3 ms·
> It is popular today, not because it does an admirable job of playing Jet Fighter and Tank, but because its flexible design also allows it to play chess and ba
by tenebrisalietum 5y ago
> It is popular today, not because it does an admirable job of playing Jet Fighter and Tank, but because its flexible design also allows it to play chess and baseball, as well as Space Invaders, Pac-Man and many of the other arcade games that have been invented since the VCS came on the market.
Yeah, the original Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 sucked, and has nothing to do with why it's popular today. Any of the Atari 2600 baseball games of its era also sucked.
> its flexible design
The only thing "flexible" about the Atari's video chip, the TIA, is that you can choose what to do with each scan line. Too bad you are so limited on what you can actually do on that scan line and need insane tricks to get things like 48 useable 160x200 resolution pixels in a row for score display. On top of that, you only have 128 bytes of RAM.
It's fun to program if you like constraints, but programmable sprites, nametables, and sound channels that can play musical notes might be considered funner.
The Atari 2600 has great charm because so much was done with something so primitive, and it's awesome to see new games developed with it with increased RAM and mapper chips. A new chess game But hardware with better capabilities may have been just as popular if available for $199 in late 1970's dollars. Arcade games of the time with much more flexible display hardware were also popular.
- nsxwolf 5y agoMs. Pac Man, on the other hand, is fantastic on the 2600. It looks a lot like the same bad game, but it plays very close to the arcade.
- mgkimsal 5y agoIIRC, it was because they opted for 8k ROM instead of 4k (or perhaps 4k instead of 2k?). Whatever the choice, it was definitely a big difference.
- MegaDeKay 5y agoI was always really impressed by Space Invaders on the 2600. About as faithful a port as you could get imagine with solid graphics and sound effects, appropriate levels of difficulty, and lots of options. I played the hell out of it.
- egypturnash 5y agoIt was definitely a minimum viable product, but: 2600: US$190 in 1977, sold 30 million units as of 2004. Colecovision: $175, 1982. 2 million units sold. Intellivision: US$275 in 1979, sold 3 million. Pac-Man for the 2600: 1982, 8 million units sold. The 2600 was discontinued after the technologically-superior Intellivision and Colecovision were discontinued. The Colecovision cost less than the Atari when it came out and still couldn't move more consoles than Atari moved copies of Pac-Man. Technically I guess the Intellivision and Colecovision were competing with the 5200 (1982, $270, 1 million sold) but none of them lasted more than a couple of years, versus the 2600 finally going out of production for good in 1992. (All data from Wikipedia except for the Coleco and 5200's launch prices, which came from an IGN page listing launch prices.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- timbit42 5y agoWeren't a lot of those Pac-Mans for the 2600 pack-ins? While the Atari 800 and Amigas are my favourite systems, I'm not a fan of the Atari 2600. I'll take the Mattel Intellivision or Coleco ColecoVision any day. The only 2600 game I liked was Frostbite but it's available on the Commodore 64 now so...