/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.4757502]

Did video games just suck before the NES came out?

I notice there's no real nostalgia market, financial or emotional, for the Atari 2600.

[Anonymous No.4757510]

>>4757502
Pre-crash era arcades were fucking fantastic. The early 80s is easily one of the best times for video game, but most of the stuff worth playing was in the arcades.

Some Atari 2600 games are worth playing though, especially if they're by Activision or Atari.

[Anonymous No.4757518]

>>4757502
Very small library of games that are worth anything, and most of those are good games by good programmers with zero actual memorable bits of visual or musical cues. Art and music were barely a thing until 3rd generation.

[Anonymous No.4757529]

Console games sucked, yes. There's plenty of nostalgia for early 80's arcade games.

[Anonymous No.4757597]

Not at all. Been on a gen 2/early 80s arcade kick, and games of that era are brilliant, even the home ports. Colecovision has the best home ports of Ladybug, Centipede (with roller controller), Spy hunter, with great original titles like Slither. And many of the arcade games of the era are exceedingly deep. Don't get the hate for the 2600. The limited graphics now have a unique art style and it can be argued home 2600 ports have more to offer than their arcade counterparts since there's usually like 30 game modes.

I think the reason there's not much nostalgia for that era of consoles is because gaming wasnt as big among older Gen Xers born in the late 60s/early 70s. I got my cousin's 2600 when she turned 15. That generation has a bigger connection to music than games (MTV generation). That's my theory anyhow. Everyone I know born in that era isn't a gamer.

[Anonymous No.4757601]

>>4757597
>I think the reason there's not much nostalgia for that era of consoles is because gaming wasnt as big among older Gen Xers born in the late 60s/early 70s. I got my cousin's 2600 when she turned 15. That generation has a bigger connection to music than games (MTV generation). That's my theory anyhow. Everyone I know born in that era isn't a gamer.
Not especially convincing since the 2600 moved 30 million units, the same as popular consoles like the Mega Drive and the Nintendo 64 and considerably more than the Gamecube or Saturn

[Anonymous No.4757613]

>>4757601

That gen seemed to grow out of it faster. They handed down their ataris and never looked back. I shouldn't say they have no nostalgia, it's just not as strong for gaming related things as younger gen Xers/millennials.

[Anonymous No.4757614]

>>4757601
The VCS was selling this dream of arcade games in your home, and delivered a bunch of garbage that was good for maybe 10 minutes of play. Sure they sold a bunch, but not a lot of memories were made with it.

[Anonymous No.4757623]

I find games with simple yet addicting gameplay like pacman, breakout, joust etc. a lot more impressive than today's AAA open world walking sims with stats tbqh, but there's not much to say about them since their gameplay tend to be simple

guess you could compare scores

[Anonymous No.4757625]

>>4757502
it sucked until the c64 came out.

[Anonymous No.4757632]

>>4757623
> I find games with simple yet addicting gameplay like pacman, breakout, joust etc. a lot more impressive than today's AAA
i agree. i enjoy them a lot more than some more recent titles.
> but there's not much to say about them since their gameplay tend to be simple
i find some to be just too long and boring.

[Anonymous No.4757635]

>>4757502
The 2600 was my first console and although I would like to pick one up it just just doesn't hold the same nostalgia power over me like the nes or genesis.

[Anonymous No.4757638]

resident oldfag here.

The 2600 was a great system, and as a kid it was great to be able to walk into a clearance store and find a new game for 5 bucks. I continued to play mine as a kid through the crash, not realizing it had even happened. But when the NES came out, it was such a massive jump in the quality of the games, bringing something so much closer to an arcade experience, that the Atari just got left in the dust.

I still enjoy a few old 2600 games. As others have mentioned, Activision and Imagic put out consistently good titles. The various Tron games were great as well.

Other than those, Venture, and most of the first party Atari titles were pretty good.

Outside of those, you were mostly relying on trading games around with family and friends, trying to find a gem in all of the shovelware. It was kind of like trying to find that one game worth playing for more than a few minutes on a 1000 games in 1 bootleg console.

[Anonymous No.4757648]

>>4757502
pretty much,its fanbase is smaller but devoted,the games back then was simply too basic to be that passionate about

kids didnt game like our generations do either back then,you played for like 30 mins then played outside with mates

[Anonymous No.4757669]

Most of what I played on the 2600 were arcade ports and most of them sucked except for Berzerk. I'm nostalgic for those original arcade games not the poor home translations of the era.

The only other game I hold some nostalgia from the 2600 is Pitfall II since it has background music and an actual game conclusion.

[Anonymous No.4757671]

>>4757502
>I noticed I was born after 1999 and personally have no nostalgia or attachment to the 2600.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4757674]

>>4757502
>there's no real nostalgia market
There's only like 10 versions of the Atari Flashback.

[Anonymous No.4757708]

>>4757502
My uncle and some other family members had nostalgia for it when I was a kid. There were people who did have some nostalgia for it but that was back then. Those who would have had nostalgia for it are way older then all of us here at this point. It also doesn't help that Atari released a shit console with the Jaguar.

