Atari vs Colecovision Which was better? - Player One Start
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ค. 2024
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In this video I compare two legendary consoles of the early 1980s, the Atari (2600 and 5200) vs the Colecovision. Both companies rose to prominence in the early 80s, but died out with the video game crash of 1983. Lets take a look at the hardware and game play. Which will win?
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Viewing Guide:
Intro: (0:00)
Atari History: (0:55)
Coleco History: (4:38)
Which is better - Console Design: (8:07)
Which is better - Controller Design: (9:40)
CPU and Graphics: (11:40)
Sound: (16:32)
Game Play: (19:56)
Which is better?: (28:07) - เกม
I was in my early 20s when colecovision came out I loved Zaxxon played that forever
Colecovision all the way!! I was an enterprising young lad of 12 when the Colecovision came out. I was hyped so I made a plan . I mowed lawns & placed an ad in a local free paper called the Thrifty Nickel to sell my Atari 2600 & some Star Wars toys so I'd have the ~$200-$300 in-hand by the time the Colecovision was available. Hey, there was no eBay! My mom worked all the time, so I got a neighbor to give me a ride down to the mall so I could buy it. I walked into Sears flush with cash and came out with that sweet, sweet Next Gen console, a huge grin on my face & a sense of satisfaction. Score! Kids thesedays look at this stuff & can't understand that we were losing our fkn minds over how awesome & arcade-authentic the games & graphics were. It truly was out Next Gen, our Playstation in the SNES/Genesis era. Anyways my Mom, who was a single mother with 2 or more jobs all the time was impressed (& relieved I'm sure) at my ingenuity & hard work to get my Colecovision without simply asking for it.
I owned both machines back then and today own a refurbished 5200 and Collectorvision Phoenix (which is essentially a Colecovision). You have to have 2 perspectives to compare these machines, the 1982 perspective compared to today.
1982-The Colecovision was the system every kid wanted. Coleco ran circles around Atari with marketing, not only throwing in a top notch pack in game, but also having pictures of arcade machines on the boxes. To the gaming fans of the day, Coleco games were fresh, new arcade ports, while Atari 5200 games were games we had on the 2600.
Today's perspective - Now that you can find replacement and refurbished 5200 controllers on eBay, I actually think the 5200 is a slightly better system with actual game play and sound. Both of these systems are fun to collect for today and for all the Coleco fans, I super highly recommend the Collectorvision Phoenix if you can find one.
I loved my colecovision. It was the first big Christmas gift I remember asking for. I’ll never forget it.
Me, too. In contrast, the Commodore Vic20 was my first "big" purchase. I have to say, I was underwhelmed and disappointed.
Coleco was the first console I had as a kid so it will always hold a very special place for me and brings back tons of memories as a kid.
The CV with the Atari expansion module. It didn't get any better than this.
@@Peppers19781978 yah, I completely get that. Such memories attached to that time. I played my colecovision non stop. I loved it.
Mine too, I remember playing mine till 3 in the morning and oh course lots of Mnt. Dew.
I bought the Atari 2600 when it came out, and then when the Colecovision came out I sold my Atari 2600 to a friend, and my Mom helped with the rest of the money to purchase the Colecovision. I still have the Colecovision with all the Cartridges that I bought plus the Atari Expansion Module with the Atari Cartridges that I kept. I also have the Super Controllers that came with ROCKY. Oh, I also still have the Steering Wheel, and Gas pedal that came with TURBO.
That's one thing that is different between me, and my older brother. He sold, or traded everything that our Mom ever bought him while I kept almost everything that she bought me. I still have the Commodore 64 with the Floppy Disc Drive. I can't remember if I still have the Cassette Tape Drive that we first got for it, or not? LOL I even have all the Rubix Cubes from the 80s. 😉
Thanks for making, and sharing this video. Now I want to bring out my Colecovision to play. Yes, It still works. 😜
👍🏼👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿🇺🇲🇮🇱🇺🇲🤘🏿🤘🏾🤘🏽🤘🏼
I'd give anything to play Rocky and Baseball again with the Super Controllers. Also, Beyond Castlewolfenstein, Beach Head, Karateka, Racing Destruction Set, Double Dragon 2, on Commodore 64. Good times.
@@Audioholics Heck Yeah!! I miss my Colecovision, Sega Genesis, and Commodore 64.
I still have all 3 systems. I just need to replace the rf switch. It has a short in it, so it causes lines, and the static looking rocks/snow, or whatever it is called. LOL
I wonder if rf switches still exist. It's not like I can drive to RadioShack. 😉
I'll probably have to go on Ebay, and hope that I don't get screwed. I hate purchasing anything electronic on Ebay, because you never know if the seller is being honest when they say "It's Brand New in the package" then it shows up, and doesn't work. The last thing I bought gaming wise besides games was 2 Colecovision Adam white controllers. Dude said they were like new. They looked good, but one of them didn't work right.
I just said screw it. Normally I would go off on a lying seller, but I got them at a decent price, and usually only use one anyways, so screw paying to ship it back just to either get 1/2 a refund, or wait to have another one shipped to me.
Crap! Sorry. I got a little carried away with this comment.
Anyways, Have a good evening.
😎
How did you like the coleco controller ? I though it hindered gameplay , I much prefer a joystick.
@@johnjaleco5683 I was disappointed with it. They tried to make it like the Intellivision disc, and a joystick all in one, and they suck.
