Atari thread.

[TheSonicRetard]

Does the 7800 have a trackball controller?

yes it does. i have an atari 7800 branded trackball that works great with centipede. you can also use it on the 2600 version of missile command, on the same system, which makes the game way better.

[Zoltor]

The 7800 is the best, as it also playes the 2600 games, and the 5200 is the worst, um the controllers don't work=enough said.

[ApolloBoy]

yes it does. i have an atari 7800 branded trackball that works great with centipede. you can also use it on the 2600 version of missile command, on the same system, which makes the game way better.

Those two games don't actually support a true Trak-Ball mode, and there aren't any games on the 2600 or 7800 that do except for hacks. The CX22 and CX80 Trak-Balls have a joystick mode which allows them to be used with any game that uses a normal controller.

[Baloo]

Those two games don't actually support a true Trak-Ball mode, and there aren't any games on the 2600 or 7800 that do except for hacks. The CX22 and CX80 Trak-Balls have a joystick mode which allows them to be used with any game that uses a normal controller.

Doesn't that render the use of a trackball pointless then?

[Zz Badnusty]

I can't imagine anyone who says the 5200 is the worst has actually spent much time playing one.
The Personal Arcade Machine (PAM) has some of the best home ports from that era. Kangaroo, Popeye, Joust, Defender, Pac Man, Dig Dug, Vanguard, Jungle Hunt, Berserk, Q*Bert, Mario Bros., Star Wars, and many more.

The analog control was ahead of it's time, and while there are durability issues, there were (are) options available to circumvent faulty controllers. Games like Pole Position, Super Breakout, and Centipede benefited greatly from the analog control. And then having the trackball for Centipede and Missile Command, and a few other games really brought the arcade experience home.

The 5200 also has some of the best sports games from that era, some of which made good use of the keypad. Games like Miner 2049er and Countermeasure also make limited use of the keypad.
And then there is the 5200's crown jewel: Star Raiders, with it's 3d analog dog fights, and tactical simulation which puts the keypad to full use.

With the recent release of the 5200 SD cartridge there are dozens of games being converted from the A8. Like ApolloBoy said, the 5200 is unjustly maligned. The comments about the controller are so knee jerk and cliche by this point it is much like hearing about "the Japanese soundtrack" every time Sonic CD is mentioned.

[ApolloBoy]

Doesn't that render the use of a trackball pointless then?

Not necessarily, using a Trak-Ball is an entirely different thing than using a joystick.

[kool kitty89]

The A8 uses a line buffer for video modes that have more than one line per pixel, so that 160x96 mode has zero DMA contention on every other line. That's why games with software sprites or other CPU driven effects like to use that mode. Also, the C64 has more DMA contention because it has to fetch more data for those better graphics. 8 sprites 12 pixels wide with 3 colors takes six times as many cycles to fetch as the four players on the A8. Also, a minor correction to something you said earlier - the A8 can pair the four players into two players with 3 colors. You get one player color, the other player color, or the OR'd value of the two colors for the third color. It's not quite as good as three independent colors, but good enough for most games. You can also do priority tricks to get more colors without pairing players by overlapping with magnified versions of the missiles. There's a hack of Pacman over at AtariAge that does that to get the eye color in the ghosts.

Oh, cool, I'd seen this vaguely mentioned before, but I hadn't found a proper explanation on 2-bit sprites. (that makes it a bit closer to the way the Amiga uses sprites)

And good point on the line buffer too.

Considering the C64 came out 3 years after the A8, you'd expect it to be better, which is why I was rather disappointed at the CPU speed and the floppy speed. Both were a major step BACKWARDS from the older A8.

