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/vr/ - Retro Games

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9270459 No.9270459 [Reply] [Original]

Do you think Atari should of went ahead with the Panther instead of Jagwire?

>> No.9270491

>>9270459
No but they should have

>> No.9270507

>>9270459
Is that a fax machine?

>> No.9270518

>>9270459
Probably. Atari was still a fondly remembered brand and probably could have made a significant dent into Sega/Nintendos market share. They waited too long with Jaguar and it was underpowered from the getgo.

>> No.9270583

>>9270518
Nah. Atari was fucked the moment they crashed the market, then released a shit console with controllers that break in a week.

>> No.9270625

>>9270583
Wrong order of events, anon. Atari 5200 was released sometime in fall of 1982. The active phase of the Crash began on December 8th 1982, after Warner Communications announced to their stockholders that their yearly revenue was below expected projections, and Warner stock prices started to drop rapidly from that point, taking Atari and the whole home gaming industry for a bumpy ride.

>> No.9270651

>>9270459
The Panther would have easily been the better bet. A powerful 16 bit machine in 1991 could have found a niche compared to the Jaguar trying to launch the next generation at a time when the SNES and Genesis were in their prime.

Atari's overall problem though was that it didn't fully understand the third party system. They kept thinking that they could carry a library all on their own. Think about it: they release the Jaguar in 1993 and instead of trying to get Mortal Kombat on it they make their own Mortal Kombat imitation. The Panther would have been better positioned in theory but there's no guarantee the software would have been any more competent. You wouldn't have seen Street Fighter II on the Panther. Atari would have just made some shitty Street Fighter II imitator and expected the Atari name to sell it.

>> No.9270671

>>9270583
Jesus christ I'm so tired of zoomers just making shit up

>> No.9270673

Atari was doomed as soon as the NES came out. Everyone likes to talk about the "crash", but I don't know if it was all that important. Atari never made strong moves toward making deeper, less-disposable games suitable for playing at home. Even Sega, the king of the arcade, was able to figure it out to a certain extent.

Also, they never seemed to figure out how to make a good controller.

>> No.9270729

Hardware didn't matter at all. Atari had not made a hit game in years and had no 3rd party support for either the jaguar or the panther. No console has ever succeeded without a killer app, and atari has been creatively barren since 1983.

The panther had less polished versions of the jaguar launch titles in development and they were awful when finally released several years later on more powerful hardware.
>Raiden
>Trevor mcfurfag
>Cybermorph

Raiden was just ok, but overall a library of games rated “4 out of 10” with zero japanese support would have crashed and burned way worse than the neo geo or TG16 did in the west.

>> No.9270957

>>9270729
It mattered to some extent. The NES was rudimentary and most of it's games needed cart side hardware but the 7800 barely had any sound without the POKEY chip. It was supposed to come out years before it finally did, sure, but you'd think they would have taken that into consideration. Everything Atari did came off as excessively cheap. The Jaguar's shell doesn't even properly house the PCB. It has gaping holes in it.

>> No.9270984

>>9270957
7800 was designed by an outsider company which could not fit audio capabilities into its custom video chip and decided to rely on cartridge expansions instead of redesigning 7800's motherboard to fit a dedicated audio chip.

>> No.9270994

>>9270984
That's the explanation but it doesn't correct the underlying problem.

>> No.9271017

>>9270651
Jack Tramiel was a computer maker, not a toy maker, and didn't understand how the market works. His son Leonard Tramiel was a shithead who barely cared about the company.

>> No.9271147

>>9270957
>Everything Atari did came off as excessively cheap.
Everything Atari was doing in the Tramiel era WAS excessively cheap, that was the entire point. Jack was just trying to make Atari profitable again, which he absolutely did, and they had the cheapest, coolest looking industrial design in the business for their computers, and they were really good machines for the price. They kept making money on the now comically cheap to manufacture 2600 Jr, and the 7800 was a modest success, financially at least, despite its years late launch. Then his son took over as >>9271017 said, totally bit it with the Jag, and fucked Atari to death. If they had gone all in on the ST, sold dirt cheap 8 bit machines in the former soviet bloc and dropped game consoles entirely (maybe keep the 2600 around at $50 indefinitely) they would have been around longer.

>> No.9271195

>>9270459
What was the Atari presence like in other countries besides the US?

>> No.9271207

The one thing the Panther would have helped with is giving the Lynx a console to pair with. The Lynx, not being built by Atari itself, was a nice piece of hardware. But back then a handheld was expected to behave like a miniature version of a main console. Being put out there all by itself left the Lynx without the benefit of the symbiotic marketing that something like the NES and SNES provided the Game Boy with and vice versa.