The problem here is that Atari games and other similar console at the time period aren't anything like games from the NES and forward. They were extremely simple games you just play for a bit but not obsessively like you see with games today. I've been told exactly this from an anon on here before and it makes a lot of sense to me. If you look at how hooked some people are on today's games they even blow away NES/Genesis/Snes and I'd even say fifth gen console games out the water in addiction level. Games today are often made to be way more addictive and in depth with stories and such. That doesn't mean they are automatically better but that should put things into perspective here.

In short, Atari is well past its prime years and those who loved it have long since moved on at this point. Any newer younger fans who may be into it are very few in number. There are plenty of kids today who couldn't give two shits about even the PS2/Gamecube consoles btw. Nintendo changed gaming big time with the NES.

So that is my thoughts on the topic and your question. Those games can easily be played elsewhere anyways as well.

[Anonymous No.4757712]

>>4757502
>I notice there's no real nostalgia market, financial or emotional, for the Atari 2600.

Maybe not these days, because the market for the 2600 has grown old and the initially nostalgia for the console has passed. Ten years ago there was a lot more nostalgia for the 2600 than there is now.

The 2600 sold roughly 30 million units total, and was once in 20% of all households in North America. It is the quintessential vintage gaming console.

But then again, the 2600 was originally sold between 1977 and 1983. Then it was removed from retailers due to the home console crash in 1983. The 2600 returned in 1986 as the Atari 2600 Jr. as a $50 dollar gaming console to appeal to older consumers who grew up playing the system.

>>4757638
>I still enjoy a few old 2600 games. As others have mentioned, Activision and Imagic put out consistently good titles.

What's interesting about the 2600 is that the console has no licensed third party developers. Activision was created by former Atari developers, and they released their games as "2600 compatible" and never had a licensing deal with Atari. Atari never saw a cent out of Activision. All other third party developers on the 2600 followed Activision and just made cartridges as "compatible" and gave no royalties to Atari. All third party 2600 cartridges look different from each other.

This also lead to the home console crash of 1983 in North America, as there was a flood of games with no quality control. When Nintendo entered the market with the NES, they took a very draconian approach and made sure to take a cut of the profits from each NES third party developer.

[Anonymous No.4757862]

>>4757502
When gen-Z comes of age, there won't be any NES nostalgia either. Why would there be? You have to have experienced something in its time for it to be nostalgic, otherwise it's just the whiff of a soundless fart, like synthwave. Atari came and went... twice. Unless you think the Infogrames VCS is going to be anything other than another Ouya.

[Anonymous No.4757978]

>>4757502
>Did video games just suck before the NES came out?

There were these funny things called "arcades" before the NES, young anon. Lots of people liked to go there and play video games.

The Atari VCS and other systems that came out before the NES have their share of very fun and interesting games too.

>I notice there's no real nostalgia market, financial or emotional, for the Atari 2600.
The main nostalgia phase for the Atari is long over. It was going on in the 90s. That's when people who had an Atari as a child were entering their 30s, 40s, and 50s and feeling nostalgic for it. There was a wave of collecting and homebrewing, as well as remakes of classic games and re-releases.

Now 70s video games are getting to be pretty ancient, and so is the player base. Many of them have moved on from that nostalgia for their youth. But there are still communities out there if you look, and I believe there is a teensy upswing in interesting from young people who are simply curious about the past, or who have grown tired of the typical NES/SNES gamelist of the casual retro gamer and want to branch out.

[Anonymous No.4758005]

>>4757502
>Did video games just suck before the SNES came out?
Yes

[Anonymous No.4758012]

>>4757510
Early 80s arcade game had a special charm and innocence you don't see much of in modern games.

[Anonymous No.4758089]

>>4758012
I'm 27 and have been on an Atari/INTV kick lately. Having grown up with the NES and PS2 simultaniously I find the 2600 to be super fun.

You're really only hurting yourself by closing yourself off from it.

[Anonymous No.4758093]

>>4758089
Sorry didnt mean to quote you
>>4758012

[Anonymous No.4758125]

>>4757502
>I notice there's no real nostalgia market, financial or emotional, for the Atari 2600.

I'll just leave this here.

[Anonymous No.4758181]

>>4757502
>Pac-Man
>Galaxian
>Missile Command
>Lode Runner
>bad games
Seriously? And that's not even mentioning the Commodore 64...

[Anonymous No.4758201]

Home consoles prior to the MSX and Famicom are way too primitive.

[Anonymous No.4758209]

>>4758181
>Atari 2600
>Pac-Man

Yes, in fact it is a bad port.

As a standalone game it's just okay.

[Anonymous No.4758216]

>>4758201
>Home consoles prior to the MSX and Famicom are way too primitive

The Atari 5600 and ColecoVision were pretty good upgrades over the Atari 2600. The Commodore 64 was released in 1982, a year before the Famicom and MSX standard, and was a very capable machine for doing scrolling graphics and NES-like games. The Atari 800 personal computer was pretty damn good too.

[Anonymous No.4758238]

>>4758216
Shame that the 5200 controller is the undisputed champion of shitty, flimsy, broken-ass controllers.

[Anonymous No.4758246]

>>4758238
>>>4758216 (You)
>Shame that the 5200 controller is the undisputed champion of shitty, flimsy, broken-ass controllers.

It really is one of the worst controllers ever made. No exaggeration. Bit of a shame because the 5200 (called it the 5600 by mistake) was not bad hardware. It was like an Atari 800 home computer in a console. The system was stupidly large too.

