Atari 7800 1986 (1 of 3): Pole Position II / Dig Dug / Ms. Pac-Man / Joust | NES Works Gaiden #12

Before I dive into NES Works 1988 in earnest, it's time to set right a historic wrong of sorts. NES Works/Game Boy Works/et al. have focused primarily on Nintendo's legacy, but that has always been more a function of my personal time and resource limitations than any slight to Nintendo's peers in the console space. Now that I've launched my long-overdue Lynx and Game Gear retrospectives, there's no getting around the fact that the core console space deserves the same treatment as handheld gaming. And so, we rewind time about 18 months to mid-1986 this week to begin looking at the early days of the Atari 7800, the first console out of the gates to compete with Nintendo's NES in the U.S. It had a slow start, to say the least-it will only take three episodes of this length to bring these 7800 retrospectives to January 1988 in line with the current NES chronology!
It's hard to see this early 7800 lineup as serious competition to the NES-these few games feel very much like relics of an earlier era. That's because they are, of course. They're the games that would have launched alongside the 7800 in 1984 had Jack Tramiel not put the console on ice for two years. Viewed through that lens, however, the 7800's initial offerings were fairly impressive, and even in 1986 these were the best home ports available for all four of these arcade classics. Was that really the most compelling sales pitch for kids who were already immersed in Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt? Absolutely not! But even if timing and market realities tripped it up right off the starting blocks, the 7800 deserves respect.
Special thanks goes to Kevin Bunch of @AtariArchive for the hard work he's invested into sorting out the actual chronology of 7800 releases by researching magazines and newspapers of the late ’80s, allowing us to pinpoint game launches to the month. His works is far more precise than the internet's existing 7800 release info, which is generally no more specific than by year... and often the wrong year at that.
Video Works is funded via Patreon ( / gamespite ) - support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its KZbin debut! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week.

[@AtariArchive]

Thanks for the shout out! As someone who did own the 7800 in its heyday I'm glad to have helped in my own way. A couple fun things to note: Practically all the early 7800 releases all come from GCC, the same outfit that did the arcade Ms. Pac-Man. GCC was also behind the design of the 7800 itself, and that was a big reason why the machine was mothballed for two years - essentially, GCC was owed money for the games and the hardware, which Warner was obligated to pay but refused following the Tramiel sale, as they insisted it was on the new Atari Corp to foot the bill. Tramiel eventually relented and paid up for both software and hardware by late 1985, but as you note that did kind of put the 7800 in an awkward position with the market having shifted (as well as suck up a lot of the money Tramiel had intended to use for new software and promoting the platform).

[@JeremyParish]

Yep, there's a big sidebar on GCC in the next episode-I didn't want to get too bogged down with that too much system-level material in a single episode. Thanks again for all the research you've done on the system!

[@jasonblalock4429]

It really makes you wonder how the 80s gaming and computing landscape might have been different, if Jack Tramiel hadn't had his fingers in so many pies.

[@SECONDQUEST]

Oh wow, thanks for the information!

[@amuzulo]

Jason Blalock Yeah, it’s possible Atari would’ve been the reigning king of the living room with the NES being that alternative console from Japan. Crazy to think about!

[@EvilAng3la]

GCC being behind the Ms. Pac-Man port is important in another way - it has the correct ghost AI, which I know many other home versions did not have. Namco's Museum titles for PS1 and N64, for example, both use the Pac-Man ghost AI instead. This results in the ghosts following patterns instead of the randomness of the arcade and 7800 versions, along with a few other behavior differences. So the Namco versions are Pac-Man with a Ms. Pac-Man skin in comparison.

[@Chumblefunk]

People will still be probably be watching this channel hundreds of years from now.

[@theguywhomakespopculturere574]

I can't wait until 2193 when they clone Jeremy Parish back to life to host the final episode of NES Works (A Disney-Amazon Production).

[@almightycinder]

@@theguywhomakespopculturere574 Are Disney-Amazon Production the makers of the X-Box 3 One X F 2 or the Playstation 45?

[@theguywhomakespopculturere574]

@@almightycinder They started manufacturing the PlayStation 2 2 once SuperSony's trademark ran out.

[@tomatotomatoe7253]

As long as he don't review the intellivision amico

[@tomatotomatoe7253]

@@theguywhomakespopculturere574 He will just be a head in a jar like Futurama

[@Encyclopedia_Brown97]

I love that Jeremy has just accepted that this project will literally never reach its conclusion and has decided he might as well give the most complete account possible

[@alex_-yz9to]

Never lose hope, multi game episodes will make sure it will happen some day as opposed ti the multi episode games he used to do

[@AltimaNEO]

Here's hoping he's got some children to carry his lifes work to completion

[@rodneylives]

