The Atari-Nintendo deal occurred around the spring of 1983, before the Famicom was released and before the Tramiel takeover: http://www.atarimuseum.com/articles/...tendo-deal.htmQuote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
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The Atari-Nintendo deal occurred around the spring of 1983, before the Famicom was released and before the Tramiel takeover: http://www.atarimuseum.com/articles/...tendo-deal.htmQuote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Lots of websites and literature get that wrong or mixed up. (it gets even more confusing when Atari Games comes into the picture -the Arcade portion that split off, staying with Warner, then going to Namco, then becoming independent, publishing undr the Tengen label, then geting bought by Warner int he early 90s and then by midway in the late 90s... and it goes on)Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Umm, you should really listen to this interview here: http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogame...800/7800-20th/
http://www.applefritter.com/mp3/vcf2004/atari.mp3
Exactly right, and Nintendo could have gotten the thing out a couple years sooner had it not been due to Atari's meddling and the gaming crash. (I think Nintendo wanted to get the Famicom to the US not long after its Japanese release was planned)Quote:
Originally Posted by ApolloBoy
So that whole thing went down more than a year before Tramiel acquired Atari consumer.
Really not so much a takeover as: taking on the consumer portions, brand name, properties, and such plus the massive debt of Atari Inc. in a form of liquidation and then creating an entirely new company: Atari Corp. (plus Warner's Arcade portion becoming Atari Games)
So it wasn't so much: what are we going to get rid of and what to keep from this company, but rather: Who are we going to hire for our new company which owns portions of this old company? (and in some cases they didn't even have a choice to hire some of the old staff as they'd already decided to move on to better waters)
Now, as for Nintendo, Atari was definitely not a good choice to partner with, Coleco seems like it might have been due to the Donkey Kong deal, but the ColecoVision was only a year old, so not a good route there either. Mattel could have been a better choice with their aging ca. 1979 Intellivision and lack of successor, in addition to waning popularity and Coleco's competition. Indeed, Matell may have been fairly eager to adpot newer hardware, particularly something as advanced as the Famicom.
I have a Jag and a dozen games. The system is worth owning if you are into collecting, but it's not a terribly strong system overall. I enjoy:
Raiden
Power Drive Rally
Super Burnout
Rayman
As others have said, AvP is overrated and not that fun to play. Perhaps it was back in the day, but it hasn't aged well. The controller is fine to hold, but the buttons are a bit mushy. I also have an s-video cable, though composite should be good enough on a smaller CRT.
AVP on Jaguar = Horrible.
I never mention it on forums because for some reason there's a lot of love for it,
But the truth is that its kinda like an Aliens mod for the Wolf3D engine.
(Doom it is clearly not)
The subsequent AvP on PC is another story of course.
fuck yeah, AVP for pc is awesome.
Horribly hard when you play as the Marine though.
(a problem they fixed with avp2)
Coleco was losing cash by the handfuls, with the poorly handled Adam computer development and expensive hardware.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Not in 1983... An dyeah Adam was really screwed up... Should have been a much simpler console type computer. (C64 form factor with various expansion/accessory ports and such, no onboard tape drives or integral daisy wheel printer -which contained the power supply rendering th emachine useless if the printer broke)Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Regardless, Mattel seems like the more reasonable choice, established in the market, if closer to 3rd in market share in mid 1983 (coloco was really doing well that year I beleive, up to the crash), but all th emore to persuade Mattel to partner with Nintendo.
I happen to have a Jaguar with Tempest 2000 and Flip out. Tempest 2000 is just totally awesome. Flip out comes about as far away as interesting as a game will ever get.
The Adam Computer was announced at 1983's CES and was set for launch by the holiday season. Coleco was throwing a ton of cash towards production and the design of the Adam. The Colecovision only sold about 3 million units, so it was hardly a cash cow for Coleco either. The Cabbage patch kids fad was already dead by then, so they didn't have any products to make up for the losses.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
The Adam computer pretty much bankrupted Coleco.Quote:
. An dyeah Adam was really screwed up... Should have been a much simpler console type computer. (C64 form factor with various expansion/accessory ports and such, no onboard tape drives or integral daisy wheel printer -which contained the power supply rendering th emachine useless if the printer broke)
I agree. Mattel was a much larger toy company that Coleco, and they Tom Kalinske. ;)Quote:
Regardless, Mattel seems like the more reasonable choice, established in the market, if closer to 3rd in market share in mid 1983 (coloco was really doing well that year I beleive, up to the crash), but all th emore to persuade Mattel to partner with Nintendo.
Herro, new here. But anyways, I own an Jaguar and I don't care for it whatsoever. I bought a Genesis model 2, a sega cd model 2 and some games for both and he threw in a free Jaguar. It came with the console,cords,2 controllers and some games which were, iron soldier,doom,trevor mcfur in the cresent galaxy and cybermorph. I tried playing it but I didn't like it. I threw it in with the rest of my consoles just for display but other than that, it gets NO LOVE! I'm even thinking about putting it on ebay. Sorry kitty : (
Yeah, but it could have paid off had it actually been a good machine, somethign to trasition to with the market crash. (a bare bones colecovision with more RAM and integrated keyboard base unit with full CV compatibility would have been great -plus expandability for tape and disk drives plus printer etc)Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
And maybe Michael Katz as well, not sure at the timt though, he was at colecto and mattel at different times, then Atari Corp. prior to Sega. (managing the release of the 2600 jr and 7800)Quote:
I agree. Mattel was a much larger toy company that Coleco, and they Tom Kalinske. ;)
I don't think anyone in the console market predicted a console market crash, but they were well aware of the popularity of home computers. The Adam computer was a rushed piece of hardware and it showed with its poor design. I don't believe Coleco stood a chance against Commodore or Atari, unless they could come up with a cheaper alternative, and Commodore used many underhanded tactics to make that near impossible for the competition.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
With the ColecoVision architecture, you've got the potential for something approximating the MSX standards, the difference is the sound chip (sound+I/O chip on MSX) and that's pretty much it, Sega's SC-3000 was just that, a better conversion based ont he same fundamental architecture as the CV. (albeit a bit late and didn't have the advantage of being comaptible with a popular home system with the SG-1000s modest performance and the MSX's stong market share -along with others liek FM7 and PC-8801)
Coleco just rushed the thing together and added unnecessary accessories (they shouldn't have inclused the tape drives -especially onboard, or printer), just a simple CV plus added accessory ports (serial plus parallel ports) cassette deck interfase, provisions for ram expansion possibly, and a decent amout of RAM. (maybe with additional expansion support as well, not necessarly the 80 kB of RAM the Adam had either, a baseline 64 kB should hav been OK) Just a simple keyboard console form factor.
No matter what thouch coleco threw the Adam together, made poor design choices, rushed it out with reliablility propblems etc. (they probably could have avoided all that by taking a simpler approach)
Mattel kind of screwed up with their aquarius as well, but tha't a slightly different example. (for one, an independednt development fromt he Intellivision, so no software base to build on, also it was too limited... 4kB of RAM in 1983, 1 channel sound, etc)
Atari Jaguar...I remember that system, it was one of my firsts(my first being the Sega Saturn). MY dad bought it instead of the playstation, what a mistake he made...but the charm of the system still haunts me to this day, I some times feel like buying one on ebay to relive it's So-so-ness