Misguided criticism of the Atari 7800

[DracIsBack]

In reading some various popular classic gaming sites it has become very apparent to me that some folks that run these popular sites have some very misguided criticisms of the 7800.

 

You know the types of comments I'm referring to:

 

"The 7800 was released to compete against the NES, a superior system"

 

"The 7800 was horribly dated in 1986"

 

"The 7800 was 1983 hardware in a 1986 world"

 

etc etc etc.

 

While there are things to criticize about the 7800, "dated hardware" is notone of them.

 

As soon as I write this, I can envision people saying, "yeah ... but the sound was horrible!"

 

True. The sound did suck.

 

Then again, the NES had less than half the number of colours as the Atari 2600. Is the NES "dated" hardware as a result?

 

Let's consider some things.

 

1. Argument: The 7800 was dated hardware. It was developed in 1983 and then delayed to compete against the NES. It was a 1983 system designed to compete in a 1986 world. It was out of date!

 

Response: The NES was developed in 1983 as well - as the Famicom. In 1986, both the 7800 and the NES were "1983 systems competing"

 

2. Argument: The 7800 was "crippled by its low resolution."

 

Response: First off, the 7800 had higher screen resolution than the NES. While most games did not use that, you can blame that on the programmers not the system. Second, even in the lower resolution mode, you're not exactly talking about the difference between - say 1024 x 768 on one system and 80 x 192 on the other. It's a marginal difference.

 

3. Argument: The 7800 games had low numbers of colours.

 

Response: The 7800 had a palette 5 times the size of the NES. It could also display 25 colours on screen compared to the NES. The "limited palette" criticism is a function of ports, not proper use of colour. Anyone want to show me an NES game with graphics like TOWER TOPPLER's underwater sequence .... good use of the 7800's colour?

 

So tell me, 7800 critics, how exactly was the 7800's hardware "out of date"? With the exception of sound, I think it was a stronger contender than many realize:

 

* Processing power. Both the NES and 7800 used 6502 processors. It wasn't like one had a processing edge over the other.

* Graphics. With 256 colours, 320 x 200 resolution and the ability to manipulate a hundred moving objects courtesy of a flexible 7.16 mhz MARIA chip, the 7800 could have been a graphics powerhouse - when used properly. You certainly didn't see flickering on the 7800 like you did on the NES.

* Memory: The NES had 2K of RAM and 2K of video ram. the 7800 had 4K of RAM. Sounds pretty even.

* Cartridges: Yeah, there were 8 megabit NES games at the end of life. It's also been established that there was nothing from preventing the 7800 from playing 2 megabit, 4 megabit and 8 megabit games - except for Jack Tramiel's tight wallet.

 

I maintain that the 7800 was competitive in terms of hardware with the NES. The NES was a solid system no question, but the 7800's achilles heel was not found in the hardware.

 

If, in an alternate universe, Atari had given the 7800 the same resources that Nintendo gave the NES in terms of licenses, development budgets, cartridge space, development time, R&D etc, does anyone really think that the 7800 couldn't have pulled of CASTLEVANIA, SUPER MARIO BROTHERS, LIFEFORCE etc?

 

I think it wouldn't have been problem.

 

Hardware wasn't the 7800's weakness. Jack Tramiel was.

[Tempest]

Wow! You're suffering from some serious delusions...

 

Tempest

[DracIsBack]

The best counter-argument you have is an insult ...?

 

If you don't agree, how about refuting my points with specific counter-arguments?

 

I totally dig your site, but you need to come up with a better technical response than "you're delusional" to convince me of your beliefs.

 

If you stand by your convictions that the 7800 was "horribly dated" in 1986, please feel free to give me a detailed technical explanation of why the 7800 couldn't play a game like LEGEND OF ZELDA?

[Tempest]

Not an insult, just stating a fact.

 

Well I won't doubt your research, but if the 7800 was so superior to the NES then why do even the first NES games (Clu Clu Land, Ice Climber, Balloon Fight, etc.) look better than the last 7800 games? Face it, the NES was better. Even an Atari fanboy like myself has to admit it.