Excellent work as always! While the machines are of comparable power, and both essentially use 6502s as their processor, it's worth noting the differences between the 7800 and NES that gave their games different qualities. The biggest, I would say, would be scrolling support. While the NES' lack of RAM is a major limiting factor, once its PPU is supplied with a bit of extra memory (packed on board the cartridge!), it is a scrolling beast. It (with that extra RAM) basically maintains four screens of graphics tiles instead of just one, that the PPU can display any portion of. Super Mario Bros has a whole screen full of data ahead of Mario that it can draw and update whole seconds before Mario gets to it. Meanwhile older 8-bit systems didn't offer nearly as good scrolling support. The Commodore 64, for instance, a system I'm intimately familiar with, only allows up to two character tiles ahead of the visible screen, which forced its processor to spend a lot of time constantly drawing the next screen. (In recent years bizarre and inventive hacks have been discovered to get around this, but they weren't known of at the time and the C64's chip wasn't designed for them.) It also required the developer to write his code in such a way as to figure out the next data being scrolled in line by line, which took still more processor cycles, while the NES could use the whole offscreen area as a buffer for drawing the upcoming terrain. It was this affinity for screen scrolling, I think more than anything, that was the NES' best feature, that allowed for a whole universe of scrolling action games that hadn't been seen before, that basically made the whole scrolling platformer genre possible.

[@SECONDQUEST]

Very interesting read! Thank you

[@KuraIthys]

Ironically, the Atari 8 bit microcomputers (of which the Atari 5200 is a very close relative - to the point that the software requires only very minor tweaks to port) are extremely capable of scrolling. Although the nature of how it performs scrolling requires that horizontal scrolling in particular takes a relatively large amount of work (you might have to update as many as 24 or more bytes of data to scroll in more info) the fact is, you can make your scrolling region pretty much as large as you have the memory to support. (so from the 800XL onwards, that's near to 64k) Vertical scrolling in particular is simply a matter of adjusting the memory offset that the system starts drawing graphics from. And since this is a 2 byte value, it can be anywhere in memory you like. (there is a problem that graphics data cannot cross 4k boundaries in memory. But that only applies to the auto-incremented values; Since display lists let you set multiple start values, there's a fairly simple workaround.) Given most display modes amount to 40 bytes per line (in graphics modes that would be 40 bytes per scanline, while in character modes that would be an 8 or 16 scanline high character) This means if using a character mode, with 24 lines of characters, your maximum theoretical (obviously due to shared memory you'd run into other items in memory - this would display as garbage, though it would otherwise work) vertical scrolling height is something like 1638 lines, or 68 screens worth, without ever having to adjust anything other than the memory offsets and the fine scrolling register. And while it takes more work to do due to how it's handled (a display list set up for horizontal scrolling essentially requires a new memory offset every line), horizontal scrolling for a standard 40x24 character layout could cover an area up to 2730 characters wide, or about 68 screens wide. (again, not in practice due to memory limitations) You can alter the height of a display easily from being a single line to (on PAL computers) somewhere near 30 lines, so there's a lot of leeway, and of course, you can combine vertical and horizontal scrolling, which creates reduced distances in both axes. But the point is you can scroll extremely long distances without having to alter the memory the display is accessing; It can be set up in advance, and the limitations are basically that the graphics chip, just like the CPU cannot access more than 64k of memory. (though if you have a 130xe or any kind of modified machine with more than 64k of RAM, you can configure it so the display memory is separate to the CPU memory, where normally they are shared. Eg. A 128k machine can in effect have 64k of video memory all to itself for the graphics chip.) The irony perhaps, is that in some ways, the Atari 7800 may be a LESS capable machine than it's predecessor the 5200. I would think that Atari would have done better on a hardware level to upgrade the 5200/8 bit microcomputer design than what the 7800 design amounted to. There's early planning documents for a backwards compatible upgrade to ANTIC an GTIA that would essentially have been a 65816 based system with massively upgraded sprite capabilities (16 colour sprites, far more of them available, and a bunch of other subtle upgrades). Though I suppose what you'd end up with would look a lot like an Amiga. (perhaps unsurprising given that the Amiga was designed by the same people as the Atari 8 bit computers were.) Tramiel however had very different ideas about what computers and consoles should look like, so I guess that's a big reason why such designs were canned...

[@rodneylives]

@@KuraIthys That is interesting! Although still more work to do than on the NES, which basically can track (with extra RAM) a screen four times larger than what's visible with little effort on the developer's part. Part of what makes the C64 terrible at scrolling (although not as bad as the original MSX, which had no hardware smooth scrolling at all) was the need to move characters during each frame. With only a couple of characters in it's "buffer" (which are obtained by reducing the visible screen size to 38 columns), it's always having to not just move new characters to the display, but manually move the all the other characters around the screen on specific frames. That's 1,000 copy-and-writes within a 60th (or 50th on PAL) of a second. While it's possible to kind of work around that, since the C64 lets you keep alternate screens in memory that can be switched to nearly instantly and so you can prepare the next shift ahead of time if you know it's coming, sadly that doesn't apply to the color data, which is kept in a special 1,000-byte region of memory on-board the video chip and cannot be relocated, which imposes severe limitations on how colorful your graphics can be. (Popular C64 games Uridium and Paradroid get around this, I figure, by basically having the whole background using the same colors so it doesn't have to be updated, trading that off for allowing for faster scrolling.) It should be noted that in the last few years people have managed to glitch the C64's VIC-II video chip into allowing a form of NES-like free scrolling, but with a tragic limitation: it messes up the VIC-II's chip timing. On the Commodore 64, the VIC-II also performs the dynamic RAM refresh that keeps memory consistent, so it's possible with this glitch to cause it to take so long updating the screen that it doesn't refresh memory rapidly enough, and so some bits "flicker" on some bytes of memory, usually causing an immediate crash due to program code getting corrupted. But if you know which bits tend to be affected, you can plan for it, by keeping your code in a part of memory that won't be harmed, and using the uncertain memory in such a way that the high bits don't matter. If I remember correctly, it was using this trick that enabled that brilliant (and Nintendo-hated) port of Super Mario Bros. to the C64 a while back.

