10 replies to this topic

[Arnoldb3]

Is there an adapter made that enables 5200 series games to be played on a 7800 system ?? I have seen adapters that allow you to play a 2600 game on a 5200 game but not a 5200 on a 7800 system.

[NoahsMyBro]

Nope.

[AtariLeaf]

Its unfortunate since the 5200 has great games but controllers that are very poorly designed. I thought I heard of an adapter that was in the works for the 7800 but was never released. I could be wrong though.

[King Atari]

If there was an adaptor, you'd also need 5200 controllers, for the extra buttons and stuff. Some games you couldn't play with just a Pro-Line.

[-^Cro§Bow^-]

No there was an adapter Being made called the Slam Pam that would have enabled 7800 games to be played on the 5200. But atlas other than a semi complete prototype, Nothing more of it was ever done.

Makes sense when you think about it. Why would Atari invest so much into something that would have cost the same price as the 7800 would have by itself?

[King Atari]

Kinda sad, the 5200 had a shorter lifespan than the 7800, yet it seems to have more games (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm too lazy to go look).

[Brian R.]

These "adaptors" seem to be a bit of a misnomer. As I understand it, the 5200 adaptor to play 2600 games was really just an entire 2600 that passed through the 5200. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The 7800's backwards compatibility with the 2600 is similar - the 7800 actually contains an independent 2600 within it.

[slapdash]

Brian R. said:

These "adaptors" seem to be a bit of a misnomer. As I understand it, the 5200 adaptor to play 2600 games was really just an entire 2600 that passed through the 5200. Correct me if I'm wrong.

That is correct. Usually they just piggyback the TV and power signals to the adaptor which overrides the main system.

Quote

The 7800's backwards compatibility with the 2600 is similar - the 7800 actually contains an independent 2600 within it.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the 7800 doesn't technically have a 2600 inside of it; more so the architecture of the 7800 is a superset of the 2600, and can act like a 2600 when it has to. There's nothing independent about it as I understand -- there's only one processor in there, one TIA chip, and maybe the other chip (RIOT?) too. All are used in both modes. Does anyone know for sure?

[-^Cro§Bow^-]

Russ...

I am no electrical engineer by any means..and I am not the foremost knowlegable person on the 7800. However, all three of the main chips found in a Stella are still in a 7800. And basically the 7800 does use the same chips in pretty much the same way the 2600 did. However, there is one very large extra processor in the 7800 which is referred to as Maria. She is what makes the graphics possible on the 7800 and also may act as the processor in 7800 games. I only state that becase the 2600 ran at the default of 1.19mhz..and the 7800 in 7800 mode runs at 1.79 mhz I believe. However, the graphics are running at like 4mhz.

But essentially the 7800 was a 2600 with beefier graphics and memory ability. 7800 games switched the 7800 to 7800 mode...vs 2600 mode.

[slapdash]

-^Cro§Bow^- said:

essentially the 7800 was a 2600 with beefier graphics and memory ability.

That's about what I remember -- so confirming that a 7800 doesn't have an independent 2600 inside.

Makes me wonder how the Gameboy Advance, and Gameboy Color, kept Gameboy compatibility -- superset (2600 on 7800), independent (2600 on 5200, Colecovision, Intellivision) or emulation (2600 on PC, for lack of a better example)?

[Agent X]

King Atari said:

Kinda sad, the 5200 had a shorter lifespan than the 7800, yet it seems to have more games (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm too lazy to go look).

I'm almost certain that there were more games released for the 5200 than the 7800, although not by much. (I'm not counting prototypes or homebrews for either system.)

The 5200 had substantially better third-party support in two years on the market than the 7800 had in five years. That is probably what hurt the 7800 so much. The ratio of third-party games to first-party games on the 5200 is much higher than that of the 7800. If the 7800 had the same number of first-party games, but had third-party games released at the same ratio (compared to first-party games) as the 5200 did, then the 7800 would've had over 100 games.

In the 7800's favor, it had a lot more exclusive games than the 5200 did. Very few games that were released for the 5200 were truly exclusive to the system.