@@Facelessman42001 they could have dominated video games for years with a proper arcade stick , they make so much difference to gameplay . As for the intellivision , the r&d department at Mattel should have been boiled in their own excrement 😋
I got a Colecovision when i was 7 we have great memories of my mum and dad playing Donkey Kong,Turbo,Carnival
Coleco had balls, to offer an expansion pack to play its competitors games. Imagine if that happened today lol
That's the way it was back then. Colecovision had an adapter to play 2600 games, so did Intellivision. Atari sued Colecovision, but they settled and came to a licensing agreement.
Those competitors would also publish some of their games on competing consoles, Coleco had the console rights to Donkey Kong so they made the CV, IV and 2600 versions. Colecovision's version had more stages than the other versions (as well as looking better/more faithful to the arcade original). They did not make a version for the 5200 because it would have been very close to the CV version (as shown by the Atari 8 bit computer version which Atari had the rights for).
Atari instead secured the rights to Mario Bros. which did not see a Colecovision port.
So did Intv
yeah.... and Atari tried to sue the balls off of Coleco!!.....yeah what would happen if Microsoft made a xbox expansion thing that would let you play all ps5 games on xbox series X what would happen?
@@anotherhunkydory PS5 would make an expansion thing to play Xbox games on it.
That 5200 looks like it's been through a war!
Mine looks a bit worse having a dent on the left side near the Atari logo. I curse myself now for doing this but one time many years ago I got frustrated not being able get past a level (I can't even remember what game this was) I struck the console with the end of my controller. It didn't break but the stupid, immature kid version of me dented the console for no good reason. But it still works today but I really wish hadn't done that.
my neighbor had coleco vision. This was the holygrail of games that looked closest to the arcade versions. hands down friends in the neighborhood stopped coming over to my house to play games and started hanging out over at my buddy's house more... He had the more expensive and sought after gear!
Yes, the 5200 did have the first pause button on a controller. Atari even had a commercial campaign highlighting this feature. I still remember it from when I was a kid. A teenage boy is playing his 5200 and the phone ring. Someone answers the phone and calls to him saying that a girl is on the phone and wants to talk to him. He quickly presses the pause button to go pick up the phone. Yes, as much an unrealistic scenario back then as it is today! 😄
Actually, the Fairchild channel F was the first console to have a pause button on it's controller.
@@RMoocher I believe the Channel F pause button is on the console itself
We've gone full-circle and once again have single-player games that can't be paused ... except now it's because of online features. Phones still ring though.
The 5200 was basically an Atari computer without a keyboard. The player/missle graphics were an extension of the 2600, but they completely changed the register map for the gTIA VS the TIA and took away some features like replicating the player 3 times on screen. (Space Invaders for the 2600 showed 6 aliens across without flickering by using the replication feature .)
Atari graphics modes included memory mapped modes upto 320x192, but you could program the resolution on a line by line basis using "display list." It was a very flexible machine where a good programmer could have displays with more colors than the coleco and combine high and low resolutions by using clever code. The coleco used an off the shelf graphics chip produced by Texas Instruments, this chip was very fixed function and limited in capability. The same TMS9918 graphics chip was used in the ti99 and the MSX computer systems. You had "32 sprites" but only 4 could be displayed per line. This made it functionally similar to the Atari Players which were the entire height of of the screen and could be moved on a line by line basis.
The 5200 was basically a 400 in a different case. In addition to player/missile graphics, the Ataris had hardware-based fine scrolling and redefinable character sets. So, by using a multicolor text mode with a custom character set, you could create giant, smoothly scrolling maps and other environments that were in fact text... and overlay players on them.
That's right, and I think it's hilarious how the people in that poll voted overwhelmingly in the ColecoVision's favor over the 5200 concerning graphics capability. Almost everywhere I look, people (maybe some of the same people!) praise the Atari 8-bit computer's graphics capabilities to high Heaven, even claiming that it stomps all over the Commodore 64's graphics. 256 colors (albeit 128 in all but one mode)! Custom chips designed by the same super-genius who designed the Amiga's custom chips! But here, in this video, it apparently doesn't hold up even to the TI-99/4A and Tomy Tutor's graphics, which are identical to the ColecoVision's, as all of these are based on an off-the-shelf graphics chip from TI.
In my view, as a software engineer who, in addition to my regular job, has been programming 8-bit computers, including the Atari and C64, for decades, the C64's capabilities are practically a superset of what the ColecoVision can do. The only exception is sprites because the ColecoVision has 32 versus 8 on the C64, but on the other hand, the ColecoVision can only display 4 on each scanline, while the C64 can display all 8. This implies that the TI chip includes hardware multiplexing of 4 sprites to present 32 to the software. However, in the C64, it is possible (and it has been done in practice), in Atari-like fashion, to multiplex its 8 sprites in software in a way that does not involving flashing them, so there can be more than 32 sprites on the screen at once without flickering (88 is about the maximum limit for a game, depending on how one counts them, and there could be even more with weird demo-style tricks). So really, the C64 can do almost anything the ColecoVision can do, and a whole lot more that the ColecoVision cannot do. One thing the ColecoVision has going for it, though, is that its games are rather consistently good from a programming point of view, while on the C64 it varies from absolutely brilliant to awful. For example, _Defender_ on the C64 is awful, when it certainly didn't have to be. Looking through the TMS9918 chip's modes and features, I don't see anything it can do that the C64's VIC-II chip cannot. The C64 port of this game was simply programmed badly.
