Atari Video System X

[Lan Di]

I just stumbled on to this video. Its an old video (2010) so some of you have probably already seen it. Any Atari fan or any classic gamer should check this out. Apparently the Atari Video System X was the predecessor of the Atari 5200.

[KnightWarrior]

That looks like a Very Early Prototype 7800

[Vector2013]

Looks like the rare Japan Atari 2700 a little bit.

[Vector2013]

How the hell was it legal for another company to produce and advertise their system playing 2600 games ?

Found more info on this :



Atari 2000 :



Atari 2800 :

[gamevet]

It's no different than an IBM PC clone. You can manufacture it, as long as you don't copy any of the internal designs of the hardware.

[Vector2013]

It's no different than an IBM PC clone. You can manufacture it, as long as you don't copy any of the internal designs of the hardware.

Interesting.

[kool kitty89]

It's no different than an IBM PC clone. You can manufacture it, as long as you don't copy any of the internal designs of the hardware.

At this point, most/all of the patents (if there were any) probably would have run out anyway. That's also assuming there weren't actual legal loopholes like what happened with TIA in the VCS to allow legal clones of that to be made. (didn't happen -legally- with any console after that . . . except the Colecovision/SG-1000 which were totally off the shelf, and perhaps the Intellivision -also off the shelf)

That looks like a Very Early Prototype 7800

In concept, it is. 2600 compatibility with next gen performance. The difference being it came much earlier (started in '79 iirc and cancelled in '81) and was actually developed in-house by Atari Inc engineers (unlike the totally independent -and non-collaborative- MARIA project with GCC and Warner).

It also used directly enhanced derivatives of older hardware, namely STIA rather than hacking in MARIA to the original chipset. STIA was to be coupled with an ANTIC derivative (8-bit computer chipset), so we can assume the enhancements would have been somewhat like what GTIA featured and possibly more . . . it also may have natively expanded on TIA's sound generation.



There's some more info on the 5200 (and maybe 7800) Retrogamer articles which was compiled here: http://www.amazon.com/Atari-Book-Ann.../dp/B00BORCSRQ

I'm not sure if those details are in Curt Vendel and Marty Goldber's "Business is Fun" Atari History book. I haven't found any deep details on that there (just a simple mention not beyond what Atarimuseum has), but I may have simply not gotten to that part yet.

Edit: it seems to be in there, this snippet showed up on google books when I searched "Atari STIA"
http://books.google.com/books?id=3Fw...20info&f=false

Chapter starts on page 626. Apparently the 3200 was part of a total product revamp with plans to re-release the VCS in new styling, release the 3200 as the lower-end/mid-range next-generation system, and then PAM (what became the 5200) on top of all that to cater to the high-end. Honestly, that's just kind of crazy since the 5200 really didn't do anything that couldn't have been covered already by the Atari 400 and 600 (had they not cancelled it). It would have made a hell of a lot more sense to keep the 3200 going and cancel the 5200 in favor of the 600, with the 600 as the high-end game system and low-end computer and 1200 XL as the high-end computer (replacing the 400 and 800 as originally planned). As it was, the 5200 ended up priced higher than the 16k Atari 400 in late 1982. (not to mention how aggressive positioning of the 600 could have cut into the computer market against the Vic-20, TI99/4a, and C64, on top of being a direct competitor with the Colecovision)

And there's Atarimuseum's page too:
http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogame...ia/sylvia.html



And this Atariage thread from when Curt first unveiled the diagrams and info:
http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic...ss1000-sylvia/

[SEGA.GENESIS1989]

This is one sexy console:


Without considering what was "under the hood", The outershell is a very forward thinking timeless design. If that was released, I would have bought it in a heartbeat!

[kool kitty89]

It kind of looks like an Atari 800XL without the keyboard. (and a different color, of course)

That's just a concept design though, I personally doubt the final case would have looked like that . . . at least not just like that. Though it's not totally dissimilar to the 2700 or 5200 styling either.

And it's hard to tell what color it is with that lighting . . . could be black with the shine skewing things. (black would be typical, though)

Those controllers don't look particularly promising either . . . like the 2800 and 2700 controllers (seems to have joystick and paddle combined), and an awkward shaped joystick. Personally, I think the 5200 controller form factor was the way to go, just with a digital stick rather than analog (as standard) and just 2 or 3 buttons. (you could add 2 with the pot lines) They even could have made an analog+keypad controller available as an accessory that could be used on the 2600, 5200, or Atari computers. (all had 2 analog lines and 5 digital . . . you could potentially use 4 of the lines to map out 16 keys too, but even typical computer game ports really didn't need more than 5 buttons at the time)
Having both action buttons on one side of the controller was also nice on the 5200, they're a tad too small though . . . and the big problem with the buttons/keys is obviously the build quality and durability. (that form factor was a great idea though . . . a lot better than the awful intellivision disc or colecovision knob, though similar to the SG-1000 stick or Coleco Gemini controllers -in style at least, though the SG-1000 sticks were pretty poor from what I've heard)

Short of those, the stock atari joysticks were by far the best controllers out there prior to gamepads arriving (and even then the atari sticks are arguably better for certain games) . . . the Vectrex controller was pretty nice too. (especially considering it was analog)