I had the 7800 in the early 90's when it was on clearence prices, It was a good buy. Could play all the 2600 games and Double Dragon and Choplifter! It was my Atari system for years. Great video!
I like to read stuff like this, man. This is gonna sound weird, but even though the 7800 wasn't MY Atari, I'm glad it was SOMEONE's. As if I'm worried about the 7800's sense of acceptance, or something. LOL. I had a well-loved and cared for 2600 when I was a kid. I owned the 5200 and 7800 years later, and prefer them actually, but they were irrelevant to the vast majority by that time... but the 2600 was and always will be MY Atari.
I've said this many times, but even at the 7800s test market release in mid 84, console gamers were tired of the SAME arcade games yet again. Yes, they were the best console port versions to date, but we'd already played pacman, mspacman, joust, digdug, etc to death on 2600, intv, cv, and 8 bit computers by 1984. We wanted either ports of 83,84 arcades or home computer style games from Epyx, activision, ea, etc. Yes, 7800 got some from these publishers by 87 onwards, but that was 3 Years later. In North America, by late 85, early 86, most buyers wanted new game styles like super mario or sms shmups or fighting games, or a real computer like an x86 pc clone, pcjr, Apple2 or Lazer clone, atari st or amiga, or mac. C64 fans upgraded to the c128 or amiga, or switched to a pc clone or st.
Yeah but the 7800 was also supposed to have games like Desert Falcon, Tempest, Food Fight, Ballblazer, Elevator Action, Xevious and Rescue on Fractalus ready for it's full launch and these would have been the game changers.
Alan Rizkallah the same could also be said for the Sega Master System. Had Nintendo's monopolistic illegal practices regarding third party developers been struck down sooner both the Sega Master System, and the Atari 7800 could have had much larger more impressive original game libraries.
In the winter of '83 at a trade show, an Atari rep showed me the unfinished 7800 running pole position. The system was a mock-up with exposed boards, as a case was not created yet.
Sounds like Winter Ces, January of 1983!? Wow, didn't know they had the 7800 hardware working that early. Shows the mess that Kassars Atari was at the time, ie constantly changing directions, no focus, such as the mismanagement if the 8bit computer line with the xl redesign, initially flops with the 1200xl. As they were doing all the xl work anyways, that would have been perfect opportunity to do an xl game console, basically a 600xl minus keyboard or sio port, with bus edge connection to add those later, or support a keyboard via one of the 9 pin joystick ports. Had this been available by Fall 83, it could have been a top contender. Better sound vs the 7800, large existing software library, and given recent A8 homebrews, the A8 graphics as is would have done the job for the remainder of the 80s, with special chips added to carts as costs went down over the decade, like the nes carts.
Mom got us a 7800 for Christmas of '87. My younger brother and I were disappointed as we'd asked for an NES. We figured it was due to the price difference and the backwards compatibility with a fair bit of 'a video game system is a video game system' thrown in. We had a fairly extensive 2600 library at the time. Never had problems with the Pro-Line joystick, but we went to the 7800 form a Sears Video Arcade 2 system that had a similar layout controller, though with even less ergonomic buttons. It being a combo joystick and paddle was nice though. We didn't end up having the 7800 all that long I had both an NES and a Master System within a year, and a Turbografx16 a couple years later so it got gifted to our younger cousins. One of the things that really killed it for me was lack of game rentals. By '88 or so, most video rental stores had NES games, a few had Master System games, but I can recall ever seeing Atari game rentals.
Great vid. Love my 7800. And the homebrew community keeps showing what could have been with this underrated console. I think the painline controllers was a mistake, but not a huge one as people could use other controllers. I like the Europads myself. Not using a Pokey on board was a mistake. I understand about room on the board, but they could have used a daughterboard for the 1st gen release. Still, there has been some really good TIA sound, so it's disappointing, but not a killer. And an inexpensive Pokey (Gumby) in the carts would have been feasible if they sold more units.... But Nintendo keeping 3rd party devs away? That was a killer (or genius, depending on your perspective. ;-) Still, good point that not beating the NES doesn't mean it failed. Great system with great games.
I'm surprised the 7800 never gets talked about that much, at least compared to all of the Atari systems, excluding the XEGS, no one ever talks about that thing, which surprises me as it has one of the most interesting origin stories for a console. I personally don't think Atari would've won the Console War of The 3rd Generation had the Atari 7800 released in 1984 but I could see it being a strong 2nd to the NES and I also reckon the North American Console Crash wouldn't have been as serious leading to the likes of the Intellivision 3, Colecovision 2 and the Videopac+ G7000 getting released in North America as the Odyssey 3. However the Master System probably would've flopped, worldwide except in the UK and Brazil leading to the Mega Drive only coming out in those regions as Sega would just not bother with North America due to how hard the Master System flopped, this also means Sonic the Hedgehog wouldn't have been made with Alex Kidd being Sega's mascot. At least that's what I think would happen if the 7800 came out worldwide in 84 as intended.