Now, why is there all this talk of the C64, which wasn't even a part of the video? It's because I consider the Atari 8-bit's--and therefore the 5200's--graphics to be just as powerful overall as the C64's, making the latter a good point of comparison. The C64 and Atari are very different, with different strengths and weaknesses, but overall, they're jointly the most powerful 8-bit systems in terms of graphics, in my opinion, at least prior to the NES (arguable in some ways, which I won't get into here). This means the 5200's graphics are quite a bit more powerful than the ColecoVision's, although they suffer in comparison with the types of games being considered here. The Atari can compete, but this type of game does not play to its strengths. That's another thing the ColecoVision had going for it: in addition to consistently good or great programming, only games that it was well suited for were made. The end result is that its reputation is very much on the high side relative to its capabilities (which are pretty good, don't get me wrong, but the 5200 is actually way more powerful overall). It's just funny and weird to see it beat out the 5200, which has exactly the same graphics capabilities as the renowned and even revered Atari 8-bit computers. In truth, the latter (and the C64) can and has had amazing games made for it that the ColecoVision can't touch, but this fact is lost in the comparison between the ColecoVision and 5200.
@@SoundOfYourDestiny Exactly, but this video erroneously implies that the ColecoVision can scroll like the Atari can (smoothly), when it can't. It also gets the Atari's capabilities wrong. I mean, 3 colors per sprite? Try 1, although that can be changed dynamically with DLIs, so a sprite can have a lot more than 3 colors. Where did 3 even come from? The video also skipped the modes with 160 horizontal pixels, which are probably the most important and most used modes. Lots of things are wrong in this video. I could go on and on.
@@rbrtck Good post, right on the money. I remember noticing that the Coleco's motion just didn't have the smoothness of the Atari's. It's a lot like Android UI vs. iPhone UI today.
My first job was selling 8-bit software and hardware at a small computer shop, and as an Atari owner I had to scoff at the C64 out of rivalry... but it is a very cool system. It was gimped a bit by the hideous 1541 drive and a run of defective video chips (so many 64s had "sparkle" artifacts on characters or other on-screen objects). But I did envy the 64's simultaneous-color palette. And the three 16-bit sound channels, although the Atari ingeniously let you choose four 8-bit channels or bind a pair (or two) together for 16-bit. Anyway, good times. I still have my whole 800 system boxed up in mint condish, and a Commodore 1702 I need to re-cap.
I love how Atari dissed there own pacman
The most underrated TH-cam channel, bar none. Thorough, interesting, professional production, great footage, informed opinions... everything I want in a retro gaming channel
I grew up with the Atari and Colecovision consoles. I always favored the Colecovision. At the time, Donkey Kong was the game to play and Colecovision had the best graphics hands down. Also, what many people fail to realize is that Colecovision had the only version of Donkey Kong that offered the Elevator board. Thanks for the video. Brings back alot of nostalgia. Those were the good old days....lol.
Donkey kong Jr. Was a great game too, amazing graphics and game play
At that time there were only 2 other home ports of DK in existence in the U.S., Atari and Intellivision
It didn't have the cement pie board though only atari computers had all the boards that was in the acade version ..not even the nes had it!
@@anotherhunkydory I think the Adam version did have all of the levels.
@@BigSleepyOx Yes, the Adam version did have all four screens. But Coleco had to delay its release until July 1984 because of a falling out with Atari at the Summer 1983 CES when it used the normal DK cartridge (the pack-in game for the CV) to plug the pending release of the Adam computer.
the 5200 had the best looking pitfall
More fluid animation and color palette looks more natural. Has better sound too
I got the Coleco as a kid, but always felt like I was missing out. Thanks for this vid... I finally feel like my FOMO was unnecessary. I can now live my life going forward with renewed confidence. 😉
I loved both systems Atari 5200 and the Coleco and owned select games for each. One of my favorite games on the 5200 was Moon Patrol. Both systens had their ups and downs as we all know. Yes the 5200 controllers really sucked in the beginning and it made game console switching kind of weird going from the 5200 to the Coleco. Wasn't a big fan of the Atari 2600 but did like a few games. I grew up in the Arcade and playing games at home.
Thanks for showing the systems, really brought back some memories of good ol days.
My parents purchase me the Atari 2600 back in 81, the Atari 5200 back in 83, and the ColecoVision in 84. They ended up buying me the Commodore 64 computer in 86 and I never looked back lol. I was a fan of them all. The ColecoVision was the better console out of the bunch, beating out the Atari 5200 in both graphical capabilities and sound. Both could produce really good graphics and sound for the time but the ColecoVision was a bit more powerful and a better put together system overall. That said, people talk about the Atari 5600 controllers as being something Atari cheap out on. The Atari 5600 controllers was flawed but cutting edge for the time and was probably very expensive to produce. Atari gambled on new untried technology and paid dearly. That said, when the NES came to market, Their d-pad controller scheme felt very awkward to me. I was use to the old school style of controllers and it took me some getting use to lol. I actually continued using the Atari 2600 controllers with the Commodore 64 computer.
My childhood revisited. Thanks for all the hard work to put this together.
Montezuma revenge is great
I only owned the ColecoVision ... it was awesome 🤘
Amazingly the 5200 had a joystick with a boot that wasn’t torn to hell.
I still have my Coleco with the Atari expansion module. I think it still works but it hasn't been turned on in 30 years.
Get a Sega Genesis controller and try it out. That's what I'd do. The Genesis pad brought back life to my old VCS, made it fun to play again.
Had a coleco as a kid. Never had a 5200. A friend of mine did, and I remember having fun with pole position. Loved my coleco. Zaxxon and time pilot played awesome. Great video
Coleco is an logo.
I just want to add that the Colecovision was so impressive when it came out that even MTV series (about 2000 ish) I Love The 80s Strikes Back episode for 1982 the guest stars commented how it blew away the Atari VCS.
So first, I am a long time gamer, and grew up with the VCS "2600". My cousin had the Colecovision snd always bragged about how much better it was, so when I got the chance I saved up and got the 5200 just to spite him. At the time both of us kids both agreed it was better than the Coleco, mostly because of Pacman but in the end he stuck with his guns. However, funny thing is both of us ended up getting a 7800. But while I owned my 5200 I never had any problems with the controllers. The unit was struck by lightning however so I bought another one just before the stores stopped carrying them.