 

Tempest

[DracIsBack]

Well I won't doubt your research, but if the 7800 was so superior to the NES then why do even the first NES games (Clu Clu Land, Ice Climber, Balloon Fight, etc.) look better than the last 7800 games? Face it, the NES was better. Even an Atari fanboy like myself has to admit it.

 

1. The argument was whether or not the hardware was dated as many (including you) claim. I don't feel that's valid.

 

2. Point 2 is a good one. but is it an issue of hardware or;

 

* Better programmers

* Longer development cycles

* Third, fourth, fifth and sixth generation programmers pushing the system.

etc etc etc

 

The NES did have better games and it was pushed harder.

 

But my argument stands - if the 7800 was "pushed" in the same way as the NES was, what would the results be like? And no - I don't feel that the first NES games look better than the last 7800 titles.

 

Please feel free to tell me why the 7800 couldn't play Zelda on a technical level.

[tyranthraxus]

You should add the crap joysticks to the list of problems. The NESs pad's

were far from brilliant but they are still much better than the prolines or

the joypads. Also at the time I remember being quite impressed with

them. It was quite a revolutionary change to go against the joystick

trend of almost all the previous US consoles.

 

But it was uninspired management that failed to snag exciting games for

the 7800. The later arcade ports like Double Dragon and Ikari Warriors

are the only games that would warrant upgrading over a 5200 and those

came out years too late. They needed fresh 7800 exclusive games at

launch. Pole Position II was a start but not as a pack in.

 

John

[DracIsBack]

Nintendo has generally been pretty innovative in terms of ergonomics with their controllers. I'll give them that.

 

But in terms of system hardware and capabilities, I stand by my beliefs. The argument of "obsolete hardware" doesn't wash ... in terms of timing or specs.

 

If you took Nintendo's developers, licenses, development times, development budgets, game standards and creativity and unleashed them on the 7800 hardware, would they say "I can't do anything on this hardware?"

 

I don't think so.

 

I think Jack Tramiel was more of an enemy to the 7800 than GC's engineers were.

[+Mitch]

For what it's worth, I don't believe Ice Climber, Balloon Fight, etc. were first generation Famicom titles. Which would be the equivalent to 7800 first gen titles. Stuff that was released with the NES were actually Famicom second and third gen stuff. I believe the Famicom release titles were Donkey Kong and Popeye.

 

Mitch

[raindog]

Maybe what Atari needed to do was release an arcade system based on the 7800.... like Nintendo did with the NES. Maybe the reason Nintendo's games looked so much better than the 7800's was because they *had* to, or Nintendo's coin-op business would have gone down the toilet by virtue of being based on largely the same hardware.

 

Meanwhile, Atari was getting into whatever you call the chipset that runs Marble Madness, 720, Paperboy etc. in the arcade, and for their "pro system" they basically made a super 2600, the sort of machine they should have produced in response to the Colecovision instead of the 5200.

 

Hell, look at what Opcode is doing for the Colecovision, basically bringing it up to par with the NES. Maybe if they'd hired a different crew, the 7800's games could have gotten that kind of exacting attention (or the slightly lesser, but good-enough, attention that NES arcade ports got) but.... they didn't. And people writing articles about the industry have every reason to assume that because 7800 games looked and sounded like crap next to the NES, that the hardware was subpar. Their job is to comment on the industry, not make excuses for the also-ran. After all, what kind of company would release a console in 1986 whose launch titles couldn't even reproduce 1982 arcade games, unless they were limited by their own hardware? The 7800 was simply not important enough in gaming history to go any deeper than that.

 

Playing 7800 Galaga is *almost* enough to make me want to take up 7800 programming just to do it right, just to see if it can be done. But since I've never seen a 7800 in real life, I think I'll pass on that challenge.

[DracIsBack]

Maybe what Atari needed to do was release an arcade system based on the 7800.... like Nintendo did with the NES.  Maybe the reason Nintendo's games looked so much better than the 7800's was because they *had* to, or Nintendo's coin-op business would have gone down the toilet by virtue of being based on largely the same hardware.

 

Interesting point, although I'm not sure of how much of Nintendo's revenue was generated by the coin-op business at that point. Regardless, I think Nintendo (then and now) had higher standards on what games should look and play like. They revitalized the industry with a new type of style of game and have continuously pushed the bounds as far as gameplay and gaming standards.