Very much looking thru atari rose tinted glasses, the only way 7800 would of been a success would of been for the 5200 to never be released and taint the Atari name. 7800 early release list was of the same quality and same games released 2 yrs earlier on their failed 5200, backwards compatibility would of. Been a bigger draw in 84. But Atari did not have a system seller, none of their games were a super Mario bros. SCRAPYARD dog was inspired by mario didnt come out till 3yrs later. Nobody cared about old Arcade games that had been played to death on the 2600 that Atari wanted you to shell out another 30 to 50 bucks for a graphics improvement, and slightly different game play, Nintendo offered a different experience, I lived it Atari was old news Nintendo NES. Like the Wii offered a great pack in that sold the system mario/duck hunt was the same thing that got a general audience to buy the system
I own an Atari 7800 Pro System and I have nearly the entire library of officially released Atari game cartridges, plus in recent years I have been buying some of the homebrew game cartridges as well. I prefer to use actual Atari joystick controllers, whether I use the CX-40 standard joystick controller or the Pro-Line joystick controller.
13:42 I always have to make this comment when I see this fact come up. The 3.77 m number is probably an error. In a topic on the Atariage forum so users determined that this is most likely a misreading of some Atari sales docs that were released. The total sales in the doc were 3.77m which is probably where the number comes from. However this is most likely a combined sales number of console and carts. There is another set of docs for games sales which have total sale to be about 2.655m. It makes NO sense to have less carts sold than consoles, right? So doing the math we see that 3.77m - 2.655m = 1.117m which is probably a closer number to the actual consoles sold to stores. Atari 7800 was definitely behind the SMS in the US. (both got destroyed by Nintendo of course ^_^)
Hmmm, I don't know because I have heard that figure confirmed as correct by multiple people who were working for Atari at the time. An awful lot of people bought 7800s to play their old 2600 games, so there is that too, which no doubt skews things somewhat. Then you have the fact these are only North American sales and we have no figure for PAL regions. I was told by a very reliable source that UK sales were around 500,000 - so I would think that for Europe/Australia we would be looking at least 1 million consoles.
@@TheLairdsLair True, people using the 7800 as a 2600 could skew things. Its also worth noting that the 7800 did drop price much earlier than Sega. So maybe a bunch of people got it on clearance. If the numbers are correct, it could be an interesting case of second place sales, but third place relevance. Do you have references for people who confirmed the sales numbers?
While the 7800 had some serious shortcomings, mainly the weak sound chip and awful controller, its timing in the market and getting ensnared in the Warner-Tramiel transition was arguably the worst of all.
The controller I'll never understand, why oh why would they think that a controller that hurt your hand to use would be beneficial I guess they felt left and right hand could use it, but it was an awful experience.
I can't help but feel that it was the nail in Atari's coffin. If Atari had beat Nintendo to market, or even made a deal to distribute the NES in the US... things might've been quite different. *shakes fist at sky* Traaamieeeel!
@@petewillson205 I think the fact that it looks like a slimmed down and simplified version of the 5200 controller isn't a coincidence. Why they thought that was a good idea surely boggles the mind...
5:14 isnt that irving gould on the right? I am surprised he would appear in a photograpgh with tramiel and anything to do with atari as he was the reason why jack left commodore
Underrated system never played it but it seems like it had the chance to beat Nintendo but the sale of Atari to Jack Tramiel screwed its chances of major success
It’s actually amezing that the atari 7800 failed against the nes because it was backwards compatible with atari 2600,while the colecovision,intelevision 2 and the 2 port atari 5200 used addons to run atari 2600 games,but i call it fake cross compatible,because all they do is sucking power from those consoles and it uses composite line input and they all have builtin controller ports,so it’s not real compatibility,btw both coleco and mattel didn’t had permission from atari to do so untill they settled a sort off agreement with each other after a ligal battle. Another AMEZING thing about the atari 7800 is that just like other systems,there were nintendo games on it,but there were no sega games on it,while on the ill faitedvatari 5200 there were sega games on it.