Now, to fully appreciate the 5200 you need the Trakball controller. Owning a 5200 is a labor of love with always fixing the controllers unless you can afford the gold dot conversions. But the Trakball is as robust of a controller as I have ever seen. If you ever disassemble it, which I recommend for clesning and lubercation, you will find some pretty massive spindles sitting on ball bearings. This is how you want to play Centipede and Missile Command. It is true the Coleco can tutn into a full blown computer snd I think has more gamebtitles, but the 5200 will always hold a special place in my heart.
Now about the Adam, yeah I had one too. You can either get the modules for your Coleco which is rare and inconvenient, or just buy a complete standalone which is what I recommend because you will get the printer. The only thing I dislike about that is you have to use the printer as it has the only power supply for the whole system, and its a daisy wheel, so no dot matrix! But you can get a disk drive for the Adam, and it still functions as a full fledged Coleco complete with the expandion bay. However I am not sure about the Adam module, since it uses the expsnsion bay on a Coleco, I don't believe you can use other modules with it. Not sure what ports the Adam expansion have either.
The fun part about Computer Space, is that it did get a role in Soylent Green.
I really enjoyed your video. I also grew up during this time and I can attest to the fact coleco was the king back in the day and anyone who had a 5200 spent most of their time trying to save money to buy replacement controllers
Really nice history of both companies at the start
We had an Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 growing up in the 80s. I'll always have a soft spot for the 2600, but the more I look into the Colecovision, the more I believe it to be the better console of the two. Great review looking at the history and the hardware/software of the two systems.
Justin Caldwell Thanks! Glad you liked it.
Atari did make a great version of Pac-man for the Colecovision. They didn't release it. However, the ROM image can be found. It looks and plays better than the 5200 version, which is probably why it wasn't released.
Awesome video. I got a colecovision with a ton of games at a garagesale as a kid. This was during the nes era. I probably played the colecovision just as much as my nes. There were so many creative games.
I have to admit. Sure the Colecovision Grafics are looking more Colorful...I like the 5200 Grafics more.
Great video ...very informative!
The ColecoVision was in my opinion the best system ever made. Compared to its competition of the day.
Colecovision was THE game console of the early 80’s. The Atari 2600 expansion module was a great feature, as was the Turbo steering wheel. Of the early systems, everyone wanted to make them into a home computer. Astrocade tried hard with their basic cart and cassette interface. Intellivision crashed and burned. Atari had their “Basic Programming” cart and keypad controllers. Coleco actually got a machine “out the door”. It failed, because they tried to do the impossible with early 80’s technology/manufacturing.
We children of the 70’s and 80’s wanted ALL of the systems. But, with an Atari 800 (or XL) and a Colecovision (and maybe a 2600) you wanted for little! As we all know, the 5200 was a repackaged Atari 400 with crappy controllers and a few exclusive games.
Colecovision is MY winner against the Atari 5200. I’d take an Atari 800 (and it’s 2600-compatible controllers) over either of them, even discounting the vast library of Atari-compatible disk software.
Fortunately I own ALL of them, and don’t have to choose!!!! And anyone who does “retro” who discounts the Astrocade and Intellivision does themselves a great disservice.
Great vid. I liked it a lot.
my favorite thing about these retro consoles is I DIDNT CARE about FPS,Graphics or any of that. all I cared about was finishing the game, and getting the high score. So many people worry about these things today and it kinda takes the fun out of just playing the game. THATS why Atari 2600 was a hit until ColecoVision and 5200 came out and graphically, Intellivision sucked. Never had one. But The Coleco and the Atari 5200 are the ones that I had and will get again.....eventually
I can remember wanting an 2600 for years and my mom never got one and then finally in the 4th grade I got the 5200. It was new on the scene but those dang joysticks, I mean they would break for no apparent reason.
I remember very well that PacMan was a 5200 exclusive, while Donkey Kong was a ColecoVision exclusive. It was my first "big decision" when I had to choose as a 5yo kid. I chose PacMan and was a 5200 owner. I'll tell ya, the 5200 was a friggin awesome system back when it was in production. The controllers were actually really nice when they were brand new. Nowadays working models, when you can find them, are much floppier and less responsive than they were in 1983. The non-self-centering thing wasn't nearly as noticable. Anyone who's ever owned the system knows how 5200 controllers can simply die while in storage, so even old-new stock controllers aren't as good as when they were factory fresh in 1983. One day someone will finally release an affordable and comprehensive controller replacement and then watch as everyone's opinion of the 5200 changes overnight. It was a great system with the BEST arcade ports of it's day, and in it's day arcade ports were the most important thing in gaming.
Nice! Thanks for sharing!!
If the controller got bad sitting around, how bad does it get in actual use? You don't need to tell me. I remember from my own system. The controllers were terrible, flimsy as all hell. Just poor design that should have not been released. Unacceptable.
Great video! How about a 7800 vs Colecovision comparison?
