Arcade and home technology

orc123

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Hi,
I am pretty amazed with the tech. specs of some arcade machines.

For sure, there were also some home technologies used in arcades - Playchoice, Megatech, etc.
Also, not all machines were oriented at state of art technology (some types of games did not need it at all, and some manufacturers used 8bit CPUs quite a long time), but some technologies were pretty amazing.

Lets say - state of art arcade tech.:
1 or even 2 68000 at 10-12 Mhz
dedicated Z80 sound CPU
some FM chip (Yamaha), DAC for sample playback
lots of colors and sprites/scalling/tile support:
15 bit or later 16 bit palette (based on subpalettes, but totally 32-65 tousand of colors)
512, 2048, 4096 upto approx. 6700 colors on screen at once
RAM had not to be too large, because everything was loaded "on the run" as necessary

Excellent home comp (85-90, but the 8bits were probably still the mainstream).
68000 at 7 Mhz, no dedicated sound CPU (Z80 at Megadrive)
16-32 colors at once (well Amiga had halfbright and HAM modes also, but not very comonly used, Megadrive 64 but with subpalettes)
512-4096 color palette
special modes to show whole palette (bwith limitations)
3-4 chanel sound chip - PAULA, AY, Megadrive FM
later (87, but popularised more later), PC VGA was close to arcade look (256 colors, 262000 colors - 18bit palette)

Generally - more colors (or at least - early - colors without strict attribute/colors per line limitations), more and bigger sprites, more details (mainly compared to cartridges - cartridge size/cost was probably limiting factor).

The question is - was the main motivation to offer better sounding and more colorful technology (and games) in arcades compared to the home computers (man can afford in that time)? When you could play just the same quality as at home, would you visit the arcade?
Thanks for your opinion. :)
 
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Tough question...if I could play at home on the same quality games as in arcades, would I have spent as much time/money as I did as a kid? Probably not. I played the hell out of my 2600 games, but still took any quarters I scrounged up to the arcade spots because the games were so much better.

For sure, one reason I stopped going to the arcade spots in the later part of the 80's was the lack of all the games I loved...the classic Williams, Atari, etc. titles I loved seemed to disappear, and I didn't get into the newer stuff that replaced them.
 
Well I figure I still go to the arcade today and play Donkey Kong or something when I could just play on my NES. So yes, graphical technology doesn't have much to do with it more than nostalgia and the feeling of being at the arcade like when I was growing up.

The social aspect makes it a bit more fun than just playing by yourself or online. I'd rather play a competitive game in person than have someone screaming obscenities over X-Box Live or Steam or whatever haha.
 
I had my games on my nes but theres nothing like the real thing. Everybody had SF2 on the SNES but still played it in the arcades.
 
Arcades generally were better up until the late 90s when we got high end consoles that would match them. That said I missed the 4p option on turtles and other home versions of multiplayer games. Also some like games like double dragon #1 removed even the second player from the mix. I'd go to the arcade for those and still shove quarters in gun and driving games to boot(Nothing beats a cockpit!)
 
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There's something to be said for dedicated video games. As soon as you start to try to do a one-size-fits-all, you have to compromize. That seems to apply not only to graphics and sound (especially the analog sounds in the early games) but even moreso to the controls. The main problem I see with the home systems is that they have to compromize certain things so that you can play a wide variety of games on them. They could get you close to the arcade as technology advance, but not close enough to the experience of playing on a dedicated arcade game to keep me out of the arcade.
 
Arcades generally were better up until the late 90s when we got high end consoles that would match them. That said I missed the 4p option on turtles and other home versions of multiplayer games. Also some like games like double dragon #1 removed even the second player from the mix. I'd go to the arcade for those and still shove quarters in gun and driving games to boot(Nothing beats a cockpit!)
Yes, its also mine opinion. Home consoles offered the (almost, at least at first sight) arcade perfect conversion at the time of Playstation and Saturn.
Before this, the arcade games conversions were rarely "arcade perfect" and often it was almost 1 computer generation behind. I mean there were arcade perfect conversions of 8bit arcade machines on the 16 bit home consoles/computer.
There were often compromises in the graphics and sound areas - less colors, more dithering, lower resolution, smaller sprites, less samples, etc. Also, as you wrote, the two (or more) players option was often removed.
 