 

 

and for their "pro system" they basically made a super 2600, the sort of machine they should have produced in response to the Colecovision instead of the 5200.

 

I don't think the 7800 was a "super 2600" any more than the NES was. It was a 6502 based console with a MARIA graphics chip and then some 2600 hardware thrown on top for backwards compatability. It's gets referred to as a "souped up 2600" but that isn't really correct.

 

And people writing articles about the industry have every reason to assume that because 7800 games looked and sounded like crap next to the NES, that the hardware was subpar.

 

 

Good point. And the point of this thread was to explore this further.

 

Judging from the specs, there is no reason why the 7800 couldn't play the games the NES was playing. So if it isn't a hardware issue, then it boils down to a development one. And while I dig Atari's systems, all of the Tramiel era systems have the problem of "great specs seldom being pushed." You get hints of the 7800, Lynx and Jaguar showing off what they can do ... the scaling in BLUE LIGHTNING, the underwater sequence in TOWER TOPPLER, ALIEN VS. PREDATOR on the Jaguar etc. But few games on these three systems "tie all the features together" into a wow factor the way that - say - DONKEY KONG COUNTRY did on the SNES.

 

With the 7800, it's particularly apparent that the Tramiels didn't even want to release video games - they wanted to be a computer company. As such, the 2 million or so 7800 consoles they sold were almost despite themselves. They didn't advertise hardly. They chinced on packaging. They didn't offer a game line. And - according to reports, they weren't willing to invest in games themselves, including development, licensing and manufacturing. Only two 7800 titles have a POKEY. Only a half dozen have additional RAM. Only two are 144K in size. Given these factors, do you think they were willing to pay for lengthy development cycles? Optimized programming? Hiring the best programming houses?

 

So that's the point of this thread:

 

What if ...?

 

What if the Super Mario Brothers team was given a multimillion dollar budget and a year or two to bring SMB to the 7800. Does anyone think that the 7800 couldn't pull it off?

 

Judging from the Atari 8-bit port currently in the works, I doubt it's a hardware issue at all.

[Tempest]

What if the Super Mario Brothers team was given a multimillion dollar budget and a year or two to bring SMB to the 7800. Does anyone think that the 7800 couldn't pull it off?

 

I think they could (Scrapyard Dog comes close), but I don't think the graphics would look as nice. The 7800 has a problem with odd colors (either dingy looking or obnoxious looking) and blurry 'muddy' looking graphics. The NES had crisp colors and graphics. Perhaps that's why they look better to the casual observer.

 

Tempest

[DracIsBack]

The 7800 has a problem with odd colors (either dingy looking or obnoxious looking) and blurry 'muddy' looking graphics. The NES had crisp colors and graphics. Perhaps that's why they look better to the casual observer.

 

But is the muddy display a function of the RF output? A 7800 with a composite or S-Video mod doesn't seem to have that issue.

 

Obnoxious colors are often a function of poor choices by the graphics designer.

 

One thing I have noticed with a lot of 7800 games is that they focus on the darker, drabber colours in the 256 palette - without good reason to do so. Absolute games tend to be like that. A lot of Nintendo games make use of bright primary colours, whereas a lot of 7800 titles make use of colours like those in SUPER HUEY.

 

The 7800 can display bright colours - Pole Position II, Ninja Golf, Tower Toppler and Ballblazer all do.

[EricBall]

Re: 7800 being as super 2600

 

As Drac said, the 7800 MARIA GPU is unlike anything the 2600 (or 5200 & 8bit, which really are the super 2600s) has. The 7800 is to the 2600 in the same way the PS2 is to the PS1. Both the 7800 and the PS2 contain compatible hardware used to play the 2600/PS1 games which is not used in 7800/PS2 mode.

 

Not having programmed the NES, I cannot compare it directly to the 7800. However, the MARIA GPU is fairly powerful (though not without some limitations), and there are impressive games for the 7800 including several very good arcade ports.

 

Re: Donkey Kong Country for the SNES

It is my understanding that this game is more an example of what can be done with massive storage space and pre-rendered sprites than an example of what the SNES hardware can do on it's own.