Awesome comparison/contrast video The Atari VCS/2600 was extremely prolific with a huge game games library for it's day. Thus why almost everyone tried to include support for playing Atari VCS/2600 games on their own consoles back then. The Atari 5200 had three major issues. Beyond the controllers not self centering they also would have to be disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled about every two weeks to keep them working. Back then it was advisable to keep them as spares while replacing them with third party controllers ASAP, and today it's still a great idea to replace them with modern compatible controllers. This should have been the first, and simplest issue for Atari to address. The Atari 2600 adapter come out rather late in the Atari 5200's main retail life, and although addressed the issue of support for playing the Atari VCS/2600 game library which hadn't been originally included via backwards compatibility it was too little too late to have the impact it could have. Finally although the Atari 5200 was based on the Atari 400/800 home computer line no cross compatibility support for their games was included though Atari could have done that. It was still an impressive second generation home video game console despite all of this. The Coleco ColecoVision was definitely king of the second generation home video game consoles when it came to doing arcade ports. I forget name, but the person who did most of the development work on the ColecoVision insisted upon 2nd-5th tier arcade port licenses, and those 1st tier arcade port licenses Atari hadn't already gotten after hearing that Coleco was originally planning to develop their own unique games for it, (a strategy which had fared poorly to counter Atari's dominance for others already). Overall I think all three consoles have their strengths looked at in the proper context, and from the proper perspective.
A great video :D It's nice to learn more about ColeCoVision - as far as I can remember it wasn't well known here in the U.K. - it was all Atari :)
Interesting, I had a similar experience here. I first heard of Colecovision via a South Park episode. Cartman stays a Kenny's house and all he has is a 'Colecovision plugged into a B & W TV." Cartman replies "..."Its like a 3rd World Country!" lol 😁
Also, thanks for watching!
Awesome video. I had the 5200 when I was a kid. Idk what happened to it. But my God those dam joystick was the worst.
@Neb6 there's a video out there of an adapter that allows for a 2600 stick or Genesis controller, but I think it has to be plugged into a working 5200 joystick keypad controller to work..
Omg I spent a lot of my youth playing a coleco vision. It was my 1st game console. I had 3 games Donkey Kong, Space Fury, & Zaxxon. This brings back so many memories. Thanks for making this video! It made my day :)
Very cool! Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it!
I'll be honest, I owned an Atari 2600. Never had heard of colecovision until just recently. I'm surprised with the better graphics of the Colecovision that it never took off more and that more people chose Atari. After watching many videos of those who own the colecovisiton here on TH-cam. Atari's graphics look so primitive in comparison. I'm hoping I can find one to get to play.
Great video, And I like the History Lesson, Learned a few things that I did not see in other documentary's! I keep my Atari 8 Bit XE computer is is similar to the 5200 without the sucky controller.
Loved the video!
Amazing comparison video man, I’ve been watching a lot of your videos recently because not many channels cover the second generation of gaming. I would strongly recommend getting the Atari 5200 trackball controller because its better than the regular controller it comes with, works with a lot of the games and makes centipede and missile command feel just like the arcade versions
Good stuff! Keep up the good work. I subbed!
I had the Coleco and my neighbor had the ATARI and they would always come over to my house to play my Coleco Vision and I never went to there house to play ATARI. except to play Asteroids.
The Colecovision was way later than the 2600, so the comparison isn't really valid. However, the Colecovision's hardware was inferior to the 5200.
comparing the 2600 to the colecovision is like comparing the NES to the genesis
@@SoundOfYourDestiny TRUE
@@adriankwok1406 My thought as well.
Does anyone remember Odyssey? It was out at the same time as Intellivision and never really caught on.
Atari's 5200 was really 70s technology.
The bright graphics on the CV is double edge sword. It works for some games.
I finally have a controller I like for the Colecovision. I've been spending time with it. Gyruss plays really well.
These generations were stumbling in the dark. They got amazing results. They carved the genres that we play today.
In my opinion, the NES is when home gaming Really arrived. They took the high notes of history, and refined it. Nintendo made home gaming a separate experience than the arcade.
Terrific video!
I was always a Colecovision fan. At the time it won hands down for me with the driving module, and Turbo port. The roller controller packaged with a game, Atari had a rollerball, but it didn't come packaged with a game. Then the Super Action Controllers and improved sports games. It was amazing at the time and offered superb gameplay for less money. Zaxxon, Venture, Ladybug, Mr. Do and Slither were outstanding ports of excellent arcade games. There are numerous additional examples. What's not to like?
True - it was next level compared to the 2600. I love them both but the Colecovision was far better.
Calling the 3.58mhz Zilog Z-80 in the Colecovision twice as fast 1.79mhz 6502c in the Atari 5200 isn't exactly accurate as 6502's perormed roughly twice as many operations per cycle...
Yep. A modern example would be the current Intel i3 8000 series quad core that runs at 2.8ghz but performs equal to the i5 3550 at 3.5ghz. (of top of my head).
Mhz is a clock rate, not the performance level... Even thou higher clock rate usually means higher performance.
@@TexasCat99 hell I remember getting similar performance in benchmarks at least between a 3ghz pentium 4 and a 1.6ghz celeron m 520, despite the p4 being twice as "fast"
yes. it's not twice at fast. a 1Mhz 6502 perform about a 2.5Mhz z80. But the z80 is faster because of the architecture. 16 bit ops, register based and not heavily memory based, some instructions had to be emulated on 6502 with more instructions giving another penality to 6502.
@@gasparinizuzzurro6306 While the 6502 is heavily memory based, it performs very well, and on zero page memory it actually outperforms Z80 register operations, on instructions that are directly comparable. For example, "adc a, register" on Z80 takes four cycles, while "adc zp" on 6502 takes 3. The difference is however most striking with immediate operands. "adc immediate" takes 2 cycles on 6502 while it takes 7 cycles on the Z80. "ld a, immediate" takes 9 cycles on the Z80 where on the 6502 it takes 2. Even a register to register load is much slower than loading or storing memory on the 6502. These are such fundamental operation that I think bog the Z80 down quite a bit even if it has more registers and more expressive instructions.
