The Atari 5200 Discussion Thread

[retromod]

well in my opinion the roadmap was quite clear but always interrupted by marketing due to it's Atari 2600 benefits.

In the book of Curt Vendel the situation is clearly pointed out. The Atari 400 was planned as a successor for the Atari VCs but then due to marketing it was altered to a homecomputer. The Atari 800 should be the homecomputer part, the 400 a videogame console. At the time of planning quite reasonable and a good approach.

Then after some sidesteps of prototypes they planned officially a successor: the Atari 5200. It was well designed in my opinion but the major issue was the lack of compatibility to Atari 2600 and again marketing who influenced them until it was too late and too bad.

The rush to Atari 7800 - a machine created outside of Atari itself by a small group of hidden engineers was ok but again too late and finally the hardware too bad. As I correctly understood at this time Atari currently dealt with Nintendo to release their system under Atari brand. The Atari 7800 was a quick shot to be first on the market but failed due to weakness in game titles. Specially the lack of games was the major impact, it doesn't make sense to someone owning Asteroid for 2600 to buy Asteroid for 7800 or 5200. 

Here in europe the Atari 2600 was a strong seller but the lack of good games were quite visible in 1982 and later, specially as all good programmer started their own companies flooding the market with game clones.
The 5200 was introduced and dropped until we are able to buy them. Moving quickly to new Atari XL series.
The 7800 was quickly introduced a short time after the Atari 800XL but was not available in stores anymore.

Atari plannings at this time was having the Amiga chipset for their new video game console. But the deal failed finally specially as Tramiel dropped in. All the great developments were stopped without review after Tramiel took over Atari. And that is bad because several 16/32 bit machines were ready somewhere in Atari labs including the famous soundchip AMY and the Gold & Silver Chipset. But Tramiel was someone who was only interested in quick money and to devices not compatible to each other. see the commodore line the "development" was only done to make the device cheaper not to enhance it's features or possibilities.

Commodore and Amiga was also something which doesn't really fit. Specially as the developed machine C900 from commodore itself was a real killer - ready for marketing and cheap in comparison to the Amiga. A failure to stop it and introducing the Amiga which was quite too expensive with functions nobody needed these days (far ahead it's time). the end of the great Amiga Chipset and due to all these extension cards and product families the Amiga abondend from the screen. Sure whom to support? the group using 680x0 cards, the powerpc groups? the AGA users? same on Atari ST: 5 Eur per device on ebay, nobody is really interested in it, it doesn't play a big role at all (also due to splitting of the market, ST, STE, TT, accelerator cards etc.)

In my opinion it was the typical "startup" problem. It worked until a specific size of the company was reached. then many people jumped in to be the right man in management. but instead they failed due to misunderstanding of the business pssing the developers and creative people inside the company. If developer and creative people leaves a company then the end is quite near. And this happend finally.... hardware itself doesn't count if there is no software who drives it beyond it's limits

[TrekMD]

Since the thread has discussed so much about how and why Atari made the 5200, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at a review of the original Video System X...

RARE ATARI VIDEO SYSTEM X PROTOTYPE Review (1982) - Documentary

[TL]

Atari Age members Aking and Paul Lay have been converting a ton of Atari 8-bit computer games over to the 5200. These are all games made with to be compatible with the original 16k Atari computers so fit into the memory constraints of the Super System.

The most notable of these is the rather good Anteater, which you can read my review of here, a game by industry legend Ed Fries. For those that don't know he was Vice President of Microsoft's games division through the years of the original Xbox and the 360 and was responsible for the acquisitions of companies like Bungee and Rare. He also programmed the official 2600 version of Halo too.

[size=140]Anteater
Drelbs
Floyd The Droid
Hot Blocks
Oil's Well
Savage Pond[/size]

https://youtu.be/F9Cl_yG1Z6w

[TrekMD]

Downloaded all of these to give them a spin!

[onthinice]

Anteater Rules!

[TL]

And a couple more 5200 conversions from Aking:

[size=140]Pooyan
Caverns Of Mars 2[/size]


And one from Fandal:

[size=140]Galactic Chase[/size]

[sloan]

Wow. Lots of goodness for the 5200, but no flash cart here 

[TrekMD]

Wow. Lots of goodness for the 5200, but no flash cart here 

You don't have one?  I'm surprised.  Very convenient! 

[TL]

[align=center:3razxpwm]This is a very interesting prototype:

Atari 5200: Blaster [Atari] (Unreleased Prototype)[/align:3razxpwm]

[TrekMD]

This looks really cool! 

[TL]

More Atari 8-bit to 5200 conversions and one of them is very special indeed!

[size=140]Rampage
Bacterion
Protector II
Phobos
Floppy Bird[/size]

[align=center:3qb7lu7d]Rampage - Atari Xe/Xl 800 Game[/align:3qb7lu7d]

[TrekMD]

I wish they'd convert Mr. Do! 

[TL]

You might also be interested to know that Protector II that you see there is the prequel to the Jaguar game of the same name!!!

[TrekMD]

You might also be interested to know that Protector II that you see there is the prequel to the Jaguar game of the same name!!!

That's cool!

[WiggyDiggyPoo]

Watched the original video and have to say I disagree re the TV/Power Box - it actually makes sense to me to have it like that where the console itself only has 1 wire coming out the back. From a clutter POV at least lol