[Anonymous No.4758250]

Arcade cabinets my man.

[Anonymous No.4758269]

>just a bunch of games

[Anonymous No.4758274]

>>4757502
If you're talking about console games then except for the occasion influential title like Pitfall, yes

[Anonymous No.4758278]

/vr/ continues to believe that the 2600 was the only form of video games that existed before the NES

or OP is trolling us to talk about old arcade games, Intellivision etc, in which case, well-played. also Yars Revenge will always be cool as fuck

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.4758281]

>>4758246
I have a Coin Controls joystick for 5200 that you can plug in between the console and OEM controller (you still use its num pad) and there are numerous so-callled "Masterplay" controllers I'd really like to get hold of. Space Dungeon is also I believe the first dual analog console game.

I used to feel the same way about 5200, for decades really but as a fully mature collector I've now realized that since the 8-bit line of Atari computers has nearly (and far in excess of) the entire 5200 library, the 5200's controller even as delicate as it is and the games designed specifically with it in mind are basically the only worthwhile things about the console I have too large a collection for and ignored collecting XT stuff while it was still dirt cheap mixed in with every huge lot of 2600 stuff.

[Anonymous No.4758336]

>>4757502
>Did video games just suck before the NES came out?
No.
>I notice there's no real nostalgia market, financial or emotional, for the Atari 2600.
There is. C64 too.

[Anonymous No.4758373]

>>4758209
I was thinking about video games in general. Even I'll admit that the Atari 2600 hasn't aged well

[Anonymous No.4758413]

>>4757712
>Ten years ago there was a lot more nostalgia for the 2600 than there is now.
Do 45+ year olds not experience nostalgia? Is this a thing that happens only to the late 20s-mid 30s crowd? What happens to people at age 45+?

[Anonymous No.4758420]

>>4758413
They spend all their effort into their job and spend their free time being pissed at people younger than them.

[Anonymous No.4758442]

>>4758420
Seriously? I see things like "moved on from that nostalgia for their youth" posted. So they just fully embrace their shitty adult lives in normie world? Sounds nightmarish

[Anonymous No.4758454]

>>4758413
>Do 45+ year olds not experience nostalgia? Is this a thing that happens only to the late 20s-mid 30s crowd? What happens to people at age 45+?

Of course these people still have nostalgia. I was just saying that Atari 2600 nostalgia peaked like a decade ago and has died down.

[Anonymous No.4758619]

>>4758125
So will everyone else

[Anonymous No.4758632]

>>4758442
He means that they don't have time to shoot the shit online and talk about their nostalgia, anymore.

[Anonymous No.4758852]

All the ecelebs in youtube are 30 years old, and all of them started playing games with the NES because that was the pleb choice for american kids back then.

[Anonymous No.4758859]

>>4758852
>All the ecelebs in youtube are 30 years old, and all of them started playing games with the NES because that was the pleb choice for american kids back then.


On the flip side, many of the UK Youtubers in their 30's reminisce about the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga and Sega master System because the gaming landscape was different over there.

I actually find it refreshing from the US-centric Nintendo spin.

[Anonymous No.4758863]

>>4757978
>The main nostalgia phase for the Atari is long over. It was going on in the 90s
I don't ever recall there being any major nostalgia phase back then.

[Anonymous No.4758864]

>>4758859
How cute, he thinks they didn't have millions of Apple IIs and C64s in the US.

[Anonymous No.4758876]

>>4758864
There were, but it's funny because whenever I've seen 80s nostalgia spots like those VH1 "Remember 198x" specials, they almost completely ignore video gaming from that era aside from the occasional mention of Pac-Man or something and only talk about music, children's toys, and TV shows.

[Anonymous No.4758880]

Atari-era games were more like an electronic-ized version of traditional mechanical arcade games like pinball, the idea of a game having a story or a specific goal to accomplish wasn't conceived yet.

[Anonymous No.4758887]

>>4758216
>a year before the Famicom and MSX standard
The MSX was based on a chipset from 1979 though.

[Anonymous No.4758904]

>>4758876
Duh? Those shows are aimed at extreme normies who think the 80s was a vaporwave paradise where everyone looked like Don Johnson and was bumping Like a Virgin on their oversized boombox.

[Anonymous No.4758929]

>>4758887
Was it? Really?

[Anonymous No.4758931]

>>4758929
TMS 9918/19, both originally designed in the late 70s for Texas Instruments' home computer line.

[Anonymous No.4758939]

>>4758931
Well the Japanese did a hell of a lot more with it than TI ever did. The final MSX1 games were coming out in the late 80’s. And (opinion) they were great!

[Anonymous No.4758940]

>>4757502
The problem with the 2600 games is that as a kid they couldn't hold your interest very long. When you had NES and SNES the 2600 looked very dated. My cousin had a 2600 and I remember as a kid playing some games in his basement den but I was mostly baffled by how hit and miss they were. Combat was fun as fuck to play against another human player and it's a shame Nintendo never made a 2 player VS game like that with updated graphics. For every Centipede, Frogger or Space Invaders game you got like 20 more shitty ones. I remember a lot of games being Pac Man, Donkey Kong or Q-Bert knockoffs like Burger Time but the quality dropping off by a lot. Also I remember arcade games in the 80s and 90s totally knocking home consoles out of the water no competition but arcade were where it was at. They were like the HD Blu-ray of their generation. Until arcades gave you a pay by the hour buffet style it was consoles were the only thing going. Still being a kid and being fucking baffled by games like ET, Stampede and Oddysey? What the hell were they thinking with those.