 

Re: colors

The Atari consoles (and probably the computers) all create color via direct Y/C. And because the Y output is linear, that means (due to how gamma works) that ~50% of the colors are fairly dark on a normal TV. This probably is more an issue for current developers (who use emulators with over-bright palettes) than the original developers (who would have tested on real hardware, though maybe with "hot" TVs).

 

I will agree that probably the biggest factors in 7800 development are time, money & effort. I can see that the hardware is capable of great things, but I don't have enough time to create huge games.

 

The main limitations of the 7800 hardware are:

1. TIA sound versus POKEY cost

2. ROM size versus bankswitching cost

3. CPU time (for both game logic and time required to build the MARIA display list) versus graphics complexity & game responsiveness

4. no generic framebuffer (not that the 7800 has the CPU power to really use a framebuffer anyway)

5. MARIA GPU power (and RAM) for massive numbers of sprites with a tiled background

6. Only 3 colors per sprite (although sprites can be layered)

[ApM]

The NES hardware was much easier for programmers to wrap their heads around. Basically, you have a tiled background, which you can scroll, and a handful of sprites. It's ludicrously straightforward.

 

The MARIA is much more flexible, but it is a bit more difficult for the programmer to get something going, and probably costs more CPU time as well. Gotta set up your display list list, and all of your display lists, and your entries to point into your character background, then place your sprite data in just the right spot to be able to use holey DMA... Now to horizontally scroll, we update 30 flags in various entries scattered around the DLL...

 

You have to do a lot more work to produce a good-looking game for the 7800.

[DracIsBack]

The NES hardware was much easier for programmers to wrap their heads around. Basically, you have a tiled background, which you can scroll, and a handful of sprites. It's ludicrously straightforward.  

 

This was one of Nintendo's smartest moves with the NES. Between this, the invention of the sidescroller and their creativity, the NES olbiterated everything.

 

Where Atari really screwed up was in diverting resources to the XEGS and 2600 JR instead of smartening up and making comparable 7800 games sooner rather than later.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

I think one way that this argument could be settled once and for all would be for a good homebrew programmer to attempt to make something that pushes the 7800 to the max. This would probably take a while, but lets suppose that someone who can program well for the 7800 attempts to make a game that pushes the console in every way - cart space, color, resolution, etc. and see the results. I'm pretty sure that if given enough time that the 7800 could pull off an astounding game. I'd love to see that, especially after getting Tower Toppler.

[rockman_x_2002]

Well... I'm thinking that in terms of sprite power, the 7800 does have the edge.

 

I mean, think about it. Robotron. The 7800 can pull off a near-perfect arcade translation of the game. And look at all those robots on the screen at once! If the NES tried to do this, it would melt into some kind of acidic puddle on your bedroom floor from all the sprites on the screen at once.

 

For further comparison, lets take Commando for the 7800 and the NES and pit them side by side. Myself... I tend to want to pick the Atari 7800 version of Commando. It's just better. My thing is actually finding the game on a cartridge so I can hear the music personally. But for now, I have to stick to emulation. Still, Commando is a great side-by-side comparison and example as to where the 7800 can excel over the NES... at least to me.

 

And while we're on the subject of side-by-side comparisons, compare "Tower Toppler" and "Castelian" on the NES. A game by any other name... again... 7800 version takes props.

[Vigo]

I think, although the 7800 is a highly interesting and underestimated hardware, the NES design is the one which can produce better graphics.

 

The reasons for this:

 

- Maria is rather complex to handle. It needs much Ram and CPU Power to build/control the display Lists.

 

- with Maria´s only two modes which could achieve better looking games (160x200x4, 320x200x2) you can only transfer 128/256 pixels to the Line Ram, which makes them rather useless for tiled backgrounds with sprites. Big minus.

 

- You cannot mix 320 x-res graphics with 160 x-res graphics in one line. This makes it even inferior to the C64.

 

- 320 x-res objects can only be placed every two pixels, and their priority logic over other objects is also broken.

 

- the Sound is heavily outdated.

 

The 7800er is definatively better than the 5200 architecture. But it has so many flaws in important aspects of the design that this complex design doesn´t pay off in the end.