[@lmeeken]

On a completely personal level, it's really interesting to see some in=depth attention paid to the 7800. I was one of those kids that got one rather than an NES (it was cheaper in '89, we were poor, and we'd just moved back to the States from Europe, so had no idea of Nintendo's dominance/reputation). I often feel like a few years of my childhood were spent in an alternate dimension that no one else ever heard of. I'm really looking forward to this series!

[@amuzulo]

I had pretty much the same experience as you. Also the host of Classic Game Room had the same fate!

[@repussified]

I had a 7800 and later an NES. I noticed SMB and Zelda were more interesting than anything on Atari 7800 or 2600 but now I appreciate their good games.

[@davidgill7412]

Atari 7800 was my first game console that I received in Christmas of 86'. Nintendo dominance hadn't happened yet. I knew Atari because of the arcades I went to as well as my cousin who had a Atari 2600. It blew me away to play video games at home. Over the course of the next year, I would receive many 2600 games (because they were in Toys R' Us bargain bins) and a handful of 7800 games. I knew nothing about competing systems and software licencing so I didn't know that the arcade Super Mario Bros. would never come to the 7800. Christmas of 87', without even asking for it, I got a NES. And so started my love of gaming. I loved the NES but I'll never forget my first.

[@mrp4242]

Our family got the more affordable 7800 Christmas of ‘88. I had friends who had an NES. But I was grateful to have something of my own. We played Ms PacMan to death. Great memories.

[@FallicIdol]

Mrs Pac-Man and Dig Dug are two of the best arcades ever. They’re timeless

[@magus2342]

Love to see you on camera, it's taking me back to the 1UP Show. Excellent material as always!

[@DanielBurapavong]

Great video. The Atari 7800 was our family's first video game console in High Point, North Carolina.

[@RichardTroupe]

Excellent! I can't wait to see more on the Atari 7800 here. I have almost a full 7800 PAL release collection (still need one more game) and it never gets the recognition it deserves. Some incredible arcade ports were released for the system, including Food Fight, but its full capabilities were never fully realised due to developers being locked down to the NES. It can outperform the NES in many areas (except for stock sound), but it took a recent homebrew release a couple of years ago called 'Rikki & Vikki' to show what it could really do. For the record, I didn't even have a 7800 back in the day (I had the NES), but I got one about 5 years ago and it stunned me.

[@christopherdemichiei]

Jeremy, great video as usual! I don't know if you've gotten a lot of feedback about it, but your in-person segments between games are really turning out well. I know it's mostly for algorithmic purposes, but it's good. 👍

[@JeremyParish]

Thanks. It's really less to appease The Algorithm and more for the actual human factor, though. The Algorithm wants angry, combative faces... humans just want faces.

[@jonriede6846]

@@JeremyParish yes- also, after years of listening to you narrate, it's nice to see you in person. Especially in this crazy quarantine world we are in right now.

[@JeremyParish]

The voiceover narrative is recorded at a desk with a full mixing board and a large broadcast mic, which isn't exactly camera-friendly. I'm still learning the ropes of my lav mic, but there's only so much you can do with a tiny clip-on condenser.

[@volumefact]

@@JeremyParish I had noticed the same thing, it's a little jarring (not to complain - minor nitpick on a great video). Have you considered using the broadcast mic in the in-camera sections, even if it means the mix is on camera? It might be a positive trade off, since the current sound quality transitions really jump out, but people are pretty accustomed to seeing the mic on camera in youtube videos.

[@JeremyParish]

I'm definitely not doing that, as it would require reconfiguring my office and toting recording equipment up and down several flights of stairs each time I want to record two minutes of video.

[@Cory_]

I adore the 7800, I think it's my favorite 8-bit system. Tons of short pick up and play games.

[@AverageDrafter]

As a kid I remember the Post 2600 Atari systems as something that you only saw in a window in a specialty electronics store or game store. I never got my hands on one, no kid I knew had one, never aspired to get one, never begged my mom for one. The NES on the other hand, I already played most of the opening line up in the arcades, and Wal-Mart had the playable display up where there was always a line of kids to play Ice Climber and such. I mean, I spent the summer before rolling up pennies to play EXCITEBITE at the convenience store, and now an arcade perfect version was here WITH AN EDITOR!

[@JeremyParish]

Yeah, the 7800 had zero presence at mainstream retailers like Walmart and Target. When I saw it, I almost always saw it at toy stores (Toys R Us, Kaybee, etc.).