[Anonymous No.4758941]

>>4758864
>How cute, he thinks they didn't have millions of Apple IIs and C64s in the US.

The Apple II will never really be remembered as a gaming machine though. The elementary school that I went to in the '80s had nothing but Apple II's. Most schools in the '80s had them as their computer of choice. It was also popular with businesses and does have a big following. But people aren't reminiscing about it in the same way they do with the home consoles from the time.

The C64 is a bit different, as it always had the gaming PC stigma. But for some reason it doesn't hold the same nostalgia in the west that the NES or other home consoles do.

>>4758887
>The MSX was based on a chipset from 1979 though.

It kinda shows, given the lack of good hardware scrolling.

Many of the home systems from that era used a derivative of the MOS 6502 including the Famicom/ NES. Commodore 64, Apple II and even the PC Engine. That CPU was introduced in 1975. Even the Atari 2600 has a gimped 6502 CPU.

[Anonymous No.4758943]

>>4758939
I don't fucking care about the Japanese.

[Anonymous No.4758947]

>>4757502
Most pre-NES video games just had generic characters; 90% of games you either controlled a paddle, a spaceship, or a little stick dude with a gun. Nintendo gave birth to the scotformer, and suddenly video games weren't just "games" but a narrative medium.

[Anonymous No.4758950]

>>4758941
>The Apple II will never really be remembered as a gaming machine though

The PC gaming industry was essentially born on the Apple II. Major devs like Sierra, Broderbund, SSI, Origin, and more all started out making games for it.

[Anonymous No.4758953]

>>4758941
>But for some reason it doesn't hold the same nostalgia in the west that the NES or other home consoles do
That would be like asking why Sega isn't as well remembered--they haven't made consoles in almost two decades and a whole generation of kids have never known them as anything but a third party developer on Nintendo consoles. The fact that Nintendo is still a hardware developer and has a vast marketing machine has enhanced their reputation among normies a lot.

[Anonymous No.4758957]

>>4758950
>The PC gaming industry was essentially born on the Apple II. Major devs like Sierra, Broderbund, SSI, Origin, and more all started out making games for it.

That's true. Even John Carmack learned to program on an Apple II, and John Romero started his career making games for the Apple II. Not saying the Apple II isn't influential. It's just that the fanfare for it as a retro gaming machine isn't really there.

[Anonymous No.4758959]

>>4758940
>he doesn't like Stampede
Get the fuck out, that's one of the best games for the system.

[Anonymous No.4758962]

>>4758953
>That would be like asking why Sega isn't as well remembered--they haven't made consoles in almost two decades and a whole generation of kids have never known them as anything but a third party developer on Nintendo consoles. The fact that Nintendo is still a hardware developer and has a vast marketing machine has enhanced their reputation among normies a lot.

Sega had a hard time in the west, outside of the Genesis and to a lesser extent, the Game Gear.

Nintendo had that developer monopoly in the west that prevented third parties from making games for competing consoles like the Sega Master System. That monopoly ended in 1990-1991 when Nintendo was forced to changed their contracts. The Genesis benefited from the flood of Nintendo third parties.

Most of Sega's hardware just never caught on in the West. But the Master System and Mega Drive were big in the UK and other regions like Brazil.

Sega had a hard time in Japan as well. The Saturn was their most successful console in Japan, and it bombed in every other region.

[Anonymous No.4758965]

>>4758957
>Not saying the Apple II isn't influential. It's just that the fanfare for it as a retro gaming machine isn't really there

The problem with the Apple II is that the C64 quickly surpassed it as the go-to platform for PC gaming. If you had to pick between the Apple II and C64 version of a game, the latter will nearly always look and sound better. The Apple II is only better at a few genres such as text adventures (due to 80 column text and faster disk access) and flight simulators (due to bitmap graphics and analog joysticks).

[Anonymous No.4758971]

>>4757712
>Ten years ago there was a lot more nostalgia for the 2600 than there is now.

Nope, prices for Atari stuff has never spiked like SNES games and hardware has.

[Anonymous No.4758974]

>>4758619

[Anonymous No.4758976]

>>4758971
>Nope, prices for Atari stuff has never spiked like SNES games and hardware has.

Very few older consoles and games have spiked in price like Super Nintendo, or Nintendo games in general. That doesn't really mean anything.

There is an odd level of stupidity present in collecting Nintendo games and hardware that isn't there with other systems.

[Anonymous No.4758981]

>>4758965
The Apple II and C64 were the two giants of 8-bit computers in North America, both sold millions of units and had the support of major game developers. Other 8-bit machines were business computers like the Kaypro II or also-rans like the TRS-80 CoCo. The Atari 8-bit line wasn't relevant for that long and by the mid-80s was nearly dead.

Europeans however had the three-way C64/Spectrum/Amstrad rivalry.

[Anonymous No.4758990]

>>4758976
>Very few older consoles and games have spiked in price like Super Nintendo, or Nintendo games in general. That doesn't really mean anything.

Yes it does, it means there's nostalgia which is then marketable.