 

Look at last generation NES titles like Kirby´s Dreamland, Bucky O´Hare etc. I say with full confidence that these titles are never equally possible on the Atari 7800.

 

Even some last generation C64 titles (Mayhem in Monsterland) are not equally possible on the 7800.

 

And that´s no NES / C64 fanboy bashing the poor 7800er but simple facts.

[DracIsBack]

You make good points Vigo, though I'm always skeptical of comparisons of "seventh generation games" from popular platforms and declarations that they could "never be achieved" on a less popular platform. Those that developed the first NES games probably felt the same way.

 

As there weren't seven generations of 7800 titles, we'll never truely see the 7800 version of SOLARIS/TOY STORY/DONKEY KONG COUNTRY/KIRBY'S DREAMLAND etc. And as such, we can't really delcare what the 7800 can't or can't do without the same level of programming experience/in cartridge chips/programming hacks/modern development tools etc applied to it.

[Vigo]

You make good points Vigo' date=' though I'm always skeptical of comparisons of "seventh generation games" from popular platforms and declarations that they could "never be achieved" on a less popular platform. Those that developed the first NES games probably felt the same way. [/qoute']

 

I know that it is quite usual bashing technical aspects of a system because it is less popular. But trust me, i played with the 7800er quite a bit (i changed my 7800er into a development system), and my estimations are not far fetched.

 

As there weren't seven generations of 7800 titles, we'll never truely see the 7800 version of SOLARIS/TOY STORY/DONKEY KONG COUNTRY/KIRBY'S DREAMLAND etc. And as such, we can't really delcare what the 7800 can't or can't do without the same level of programming experience/in cartridge chips/programming hacks/modern development tools etc applied to it.

 

That´s not entirely true. I agree that the 7800er can do much better than what current games display. But you can clearly see the technical limits, where the NES is superiour (the first one being the resolution).

 

Plus, those scrolling games like SMB fit perfectly into the NES graphical architecture. To scroll the screen on the NES, you just have to change two PPU registers. It even wraps the screen around, so you don´t have to copy much VRAM data around while scrolling large levels.

 

On the 7800, you would have to change the horizontal offset of every Display List List, and even if that´s done, no wrap around occurs which would require copying the screen memory via CPU every 8 pixels (like the C64).

 

You can clearly see that you need more processing power to handle these kind of games on the 7800er. Both consoles being clocked at the same clockspeed, the NES clearly wins.

 

Atari did not design the MARIA to handle those kind of graphics well. It is rather designed to display many objects with a static background, the way games used to be <1984,85.

[DracIsBack]

That´s not entirely true. I agree that the 7800er can do much better than what current games display. But you can clearly see the technical limits, where the NES is superiour (the first one being the resolution).

 

Touche. I can align to the fact that there are some advantages to the NES. I just had some issues with people assuming the 7800 hardware was "horribly behind" and "horribly out of date". Also, it's not as though the NES can do everything the 7800 can do and then some. Each system has certain strengths and weaknesses. The NES is adept at tile-based games. The 7800 is adept at animating large numbers of moving objects without screen flicker.

 

Plus, those scrolling games like SMB fit perfectly into the NES graphical architecture. To scroll the screen on the NES, you just have to change two PPU registers. It even wraps the screen around, so you don´t have to copy much VRAM data around while scrolling large levels.

 

Good point. Of course, my thought also is Where does the 7800 hit the wall? Some bashers of the system assume it can play nothing more than a good FOOD FIGHT which, as SCRAPYARD DOG demonstrates, is silly. If BLUE SKY SOFTWARE were paid a decent amount to develop a SCRAPYARD DOG 2, and a SCRAPYARD DOG 3, it would be interesting to see what tricks they could work in and how good those games would look? My hunch is probably as good as the bulk of NES side-scrollers, but not as good as the premiere final ones.

 

Of course, in an alternate universe, the 7800 carts would be equipped with additional chips like the later NES carts were to help with the graphical tricks.

 

 

One other thing that hurt the 7800 trermendously were the houses that Atari hired to develop for it. Wan Technologies comes to mind, Imagineering comes to mind and IBID Inc. comes to mind - these were all hack programming houses that didn't generally do a good job on games.