[@AverageDrafter]

Hey Jeremy, here's another tangent for you to chase - The Nintendo M82 (which is what I now know is what the in store demo unit is called). A multicartridge NES that millions have played, but few actually own! That's 'Works bait if I've ever seen it...

[@JeremyParish]

A key part of Works is including photography of the original hardware/software, so that's definitely not happening.

[@MarcBarkyMarta]

Great stuff! The 7800 Pole Position II was cool, but the ColecoVision had a great racing game - Sega’s Turbo! It was pretty impressive back in the day, and it even came with an actual racing wheel and pedal for analog controls, and you could use the control disc as a gearshift. The game was really close to the arcade version, though graphically scaled back. ColecoVision had some good ports, and it was a big inspiration for the NES (not to mention similar in hardware to the SG-1000 and MSX standard).

[@binkbonkbones3402]

This channel is SUPER underrated.

[@Jordan3DS]

Agreed, I think he manages to relay information in a way that's both informative as well as entertaining, whereas most KZbinrs tend to stray too far in one direction or the other.

[@misterknightowlandco]

I had an Atari 7800 back in the day. I loved it cuz you could play the old Atari games as well as the new ones which there weren’t many of from what I remember. I really dug it though if it had more new games I would have preferred it.

[@famuel2604]

You are slaying in this footage of Pac-Man

[@ScarletSwordfish]

I am loving these gaiden series.

[@jamesmoss3424]

The Atari 7800 is a underrated console and it needs the respect it want. 😀👍🎮

[@HexagonHeat]

11:06 get stick bugged lol (also I enjoy learning about these systems that aren't covered as often)

[@BobMagana]

Atari 7800 was my first console, we asked for a NES for Xmas, played the crap out of that system.

[@elfiebranford9330]

Really loving seeing you more in the video, it adds an extra layer of coziness to your excellent videos~!! I especially love your hat too!! I've been waiting for an upcoming video on the 7800, as it's probably my favourite Atari console next to the 2600. I was surprised to see just how good looking Pole Position II looked on the system, even compared to Rad Racer. I never noticed until now just how mediocre, for lack of a better word, the colours looked on the 7800's games; it looked like an NES with a filter thrown over it. Even with that graphical disadvantage, it has a certain charm to it. At least to me. Great video as always, Jeremy~!! Can't wait to see more of the 7800 soon!!

[@jeremygregorio7472]

My mom got me a 7800 because it was compatible with my 2600 cartridges. That was a huge selling point to parents as was the lower cartridge costs but nothing could compete with Mario.

[@CircsC]

I love how bloody thorough you are.

[@opaljk4835]

It’s nice to see your face on these more recent videos. It brings kind of a warm welcome. Thanks for the wealth of amazing content on here and elsewhere

[@SatoshiMatrix1]

I'm glad to see you covering the 7800, Jeremy. I've experienced the 7800 only through emulation as I don't quite think there are enough games for it to make it worth owning. I do appreciate the history lesson though.

[@k8track]

Really looking forward to seeing the Atari 7800 get the Jeremy Parish treatment. FYI, this is actually NES Works Gaiden #13, as #12 covered Mega Man Legends, which you posted on May 6 earlier this year.

[@feitclub]

I wonder where I would have fallen on the line, having grown up playing 2600 AND classic arcade games, had the NES not arrived when it did or if the 7800 was released sooner. these are great arcade ports! but they really lack the magnetism of the NES launch library.

[@amuzulo]

Yeah, imagine if the 7800 actually came out in 1984 like Bushnell wanted! 😮

[@g.u.959]

Not sure if it’d ever get covered on here, but I’d highly recommend Rikki & Vikki for the 7800. It’s a homebrew game that released in late 2018, it’s a puzzle platformer that has 1P and co-op campaigns! The developer makes and sells actual cartridges in really nice cases, and they work on authentic hardware. But it’s also on Steam as well!

[@davidlee1980]

I was going to write the same thing. Rikki & Vikki is amazing. 7800 has some awesome homebrew.

[@repussified]

@@davidlee1980 Ironically now is the best time to own a 7800. Probably can't say that for most other after-market platforms with homebrew.

[@aaronmoore6275]

Love your stuff. Actual history!

[@nivaldowesley666]

joust aways remember me ready player one, the book! great video!

[@jaylashmenn5999]

Jesus Jeremy, this is quite an undertaking. I pray to God you're Gr8 Grandsons can finish with reviewing all the switch games by 2040 I may pass away one day. Ha. Love the show.thanks and keep up the gr8 work

[@JeremyParish]

It dies with me, I'm afraid.

[@jeffroberts9693]

Great content as always. It'd be cool to see a Lynx/7800 combo book from you.

[@JeremyParish]

There'll be books, but the two platforms would be separate. There are enough games for each platform to support a full volume apiece.

[@jeffroberts9693]

@@JeremyParish Even better! I don't much care for the Lynx but I'm always interested in the history and intellectual analysis of gaming. You provide both so I'll always buy your books.

[@RCaIabraro]

I loved my Lynx.