It's fair to view the zero page on the 6502 as a large, flexible register file. Where the Z80 shines IMO is in its breadth of operations and 16-bit index registers, particularly for indexing, which results in compact code but very rarely cycle-by-cycle faster, at least for typical 80s video game workloads.
@@storerestore You are not correct.
First: Ld a,immediate takes 7 T-States. Register operations takes 4 t-states.
At conventional clock speeds (like C64 @1Mhz or at most z80 machines that run @ 3Mhz) a simple page zero operation takes 2-3 us for 6502 and a little more than 1us for a register based operation on z80 like add a, b. the same apply to ld a, immediate, little less than 2us.
You may argue that the comparison should be done at same clock speed, but it is not true.
the z80A ran at apparent clock speed of 3-4Mhz but it is in reality a fake. Internally the cpu divides the clock to give the same steps that 6502 achieve with two clock sources at a lower speed. this was done to help to reduce costs of external hw by supply only a clock source instead of two like on 6502. the same idea was applied when the designers of z80 made the dram refresh circuitry built-in on z80 instead of a more common external circuitry. Was to cut-down costs.
You must also take in account that to have a 6502 clocked at the same speed of a 3Mhz z80 was not possible at the time with the conventional DRAM chips used, because there were issues on also memory refresh and video memory contention.
To be more clear, while it is 'normal' to have a 6502 @ 1-1.5Mhz it is normal to have a Z80A @3-4Mhz.
this is due to the fact that 6502 requires two clock sources and z80 only one, but internally it does divide in smaller steps every operation.
This is also proved by the fact that a typical 6502 system ran at apparent slower clock that a z80A but it used the same DRAM chips. So the memory bandwidth is in the same ballbark.
taking this in account, for example in the c64 scenario, the faster cpu operation (page zero addressing) takes 2us.
comparing this with a z80A in the spectrum the ld a,(HL) (that is more flexible than 6502) takes a little less than 2us.
register operations take a little more than 1us.
(I have not considered the extra delay imposed by video hw because they are too much system dependent, for example the VIC-II imposes sometimes a pause to 6502 that can reach even 64us in the worst case, the same apply to ULA in spectrum but the amount of this delay also depends on how much is is the video hardware sophisticated is so a comparison is not fair)
the reality is that the so-called page zero addressing is a tradeoff to remedy to the lack of a great number of registers, but this cannot cope with internal cpu register operations in terms of speed, as is proved also by recent processors that regardless of being CICS/RISC based have a lot of registers available. the entire CPU industry moved from a memory based approach to a register based one even from the early days of 8086 CPU or motorola 68000.
the availability of registers help a lot to reduce memory pressure in typical operations where intermediate results can be stored in cpu registers instead of being another factor of pressure in memory2-
Great video!
I got my first ColecoVision when I was 16, I mowed lawns & I cleaned rain gutters and washed cars so I could buy a Colecovision system.
and I shoved Snow in the winter so I could buy ColecoVision games I had all of them. One Day I come home from school and everything was gone. My dad had taken them and wouldn't give them to me, because I got C on my report card. Even after I got straight A's on the next report card. He still didn't give them back to me. I should have called the POLICE and reported them Stolen at that time. Dad..... if your reading this FU!
I’d have to say that was kinda hard but he knew you should of had a A all along so I guess he didn’t think it was worth giving it back to you because you may go back to a C
Because Hope why were you going to school making Cs and hermited in your bedroom wasting your time playing video games when you should have been on the road minting money like your brothers. Joseph was right you LOSER.
I’m addicted to these videos
Awesome review and comparison.
I loved my Colecovision so much, and it seemed so much more advanced than my old 2600. But it had one major flaw: my God, but my hands would cramp up after an hour or of play on the Colecovision. With the main fire button operated with the index finger of the hand that was holding it, your hand would be twisted into a claw by the end.
It's so strange how Atari, Coleco, and Mattel nearly got the next generation controller layout right. Had they only rotated the controller setup 90 degrees and gone with a thumb control instead of a joystick, they'd have beaten Nintendo to the punch.
Don't get me started on the ill-fated Super Action controllers. It certainly was an improvement over the stock controllers, and I liked the idea of a roller wheel to give you some sort of paddle-like analog control, but they looked like overgrown ski pole grips and just weren't a good design.
Even at the time, people hated the Intellivision disc. But I didn't! It was a 16 directional pad, something unheard of until analog sticks.
The joystick issue on the 5200 is not an issue today with all the upgrades (gold dot and flex). Donkey Kong on the Coleco is even missing a scene. 5200 all day,
19:10 Since it uses the same sound chip as the SMS I guess such homebrew would also be an indicator of what it could do audio-wise.
I never knew anyone that had an Atari 5200. The Atari 2600 was the first and popular till the colecovision came out and it became king. Intellivision was always considered a bad purchase. Many people were using the Apple, Radio Shack and Commodore series of home computers and at the time they had much better games.
In my neighborhood all the kids on the block had different consoles/computers. I had a 2600, the kids who lived upstairs had the 5200, my niece who lived on the same block had the Colecovision, the kids one block over had the Intellivision, and the neighbors across the street had an Atari 400 computer. We had various game sessions at different houses. 😁
I was in junior high about that time (82-83) and eventually got a computer myself, most of my school friends had an Atari 800 (as that was the one predominantly used at my Jr high), one had a Commodore 64, I got an Atari 800XL.
It was all cool though, some companies would include both Atari and C-64 versions of a game in one purchase (whether it was a cassette tape with a version on each side or 5.25 inch floppy disks, again with versions on either side or separate disks), we'd buy them and give each other their computer's version.