>> No.9271210

>>9271195
It had some presence overseas. The Japanese version of the 2600 was rebranded 2800. It must have been relatively successful since Nintendo was even briefly considering licensing the Famicom to Atari and letting them handle the American release until deciding to just do it internally.

>> No.9271245

>>9271147
The 7800 was a bigger mistake than the 5200. At least the 5200 was designed with the logic of giving it near identical architecture to Atari's lineup of 8-bit computers, which as you said were pretty successful. The 7800 meanwhile was built with no consideration for the direction the industry was heading. Nobody wanted to play Centipede and the original Mario Bros. in the late 80s. The NES got that out of it's system with it's black box titles and almost completely switched gears. The 7800 had what? Scrapyard Dog? It had great versions of those old arcade games but at the time they were just old and hadn't yet become sufficiently retro to drive people back to them.

>> No.9271397

>>9271245
The 7800 was designed in the very early 80s when arcade accurate ports were still in high demand, and was postponed for 2 years. Thus the titles already lined up for it were arcade ports. Regardless, Scrapyard Dog, Ikari Warriors, Alien Brigade, Fatal Run, Midnight Mutants, and a few other titles proved that the 7800 was capable of anything the NES was doing, and more. 7800's sprite count was its strength, Robotron and Ballblazer were beyond anything the NES could pull off.

7800 failed because it didn't have many games. I heard programming for it was hard especially for NES style games, or maybe Atari was too hostile to their third party developers, but one thing for sure is Nintendo's anti multi platform policy and lack of high budget game studios really hurt all Atari's consoles.

>> No.9271553

>>9271195
>What was the Atari presence like in other countries besides the US?
massive.

>> No.9271559

>>9271397
>I heard programming for it was hard especially for NES style games
no, quite the opposite. 7800 was easier to program for and was way more flexible. not sure why people say it failed when it was in production for around 6 years.

>> No.9271567

>>9271397
For whatever reason I don't remember the 7800 having much of a presence in stores. I was very young and a Nintendo junkie so maybe I didn't notice but I did pay attention to gaming as a general rule and just don't remember seeing 7800 all that much, if at all, in the electronics section at department stores.

>> No.9271571

>>9270625
The whole gaming industry, excluding Home Computers and Personal Computers. Basically 3/4th of the devices in households globally. In other words Atari was surpassed by competition and it was "tHe deATh OF GaMiNg!?!?"

>> No.9271573

>>9271559
It had like 70 games total compared to the NES's 800. Even Master System had a few hundred. They may have been farting out consoles for six years but they sure as hell weren't making games along side it.

>> No.9271579

>>9270459
gr8 b8 m8 8/8
also serious answer it would have been wiser.
i love the jag tho so no major regrets from me

>> No.9271581

>>9271567
They only sold less than 4 million units, and most of the sales were spread across Europe where Atari still enjoyed a decent popularity and provided better accessories like the NES inspired gamepad. SMS sold over 10 million and NES was extremely popular everywhere. Jack knew he couldn't compete against nintendo's dominance in the american and asian market so he focused on the european market.

>> No.9271583

>>9270583
never heard of a jag controller breaking in 2 weeks. i never broke one.

>> No.9271585

>>9271579
The Jaguar came out at the worst possible moment. It tried to launch the next gen while the 16 bit machines were at their strongest and then because computer tech advanced so quickly in the 90s it was painfully outclassed by the time the market was finally ready. Releasing the Panther in 1991 and leaving the Jaguar in the oven to cook for a 1995/1996 launch and battle the N64 directly (obviously with more powerful hardware than the actual Jag had) would have been a way better strategy.

>> No.9271586

>>9270459
I wonder if they were holding off, considering the 5200 and 7800 were total failures, and by the early 90s the Lynx was dead in the water.

>> No.9271587

>>9271585
obviously

>> No.9271589

>>9271583
I think he's mistaking it for the Colecovision, which did have notoriously fragile controllers.

>> No.9271591

>>9271583
probably referring to the 5200 controllers, which all broke pretty much right away.

>> No.9271595

>>9271589
>>9271591
ok i didn't know that, that was before my time in gaming.
i have something like 8 jag pads but yet to break one...