 

On the other hand, RADIOACTIVE SOFTWARE produced two first-generation 7800 titles ... MIDNIGHT MUTANTS and FATAL RUN that were leagues beyond anything that the afforementioned companies produced. What if RADIOACTIVE sat down and did 3rd generation, 4th generation and 5th generation titles? What would MIDNIGHT MUTANTS 3 look like? What would DOUBLE DRAGON on the 7800 look like if SCULPTURED SOFTWARE (of COMMANDO fame) got the assignment instead of IMAGINEERING?

 

My feeling is that they would be SIGNIFICANTLY better than what was released.

 

Thanks for your message.

[EricBall]

Okay, I've been looking at some NES development docs, so i have a better feel for what the NES can do.

 

One important item is the NES is more "fixed function" than the 7800, though it appears there are "tricks" which can be done in code or via "mappers" (logic in the cart, mostly for bankswitching, but sometimes for much more) which involve changing the PPU (the NES GPU) state in the middle of the frame. Typically these tricks are CPU intensive since they require tight syncronization between the CPU and PPU. The 7800 has very few "tricks" both because they typically aren't necessary (i.e. the flexibility exists already), and also because the CPU mostly can't change MARIA GPU processing on the fly.

 

CPU <-> GPU coupling

The 7800 MARIA GPU shares RAM, ROM & access time with the 6502. So while MARIA is creating each line of the display, the 6502 is halted. A 7800 game may also have to spend significant time creating the display lists. The NES PPU has it's own address space, which is only indirectly accessible by the CPU. This gives the game more processing time since the 6502 is not halted during picture processing. However, the CPU can only access PPU address space (to update the tile maps) during VBLANK.

Advantage NES - more CPU processing time

 

One interesting item is the 7800 MARIA/TIA registers are mapped to zero page addresses while the NES PPU/pAPU registers are not. So register accesses require one less byte and one less cycle on the 7800, but an NES game uses these registers far more than a 7800 game. Interesting design choices.

 

Cartridge RAM/ROM

A mentioned, the NES CPU and PPU have separate address spaces. The NES cartridge connector reflects this, having separate CPU and GPU address and data buses, and separate ROMs for the CPU and PPU. This automatically makes NES carts larger and more expensive than the basic 7800 cartridge. The big N also went with a hardware lockout chip while Atari went with a software digital signature. It goes without saying that later NES cartridges were more complicated (RAM, battery backed RAM, mappers, huge ROMs) than Atari made 7800 carts.

Advantage NES - 'cause Nintendo spent more $$

 

System RAM

While both the NES and the 7800 contain 4K of RAM, there are some important differences. The NES splits the RAM into 2K usable by the CPU for general storage and 2K for the PPU (indirectly accessible by the CPU) used for the tile maps (with additional on cart CPU and PPU RAM possible). The 4K of 7800 RAM is completely accessible by the CPU, but a large chunk of it (2K or more) will be used for display lists and tile maps (depending on the game). A few 7800 carts also had additional RAM for general storage.

Advantage NES - fixed function uses less RAM

 

Tile processing

The NES has a fixed 32x30 tile map (with scrolling), with 8x8 tiles. The tiles are 3 colors (plus background/transparent), with a block of 2x2 tiles having the same palette (of 4). The 7800 has more flexible, though similar, tile capabilites; but they consume a large chunk of the processing power of the MARIA GPU (tiled background = fewer sprites per line). The NES also requires less CPU power to achieve the same result.

Advantage NES - simple & effective fixed function versus CPU & GPU hungry flexibility

 

Sprite processing

The NES has 64 sprites (max 8? per line), though it may be possible to change this on the fly to increase the total number of sprites displayed. Each 8x8 or 8x16 sprite has 3 colors (plus background/transparent) out of 4 different palettes (different palettes than tiles). The 7800 can display an enormous number of sprites (not fixed size either and with better color capabilities) both onscreen (256 easy) and on a single line (30 with no background). The problem is the CPU processing required to build the dynamic display lists.