Another thing, I really wish those Atari 8-bit computer games were also made for the Atari 5200 since they are of the same architecture. In my opinion there is absolutely no reason why Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr wasnt made for the Atari 5200
Atari 5200 was never big here in Germany. So my next console after my 2600 became the Colecovision. I never had one of the expansions, though. They were nearly impossible to get here. At least I had no idea where to get them. I did not like the controller of the Colecovision much. I never tried switching the controllers, though :) If I only knew :D
As a kid in the mid-late 80's I can remember my neighborhood friend and I unplugging and re-plugging RCA type wires to the TV to play different games on his Intellivision and my Coleco Vision.. That was a great time... Plus 3 wheelers and go karts gained popularity... Then we moved on to to that.
In Australia, Defender was titled Stargate. I used to love playing it, but it got super hard with the aliens moving way too fast to outmanoeuvre.
That's weird considering Stargate was the sequel to Defender the arcade game.
Your vision is our vision ... COLECOVISION!
Thank you. Great video.
Which should you buy NOW, 5200 or CV? A few tips for newbies, or those interested in revisiting the past. 38 years after release, CVs are notoriously buggy, with jibberish coming up on the screen. Their power supplies are buggy. Their cartridge ports are buggy. The on/off switch inside is a weak link , though easily cleaned if you are willing to remove the CV cover. The joint at which you plug the power supply into the console is another weak link that often requires some solder. Controllers rarely work. Point: it’s worth it to get refurbished CV equipment. 5200 consoles and especially power supplies have held up well. Unlike CV, 5200 carts require cleaning only occasionally. You’ll HAVE to buy a refurbished 5200 controller. My refurbished 5200 controller has held up for over two years. The capacity to attach any standard controller to the CV is a big plus. Various interfaces are around to expand 5200 controller options. CV had more games released, but also more shovelware. CV has a much more active home brew community and fan base these days than the 5200. Both systems have a number of “can’t miss” game exclusives. I give the narrow nod to CV, but I think the 5200 is great and has a great library. Obviously, I have both systems, and all originally released games for both.
FYI, on every Colecovision game I can recall trying it on, you can just leave the CV controller in Port 2 and still use it for single player game selection with an aftermarket controller in Port 1. Back in the day, you could get a keypad with Y-cable to use 3rd party controllers (Wico, IIRC). Or, best fix: get the Super Action Controllers.
Atari 2600 in Canada was hilarious, we had bootleg games at the time for it lol, "Zellers Atari Games
Zellers was a Canadian version of K-Mart. They also produced their own line of bootleg Atari 2600 carts for the low, low price of $6.99. Not only were the games almost all stolen, but the artwork for them was largely stolen as well"
Nice video!
My family was a Colecovision family 🍺🍩 I loved it!
I think every circle of friends had that one friend that had a Colecovision and would always be that annoying like gnat "Colecovison is so much better, come to my house, the graphics are so much better" but yet EVERYONE just loved Atari more . There was just something Atari that had this "magic" to it. it's graphics didn't need to be better the games were just more fun, it had so many quirky titiles, puzzle shoot em mishmash of games, Even games that weren't one to one ports from the arcade had thier "magic" to them that had their own uniqueness to it LIke Space Invaders, Ms. Pacman, Centipede, Asteroids, weird crazy titles like Revenge of the Beefstake Tomatoes. It's something colecovision fans could never understand, it was never totally about great graphics it was about great titiles , fun games,. It was a magic that Colecovision could never capture. Nintendo did but Coleco nope. and to date this still drives Colecovisions fans from the 80's crazy. I mean Colecovision had an atari adapter that has to tell you something
They way that coleco guy said “sorry Atari” sent me
OP Answer: Colecovision.
I don’t care what anyone says. I had a Atari 2600. I had 70+ games for it. My neighbors had Atari as well and we would spend hrs playing. It was not the best system but it was pretty decent for its time. I even bought the wireless joystick 🕹 that came out for the 2600 which was nice.
I wanted a Coleco with the exp pack for Atari games and the steering wheel but I was told no, my parents didn’t want to clutter up the room with all these consoles.
Sadly. In 2003, I gave all my stuff to a friend to sell on EBay for debt I owed him for things I bought. Kinda wish I had it back
Well way back before internet-we still had video games competitions all over the neighborhood. Several people including myself had an Atari. Had a friend with an Oddesy and another with an Intellivision within about an 8 block radius. I was one of only two kids in my entire Junior High to have a ColecoVision. There have only been two times in the last 40 years I said wow when hooking up a new console. First time was playing Zaxxon on the Coleco. Second time was playing Mario 64.
Great video thank you
another fun video!
Good upload Tyler sir
Ah, no love for Intellivision.....
I understand this is between 5200 and ColecoVision but then you used the VCS in the clock comparison. So that should be fair game for Intellivision as well.
The Intellivision clocked at 3.3 Mhz and used 16 bit processing before either of the competitors.
No way! I thought everything was 8 bit in those days.
@@Wingnutcaseman : well, not all 16 bits were used for graphics processing and some wasn't even used, or lost, in games.
The "personal computer" was expensive and competitive in the early 80's. If you are really interested, check out the Computer Chronicles episodes
Yup you can't compare 2600 to Coleco or 5200 why do we?
Overall great comparison, thanks)))
Great video and thanks for the memory, my younger brother Chris and I had the 2600 for Christmas that year it came out, it was okay and yes I had the et game and hated it very much look
Very cool!