Man, I was really disappointed that the 7800 port of Double Dragon wasn't all that it could've been. The graphics are passable, but there's something key missing from the controls, and they must've run into some sprite limitations because there's NO REACH whatsoever - even when kicking, It just kills the gameplay. Accolade missed the mark on their Sega Genesis version, so, lesson here? Control is extremely important when porting arcade games. Virtua Racing on the Genesis & 32X is actually VIRTUA RACING because Sega nailed the control *feel*. Ok, I'm stepping off the soap box. LOL.
The NES and Master System versions are great either. In fact the vast majority of home ports of Double Dragon are really lacking. I think the handheld got the best ones as I enjoyed the conversions on the Atari Lynx, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance - although the latter 2 were quite different to the coin-op.
I did already do one, the 2600/7800 Visual Compendium published by Bitmap Books. I'll probably do one of my own in future, but that's a long way off at the moment.
In Canada, we barely saw advertising for it in stores. Nintendo destroyed everyone easily when it came out. Everyone had a NES in their house, few had sega or Atari after....
The " have you played atari today?" Jingle was badly dated the first time you played it... And is simply grating by the 4th time and beyond. No one has nostalgia for Atari marketing.
The 7800 is such an interesting console, there's so much that people don't seem to know about it.
I had the 7800 in the early 90's when it was on clearence prices, It was a good buy. Could play all the 2600 games and Double Dragon and Choplifter! It was my Atari system for years. Great video!
I like to read stuff like this, man. This is gonna sound weird, but even though the 7800 wasn't MY Atari, I'm glad it was SOMEONE's. As if I'm worried about the 7800's sense of acceptance, or something. LOL. I had a well-loved and cared for 2600 when I was a kid. I owned the 5200 and 7800 years later, and prefer them actually, but they were irrelevant to the vast majority by that time... but the 2600 was and always will be MY Atari.
Nice video! I recently acquired an Atari 7800, and have been enjoying it immensely. You mentioned at least a few things I didn't know already.
Big fan of the 7800, still have my original console from 1988!
I've said this many times, but even at the 7800s test market release in mid 84, console gamers were tired of the SAME arcade games yet again. Yes, they were the best console port versions to date, but we'd already played pacman, mspacman, joust, digdug, etc to death on 2600, intv, cv, and 8 bit computers by 1984.
We wanted either ports of 83,84 arcades or home computer style games from Epyx, activision, ea, etc. Yes, 7800 got some from these publishers by 87 onwards, but that was 3 Years later.
In North America, by late 85, early 86, most buyers wanted new game styles like super mario or sms shmups or fighting games, or a real computer like an x86 pc clone, pcjr, Apple2 or Lazer clone, atari st or amiga, or mac. C64 fans upgraded to the c128 or amiga, or switched to a pc clone or st.
Yeah but the 7800 was also supposed to have games like Desert Falcon, Tempest, Food Fight, Ballblazer, Elevator Action, Xevious and Rescue on Fractalus ready for it's full launch and these would have been the game changers.
@TheLairdsLair Agreed, had they all been released through 1984, early 85
I enjoyed my 7800 when I had it. Only had about 5 games for 7800 but I had about 50 2600 games.
Great video! There's so much untapped potential in that hardware. Oh to think what could have been.
Most definitely!
Alan Rizkallah the same could also be said for the Sega Master System. Had Nintendo's monopolistic illegal practices regarding third party developers been struck down sooner both the Sega Master System, and the Atari 7800 could have had much larger more impressive original game libraries.
In the winter of '83 at a trade show, an Atari rep showed me the unfinished 7800 running pole position. The system was a mock-up with exposed boards, as a case was not created yet.
Wow! That's really cool!
Sounds like Winter Ces, January of 1983!? Wow, didn't know they had the 7800 hardware working that early.
Shows the mess that Kassars Atari was at the time, ie constantly changing directions, no focus, such as the mismanagement if the 8bit computer line with the xl redesign, initially flops with the 1200xl.
As they were doing all the xl work anyways, that would have been perfect opportunity to do an xl game console, basically a 600xl minus keyboard or sio port, with bus edge connection to add those later, or support a keyboard via one of the 9 pin joystick ports. Had this been available by Fall 83, it could have been a top contender. Better sound vs the 7800, large existing software library, and given recent A8 homebrews, the A8 graphics as is would have done the job for the remainder of the 80s, with special chips added to carts as costs went down over the decade, like the nes carts.
I like the graphics compared to earlier Atari systems.
Atari should release graphically upgraded classics on the Evercade.