Advantage 7800 for pure sprite capabilities, but NES gets the nod for easier to use

 

Conclusion:

Although the 7800 MARIA GPU has the capability of creating better graphics than the NES, it is hamstrung by the amount of CPU power required to maintain the display lists needed to create those graphics. Plus, the 7800 GPU halts the CPU while the graphics are being created, further reducing the amount of CPU time available to the game. The NES wins out with it's easy to use fixed function GPU which leaves the CPU free to execute more code per frame.

[Evilbay]

Hmmm,

 

let's see...

 

 

 

Then again, the NES had less than half the number of colours as the Atari 2600. Is the NES "dated" hardware as a result?

 

So what?

 

 

1. Argument: The 7800 was dated hardware. It was developed in 1983 and then delayed to compete against the NES. It was a 1983 system designed to compete in a 1986 world. It was out of date!

 

The 7800 was an afterthought. It was not meant to compete with the NES.

 

 

2. Argument: The 7800 was "crippled by its low resolution."

 

Response: First off, the 7800 had higher screen resolution than the NES. While most games did not use that, you can blame that on the programmers not the system. Second, even in the lower resolution mode, you're not exactly talking about the difference between - say 1024 x 768 on one system and 80 x 192 on the other. It's a marginal difference.

 

The 7800's resolution is fine...okay I'll give you that.

 

 

3. Argument: The 7800 games had low numbers of colours.  

 

Response: The 7800 had a palette 5 times the size of the NES. It could also display 25 colours on screen compared to the NES. The "limited palette" criticism is a function of ports, not proper use of colour. Anyone want to show me an NES game with graphics like TOWER TOPPLER's underwater sequence .... good use of the 7800's colour?

 

No

 

 

So tell me, 7800 critics, how exactly was the 7800's hardware "out of date"? With the exception of sound, I think it was a stronger contender than many realize:

 

* Processing power. Both the NES and 7800 used 6502 processors. It wasn't like one had a processing edge over the other.

* Graphics. With 256 colours, 320 x 200 resolution and the ability to manipulate a hundred moving objects courtesy of a flexible 7.16 mhz MARIA chip, the 7800 could have been a graphics powerhouse - when used properly. You certainly didn't see flickering on the 7800 like you did on the NES.

* Memory: The NES had 2K of RAM and 2K of video ram. the 7800 had 4K of RAM. Sounds pretty even.

* Cartridges: Yeah, there were 8 megabit NES games at the end of life. It's also been established that there was nothing from preventing the 7800 from playing 2 megabit, 4 megabit and 8 megabit games - except for Jack Tramiel's tight wallet.

 

No one was arguing last I checked. What site are you checking? Is anyone on said site over the age of 14? Provide sources, do not just lay baseless comments out there.

 

 

I maintain that the 7800 was competitive in terms of hardware with the NES. The NES was a solid system no question, but the 7800's achilles heel was not found in the hardware.

 

The 7800 was just a souped up 2600. The NES was something new and different with much better game designs. The NES also had something the 7800 did not have: programmers who actually cared.

 

If, in an alternate universe, Atari had given the 7800 the same resources that Nintendo gave the NES in terms of licenses, development budgets, cartridge space, development time, R&D etc, does anyone really think that the 7800 couldn't have pulled of CASTLEVANIA, SUPER MARIO BROTHERS, LIFEFORCE etc?

 

There is no way the 7800 would have pulled off those games, so why ask?

[DracIsBack]

Amidst all these intelligent responses (both for and against), your reponse is refreshingly pointless, Evilbay. Especially after Vigo and Eric's detailed analysis, your post contributes little to the discussion.

 

Give daddy back his account ...

[EricBall]

The 7800 was just a souped up 2600.  The NES was something new and different with much better game designs.  The NES also had something the 7800 did not have: programmers who actually cared.

 

The 7800 does contain the RIOT and TIA chips used in the 2600 and also uses a 6502 based CPU. However, the 7800 only uses the RIOT to interface with the joysticks & switches (but doesn't use the timer or RAM), and only uses the TIA for sound to interface with the paddles and buttons. The 7800 does not use the TIA for graphics, but uses the MARIA GPU; which has very, very different graphics capabilities than the TIA.

 

The 5200 & 8 bit computers are souped up 2600s from a graphics standpoint; just with the dedicated ANTIC GPU automatically updating the player/missile graphics every line and changing the color of the playfield every pixel.