They may have thrown some decent spec chips in there but generally the hardware design in way too may arcade games and pinballs back in the day sucked balls!

The power and analog side was almost always under/poorly designed. Made for a good opportunity for me to learn a lot about electronics working for a large operator all through high school though.
 
Think about your starting lineup of 80's arcade games were $2000 a piece brand new. Basically, each one had a customized state of the art computer, video and sound board which trumped most consoles and some home computers for quite some time. I was always going to go back to the arcade for the better experience.

I remember the first time I thought a console had a leg up on arcade machines, and that was the Sega Genesis in 1989. By that time I had a decade of arcade pleasure under my belt. Sega Genesis was full on color and graphics, and easily beat out the standard NES at the time. I was starting college, into girls, and thought this was easier than making trips to the arcade.

Forward another decade later with the introduction of Mame. Yes I built a Mame machine in its infancy days in 1998 and still have one. However, NOTHING compares to a dedicated machine. The art, the lights, the sights, the speakers hanging right in your face. I'm not trashing Mame, but how does Mame compare when playing Star Wars, Paperboy, SpyHunter, Afterburner, Revolution X, Sinistar, Punchout (and that big blue button), Q*bert and on and on. These custom controllers sell the point of a dedicated machine. So now I am full circle. Nothing beats it, and nothing will.
 
As to the original question: I think that re Atari there might have been just such a marketing ploy.

I was 6 when Space Invaders came out and I latched onto it. I got an Atari (2600) for xmas the very first xmas it was out. My parents believed emphatically that having the Atari at home would limit, if not stifle, my 'squandering' my quarters. It did not. I recall distinctly being disappointed with the video, audio, and input devices of the home experience at the very onset and I very quickly accepted that they were apples and oranges: the Atari at home and the coin-ops on location and at the arcade. I was glad to have the games at home but I had to have both.

Knowing what we know re Bushnell and his refusal to let Atari home carts go over-- what was it? 2kb of RAM? Something like that-- or for the joystick to have 2 buttons... I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he was purposefully maintaining an obvious rift, even though knowing Bushnell he probably has coined and stated all manner of alternative explanations. (Hey, I respect him as a figure, but I wouldn't buy a used car from him.)

Now when you look at the Intellivision you MIGHT surmise that Mattel was trying the opposite approach: offering you "more" than you were going to find at the arcade. This via games that took hours to win and could be won, instead of 'score as much as you can before you crash' as was the law of the coin-op arcade. That said, Atari, too, offered titles of this description. Adventure comes to mind.

Obviously Mattel, unlike Atari, had NO stake in arcades.

I think the Colecovision definitely came out of a strategic desire to replace the arcade as much as possible. Coleco had no stake in arcades and were at the time all about home games.
 
I remember the first time I thought a console had a leg up on arcade machines, and that was the Sega Genesis in 1989.
Yes, Sega Genesis promised to bring the arcade experience home and they really did it. Well from todays view, it could not exactly cope with some high-tech arcade machines with hardware scaling, colors, etc., but at least at the first sight this was arcade-like graphics and sound back in the day.
 
As to the original question: I think that re Atari there might have been just such a marketing ploy.

I was 6 when Space Invaders came out and I latched onto it. I got an Atari (2600) for xmas the very first xmas it was out. My parents believed emphatically that having the Atari at home would limit, if not stifle, my 'squandering' my quarters. It did not. I recall distinctly being disappointed with the video, audio, and input devices of the home experience at the very onset and I very quickly accepted that they were apples and oranges: the Atari at home and the coin-ops on location and at the arcade. I was glad to have the games at home but I had to have both.

I understand, but wait, the Atari 2600 wasnt the best what they offered back in the day, there was much better graphics and sound on the 400/800 series computers from 1979. It was considered nearly identical to arcade (well, at least close to arcade).
 
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