Mom got us a 7800 for Christmas of '87. My younger brother and I were disappointed as we'd asked for an NES. We figured it was due to the price difference and the backwards compatibility with a fair bit of 'a video game system is a video game system' thrown in. We had a fairly extensive 2600 library at the time. Never had problems with the Pro-Line joystick, but we went to the 7800 form a Sears Video Arcade 2 system that had a similar layout controller, though with even less ergonomic buttons. It being a combo joystick and paddle was nice though. We didn't end up having the 7800 all that long I had both an NES and a Master System within a year, and a Turbografx16 a couple years later so it got gifted to our younger cousins. One of the things that really killed it for me was lack of game rentals. By '88 or so, most video rental stores had NES games, a few had Master System games, but I can recall ever seeing Atari game rentals.
Thanks for sharing. Interesting that there were no Atari rentals available. I don't remember seeing them much either.
Great vid. Love my 7800. And the homebrew community keeps showing what could have been with this underrated console.
I think the painline controllers was a mistake, but not a huge one as people could use other controllers. I like the Europads myself.
Not using a Pokey on board was a mistake. I understand about room on the board, but they could have used a daughterboard for the 1st gen release. Still, there has been some really good TIA sound, so it's disappointing, but not a killer. And an inexpensive Pokey (Gumby) in the carts would have been feasible if they sold more units....
But Nintendo keeping 3rd party devs away? That was a killer (or genius, depending on your perspective. ;-)
Still, good point that not beating the NES doesn't mean it failed. Great system with great games.
I'm surprised the 7800 never gets talked about that much, at least compared to all of the Atari systems, excluding the XEGS, no one ever talks about that thing, which surprises me as it has one of the most interesting origin stories for a console. I personally don't think Atari would've won the Console War of The 3rd Generation had the Atari 7800 released in 1984 but I could see it being a strong 2nd to the NES and I also reckon the North American Console Crash wouldn't have been as serious leading to the likes of the Intellivision 3, Colecovision 2 and the Videopac+ G7000 getting released in North America as the Odyssey 3. However the Master System probably would've flopped, worldwide except in the UK and Brazil leading to the Mega Drive only coming out in those regions as Sega would just not bother with North America due to how hard the Master System flopped, this also means Sonic the Hedgehog wouldn't have been made with Alex Kidd being Sega's mascot. At least that's what I think would happen if the 7800 came out worldwide in 84 as intended.
Very much looking thru atari rose tinted glasses, the only way 7800 would of been a success would of been for the 5200 to never be released and taint the Atari name.
7800 early release list was of the same quality and same games released 2 yrs earlier on their failed 5200, backwards compatibility would of. Been a bigger draw in 84. But Atari did not have a system seller, none of their games were a super Mario bros. SCRAPYARD dog was inspired by mario didnt come out till 3yrs later.
Nobody cared about old Arcade games that had been played to death on the 2600 that Atari wanted you to shell out another 30 to 50 bucks for a graphics improvement, and slightly different game play, Nintendo offered a different experience, I lived it Atari was old news Nintendo NES. Like the Wii offered a great pack in that sold the system mario/duck hunt was the same thing that got a general audience to buy the system
I've got a US copy of Pole Position II on my 7800, and when I play it on my PAL console, all the colours are messed up. What's that all about?
Apparently the colour registers are different between PAL and NTSC, you see the same with 2600 games too.
I love the 7800. Wish i new where mine still was. I play 7800 games on my Wii a lot.
I’m off to play Atari today. 😂
You spotted the subliminal message then! ;-)
luv my 7800...its strange and kinda quirky with a checkered past much like me. my fav retro system for sure. well done video!!!
Thanks! 👍
I own an Atari 7800 Pro System and I have nearly the entire library of officially released Atari game cartridges, plus in recent years I have been buying some of the homebrew game cartridges as well. I prefer to use actual Atari joystick controllers, whether I use the CX-40 standard joystick controller or the Pro-Line joystick controller.
Good video. 7800 is a awesome console.
13:42 I always have to make this comment when I see this fact come up. The 3.77 m number is probably an error. In a topic on the Atariage forum so users determined that this is most likely a misreading of some Atari sales docs that were released. The total sales in the doc were 3.77m which is probably where the number comes from. However this is most likely a combined sales number of console and carts. There is another set of docs for games sales which have total sale to be about 2.655m. It makes NO sense to have less carts sold than consoles, right? So doing the math we see that 3.77m - 2.655m = 1.117m which is probably a closer number to the actual consoles sold to stores. Atari 7800 was definitely behind the SMS in the US. (both got destroyed by Nintendo of course ^_^)
Hmmm, I don't know because I have heard that figure confirmed as correct by multiple people who were working for Atari at the time. An awful lot of people bought 7800s to play their old 2600 games, so there is that too, which no doubt skews things somewhat. Then you have the fact these are only North American sales and we have no figure for PAL regions. I was told by a very reliable source that UK sales were around 500,000 - so I would think that for Europe/Australia we would be looking at least 1 million consoles.
