games who not only sell 7800 stuff but a ton of other consoles homebrews as well. Just stay away from eBay that place is highway robbery!
Great video. This reminded me about a promotion Capri Sun did called Fun Facts. I do not know if the whole series was exclusively about the 7800, but there was at least one card created for Tower Toppler. I only have that card from the set and have never found anything else out about it. Maybe you'd know more or have better luck. I'd be happy to send you pictures of the front and back of the card.
That would be very cool to see the pictures of and I had no idea about Capri sun running such a promotion. You can send them to 7800progamer@gmail.com or reach me another way if you want. But I definitely want to see them!
Karateka is pronounced Kuh raw teh kuh. Ignore the commercial. It is NOT care ruh TEEK kuh The encryption key for the 7800 was almost lost forever until it was found on an Atari ST hard drive Atari Corp almost threw away!
Thank God it wasn't lost forever. Finding it and releasing homebrews has been an excellent second life for the system. I've heard it pronounced multiple ways but never thought to take the time to learn the proper pronunciation of Karateka. Good information to have.
It was an Australian only 7800 commercial. Eventually I'm going to do a video where we look at and "review" every 7800 commercial I can find so I'll talk a bit more about it there. But I always liked it 😀
I wish you had given us the names of the games you showed as well as the home brew. That last one in particular with the giant boss Dracula onscreen caught my attention big time (no pun intended)
That's good feedback I apologize for not doing that. Let me look back at the video and I'll put timestamps up and the name for each game. Thank you I'm always learning and trying to get better and this is definitely something I'm going to do from now on.
@@dinnerfor1540 Homebrews were dragons havoc, knight Guy, Rikki and Vikki, and Bentley bears Crystal quest. In future videos I'm going to have the name of the game and it's release date and developer in the lower corner
The Sega master system came out in 1984 in Japan and was backwards compatible with the sg-1000 and sc-2000 software. However the Atari 7800 came out in a test market in 1984 in the United States (specifically Ataris home state of California) but didn't receive a national roll out until 1986 after the sale to the Tramiels. So it's a little murky but it should've probably been stated that it was the first backwards compatible console in the United States as the consoles before the master system never saw a north American release. Americans would've been ignorant to the master system backwards compatibility and I'm an ignorant American so it works?
I think the Sega Genesis/Megadrive could play Sega Master System games? It had a Z80 that was used for sound in 16 bit games. (Off course that system was much newer than the 7800)
@@erikkarsies4851 yes with the master system adapter the Genesis could play sms games. That was after both of the prior mentioned consoles and required an additional purchase or some sort of adapter. But a good point none the less.
I'm very excited because it should make the library of 7800 (and 2600) games more accessible to a wider audience. Unless you have the ability to buy a modded console or mod it yourself, there has been no easy way to collect and play this library of games outside of emulation and bits and pieces via anthology titles. As long as it is compatible with homebrew it should give a little more attention to the things Revontuli, PacManPlus, Muddy Funster, Video61 and more are doing to show the incredible things the 7800 could've produced had the company been more focused at the time. For myself I've had a way to play these games for a long time (via my AV modded 7800), but I do still plan on picking one up for hopefully better recording quality for you all!
@@TheAtariNetwork Thinking about making 7800 homebrew myself. Tried for 2600 with batari basic, but it's too limited even with DPC+ for the kind of stuff I want to make. Good thing there's 7800basic.
I'm sure you already know but if you decide to make a homebrew head over to the AtariAge forums. There are a ton of very smart and helpful people including the gentleman who made 7800basic. I'd love for you to make a homebrew! The console always needs more games and more talent working on it! If you ever do make a game let me know, I'd love to play it and feature it!
I think the problem with kids comparing 7800 to Sms and nes is that it looked closer to the 5200 with lower res graphics. The fact that the palette was limited at the 320 mode hurt it’s ability to compete. Graphics was everything back then, kids were always comparing especially as we got closer to the 16 but era.
Your absolutely right graphics were a lot. And the NES games were mostly better. But I really think the 7800 was under utilized in its time. I wish GCC had been able to stay aboard and push the limits of what their little box could do. The cartridges desperately needed those additional sound chips too. Thanks for watching!