[@OttScott]

Love the context. Love your content. Keep it coming!

[@stewartbladensb]

Oh my god. So now I’ve got to trawl through even more of your bloody videos? Well if I bloody well have to I will but I’m not saying I’m going to enjoy watching every, single, video, you put out there.

[@JeremyParish]

Sounds rough. Hope you make it through somehow.

[@billcook4768]

The time scale is interesting. I grew up playing and loving these arcade games. And in the GBA era, two of my first carts were Namco and Midway collections with them. Played the heck out of them. But in 1986? I had no interest in playing older arcade games.

[@lmello009]

So there will be a SMS Works series, too? And SMD/Genesis along the SNES? You'll need help, that's a lot of work. Cheers!

[@AlexZanderSantaMaria]

I have next to no knowledge of the 7800, so this is very interesting, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the subseries.

[@deleteable.]

this channel way too underrated

[@dumpnchase]

As always appreciate the episode. Great idea showing the other system. Helps us understand more of the landscape. Great Job!!

[@JolliAllGenGamer]

Ok good glad you are doing 7800 I just got an evercade and got for the atari collection. The 7800 console and collecting is starting to get expensive now.

[@elrandohorse]

9 games at launch is impressive in this day and age

[@roberthanthonymartinezrive7383]

Looking foward to your thoughts on Midnight Mutants, Alien Brigade, Scrapyard Dog, Commando and especially Ninja Golf, which are five of the best titles on the 7800 :D Good episode BTW! P.S.: The title of the video shoudn't end with NES Works Gaiden #13 instead of #12 ;)

[@Choralone422]

I remember the 7800 pretty well. My best friend & next door neighbor had one. His mom bought it for his birthday in the summer of 87 since they had a 2600 back in it's day and didn't want to take a chance on this new Nintendo company. The 7800 was a step up from the 2600 graphically but nothing that we ever played on it seemed to have any real depth of any kind gameplay wise. Plus the sound on the 7800 isn't any better than the 2600 (with the exception of 2 games which use an additional POKEY chip in them.) I got a NES for Christmas of 1987 and once my friend and his mom saw & heard Zelda & SMB (which were they only 2 games I owned for months!) my friend also got a NES for his birthday in the summer of 88. The 7800 was permanently shelved after that! Ultimately the 7800 on a technical level was always going to play second fiddle to the NES (or even the SMS) as Atari didn't develop the system initially and didn't add-on to the hardware in any way during its life. Unlike the NES which had a number of technical additions to the cartridges over time which greatly expanded the amount of ROM space a game could use through bank switching, added extra RAM, battery backed SRAM, and more! That allowed the games to grow in complexity and depth in ways the 7800 games never could!

[@BloodyPlatty]

Love your videos man!!

[@rabiroden]

that flame graphic in Joust looks pretty excellent tho

[@SECONDQUEST]

I'm loving this new format with you on screen! My only critique is the difference in audio quality between you on and off screen. I'm sure you know about it so it's all groovy. It's always cool to see the narrator or video creator on screen so I hope you keep it up! As always, I'm loving the series.

[@michaelmorris4515]

The 7800 hardware was optimized for these sorts of games. The NES's tile based graphics where better suited for the generation of titles that it had. As your series will no doubt show, the 7800 really struggled with scrolling backgrounds. Also, Atari didn't do themselves any favors by skimping on the sound chip of the system choosing to leave the 7800 by default with the same sound chip as the 2600. The 7800's main selling point was it's ability to play the nearly the entire 2600 library. That was the reason I bought mine, which I still have after all these years.

[@crithon]

wow, that capture is amazing.

[@steveafulton]

Very nice work.

[@lurkerrekrul]

I first learned about the Atari 7800 when I saw a two-page spread on it in Electronic Games magazine. I loved the look of the (artist's rendered) screenshots and I wanted one! Then Tramiel took over Atari and canned all the projects. Fast forward to a couple years later and I find it sitting on the shelf at my local toy store. Unfortunately, I think it was like $100, which I didn't have, and since I already had an Amiga, it was hard to justify that kind of money for a system that was now two years out of date. :( I eventually got a used one from someone on the net and while I liked it, it would have been much more impressive if it had come out when it was originally intended. I HATED the joystick though. Holding it for more than a few minutes lead to serious hand cramp and the joystick never felt very responsive. It always felt like I was fighting it. I used to just set the games to one-button mode and plug in one of my other joysticks.

[@NukeOTron]

Nice of you to bring up Williams Electronics, and not automatically assume that Atari owned Joust and Defender. Seriously, that seems to be a common misconception I've heard over the years. By the way, do you see any ports of Sinistar on your list of things to cover eventually? It is a historically important game.

[@jasonblalock4429]

I HUNGER!!! ... for an episode about Sinistar. ;-)

[@JeremyParish]

Not seeing it on the agenda for the foreseeable future, I'm afraid. As it is, I've had to contrive all kinds of weird excuses to cover old Atari and Sega arcade coin-op titles...