I guess we needed a console for the Colecovision to beat up on lol I like the video 👍🏼
That was such a great review. I like how you went the extra mile and did the sounds, graphics and gameplay in side by side view. It is such a great way to get the comparison. I also like how you did it with a few different games - great job. When I was a kid I begged my dad for an Atari 2600. On Christmas morning I opened my present and to my initial dismay it was some other weird looking system that I had never seen before (a Coleco vision) after unwrapping and playing Donkey Kong and Cosmic Avenger I was totally blow away. Imagine my surprise when 2 days later for my birthday I unwrapped the Atari 2600 and Turbo add-ons for the Colecovision - Best gifts ever - I felt like the luckiest kid in the world.
Pheugo I appreciate you sharing, I genuinely enjoyed your story. That would’ve been a great Christmas! 👍 Thank you for your kind words and thank you very much for watching!
atari brought video gaming home, colecovision perfected it. i was the squirrel that dropped the nut and ran when the colecovision came out
Great job!thank you!
Thanks great history lesson here on the consoles.
Excellent video! So I was 8 years old in 1982 and at the time we had an Atari 2600… my
Neighbors we played with back then had a Colecovision and I remember being absolutely blown away by the graphics of the coleco and us playing games like Smurfs, mouse trap, pitfall, pepper 2 etc… hours of fun and we always chose the coleco
To play instead of my Atari 2600 bc it was just better! It felt more arcade like and had much more vibrant colors and graphics, def a superior system. As a matter of fact I felt so passionate about the coleco that I bought one a year ago and have 20
Games so far for it and I have to say my kids love it and play these games with me as well. Don’t get me wrong I also grew up with the NES and Genesis etc… and love those consoles but the coleco just holds a special place in my
Memories bc it was my
First memories of playing video games and great ones at that!
So the colecovision for me wins hands down everyday of the week! Love this system ❤️
Colecovision had the best platformer of all time as a pack-in game....... nuff said
Q-bert on the Coleco sounds virtually identical to the 5200.
Dude, I don't know your name (haven't found it yet), but I just discovered your channel today. I'm hooked. This what I've always wanted in a videogame-themed show: historical perspective, nitty gritty tech breakdowns, side-by-side comparisons... love it. You really do your homework, and it shows. Cheers!
Christian Huey First, thank you very much for watching. My name is Tyler. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I appreciate your kind words as well. This channel fulfill a lifelong dream for me as well. What I enjoy most is being able to share my passion with others and seeing it appreciated.
Colecovision was a great system overall. 5200 came out too late and because of that didn't have as many games as colecovision did. But today Colecovision still has hugh support from the homebrew community. I think there are more homebrew games than original games for it.
You know Atari 5200 was Rushed to release to Answer ColecoVision and mainly, ImtelliVision, right?
@@Nestalgba92023 And the silly thing is the tech in the 5200 was from their 8 bit computer line the 400 and 800, which were around since 1979, for context the Intellivision and Colecovision launched in 80 and 82 respectively.
I think some of those exclusive games on the 5200 make a difference like Space Dungeon and Mountain King. Never owned a Colecovision but that port of Donkey Kong did look good.
Atari Inc's actual founding history is a lot more complicated than that. Check out the "Atari Inc: Business is Fun" book for the accurate and definitive history...
Yes, I agree. I have not checked out that book, but I will now. Thanks for watching! :)
For a serious comment, it's not entirely true that there can only be four sprites on screen on Atari 2600. Everything in the system is line oriented, so you can actually only display _two_ arbitrary graphics sprites _per_ _line_. Through clever programming you could then display many sprites in a single full frame. Even that is not strictly true since you can also re-trigger a sprite again on the same scan line after it has already been drawn. Using this technique you can make for example a 6 digit score display with six sprites on the same line, by alternating retriggering of the two player sprites at even intervals.
It's sort of true that you only have half a playfield to work with at a time (well, half a _line_ of a playfield), but again that is something that you can work around by reloading the playfield graphics registers mid-screen. All this timing trickery is something that 2600 programmers must have been used to, because the whole video display system relies on CPU intervention between each line to reload the line based graphics registers. This also means that the 2600 spends a considerable amount of CPU time just loading the next line's data into the graphics registers. At full vertical resolution, through the portion of a frame where the screen is visible, the CPU will almost always be occupied with manipulating the graphics registers or halted waiting for the next line.
It's a really constrained system. I've heard somewhere that it was really only designed to run a couple of games, and from the terminology used for the sprites (player, missiles, balls) one can guess which. Things like generating a correct video signal, which later consoles (including Colecovision) handled entirely automatically in hardware, was something that the 2600 largely offloaded to the programmer because it was cheaper. The Colecovision could use almost all that time for game logic rather than worrying about how to draw the display.
Keep it up, earned 👍
TampaTec Thanks! I appreciate it.
CLARIFICATION: CPU Speed
The Z80 and 6502c are constructed very differently. Generally speaking, these processors are about even in terms of performance, even with different clock speeds. In this video, I directly compare clock speeds, but did not mention the differences in processor architecture.
However, there is still a slight advantage to the Colecovision's Z80. I did state that the Z80 has twice the clock speed, but did not mean this to say that it has twice the performance. The Z80 can outshine the 6502c at certain tasks, but overall accomplishes less per cycle than the 6502c. Like any processor, it largely depends on how programmers code for it. I hope this helps clarify this point. Thank you for your comments about this.
Another thing to note when comparing anything else with the Atari 2600 is that it could only load a line at a time into the graphics chip. The graphics memory is literally a handful of bytes that represent the playfield, player graphics and sprite states only for a single line. Therefore the CPU had to spend a lot of time reloading the graphics registers between lines, which by comparison to the Colecovision (which handled all this automatically in hardware using more video memory and a more advanced display controller) wastes a lot of CPU cycles.
I had an opportunity to buy one a few years back, but I wanted to talk to the Wife, first...she agreed I should get it, so I went back and it was gone...I miss my Colecovision...