Interesting video. From the info I could find about the original Maria: during development, GCC kept adding video functions to the chip until they ran out of space on the die to complete the design. They ultimately decided to drop the sound functions and use a separate chip instead. However, that would have required a board resign, which apparently Jack had no interest in paying for. He similarly nixed the cart based Minnie in favor of Atari's own Pokey, which was outdated by the time the 7800 came out and ill-suited for the task. Very few devs were willing to pay for it. I don't know what Jack was charging for it, but I'd guess the unit cost was more than $5. It was a shame Minnie wasn't released. The specs looked similar to Commodore's SID. One detail stands out though, "2 arbitrary 64-byte waveforms stored in on-chip ROM, which could differ per-game." Seems like some sort of low-fi wavetable synth, which would still have been fairly cool for an 8-bit console. What could have been...
I love that you looked into it. The original maria design displayed crazy amounts of sprites but they left nothing to move them! According to Steve Golson at a PRGE panel that is. The thing is, GCC was very proud of what they made, at least that's what I gleaned from my research and they probably would've stayed on had Jack paid them. The Minnie was the biggest loss of all as the sound is more important than most people think. Somebody over at AtariAge shared a link from his research and actual talks with former GCC employees and I think the price was just over 4 dollars added to cover the Minnie. Such a shame. Thanks for watching and commenting!
The biggest fact about the 7800 is that Atari never put a full effort behind it. Lol Atari was too concerned about the computer market (Tremails....Tremels Transistors...Transformers....Tribbles ...what ever, you know who)...rather making the 7800 competitive.
I sish you mentioned the expansion port of those first models of the 7800 for planned peripherals, I wish you mentioned that some of nintendo games still did appear on the 7800 and that atari even used nintendo games in some of their commercials and posters (who had ever tout that that a competitor used a competitor’s character against them???) that’s like giving somebody a cookie from his own dough with an added bitter taste to it, Also it should be noted that atari did came with their own mascot platform game scrappyard dog as the ansure to supermariobros, So atari did tryed what they could do against nintendo, Also the atari 7800 was the first atari system with no sega games on it anymore unlike it’s previous generation systems. I really like the atari 7800 for what it is ever since.
I plan on bringing up the expansion port in the next episode of Five Facts: Odd Things that Was and Wasn't on the 7800 so stay tuned for that in the next few weeks, maybe this Thursday depending on my community poll. So Atari still had the rights to DK, DK JR and Mario Bros from inherited agreements from years prior. They took a lot of jabs at Nintendo and that will be mentioned in The Atarian : Atari Corps Version of Nintendo Power video (coming soon as well). When they tried with scrapyard dog and what we at atari7800forever.com call the crazy 9 late release titles it was far too late. According to Kurt Vandels sales numbers atari 7800 wasn't selling much at the time especially compared to 1986-1989. But you're right they did try. If you like the 7800 stay tuned. Everything you wanted to hear and more is coming eventually. I have to spread it out to keep you coming back lol
It was a perfectly capable console with terrible sound, something Atari consistently did until the Jaguar. And even then they compromised it so much that some games couldn't do in game music anyway due to lack of processing power. They were their own worst enemy. Imagine putting the same sound chip in the 7800 that they did in the 2600. I mean what hair brain fool would do such a thing with the likes of the NES and C64 sound out there.
It s known that because of this idiot of Jack Tramiel who believed only in computer game market and focus on the ST line the Atari 7800 could have been released one year at least before the Nes and so would have been THE home video game system the most advanced and success would have followed and naybe nes would have been a dailure …. VERY SAD …
Jack thought the way many people thought back then. Video games was just a fad but computers will be the wave of the future. Jacks biggest failure was not wanting to pay for what he had and insisting that Warner pay GCC and then sending them away. I promise GCC could've given the 7800 a library of solid titles much like the NES and it's first part programmers. Thanks for watching
"Directors Comment" here where I leave some new information for people rewatching the videos as a treat. So this was the first video where I did any real editing and I desperately needed the practice. It took a long time to get done but today Im proud to say I could of done it much quicker. Still, compared to my past videos where I barely did any edits at all this one was huge.