[@mrp4242]

Ms. PacMan: My favorite game on the system as a kid. Got more play at our house than any other. Dig Dug and Joust: we didn’t own these. But for sure would have liked them. In retrospect, I would have asked to get either of these games back in Christmas of 1989 rather than Kareteka, which is what I got. Ugh. Pole Position II: Packaged title. Decent enough.

[@BagaJr]

I wonder how different things would have been if the Atari 7800 came out in 1984. Would it have made it harder for Nintendo to take over, or would the 7800's limited library still hold it back?

[@willmitchell8500]

Love the Nintendo 64 Christmas Kid forever.

[@ztoxtube]

Ms Pac-Man on 7800 was so good. Also Xevious. Shame about the late releases.

[@billkendrick1]

Ironically, crippled with the 2600/VCS's TIA chip, it can't sing *all* the notes like a maestro ;) (Spoiler: Atari 8-bit / arcade POKEY chip included inside a few games; but by 1986 it really needed that *or* better)

[@AtariArchive]

The design made perfect sense when you consider it in the context of its development: Warner-era Atari was flush with cash so designing a cart slot that could detect add-on memory or audio chips was a great idea, as anything that needed those could just get them on the cart. Worked out great for Nintendo with all the extra mapper chips and other cartridge add-ons on the NES and Famicom. Atari Corp was way more cash-strapped, though, and while I don't think every game would have needed a POKEY (or an FM synth chip, or what have you) it's pretty clear as you get into the library where the lack of audio/memory/larger cart sizes hurt the game.

[@lucasm.thomas5976]

That Joust boxart is amazing.

[@JeremyParish]

Yeah! Early 7800 games carried forward the best art of the golden arcade era, when publishers let cover illustrators really go for it.

[@MCastleberry1980]

My parents for some reason bought is an Atari 7800 when the NES was in full swing. I got my NES fix at friend's houses, but I played a LOT of Pole Position II and Ms Pac Man because we only had those two games and Mario Bros the entire time.

[@amuzulo]

Ha, I only had the 2600 version of Mario Bros and it was like another world playing the 7800 version at my cousins’ place!

[@MCastleberry1980]

@@amuzulo the 7800 actually plays better than the NES. Way less slippery

[@maindrianpace6898]

This is fantastic thank you.

[@dustinramsey1198]

Yes! Been waiting for this day!

[@rpgspree]

Other than the lack of licensed titles and third party devs, another issue that really held the system back was the awful sound chip from the 2600. From what I understand, they originally intended to include both the 2600 TIA chip for backward compatibility and the better POKEY chip from their computers, but it was eventually dropped from the board layout due to space and budget constraints. While they left the option for publishers to add POKEY in the cart, it's an expense few opted for. That compromise might have been passable in 84, but by 86 the competition made it inexcusable. 7800 was overall a victim of bad timing, with the original release slated shortly after the market crashed, and poor company management that created the fiasco in the first place.

[@KesorodaBlk]

Joust felt like a Battle Royale back in the day. That, as well as Bomberman.

[@Jordan3DS]

I think the idea of "Battle Royale" being its own genre is sort of silly in general, since it's not like massively multiplayer games are a recent thing. There's the battlegrounds of World of Warcraft, the online multiplayer of the original Battlefront games, and on a smaller scale, the examples that you gave. I find it funny that so many people seem to think that it's a radical new thing when the same idea has been in practice for decades.

[@Syntox]

You're doing the lord's work over here.

[@ricksloan5588]

Love your popcorn dude!

[@RCaIabraro]

Very informative

[@mattandsarahrose]

My cousin had a 7800 before he eventually got an NES. The reason? His 2600 broke and the parents bought the upgraded system that could play all the original games. We played a good amount of Pole Position II. He didn't get many 7800 games though and when he picked up an NES, the 7800 gathered dust.

[@TheGreenMeanie]

Great video as always, but the NES footage of Ms. Pac Man is mislabeled. The Namco version is labeled as the unlicensed Tengen version and vice versa. The giveaway is that the Tengen version had the power booster, whilst the Namco did not.

[@silentfanatic]

Joust. Joust. Let it all oust.

[@dpgreene]

Just commenting on the racing games. Activision’s Enduro on 2600 is actually pretty decent and impressive for a 2600 game though 7800 pole position definitely blows it out of the water. I also really like F-1 on Famicom and it’s sad we never got a US release. It would have been a solid black box title.

[@PandaXs1]

my introduction to the 7800 was in the mid-90's, the 99 cents only store sold 7800 cartridges for, well, 99 cents. c'est la vie I suppose.

[@MapleMilk]

Only Atari's business people can make a perfectly fine console and one that's even advanced for 84 and say "shelf it"

[@alex_-yz9to]

You can thank their shitty marketing that broke the american game industry

[@pentelegomenon1175]

Supposedly Mattel shelved a console around the same time that was 32 bit and had scaling and color indexing capabilities, and even some 3D capabilities.

[@SonofSethoitae]

@@pentelegomenon1175 the intellivision iv was only 16 bit, but yes

[@Flintofmother]

I had an Atari XE before I got a Nes, I was under the impression that was just an 7800 with a keyboard an a floppy disk port.