>> No.9271596

>>9271586
>total failures
Nope. 5200 sold poorly but they didn't lose any money over it, since the unsold units were converted into Atari 8 bit micros which were still selling well. 7800 was actually quite profitable. It failed to shake up nintendo's dominance of course, but it sold pretty well. Lynx sold like 2 million units, not an impressive number but it was enough to keep Atari afloat. The jaguar was the total mess, and it killed atari because they killed all their product lines to sell it. It only sold 250K units somehow even though they sacrificed everything for it. Wouldn't happen if they released the Panther instead.

>> No.9271598

>>9271595
Speaking of the Jag pad, for the life of me I don't understand why they released the three button version at all. A 3 button controller in 1993? And then you dick over everyone with a superior six button version as a separate purchase? Sega had to do it that way because they couldn't predict Street Fighter II when the Genesis launched in the 80s. Atari meanwhile seemed to just copy Sega's strategy without considering if they even needed to by then.

>> No.9271602

>>9271595
Jag pads are generic silicone dome controllers without analog stick or any fragile moving parts. No shit hey last forever.

>> No.9271606

>>9271596
To be fair, the market itself killed their best product line. By the early 90s IBM compatibles completely displaced the incompatible architectures of 80s home computers. The Jaguar was a final gasp of air.

>> No.9271612

>>9271598
the extra buttons of the pro controller is just a rewire of numpad buttons tho, so no extra inputs. so there is that.
i agree on the antiquated button config tho.
>>9271602
indeed. the only problem will be dirty contacts or maybe the rubber bubble of a button sliding to the side in some rare cases but that's an easy fix...

>> No.9271648 [DELETED] 

>>9270583
You have to be 30 to post on this board.

>> No.9271768

>>9271571
Home computer industry was already on a bumpy ride thanks to Jack Tramiel's price war against Texas Instruments.

>> No.9271782

>>9271768
>price war
Selling the best computers for the lowest price isn't price war. The VIC-20 was a brilliant computer that could be built quickly at a low cost because it could only display character graphics. TI and Atari computers were unnecessarily expensive and complicated.

>> No.9271791

>>9271782
>best computers
>could only display character graphics
Sure...

>> No.9271797

>>9270459
>should of
*should've
You fucking nigger

>> No.9271805

>>9270673
>I don't know
Exactly, you don't know shit

>> No.9271927

>>9271791
It was the best in its price range. The alternative would be the ZX81 or commodore pet which didn't have graphics at all.

>> No.9273262

>>9271397
>>9271245
What I was trying to get at is that the 7800 did not fail, it made Atari money and was a modest success. It has the best version of Ballblazer as well, which automatically makes it radical. Atari was in a war with itself for the 5200, it shouldn't have existed at all — the 400 was the same thing, but drastically better.
>>9271553
The Atari 8 bit computers were huge in eastern Europe due to their cost, and Jack being from that region himself, he knew what he was doing marketing to them. The ST was quite big in the UK and Europe, and the 2600 was actually very popular in the UK, particularly as a super budget console when the UK middle class was still much poorer than their US counterparts.

>> No.9273503

>>9270459
Based jagwirechad vs the virgin jag you err

>> No.9273542

>>9271797
This poster is the coolest motherfucker ever and drowns in pussy daily.

>> No.9273568

>>9271210
I recall reading it was not that they gave it up, but rather that Atari told them to fuck off after seeing that they sold the home license for donkey kong to coleco.

>> No.9273572

>>9273503
I'm on that jagwahr grindset

>> No.9273576

>>9270459
Atari's reputation was already done by the 1990s. People moved on to Nintendo and Sega. The Jaguar was also poorly designed and not easy to make games for.

Any time you make a complicated CPU and electronics, then you console will suffer. Dunno why companies don't understand this.

Atari Jaguar learned this.
Sega 32x learned this.
Sega Saturn learned this.
Sony PS3 learned this.

It's why Xbox succeeded. Powerful hardware and developer friendly technology.

>> No.9273585
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9273585

>>9270491

>> No.9273821

>>9273576
Atari's reputation was one of the biggest hurdles for sure. Kids mostly associated the brand with ancient history. Its funny now since at the time of the Jaguar the Atari VCS was only about as old as the Wii is today. But given how video games changed so dramatically in the intervening years the word "Atari" was associated with simplistic single screen games. Most kids who started with the NES didn't know the 7800 was a thing. Maybe the knew of the Lynx but almost nobody bought it over a Game Gear, let alone Game Boy. It was just very hard for anyone to take Atari seriously enough to give Jaguar a chance and so they were just itching for reasons to dunk on the thing. And Atari certainly didn't help, making the entire marketing campaign about the bit wars while offering games that barely looked better than what was being done on the SNES and Genesis. The Jaguar became a joke right out of the gate and never recovered. Nintendo had the foresight to know that if they were going to play up the bit angle they needed to make the games appear sufficiently more advanced, even if there was no real connection between the game's appearance and "bits" they recognized that the consumer base expected "more bits = better games."