I only ever expected it to get like 100-300 views like my previous videos. So the fact that it blew up to 3.5-4k so quickly was shocking to me and honestly scary. But most of you guys have left awesome, funny and supportive comments so thank you!
I plan on doing more Fun Facts videos for other Atari consoles and more on the 7800 eventually but I like the idea of using the advertisement throughout the video. Overall while I feel my speaking and audio are weak, I'm pretty proud of this as an absolute first effort.
Thanks to this video, now all i see is 7800s everywhere.
WHAT DO YOU WANT!?
@@TheAtariNetwork I WANT ATARI!!!!
@@iansmith8783 you can't see it but I'm dancing around the Walmart singing I want Atari right now. Of course it's Walmart so nobody cares 😆😆😆
I sure did love playing Robotron, Joust, and Xevious on my old 7800, I never knew anyone else who had one back then 😂
Being broke, the price was great and I did love those arcade ports at the time
It was priced competitively well. In my research it appears it started pretty low and got more expensive over time as they sold off the initial stock they inherited and had to produce more consoles, but all the games were about half if not a third of the NES prices. Thanks for watching!
Oh and I was the only kid I knew with a 7800 too lol
let me blow your mind "karate" "ka".
Lol
It's nice to see that the Atari 7800 has been getting a bit more love and recognition recently.
Absolutely it's long over due, especially with all the work of the fantastic homebrew developers at AtariAge and elsewhere. Thanks for checking out the video!
Im so glad the homebrew community is alive and strong on the 7800 and even more so the 2600 which makes owning a 7800 even greater.
7800 is definitely the best of both worlds! The homebrew stuff is truly incredible and worth checking out. Developers are even making things available digitally now for people to enjoy on emulator and flash carts such as PacmanPlus and MuddyFunster. You can look into that more at the AtariAge Forums if you're so inclined. Thanks for watching!
that song is great/hilarious hahahah "Seventyeighthundredz EVERYwhere" just... I don't think it rolls off the tongue quite as much as they wanted it to haahahaha
Great vid man, very informative and entertaining.
I love that song for how awful it is. It's great in ways they never intended! Represents the 7800 well honestly.
Thanks. It's the first video that I did heavy editing in. I know everything is off a bit but it gets better from here. It was a great learning experience.
Thanks for watching!
@@TheAtariNetwork I saw you mention that in your description and diddn't wanna be too hammy with compliments but nah man your editing is looking very good -- I would suggest you not be so hard on yourself but it seems to be working for ya hahaha ( but seriously, don't lol )
@@sebytheman thanks for the compliment. I honestly never did a video like this before and it was a lot of fun. I wish I could speak more naturally for the voiceover but it comes with time I'm sure. I just have the grand visions for these videos and I'm not quite there yet but that's ok.
I'll do more like this but they are time consuming and I have a 9-5. So I'll continue with 1-2 playthroughs a week, mess around with some other stuff here and there and maybe 1 of these a month.
@@TheAtariNetwork Perfectly valid!
I get it, I'm working on some lofty projects myself and it's hard to be new at things haha -- you're on the right track to fill the 7800 niche tho!
Agreed OP - it's like the marketing folks said "What's the best outcome we can get from this ad campaign?", Ooh, I know! Wouldn't it be great if the product sold so well there were 7800s everywhere?!!. Scriptwriter points at him (Key-and-Peele-Gremlins-2-style): "It's in the ad!"
The 7800 was a good console but it needed more 3rd party support that could provide more original games opposed to remaking older arcade classics. Ninja Golf is proof the 7800 could of had its own game franchises similar to the NES having Mega Man or Castlevania.
It desperately needed 3rd party support. But the issue was that a lot of developers didn't want to upset the NES and they probably wouldn't of made a lot of money or sold a lot of copies on the 7800 especially around 89-90. So it was one of those catch 22 things, they needed a bigger audience, they need more games to get a bigger customer base and they needed more customers to get games.