@@TheLairdsLair True, people using the 7800 as a 2600 could skew things. Its also worth noting that the 7800 did drop price much earlier than Sega. So maybe a bunch of people got it on clearance. If the numbers are correct, it could be an interesting case of second place sales, but third place relevance.
Do you have references for people who confirmed the sales numbers?
nice vid 7800 all the way :)
While the 7800 had some serious shortcomings, mainly the weak sound chip and awful controller, its timing in the market and getting ensnared in the Warner-Tramiel transition was arguably the worst of all.
Couldn't agree more!
The controller I'll never understand, why oh why would they think that a controller that hurt your hand to use would be beneficial I guess they felt left and right hand could use it, but it was an awful experience.
I can't help but feel that it was the nail in Atari's coffin. If Atari had beat Nintendo to market, or even made a deal to distribute the NES in the US... things might've been quite different. *shakes fist at sky* Traaamieeeel!
@@petewillson205 I think the fact that it looks like a slimmed down and simplified version of the 5200 controller isn't a coincidence. Why they thought that was a good idea surely boggles the mind...
7800 had great arcade ports
5:14 isnt that irving gould on the right? I am surprised he would appear in a photograpgh with tramiel and anything to do with atari as he was the reason why jack left commodore
Not sure actually, but yes, it would be unlikely!
Who is taking up the task to manufacture the XM game module?
Not sure, couldn't find an answer to that.
Underrated system never played it but it seems like it had the chance to beat Nintendo but the sale of Atari to Jack Tramiel screwed its chances of major success
It’s actually amezing that the atari 7800 failed against the nes because it was backwards compatible with atari 2600,while the colecovision,intelevision 2 and the 2 port atari 5200 used addons to run atari 2600 games,but i call it fake cross compatible,because all they do is sucking power from those consoles and it uses composite line input and they all have builtin controller ports,so it’s not real compatibility,btw both coleco and mattel didn’t had permission from atari to do so untill they settled a sort off agreement with each other after a ligal battle.
Another AMEZING thing about the atari 7800 is that just like other systems,there were nintendo games on it,but there were no sega games on it,while on the ill faitedvatari 5200 there were sega games on it.
Have my orginal form 1987 and still to this day it works! I still cant play nor stand a NES
Man, I was really disappointed that the 7800 port of Double Dragon wasn't all that it could've been. The graphics are passable, but there's something key missing from the controls, and they must've run into some sprite limitations because there's NO REACH whatsoever - even when kicking, It just kills the gameplay. Accolade missed the mark on their Sega Genesis version, so, lesson here? Control is extremely important when porting arcade games. Virtua Racing on the Genesis & 32X is actually VIRTUA RACING because Sega nailed the control *feel*. Ok, I'm stepping off the soap box. LOL.
The NES and Master System versions are great either. In fact the vast majority of home ports of Double Dragon are really lacking. I think the handheld got the best ones as I enjoyed the conversions on the Atari Lynx, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance - although the latter 2 were quite different to the coin-op.
So its Kurys atari 7800 keyboard still alive
2600 + 5200 = 7800
Do The Math!
How can you get the XM now?
No idea!
Is a 7800 physical book volume in the works next?
I did already do one, the 2600/7800 Visual Compendium published by Bitmap Books. I'll probably do one of my own in future, but that's a long way off at the moment.
@@TheLairdsLair very cool! Just bought your Atari St and Master System books in the meantime!
Awesome, I hope you enjoy them. The next lot of print books will cover Amstrad CPC, MSX and Sega Mega Drive.
@@TheLairdsLair very cool!
The 7800 compendium is fantastic!
What is the value of an Atari 7800 pro?
Depends what country you are in, eBay sold items is always the best gauge of value.
In Canada, we barely saw advertising for it in stores. Nintendo destroyed everyone easily when it came out. Everyone had a NES in their house, few had sega or Atari after....
"Amazing" fact N: incompatible with Atari 800/XL
Of course it is, it's a totally different system, why would it be?
Atari had specs but games that used none of them, crappy controls, and ugly games, no big name games, and doomed......
The " have you played atari today?" Jingle was badly dated the first time you played it... And is simply grating by the 4th time and beyond. No one has nostalgia for Atari marketing.
Heh, I kinda like it :-)
@@TheLairdsLair In a sense, I see your reasoning