>There is an odd level of stupidity present in collecting Nintendo games and hardware that isn't there with other systems.
And Genesis, and recently PSX, actually everything popular (you know, stuff that would produce nostalgia in a significant portion of the population) except for some PC stuff has a pretty sizable market. Nintendo has the advantage of having been around longer and been relevant consistently in the countries it has done well in, but it's not alone.

Atari, on the other hand, has never had a significant market for nostalgia. Not now, not ten years ago, not ever. The explanations up above that Atari gamers would tend to drop their games easily and forget about them forever is quite accurate.

[Anonymous No.4758996]

when i played a sega master system it made the atari 2600 just seem so lame in comparison that i didn't give it a chance again until many years later with emulation.

2600 is still fun but you need different expectations.

Some fun games

seaquest
pitfall 2
asteroids
missile command
millipede
breakout
frostbite
yars revenge - get harder the more you play

also try playing 2 player basketball, boxing, fishing and tennis, its more fun than it looks

>pic related - what i've played

[Anonymous No.4759000]

>>4758950
I understand what your saying. But it won’t be “remembered” that way. All people think of is Oregon Trail.

[Anonymous No.4759001]

>>4758990
>Atari, on the other hand, has never had a significant market for nostalgia.

The Atari 2600 says you are wrong. Also the Atari Logo by itself is pretty iconic and has nostalgia behind it.

[Anonymous No.4759003]

>>4758959
Yeah but as a little kid without a manual how the fuck do you play it? Before Game FAQs existed?

[Anonymous No.4759005]

>>4757502
Many of the best games for the VCS were paddle games. Fast and responsive as fuck. There were decent games for it though. You don't really get that with emulation these days without specific adapter for the thing that they don't really make anymore. Maybe getting a spinner might work, not exactly the same though.

>>4757978
I had an Atari when I was a child. I'm in my 30's now. Also, if you were turning 50 in the 90s you would have been 28-37 when it came out. How the fuck is that a child? Similarly, if you were turning 40's you'd be 18-27 when it came out. Still not a child.

[Anonymous No.4759010]

>>4758962
Isn't both Atari like Konami and SEGA more interested in designing slot machine games than actual vidya these days anyways?

[Anonymous No.4759017]

>>4759001
I think what some of the other posters are trying to say is that their is some nostalgia for the Atari 2600. But that nostalgia is usually worth about as much as a meal at Burger King.

[Anonymous No.4759018]

>>4759001

No it doesn't, Atari 2600s sell for less than later systems. It's true that it does have some market, but it's far, far smaller than third through fifth gen systems, and probably soon sixth gen.

The Atari logo is indeed iconic, but then again so is the IBM logo, which doesn't indicate nostalgia. Buying old shit at unreasonable prices in competition against hoarders indicates nostalgia.

>>4759010

The real Atari ceased to exist 20 years ago, anon, and even by that point all key employees had long since left the company. Atari today is just intellectual property being shuffled around.

[Anonymous No.4759023]

>>4759010
i've personally seen many konami slot machines, if you go to gambling place, chances are that a fair number of machines will be made by konami

[Anonymous No.4759025]

Why didn't Americans love the Amiga?

[Anonymous No.4759026]

The nostalgia for the 2600 came and went in the mid to late 90’s

[Anonymous No.4759028]

>>4759000
Goddamn Oregon Trail. How many people died in the first few minutes when they lost their cart trying to cross the river? And yet hipsters wanna be nostalgic for it.

[Anonymous No.4759029]

I never played OT but the first computer games I ever played were Astro Grover and Ernie's Big Splash on a C64.

[Anonymous No.4759030]

>>4759018
Original IBM stuff is going for high prices these days too.

[Anonymous No.4759034]

>>4759023
With all that casino dough you'd think they'd stop making Metal Gear cinematics and just give us a decent Contra FPS, yeesh.

[Anonymous No.4759035]

>>4759026
I don't remember any such nostalgia.

[Anonymous No.4759038]

>>4759035
Maybe the Atari Lynx handheld he's referring to?

[Anonymous No.4759039]

>>4759025
Bad marketing. Commodore sold it as a multimedia machine rather than a gaming machine.

[Anonymous No.4759041]

>>4757502
It personally pisses me off that dumb fucking "gamer" movies like Ready P1, Wreck it Ralph and Pixels are losing the nostalgic load that could rejuvenate interest in Atari on normies.

[Anonymous No.4759043]

>>4759025
Poor marketing, brand image problems, and a lack of quality business software meant it wasn't taken seriously as a computer. At home, everyone was too busy playing actually good games on their (much cheaper) NES.

[Anonymous No.4759048]

>>4759043
>At home, everyone was too busy playing actually good games on their (much cheaper) NES.
NES games looked and sounded so primitive and rubbish against Amiga games though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ADhznw1zhc

vs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkZVU345KKM

[Anonymous No.4759049]

>>4759039
I get the impression that it's because it was released in 1985 with an intro price of 1,295. Whereas the C64/128 were like 100-200 bucks by then. IE low entry barrier to computing and people didn't really know a whole ton about them either and therefore no reason to "upgrade" until you cared enough. Fuck we had a handful of C64/128s, we had three around a table for the kids alone and two for my mother who could do her music and be online. And we used them til the 90s regularly. People were giving that shit away practically.