@@TheAtariNetwork it's too bad they didn't. As I said with a game as well done as Ninja golf the 7800 was capable of pulling an original title and franchise. That game alone should of had a sequel and made into a Shinobi type mascot with a comedic golf twist
Oh God that commercial was so bad. That was the first time I ever really saw an Atari product before. By that time I had both an Nes and Master System. I wouldn't get my first Atari anything until my Jaguar in 1994.
Addendum- The Atari 7800 was the first backwards compatible console in America. It was not the first ever made. That would be the Sega Mark 3/Sega Master System in Japan. The Japanese version of the Master System and its all white cousin the Mark 3 could play all Mark 1 and 2 games including Sega's My Cards without an expansion.
Thank you for watching! The commercial was something else that's for sure. Atari Jaguar is an interesting first Atari console and might be even less supported than the 7800 was. We're brothers from another console generation lol
I don't know how I missed the Sega mark 1 through 3 thing. I'll have to look into that and make a correction. Thank you.
I love hearing about the 7800. We had the 2600 like many others. I knew of the 5200 but didn’t want to spend the money on a new system. My older brother talked me into going in on the Nintendo Entertainment System. So other than seeing the 7800 in the Electronic Game Magazine it was off my radar for decades. Long story; short I have 2 working 7800 consoles and I am building a collection of original games and homebrews. Keep the videos coming.
Well your older brother wasn't wrong lol. But I'm glad you can appreciate the 7800 today! And don't worry there's plenty more videos coming soon!
I learned something new from this video-I didn’t know that Nintendo had gobbled up arcade game licenses and locked them to the NES. The ports on the 7800 were mostly older arcade games.
But I feel, more than anything else, the commercial failure of the 7800 was primarily due to Jack Tramiel’s ownership of Atari and the business decisions that he made. This is why I also have a love/hate relationship with the ST. I stayed faithful to the Atari brand and upgraded my Atari computer from 800->XL->XE->ST, but the ST line being a Tramiel product always bothered me (plus the hardware quality sucked-mushy keyboards anyone?). I learned recently that the design engineers of my beloved 800 created the Amiga, so I recently acquired an Amiga 500 from a friend. But I digress 😊
Thanks for diving into the 7800. It is a system that I only found out about just a few years ago, so I am very much learning. Your videos have been most helpful in my education.
The ST was what Jack bought Atari to create, well essentially. He wanted to compete with Commodore in the computer space and crush them for ousting him off the board and out of his own company.
The 2600 Jr and 7800 were essentially just cash cows for his company and both were financially successful believe it or not. But the ST was his baby through and through. At least according to my research.
Thanks for watching it's much appreciated!
It came a few decades after the fact but I feel like Rikki & Vikki is the vindication the 7800 needed for the longest time to show it was no slouch compared to it's contemporaries. It's just a shame we never saw the hardware really stretched and put to task when it needed to the most.
Very nicely said! Thank you for your comment and I couldn't agree more. Thanks for checking out the video as well!
I think you are being unfairly harsh towards the Tramiels and Atari Corp by saying they didn't care about quality. Jack Tramiel didn't care about video games, but that's not the same thing. The Tramiel era of Atari was full of quality computers and software and Jack wanted to go up against the Macintosh and Amiga, not the dead game consoles of past competitors. He changed his mind about the 7800 too late. I think it was a huge mistake to cancel all their video game projects, but it was understandable at the time. If Jack Tramiel could have predicted the future with Nintendo and Sega coming into the picture, the 7800 could have been first to the US market and things would have been very different. Another part of that mistake was not taking advantage of the marketing that had already been done with the Cloak & Dagger movie. In a parallel universe somewhere, Nintendo and Mario are nothing, while Bentley Bear and Jack Flack are the most popular video game mascots in history.
Maybe it came across a bit harsh, but let me explain a bit. I was focusing solely on the Atari 7800 and it's software at the time. He wanted top notch and competitively priced computers and computer software to compete with his prior company and others. That I think is well known from people who was there or looked into that era of Atari.
However I've done a ton of research just out of love of the 7800. This includes panels with former GCC employees, interviews with Michael Katz and contracted developers on 7800 software, and a conversation I had with a person who met and worked with Jack a handful of times.