[@CaptainRufus]

The Xe is not. It was originally developed in the late 70s as a 2600 follow up that became a computer. And then a console in the 5200 then the XEGS. The Atari 800/400. Then the XL line then the XE. The devs that did 2600 creation and later the Amiga worked on it. The guy who developed the SIO port on it later went on to help create USB. Tech wise the Atari 8 bit computer family are better than the Apple 2, Ti99, Coco 1-2, and Vic 20 but a little less powerful than the C64 albeit a bit faster which made up for it sometimes.

[@classiccustoms2010]

Nice seeing videos on the competition of Nintendo. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the 7800 backwards compatible with at least the 2600 (if not the 5200 as well)?

[@JeremyParish]

2600 yes, 5200 no. Atari was still peddling 5200 carts in the late ’80s, though, since the XE home computer was compatible. (Atari Corp.'s hardware lineup was a bit of a mess.)

[@alex_-yz9to]

This is sone proto Xbox series x confusing stuff

[@jasonblalock4429]

@@alex_-yz9to The number of different ways that Atari and Commodore hardware ended up getting rebranded and repackaged was just nuts. I mean, they even tried to turn the Amiga into a CD-ROM gaming console. (The CD32.)

[@rayforceaddict]

I notice that the tracks you are comparing 7800 Pole Position 2 are that of the Pole Position 2 on PSX. Those tracks are altered from the originals to avoid F1 copyright issues, so 7800 Pole Position 2’s would be quite different and closer to the arcade original.

[@KuraIthys]

7800 hardware is pretty weird when I've looked at it, surprisingly capable in some ways, but doing things in an unusual manner. However, the sound capabilities are worse than it's predecessor, which is a surprise. Pokey may not have gained the acclaim of the SID chip, but it was at least moderately capable. To see a new system take a backwards step with sound, rather than forwards is... Odd. (yes, 7800 can have Pokey in a cartridge, just like the 2600 could, but still) For all that, I can't claim to understand the 7800 all that well. I've never seen one, which is not something I can say about all that many systems besides really obscure ones. (Including in shops, gaming conventions and so on I've personally seen: Atari 800XL, Atari 2600, Atari Lynx, Turbograph 16, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, Amiga 2000, NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gameboy color, Wonderswan, Neo Geo, Neo Geo Pocket, GBA, and just about anything mainstream released after 2000) I understand the 5200 design pretty well by virtue of having owned (and currently owning) an 800XL - the 5200 is an atari microcomputer in console form, and the software is almost entirely compatible (requiring only minor alterations and consideration that the 5200 has only 2 kilobytes of RAM and no peripheral support) Of course, the Atari 8 bit micro chipset was designed for a game console, but initially used for computers instead. Even so, that means I have a fair idea how the 5200 works. Not so with the 7800. (side note: did the 7800 ever get a release outside the US? I don't seem to recall any non-NTSC hardware being mentioned...)

[@fnjesusfreak]

PAL 7800s exist. They came with a gamepad rather than a joystick.

[@Pikachu132]

These games may have been some years old at the time the system got released, but outside of the undeniable system seller appeal of Super Mario Bros, the 7800's 1986 library really did feel stronger than the NES's. All 9 1986 releases are great ports of really really good games, and if these 7 initial titles were released in May, before Nintendo's second and third wave that summer of carts that included the Donkey Kong/Mario/Popeye quadrilogy and Balloon Fight, I'd say this was actually the more enticing console if Super Mario Bros wasn't screaming for your attention.

[@JeremyParish]

Realistically, both consoles were pretty hard to come by in summer 1986; Nintendo was rolling out steadily across the U.S., and Atari's distribution was awful (based on coverage from the time). By the time you could be guaranteed to find both systems at retail, it was the end of the year and the NES had begun to accumulate third parties, including recent arcade hits like Ghosts ’N Goblins and Gradius. And even before then, I'd say the NES's 25 mostly-new games by summer 1986 were more enticing than Atari's mildly improved versions of well-worn standards... certainly for me and my friends, Kung-Fu, Duck Hunt, and Super Mario Bros. caught our eye at in-store demos in a way nothing on 7800 did.

[@Pikachu132]

@@JeremyParish Yeah, I was only comparing the very initial lineup here. Once the late '86 games started rolling out, the NES definitely got a lead Atari would never catch up to. But as far as these earliest lineups go... of course it's always going to be a matter of personal taste, but if I had to pick, I'd take Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position 2, Dig Dug, Food Fight and Robotron over stuff like Clu Clu Land, Pinball, Wrecking Crew, Ice Climber and Kung Fu any day. Not because the latter games are bad, they absolutely aren't, but those are some really solid classics it's going up against.

[@JeremyParish]

Yeah. I think the real killer for 7800 was that the system supply was deeply constrained for the first year or two (I think they sold everything they shipped, but I've read that was just 100K units-most likely new old stock, and it took them a while to gear up to manufacture new units), and the fact that Atari only shipped three new games throughout all of 1987. By the time the console was available in quantity, the NES had... basically its entire 1987 lineup of groundbreaking classics.