[Anonymous No.4759052]

>>4759048
Like I said, we played the actually good ones.

[Anonymous No.4759053]

For the price of an Amiga, you could get a Tandy 1000 which was mostly PC-compatible.

[Anonymous No.4759057]

>>4759048
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkZVU345KKM

This looks like a bad Flash game.

[Anonymous No.4759058]

>>4758863
There were a shitton of remakes of old Atari games for the PS1, which was sparked by the Atari Jaguar's Tempest 2000.
Following that, you got remakes of Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, even goddamn Pong and Breakout. Q*Bert also got a remake release under the Atari label for some fucking reason.

They also started releasing compilation of old Atari arcade games during this era.

However, that was just the arcade games. I don't think the Atari 2600 in particular got any attention until the 2000's.

[Anonymous No.4759059]

Ignore that cunt. The only good James Pond game was the one on the Mega Drive which Americans got anyway.

[Anonymous No.4759071]

I mean, really. The Amiga had god-level sound and graphics but Americans somehow preferred outdated early 80s rubbish like the Nintendo and IBM clones with bleeper sound and about five colors.

[Anonymous No.4759075]

>>4759071
>The Amiga had god-level sound and graphics
But not the good games to go with it.

[Anonymous No.4759078]

>>4759049
What Youtube comment section was this pasted from?

[Anonymous No.4759081]

>>4757674
Only one worth getting is the Flashback 2 though due to having an actual 2600 on the inside instead of a goddamn emulator like everything else.

[Anonymous No.4759085]

>>4759081
Nintendo couldn't even be bothered to recreate the chipset for their own SNES retro box.

[Anonymous No.4759095]

>>4757502
Run along home now, sport. >>>/v/

[Anonymous No.4759096]

>>4759085
Or the NES, which would have been even easier to pull off.

[Anonymous No.4759106]

>>4759085
Sup with that? I'm sure Ricoh still has the schematics and documents in a file cabinet somewhere.

[Anonymous No.4759128]

In the modern Englishosphere, there's relatively more talk of PC-98 than there is of pre-NES consoles & comps.

Gaemz without an ending also tend to suck harder.

>>4759000
>trips of truth

[Anonymous No.4759132]

>>4759081
>Flashback 2

The Flashback 2 is also moldable if you want to add a cartridge slot, they even put the schematics of how to add a cartridge slot on the PCB and guidelines to drill holes into in the plastic casing.

[Anonymous No.4759145]

>>4759128
>In the modern Englishosphere, there's relatively more talk of PC-98 than there is of pre-NES consoles & comps

[Anonymous No.4759154]

There are some home brews of Atari games that do a better job than the original, such as Space Rocks (Asteroids) and larger ROM remakes of Pac Man and Donkey Kong

[Anonymous No.4759156]

>>4759025
By the time the Amiga came out, Americans were realizing that "home computers" weren't nearly as useful as they'd been hyped up to be. So if you wanted to sell a computer in America in 1985, you had to make a compelling case for it as a business or education tool. Apple could do that; they practically invented the desktop publishing industry. IBM and the various clone companies certainly could as well, with their massive library of high-quality business software.

Commodore couldn't. They were late to the 16-bit party and as a result were lacking in software titles compared to their rivals. On the other hand, they were too early for the Amiga's multimedia capabilities to really shine. And as has already been mentioned, they had an image problem: they were still seen as a maker of cheap toy computers focused on playing games. Problem was, the Amiga wasn't cheap and it didn't initially have many good games. Then Nintendo came along and ate everyone's lunch in that market, so even once the Amiga's price dropped there was no room left for it. Maybe if they'd put more focus into getting a lot of really well-done arcade ports it could have done well as an upscale NES alternative, but they didn't. It did find a niche in multimedia production, but in those days that industry was too limited to sustain it.

It's sad. I like the Amiga, but it was just the wrong machine at the wrong time and the wrong price, marketed the wrong way to see much success here in Burgerland.

[Anonymous No.4759157]

>>4758852
>and all of them started playing games with the NES because that was the pleb choice for american kids back then

>trying to start a Europe vs America flamewar
Shig.

[Anonymous No.4759158]

The Amiga was an early multimedia computer but it came out back when standardized file formats didn't exist and the pretty pictures you made in DeluxePaint stayed in the computer because the printers of that era weren't good enough to properly replicate them.

[Anonymous No.4759161]

>>4758863
>I don't recall it so it didn't happen
well it fucken did m8. Gain knowledge

[Anonymous No.4759162]

The Amiga also wasn't useful as a business computer for a number of reasons; even its rival the Atari ST outshined it for productivity software (Atari STs were the go-to small business computer in Germany back then).

[Anonymous No.4759168]

>>4759058
The Atari collecting scene started in the mid 90s. Atariage launched in 1998 as a result of that. Keep in mind the Atari collecting phase was smaller than the later retro waves since video games have gotten bigger and bigger as the years go by.

[Anonymous No.4759170]

>>4759128
I think you're letting /vr/ influence your viewpoint a little too much. PC-98 is still ultra-niche in the west.

[Anonymous No.4759179]

>>4759154
Almost every classic arcade port could have been done better with more time/competent programmers/better tools/the better technical knowledge of the hardware we have today.