The conclusion I came to is the 7800 was a (profitable) way to finance the line of ST computers along with the 2600 Jr and re-releasing those games. He was not interested in making sure 7800 software was tested and given a lot of development time. He felt that video games were for young children and they'll buy and like whatever he puts out.
But here's the kicker. I'm glad Jack Tramiel ran Atari at the time. I doubt many other owners would've even released and supported the 7800 like he did. It probably would've never seen the light of day. And you've given me a great idea for a new video! Something like "In defense of Jack Tramiel and the Atari 7800". Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
@@TheAtariNetwork Awesome, I will look forward to that video. Subscribed!
@@serqetry do you mind if I put your comment in that video? Some people don't like the idea of what they say being posted front and center but I really want to highlight it. And not to tear it or you apart but to show as motivation for that video and to preface it. I can always black out the username but it's out here publicly anyway lol.
@@TheAtariNetwork Sure! No need to black out. I'm pretty vocal about my feelings on Atari. I also agree with you that the 7800 release was largely done to support the success of the ST line. The XE and XEGS were part of the same strategy. Atari history is fascinating, especially the Tramiel era... my personal favorite. I really wish it did not all come to an end with the Falcon and Jaguar.
I'm so thankful for the current homebrew developers! The 7800 was so underutilized and now we can still have a chance to see it shine! Especially since the 7800+ just released
Im surprised by the only 59 games released in his retail life , the biggest weakness was for sure his sound chip , thanks for the video Jon
Speaking of bad sound, Scrapyard Dog actually has a sound puzzle. That is totally unplayable.
And impossible Mission has a sound puzzle too! With the sound of the 7800 why on earth are there so many games with sound puzzles? Lol
The NES was itself a 1983 system it just so happened to be weirdly designed in such a way that it's tile graphics system was exposed in the cartridges which made enhancement chips possible.
There's no doubt that the NES graphics were great for their time and there's a reason people are replicating the style to this day. Nintendo was also smart in providing resources and increasing cartridge capabilities throughout the NES lifespan. In theory the 7800 could've done much of the same but it just wasn't something the company was really interested in investing much into. Which is a shame because I feel the hardware and capabilities were never truly tapped in its retail life.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@TheAtariNetwork Could it though? The NES had a weird design feature that made the mapper chips possible, the program code and tile graphics data were on separate ROM chips in the cartridge and the PPU (picture processing unit) read the tile data directly from the ROM in the cardridge rather than transferring it to internal video like other systems of the day. This meant that the tile map system was accessible from the cartridge and you could put hardware in that swapped between ROM banks to expand the number of possible tiles or messed with the tile data on the fly to create animated tiles. The Battletoads cartridge for example has a chip in the cartridge that animates background tiles in order to create paralax scrolling.
@@atomicskull6405 a few original 7800 retail games used bank switching and a lot of homebrew use additional chips and hardware. I shouldn't say it could do much of the same that would be incorrect but the cartridges could've been expanded to allow for larger games and bankswitching was something that could've been explored more. But the 7800 hardware was vastly different and just couldn't do some things the NES could. 7800 was a lot weaker in some ways but it has its advantages too. Thanks for responding!
What would the next Atari console look like if the 7800 was successful and they maintained backward compatibility?
Oh that's very interesting. Now remember Jack Tramiel handed things over to his son at some point in the early 1990s.
And continuing to maintain backwards compatibility with their prior consoles would really limit what they could do moving forward. Plus I wonder if they did any research into how often thats used. Most companies today have researched that people say they want it but it's hardly ever used by anyone.
Would they still go the Jaguar route but actually have documentation and support for developers that they were lacking? Because they couldn't afford to give developers support like Sony and Nintendo did do to lack of fund so with a more successful company maybe they can? Idk great topic though
In my opinion, giving companies final say over who gets to make games for their console is the worst thing that could have happened. You can argue that it kept many crap developers from creating crap games, but how many great games never got made because the authors were little guys and couldn't go through the licensing process? If that idea had been in use during the Atari 2600 days, Activision would never have been formed, and some of the greatest Atari 2600 games wouldn't exist.