[@mcbfilms22]

Sorry Jeremy, but at 15:22, I left the video to check out the “strange title screen” of NES Joust. I did come back though.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Nice work brining new context. The 7800 was great, but not pushed vey hard and was never a viable competition because it took a back seat to the ST computers. Just like the NES, adding chips to the carts could make it 10X better than stock.

[@ubercomrade]

I like the live video

[@jeremiahthomas8140]

How will you decide where to put the games that Kevin does not have on his list? Centipede is a launch game though Kevin does not have it in his post that you showed.

[@JeremyParish]

I'll be doing the best I can with the incomplete resources available online, basically.

[@XJLuna]

1:00 Yooooo Gravity Rush

[@Sut1978]

Couple of things I don’t understand, wasn’t the XEGS releases really close to the 7800 as well ? Atari basically cannibalising their own console markets. The other even though the 7800 has good ports of rather old (even for the time) arcade ports the library is very similar to the XEGS and even the 5200. It’s almost whichever Atari console you went for you would be playing the same games on any of them. Also why didn’t Atari console the ST rather than the XE ? The 8-bit line was ancient at this stage surely the ST in a console might have been better received ? Excellent episode as always 👍

[@JeremyParish]

Yeah, I'm going to be covering XEGS next year. Its creation was definitely a choice.

[@bltxlettuce3444]

I imagine it would have been too expensive at the time, since home computers cost more than would be competitive for consoles. Tramiel generally was more focused on the computers and competing with Amiga.

[@tomflanagan3889]

I think centipede should have been included in this video. It was one of the launch titles.

[@Cp-71]

It's worth noting the PAL version which came with a much better controller and Asteroids built-in. If you have a choice I'd say buy it instead of the NTSC model :)

[@yellerdog]

Nice hat! Goorin Bros?

[@JeremyParish]

Generally, yeah

[@nickfooz]

What is the game shown at 4:56 ? I'm desperately looking for it, I used to play it as a kid. [Edit: It's Section Z]

[@Belzeboobies]

Oh that poor, poor Pole Position II box...

[@JeremyParish]

Time makes crumpled fools of us all

[@kicksex]

You gotta talk about the Commodore 64

[@JeremyParish]

100% no to covering computers

[@SamRodriguezArt]

Where’s Benj?! Haha

[@strumdynasty3050]

AH! A FACE!

[@elialexander-tanner5784]

Blink and you'll miss it: Marlboro billboard in the 1982 Pole Position game. Period correct, I suppose.

[@JeremyParish]

It's in the early Mario Kart games, too! Sort of. And Final Fantasy has Malbols with their Bad Breath attack... that company certainly made an impression in Japan back in the day.

[@gregor1O1]

12:30 The info here falsely identifies the footage as belonging to Namco's NES port of Ms Pac-Man when it's actually the Tengen version. The Namco version is what follows.

[@Duke_Togo_G13]

The sound chip is my only complaint about the 7800.

[@CaptainRufus]

It just had 2600 sound. Though the Atari 8 bit computer/5200 POKEY sound chip could be found in a few cartridges to not make your eardrums bleed.

[@JoJoTheOtter]

Wait. Dig Dug didn’t come out for NES in the US? I had this game when I was a kid. I am so confused.

[@JeremyParish]

Its first U.S. release for NES was on Virtual Console in 2008. Dig Dug showed up on a dozen other systems, though.

[@alex_-yz9to]

Probably a pirated cartridge made in china or something

[@JoJoTheOtter]

alex_9000 I suppose it’s possible. My father was a pilot. Perhaps he bought it in China. 😆 But I absolutely had Dig Dug as a kid. I played it on my television long before I ever knew it was an arcade game. I’ll have to do some research.

[@alex_-yz9to]

Yeah some pirated carts also came with pin adapters to run on american NES

[@williammason3229]

I pretty much grew up with Sega, I didn't care about the blast processer stuff, but what did like is the focused on more mature content, back in a time where Nintendo was really bad for censorship. Similar reason I went with Sony. But no ironically Sony is getting bad with Censorship. Nintendo is better now.

[@johneymute]

Well if it is true that many atari 7800 systems were sitting there for 2 years in a wearhouse waiting to be released anyway after 2 years of delays,welli should still thank jack tremiel for releasing it anyway despite he desersed a middle finger from atari fans for delaying it,BECAUSE if he didn’t releasing it at all,then i couldn’t buy one on ebay and let’s to be hornest here, that atari 7800 just looks more cooler then the nes or famicom,seriously.

[@stephenhutchison676]

You say that Atari Corp and Atari Games were still "in cahoots." Other than licensing (not even developing or publishing) ports of some its games for the Lynx, what relationship did Atari Games even have to Atari Corp? I can't find evidence of any other cooperation between the two companies.

[@johnnemesh5459]

I owned one of these...bought it for the backwards compatibility with the 2600...then remembered that 2600 games mostly sucked. And 7800 games werent much better. The horrible controller is what I remember the most. Still, Food Fight was great on the console.

[@michelmartens6282]

hey whats that weird thing on your n64 on the back?

[@JeremyParish]

A Wide Boy 64 (Game Boy Color dev tool), which I have since sold off to help fund more video content acquisitions