[Anonymous No.4759191]

>>4757597
>I think the reason there's not much nostalgia for that era of consoles is because gaming wasnt as big among older Gen Xers born in the late 60s/early 70s. I got my cousin's 2600 when she turned 15. That generation has a bigger connection to music than games (MTV generation). That's my theory anyhow. Everyone I know born in that era isn't a gamer.
I'm sure there were some nostalgiafags.

[Anonymous No.4759195]

[Anonymous No.4759203]

>>4759195
>>4759191
Jesus, it's like /v/ before /v/.

[Anonymous No.4759210]

>>4759203
The internet has always had stupidity and anger running in its genes.

[Anonymous No.4759250]

There are some nostalgiafags from the 2nd gen but they seem to be mostly into collecting and restoring arcade games.

[Anonymous No.4759278]

>>4758941
>The C64 is a bit different, as it always had the gaming PC stigma. But for some reason it doesn't hold the same nostalgia in the west that the NES or other home consoles do.
Huh? Commodore machines have a huge, almost cult-like fanbase, especially in Europe.

[Anonymous No.4759659]

>>4759057
Maybe from a modern perspective. At the time it looked fine

[Anonymous No.4759667]

>>4759278
>Huh? Commodore machines have a huge, almost cult-like fanbase, especially in Europe.


I mean in North America the machine doesn't have the same mainstream appeal that the NES does. Cult like? sure. In Europe it's quite different, the C64 and Amiga are still big.

[Anonymous No.4760232]

>>4759659
James Pond was garbage even by early 90s standards. That game is nothing even close to the best console platformers of the day.

[Anonymous No.4760282]

>>4759203

That doesn't look like a /v/ post at all, that just looks like a typical 90s internet post like it's from usenet or a BB forum.

[Anonymous No.4760612]

>>4757712
>Ten years ago there was a lot more nostalgia for the 2600 than there is now.
I don't remember that.

[Anonymous No.4760626]

I think it's just because the games are too primitive to be interesting. While you could argue that nostalgiafags for them are older than nostalgiafags for SNES games, I don't think that matters that much. Like someone else said, even if you were to look at people who did grow up with Atari-era games, in general there wasn't as much nostalgia or attachment to them to begin with because the things were more like traditional children's toys or board games but in an electronic format, and gamer culture really didn't exist yet.

[Anonymous No.4760645]

>>4760626
I've said that arcade collecting seems more popular with guys of that generation than console collecting. arcade-museum.com has a lot of arcade game restorers in their 40s-50s.

[Anonymous No.4760689]

>>4757638
>It was kind of like trying to find that one game worth playing for more than a few minutes on a 1000 games in 1 bootleg console.

As a kid born in 1980 that had an atari til 1990, this is exactly how my childhood with the 2600 felt.

There were some good games, but honestly there are probably only 25 out of the whole library that you'd play for over 10 minutes.

[Anonymous No.4760691]

>>4757502
have you been living under a rock?

[Anonymous No.4760698]

>>4760645
I could agree. Consoles were like the inferior, dumbed-down little brother of arcade games. It wasn't until the NES era that console games as a distinct entity emerged. There were still tons of arcade ports but you also had the emergence of games like Zelda that would not have been possible in the arcades.

[Anonymous No.4760863]

>>4758012
I'd argue Golden Age arcade games had the best gameplay of any video games. That's why you could reduce the graphics to blocks/wireframes and they'd still be fun. Any modern genres, if reduced to minimalist abstract graphics, would lose close to 100% of their appeal.

[Anonymous No.4760883]

>>4758413
>Do 45+ year olds not experience nostalgia? Is this a thing that happens only to the late 20s-mid 30s crowd? What happens to people at age 45+?

They are generally too busy working and being productive so their children can have a good enough life to spend their time as adults playing with childrens toys, either that or they discovered alcohol. Or maybe they've become "woke" and realized life is short and they only have 25 years left, time to enjoy the real world and not live vicariously through video games.

Fuck, I've depressed myself, time to play some games to take my mind off of the reality of the situation.

[Anonymous No.4761060]

>>4760698
There were also arcade games that were turned into very different games when "ported" to the NES, like Bionic Commando, Strider, Rygar, etc.

[Anonymous No.4761371]

>>4758413
A 45 year old would have been 4-5 when the 2600 came out. It's a lot more likely they'd have more nostalgia for something that came out when they were a little order. And also something that had better games. The 2600 has a number of good games that are fun to play for a little while but a large portion of the library is complete shit. I'm 49 and I have fond memories of all kinds of old stuff but for me the C64 is better than anything before because it was the first affordable system with a sizeable library of good games. Also wharez.

[Anonymous No.4761640]

I think people are missing the point of why there's such a culture around gaming that began with the NES.

First, you have to realize that the NES was really the first time that the majority of games began to have a story, rather than just being repeated stages sped up over and over until you lost. This meant there was actually something to talk about with your friends. And it didn't even happen with the first wave of games. At launch only Kung Fu and SMB could be said to have much of a story. It was when Kid Icarus, Metroid, and Zelda launched that we finally had a lot to talk about. And of course, right around that time, the 3rd party titles started to hit, and developers were catching on that games could tell a story.