If you don't believe me, try to imagine what using a computer would be like today if you could only get authorized software for it. How much of the software that you use on a daily basis wouldn't exist? Almost certainly, emulators wouldn't be allowed to exist, at least not without you having to buy every title that you run on them.
Yeah you can argue that but the video game crash in America was caused by poor quality titles by both Atari and third parties and Nintendo's strategy of locking out the NES and approving and licensing titles worked. And it probably could've worked for Atari but honestly you could argue that if the console was open maybe we would've seen more games in the Tramiel era.
It's certainly something to think about thank you for bringing it up! Do you all agree with him or do you think Atari was right to keep the platform locked down to a degree?
What is that game at 8:04 ? Looks like a fun shmup. :)
That's Dragon's Havoc and it's available over at AtariAge right now. It's incredibly fun but not for everybody as the power system works completely off being accurate rather than picking up items.
It was the fifth game I beat in my man vs 7800 series and Revontuli (the developer) sat down and talked to me and Vinnie about it so that's the audio for the video.
Thanks for watching!
@7800ProGamer oh wow! Badass. I'll check it out soon. Sounds like a great game. Perhaps this will push me into the home brew world! It's a door I haven't opened yet. Looking foward to it.
@7800ProGamer the power up system is great, unique. Accuracy is rewarded.
Check some of the homebrews out. They are doing amazing stuff!
Great video, nice facts!
Thank you for the kind words!
If you got anything out of this video and want to learn more about the 7800 in the future, including hard to find cheats, playthroughs of all the games, more facts and lots of other information, then please subscribe. It helps the channel to get seen by more people and helps to spread the joy of the 7800 and its homebrew community! Along with educating gamers on a part of gaming history that has been overlooked!
My 7800 Buyers Guide can be found here. Check it out for more information on the 7800 and recommendations on consoles, controllers, games and homebrews! th-cam.com/video/_Nx5hNN11tE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=mtB--7RjByFaJNsm
RF output in 84 wasn't so hot either. The 7800 shoud have had video and audio out.
It definitely should have. But it was more acceptable back then. Heck the TV in my bedroom until 94 had the two screws and that was it. Oh and it was black and white lol
@@TheAtariNetworkthose were the days, yeah it was a while before we had anything but a coaxial input (or prongs before that lol) I had a tg16 in 1990 and remember having to connect it through a vcr to use the rca cables.
Where is a good place to get Atari 7800 homebrews thanks
AtariAge has always been the go to place. Not only their store but on the forums as well. Some users sell their own games on the forum like Frankodragon and SiO2 among others.
Outside of that Video61 Atari Sales is often overlooked for reasons I won't get into, but they're a reliable place to get certain homebrew games. And of course theirs Good Deal Games who not only sell 7800 stuff but a ton of other consoles homebrews as well. Just stay away from eBay that place is highway robbery!
Great video. This reminded me about a promotion Capri Sun did called Fun Facts. I do not know if the whole series was exclusively about the 7800, but there was at least one card created for Tower Toppler. I only have that card from the set and have never found anything else out about it. Maybe you'd know more or have better luck. I'd be happy to send you pictures of the front and back of the card.
That would be very cool to see the pictures of and I had no idea about Capri sun running such a promotion. You can send them to 7800progamer@gmail.com or reach me another way if you want. But I definitely want to see them!
Karateka is pronounced Kuh raw teh kuh.
Ignore the commercial. It is NOT care ruh TEEK kuh
The encryption key for the 7800 was almost lost forever until it was found on an Atari ST hard drive Atari Corp almost threw away!
Thank God it wasn't lost forever. Finding it and releasing homebrews has been an excellent second life for the system.
I've heard it pronounced multiple ways but never thought to take the time to learn the proper pronunciation of Karateka. Good information to have.
That commercial is so cool. I don't think I remember ever seeing that.
