What if Atari Coin and Consumer would have actually cooperated ?

Level42

New member
Joined
Dec 22, 2006
Messages
5,895
Reaction score
49
Location
Ridderkerk, ZH, Netherlands
What if Atari Coin and Consumer would have actually cooperated ?

....just SUPPOSE the guys at Atari would have been allowed/able to do that.....it would be a bit like:
"Hey.....I have to do Asteroids on the A8 platform.....and there's a 6502 in that arcade Asteroids....and hey, there's also a 6502 in the A8 platform.....mmmm what if......"


Then we MIGHT have been getting this:

http://web.utanet.at/nkehrer/ast800xl.html


Video:



Absolutely totally completely AMAZING !!!!

What this is doing is running the actual arcade ROMS on the A8 platform. Yes somewhat like MAME can you believe !!!!
 
Last edited:
But then it would have ushered in the end of arcade machines earlier possibly. I sort of LIKED the fact that home consoles couldn't reproduce the arcade machine exactly. When they started to... arcades started to die.
 
I would have loved that. After years of disappointing graphics on the 2600 I couldn't wait to get an 800. While a good deal of the arcade ports were pretty good they still could have used some tweaking. Some of them though almost seemed like they just copied the 2600 version and added a couple of options.
 
Thats very cool.

The original Atari computer version of Asteroids doesn't look great, but it plays nice. Coming from the Atari 2600, just seeing the asteroids move diagonally was mind blowing.
My buddies and I were Defender fanatics back then, and the Atari computer version of that is fantastic. It looks a little clunky with lots of flashing, but the play is really good.

Their DK port was the best for the time as well... It had all 4 levels, which none of the console versions had. I had a ColecoVision and playing these on my buddies 400 is when I made the leap from consoles to computers and got an 800xl.
 
Thats very cool.

The original Atari computer version of Asteroids doesn't look great, but it plays nice. Coming from the Atari 2600, just seeing the asteroids move diagonally was mind blowing.
Yes, that irritated me too, although even like that it wasn't a terrible port. Indeed the A8 version is better but I still never played it a lot...it seemed to miss something

My buddies and I were Defender fanatics back then, and the Atari computer version of that is fantastic. It looks a little clunky with lots of flashing, but the play is really good.
You should try Dropzone by Archer McLean (also well known from International Karate (+)) and also an arcade game collector :)). If you like Defender you'll love Dropzone ! Great graphics,sound and gameplay and extremely fast and hard !



Their DK port was the best for the time as well... It had all 4 levels, which none of the console versions had. I had a ColecoVision and playing these on my buddies 400 is when I made the leap from consoles to computers and got an 800xl.
Yup. I had been amazed by Colecovision's DK and would definitly want one but no way we were going to get another console so shortly after buying a 2600.....
So I waited a bit, saw DK on the Atari 600XL and I was sold. Wanted that machine even if it was for just that DK version, IMHO it could have been a killer app for the A8 system and they should have packed it in like Coleco did.

Funny, recently read on the net that the guy who wrote it actually hated DK. He didn't even have a real machine around at Atari but he was lucky to live in a building where there was one. IMHO this port is actually an improvement over the original....it's so much more fluent to play.
 
Last edited:
I wonder if somehow it would be possible to get a real vector signal out of it (maybe with some extra hardware, DACs) Would be totally pointless to try, but still fun if it would be done :)
 
But then it would have ushered in the end of arcade machines earlier possibly. I sort of LIKED the fact that home consoles couldn't reproduce the arcade machine exactly. When they started to... arcades started to die.

Totally agree with this, the year or so gap between the arcades and the home consoles keep the Arcades ahead and popular to see what the next big thing was going to be.
I have 2 so called arcades in my city, but they aren't up to much :(
 
Back
Top Bottom