>> No.9273920

>>9273821
>And Atari certainly didn't help, making the entire marketing campaign about the bit wars while offering games that barely looked better than what was being done on the SNES and Genesis.
I mean, Jaguar's launch title Cybermorph was a full 3D open world game with heightmap levels and smooth goraurd shading. The art direction was shit but it was far beyond of what the SNES and Genesis could do.

>> No.9274461

>>9270673
That's exactly why the crash happened. Atari basically had a monopoly of the console market, but there was too much shit games going around that they became worthless. It gave Nintendo an in to take Atari's former monopoly a few years later.

>> No.9274465
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9274465

>RF in on the console

>> No.9274484

>>9271210
>Nintendo was even briefly considering licensing the Famicom to Atari and letting them handle the American release
Rejecting hudson soft offer or failed sony CD license

>> No.9274898

>>9270651
>Atari's overall problem though was that it didn't fully understand the third party system.
>Panther would have been better positioned in theory but there's no guarantee the software would have been any more competent.
This is my take as well. Game library has always been the dominant factor in console success and Atari couldn't seem to get traction with any worthwhile game devs.
>>9271585
Probably true but also probably irrelevant as other anons said.
You need an appealing game library more than anything else. Having a the right platform technology at the right time is a part of that, but only one part.

>> No.9275002

>>9273920
Cybermorph is a perfect example one of those games that does all of these technical things in a way that makes it not matter to the end user. It's far and away a more technically advanced game than Star Fox but instead of being a spirited action game it drops you in an open void with no music, no clear goal, and a bald lady talking at you. Which in the end made Star Fox look like the better example of 3D flying since for all it's technical limitations, it presented what it did have in a better package. Cybermorph should have been the Jaguar's system seller but they wasted all the technically superior capabilities on some avant garde shit that didn't look fun to play.

>> No.9275039

>>9274898
The Genesis is probably the best example of this. People forget but the early Genesis marketing was very Neo Geo like. It was pretty much entirely marketed on the idea of playing your favorite Sega arcade games at home. There was very little third party focus. And while it's true that it was the first time reasonably faithful ports of those games were possible, the flagship title was Altered Beast, which frankly isn't that good of a game. "Genesis Does What Nintendon't" wasn't a dig at the SNES, which wasn't out at the time, but rather the NES. Sega was picking a fight with a previous generation machine...and still losing. It wasn't until Sonic and Mortal Kombat that things really turned around.

The Panther would have been the Genesis circa 1989 but worse. Looking at the specs in a vacuum it would have been a fantastic platform and straight up arcade port heaven. Capcom, Konami, and SNK could have had a field day with that machine. But what are the chances Atari would have even bothered to try getting them on board?

It was cultural. Activision was famously the first third party formed by ex-Atari employees. The company never got over that burn and did their best to plug their ears that third party games were a good idea. They'd dip their toes in the water but never seemed all that enthusiastic. And unlike Nintendo, which COULD sell machines solely on its internal games, Atari was never nearly that competent.

>> No.9275164

>>9275002
It was the 90s man. Trippy avant aesthetics were the cool shit. The goal is perfectly clear anyway. Just follow the compass marker and collect the yellow thingies, that's your objective. The controls need getting used to but it was cool how your ship could morph and the numpad provided you multiple camera angles and views. It was probably the coolest and most impressive console game in 1993. 3DO launch titles SUCKED. 3DO might be more powerful than the Jaguar, texture mapped 3D wise, but it's full of FMV cancer.

Also Jack Tramiel's Atari isn't the same Atari that fucked over Activision. He bought the trademark but it was a very different company.

>> No.9276806

>>9271559
The 7800 was an absolute beast when it came to single-screen games, but wasn't nearly easy to do the kind of scrolling screens that the NES and SMS did with ease.

>> No.9276810

>>9271581
Europe was more amicable to microcomputers like the Atari 8-bits. Japan had their own little digital world because of their obtuse writing system, and Americans preferred more expensive IBM compats for computing and dedicated consoles for gaming.

>> No.9276821 [DELETED] 

>>9270671
Reddit is a better place for retro discussions.

>> No.9277530

>>9276806
>the kind of scrolling screens that the NES and SMS did with ease.
yeah and history proved that was really important for 2D games.

>> No.9278658

>>9276806
The nearly limitless sprites is pretty fucking cool.