It was an Australian only 7800 commercial. Eventually I'm going to do a video where we look at and "review" every 7800 commercial I can find so I'll talk a bit more about it there. But I always liked it 😀
I wish you had given us the names of the games you showed as well as the home brew. That last one in particular with the giant boss Dracula onscreen caught my attention big time (no pun intended)
That's good feedback I apologize for not doing that. Let me look back at the video and I'll put timestamps up and the name for each game. Thank you I'm always learning and trying to get better and this is definitely something I'm going to do from now on.
@@TheAtariNetworkI appreciate it.
@@dinnerfor1540
0:51 Asteroids (7800)
1:02 Food Fight (7800)
1:32 Pitfall (2600)
1:38 Radar Lock (2600)
1:51 Kaboom! (2600)
1:58 Space Invaders (2600)
2:06 Air Raiders (2600)
2:14 Haunted House (2600)
2:27 Yars Revenge (2600)
2:35 Adventure (2600)
3:12 Double Dragon (7800)
3:28 Kung Fu Master (7800)
4:04 Karateka (7800)
4:57 Fight Night (7800)
5:05 Dark Chambers (7800)
5:16 Tower Toppler (7800)
7:05 Commando (7800)
7:25 Bentley Bears Crystal Quest (7800)
7:54 Dragon's Havoc (7800)
8:28 Robotron 2084 (7800)
8:45 Mega Man 2 (NES)
8:52 Double Dragon (NES)
9:05 Knight Guy in Low Res World Castle Days (7800)
9:19 Rikki & Vikki (7800, Steam)
9:50 Midnight Mutants (7800)
@@TheAtariNetwork Thank you for adding that list. It is really helpful. Here’s another request, which games are home brews from the list?
@@dinnerfor1540 Homebrews were dragons havoc, knight Guy, Rikki and Vikki, and Bentley bears Crystal quest. In future videos I'm going to have the name of the game and it's release date and developer in the lower corner
Isn't Sega Master System backwards compatible with earlier Sega consoles?
The Sega master system came out in 1984 in Japan and was backwards compatible with the sg-1000 and sc-2000 software. However the Atari 7800 came out in a test market in 1984 in the United States (specifically Ataris home state of California) but didn't receive a national roll out until 1986 after the sale to the Tramiels.
So it's a little murky but it should've probably been stated that it was the first backwards compatible console in the United States as the consoles before the master system never saw a north American release. Americans would've been ignorant to the master system backwards compatibility and I'm an ignorant American so it works?
I think the Sega Genesis/Megadrive could play Sega Master System games? It had a Z80 that was used for sound in 16 bit games. (Off course that system was much newer than the 7800)
@@erikkarsies4851 yes with the master system adapter the Genesis could play sms games. That was after both of the prior mentioned consoles and required an additional purchase or some sort of adapter. But a good point none the less.
Are you excited for 2600+?
I'm very excited because it should make the library of 7800 (and 2600) games more accessible to a wider audience. Unless you have the ability to buy a modded console or mod it yourself, there has been no easy way to collect and play this library of games outside of emulation and bits and pieces via anthology titles.
As long as it is compatible with homebrew it should give a little more attention to the things Revontuli, PacManPlus, Muddy Funster, Video61 and more are doing to show the incredible things the 7800 could've produced had the company been more focused at the time.
For myself I've had a way to play these games for a long time (via my AV modded 7800), but I do still plan on picking one up for hopefully better recording quality for you all!
@@TheAtariNetwork Thinking about making 7800 homebrew myself. Tried for 2600 with batari basic, but it's too limited even with DPC+ for the kind of stuff I want to make. Good thing there's 7800basic.
I'm sure you already know but if you decide to make a homebrew head over to the AtariAge forums. There are a ton of very smart and helpful people including the gentleman who made 7800basic. I'd love for you to make a homebrew! The console always needs more games and more talent working on it! If you ever do make a game let me know, I'd love to play it and feature it!
I think the problem with kids comparing 7800 to Sms and nes is that it looked closer to the 5200 with lower res graphics. The fact that the palette was limited at the 320 mode hurt it’s ability to compete. Graphics was everything back then, kids were always comparing especially as we got closer to the 16 but era.
Your absolutely right graphics were a lot. And the NES games were mostly better. But I really think the 7800 was under utilized in its time. I wish GCC had been able to stay aboard and push the limits of what their little box could do. The cartridges desperately needed those additional sound chips too.