There's the color palette too, but the A8/VCS was ahead of its time in that regard. (only the Astrocade had anything close so early -that's using 3-3-2 RGB iirc)

But the commodore floppy drive issue was a big problem (and one without in-house alternatives either) . . . and given the timeframe, the CPU at least should have used interleaved DMA (more like the CoCo or Apple II) or used a 2 MHz CPU clock with contention. (either way you'd need similar speed RAM, moderately faster than the A8's minimum requirements -interleaving would need RAM capable of 2 memory cycles per 1 MHz CPU clock tick, or 1 cycle per CPU clock in the 2 MHz w/contention case, and DRAM with 500 ns -or less- RC timing was cheap/common by that point -not like the 250 ns DRAM cycles used for the BBC Micro . . . by the ST used that speed it was pretty cheap/common, but not back in the early 80s -part of why the BBC Micro was expensive and had more limited RAM than some of the competition)

[JRedmond3]

I think I kinda missed the boat with Atari.

The earliest I've gone back is NES stuff, and maybe certain DOS games. I just don't see any real point in going back to the 2600 or anything like that, fairly primitive stuff. With the NES at least you get some idea with what the developers were going towards, even if it's a bit rough around the edges. I do like that game Sneak N' Peak for the 2600 though, if there were more games like that I might get one.

I don't think I even realized that there was such a system as a Jaguar when I was a kid. I remember some of the advertising for the Lynx and maybe some of those were for the Jaguar as well and I just didn't notice.

[NeoZeedeater]

I can't imagine anyone who says the 5200 is the worst has actually spent much time playing one.

I played it quite a bit. I like all of Atari's systems. I agree the 5200 often gets bashed too much but I had to pick something last and I chose it because it's the most redundant. I would rather own an Atari 8-bit computer or XEGS console and play the same games plus many more that aren't on 5200 (I wasn't factoring in modern cartridges that have ported computer games over). Countermeasure does credit for being a 5200 exclusive, though, as does Space Dungeon for being the only home port at the time.

[gamevet]

At least the 5200 had fun games. The Jag felt like it mostly had bad tech demos and a handful of games worth playing.

[Thenewguy]

Captain Dynamo is another realistic nomination for better on ST, the Amiga version has better graphics, but the game plays at maybe 70% of the speed, and feels quite sedate as a result.

[tz101]

5200 bashers mostly have never seen one, much less played one. There are, however, many parrots around the internet that ramble some babble about the 5200 "horrible" controllers. Really? They are easy to refurbish, and there are so many excellent titles in the 5200 library, it is well worth it. Adapters exist for using 15 pin PC controllers, and the Master Play interface allows use of Sega and VCS controllers. I would rate the 5200 as my favorite Atari system, with the VCS coming in a close second.

Best games:
Space Dungeon (dual controller holder is a must)
Robotron 2040
Pac Man
Gyruss
Star Wars Arcade
Missile Command (with trak ball)

[goldenband]

Well, as someone who got one on Christmas Day 1983 (I think), I can say that the build quality of the 5200 controllers was horrendous. The problem wasn't the analog stick (which was basically a non-issue), but the side-mounted fire buttons, which were horribly mushy on both my controllers and became unusable within a month.

The fact that you can now refurbish them wasn't really relevant back then; the fact that Atari shipped something so prone to failure was, and is, downright criminal. But really, that entire design type was an ergonomic disaster to begin with -- side-mounted fire buttons were never a good idea.

That said, the 5200 had a very good library, and was an impressively capable console for its time. Once I got a 2600-to-5200 joystick adapter, the system really came alive, with games like Zaxxon, Mr. Do's Castle, and Pac-Man that were obviously leaps and bounds beyond the 2600's capabilities. I got a 7800 recently and I have to say that, so far, I enjoy the 5200's library a good bit more than the 7800's.

The question is: how relevant is the 5200 now, with all its issues and quirks (don't forget that headache of a switch box), when you can just get an Atari 8-bit and play practically the whole library? Indeed, how relevant was it back then for Atari 8-bit owners? I don't know what % of the system's library was also on 8-bit at the time; certainly, most of it is now.

[Thenewguy]

Wow, that Star Wars port on 5200 really sucks bad!

[Orchid87]

I always wondered why Jaguar has got no Mortal Kombat game. It was a perfect platform for an MK port in 1993-1994 just as 3DO that got no MK either. Weird.