Second, we can not dismiss Nintendo's marketing department. With Atari, we might see a commercial on Saturday morning for a major arcade port like Pac-man, or even for the 2600 itself, but it was nothing like having Nintendo power, Captain N, The Super Mario show, etc. Everyone was getting Nintendo Power, and it was where you learned what the awesome game was going to be. Getting that game before your friends was a status symbol. Not that as a kid you thought of it in so many words. You just knew you had to have it first, and that everyone was going to gather at your house when you got it. That advertising blitz created a shared culture that people still identify with.

When you would trade Atari games with a friend, it was like trading baseball cards. Not a big deal. When you traded a Nintendo game with a friend, that game had already been discussed, read about, and you'd probably beaten it before handing it to them. You were sharing a damned experience. It was like handing someone a cherished book or movie.

[Anonymous No.4761724]

>>4761640
>I think people are missing the point of why there's such a culture around gaming that began with the NES.
>hipsters
FTFY

[Anonymous No.4761735]

>>4761724
Hipsters are newcomers to the scene. I'm talking about my fellow 40+ types who grew up with it.

>hurr durr every hobbyist is a hipster.

[Anonymous No.4762726]

>>4758619

[Anonymous No.4762737]

People don't realize just how shitty most Atari 2600 games were. Aside from the few reputable developers like Activision and Imagic who actually cared about their product and had top-tier programmers, there were scores of fly-by-night companies trying to cash in on the video game craze with total garbage that was barely playable, sometimes crashed, and could even damage your console.

[Anonymous No.4762990]

>>4762737
>Activision and Imagic who actually cared about their product and had top-tier programmers

Well Activision were made up of former Atari game developers who were sick of not getting any credit for their own work. They were some of the best because they had the most experience with the machine first hand at Atari. Imagic generally made good games too.

But yeah, a lot of "third party" developers flooded the machine just to make a a quick buck. The talent pool for programmers and designers was all over the place.

Atari had no control over the third parties because they were all independent and unlicensed. Atari had to compete with them directly too just to get gamer dollars.

Nintendo came into the western market with heavy restrictions on third party publishers. Every first and third party cartridge with the Seal of Quality logo on it was manufactured in Nintendo's own plants. Nintendo implemented their own lock out chips to prevent unlicensed third parties. They limited third parties to ten games a year. They would not even let third parties make games for competing consoles like the Master System. Nintendo locked down on the third parties hard.

[Anonymous No.4763047]

Note that this was exclusively an Atari problem. Mattel and Coleco did put lockout devices in their consoles and devs had to be licensed.

[Anonymous No.4763057]

Now Atari didn't publish tech info for the 2600; that was considered proprietary information. Activision consisted of ex-Atari programmers so they already knew how everything worked. During 1981 however, information on the console was leaked to electronics magazines and soon it became open season.

[Anonymous No.4763094]

>>4763047
>Note that this was exclusively an Atari problem. Mattel and Coleco did put lockout devices in their consoles and devs had to be licensed.

Funny since Mattel made unlicensed VCS games as well.

But manufacturers like Coleco and Mattel didn't want to fall victim to third parties like Atari and took some initiative to circumvent it.

[Anonymous No.4763148]

Coleco did as well, although some devs reverse engineered the Colecovision, which was easy to do since it used off-the-shelf components.

[Anonymous No.4763158]

>>4760689
Agreed(b. 1979). There's still nostalgia, but it's not like NES nostalgia. Atari had imitation arcade games you could play at home, some of which were pretty fun but nothing like the NES.

[Anonymous No.4763159]

>>4761060
Almost all of them, really. Even the closest, like Pac-Man and Space Invaders, were significantly different.

[Anonymous No.4763178]

>>4761640
Story had nothing to do with it, it was the bright, colorful, fast-paced, exciting, deep (relatively), arcade-like gameplay that the NES had. Before Super Mario Brothers, you could not play a side-scroller like that in your house, and SMB was decent even for an arcade game (there was an arcade version of it). The closest approximations before the NES were games like Pitfall or Karateka. You already had text-heavy games with narratives, like Oregon Trail or Carmen San Deigo.

[Anonymous No.4763214]

David Crane did not understand Atari's fixation on "bringing the arcades home" since he argued that the consoles couldn't properly replicate the games and they would be better off making quality original titles.

[Anonymous No.4763347]

>>4763178
Why not both?

[Anonymous No.4764070]

I am 19 years of age and was thinking of buying a 2600 but I was sort of wanting it for the collection aspect, would the games sort of be lost on me? the oldest games I have actually enjoyed were early dos era games so I'm not sure if I would enjoy the games with my big squishy gen zed brain. Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.4764072]

>>4764070
To elaborate they all look either really simple with not much to the games at least compared to later consoles that I do enjoy playing

[Anonymous No.4764524]

>>4764070
Why not try out an emulator and see if you like the games? That's probably better than spending money on something you might not get much enjoyment from.
I'm 31, and while I've liked the 2600 and its games since I was a kid, most of them aren't going to hold your attention for more than five or ten minutes. Also, some of the coolest stuff is homebrews that probably aren't available on cart.

[Anonymous No.4764527]

My dad sold our Atari to get money for a NES, even then people knew it was shit in comparison

[Anonymous No.4764561]

>>4764527
by the time the nes arrived, the 2600 was years out of date. atari milked that cow for as long as they could without even thinking about competing or evolving, that was until nes arrived and started making any of atari's home console and computer efforts look like a fucking waste of everybody's time.