Thanks for watching!
Interesting video. From the info I could find about the original Maria: during development, GCC kept adding video functions to the chip until they ran out of space on the die to complete the design. They ultimately decided to drop the sound functions and use a separate chip instead. However, that would have required a board resign, which apparently Jack had no interest in paying for. He similarly nixed the cart based Minnie in favor of Atari's own Pokey, which was outdated by the time the 7800 came out and ill-suited for the task. Very few devs were willing to pay for it. I don't know what Jack was charging for it, but I'd guess the unit cost was more than $5.
It was a shame Minnie wasn't released. The specs looked similar to Commodore's SID. One detail stands out though, "2 arbitrary 64-byte waveforms stored in on-chip ROM, which could differ per-game." Seems like some sort of low-fi wavetable synth, which would still have been fairly cool for an 8-bit console. What could have been...
I love that you looked into it. The original maria design displayed crazy amounts of sprites but they left nothing to move them! According to Steve Golson at a PRGE panel that is. The thing is, GCC was very proud of what they made, at least that's what I gleaned from my research and they probably would've stayed on had Jack paid them.
The Minnie was the biggest loss of all as the sound is more important than most people think. Somebody over at AtariAge shared a link from his research and actual talks with former GCC employees and I think the price was just over 4 dollars added to cover the Minnie. Such a shame.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Commodore Amiga!!!
Great job thank you 👍
Thank you!
The biggest fact about the 7800 is that Atari never put a full effort behind it. Lol Atari was too concerned about the computer market (Tremails....Tremels Transistors...Transformers....Tribbles ...what ever, you know who)...rather making the 7800 competitive.
I sish you mentioned the expansion port of those first models of the 7800 for planned peripherals,
I wish you mentioned that some of nintendo games still did appear on the 7800 and that atari even used nintendo games in some of their commercials and posters (who had ever tout that that a competitor used a competitor’s character against them???) that’s like giving somebody a cookie from his own dough with an added bitter taste to it,
Also it should be noted that atari did came with their own mascot platform game scrappyard dog as the ansure to supermariobros,
So atari did tryed what they could do against nintendo,
Also the atari 7800 was the first atari system with no sega games on it anymore unlike it’s previous generation systems.
I really like the atari 7800 for what it is ever since.
I plan on bringing up the expansion port in the next episode of Five Facts: Odd Things that Was and Wasn't on the 7800 so stay tuned for that in the next few weeks, maybe this Thursday depending on my community poll.
So Atari still had the rights to DK, DK JR and Mario Bros from inherited agreements from years prior. They took a lot of jabs at Nintendo and that will be mentioned in The Atarian : Atari Corps Version of Nintendo Power video (coming soon as well).
When they tried with scrapyard dog and what we at atari7800forever.com call the crazy 9 late release titles it was far too late. According to Kurt Vandels sales numbers atari 7800 wasn't selling much at the time especially compared to 1986-1989. But you're right they did try.
If you like the 7800 stay tuned. Everything you wanted to hear and more is coming eventually. I have to spread it out to keep you coming back lol
Oh the 7800 played 2600 games? Really?? Wow!
It was a perfectly capable console with terrible sound, something Atari consistently did until the Jaguar. And even then they compromised it so much that some games couldn't do in game music anyway due to lack of processing power. They were their own worst enemy. Imagine putting the same sound chip in the 7800 that they did in the 2600. I mean what hair brain fool would do such a thing with the likes of the NES and C64 sound out there.
It s known that because of this idiot of Jack Tramiel who believed only in computer game market and focus on the ST line the Atari 7800 could have been released one year at least before the Nes and so would have been THE home video game system the most advanced and success would have followed and naybe nes would have been a dailure …. VERY SAD …
Jack thought the way many people thought back then. Video games was just a fad but computers will be the wave of the future. Jacks biggest failure was not wanting to pay for what he had and insisting that Warner pay GCC and then sending them away. I promise GCC could've given the 7800 a library of solid titles much like the NES and it's first part programmers. Thanks for watching