I was an NES kids through and through. Thank you for opening my eyes to the games I missed out on as kid. Glad there are ways to play these games still.
Nice info, great presentation - thanks! The Atari XEGS would fit right into the Ten Forward set in Star Trek The Next Generation. 😍 I never had one in the day but later would pick one up. It is a nice looking system ... Ninja Golf would have been sweet. At least they got Airball out.
The problem really boils down to this, the United States is a geographically huge country. Growing up a Toys R Us was an hour and a half away and I can count on one hand the number of times we went there. Other manufacturers realized the industry was changing and got products in the smaller stores where people could actually purchase them. Relying only on big cities killed so many companies back then. Then the internet came and killed all the box stores..... In the 80s we loved getting the Sears catalog but we never ordered anything from it. The catalog ordering died in the 70s, Then Atari saying they had more powerful machines than Nintendo and it still looked like 2600 games, and advertised missile command. No one cared about old crap anymore.
Loved the xe. I got one for Christmas in 88. Absolutely loved it, only problem was that all the games advertised on the rear of the box were never available were I lived in the UK. Had to buy a second hand cassette player and loads of game cassettes.
In Australia in the 80s, I believe we had a law that meant we couldn't use TV commercials from other countries. As a result, I distinctly remember a very different Australian made Atari XEGS ad. In this version, the kids are in their room zapping bugs in Bug Hunt, when they hear their mother coming to the door. By the time the mother walks in, the kids are quietly typing on the keyboard, doing what looks like homework and the mother gives a reassuring smile and pats one of them on the back. I thought for sure the Internet would have a record of this, but I've searched high and wide. Only the three American ads come up.
I actually had one way back then, but only for a day. My dad couldn't figure out how to connect it to the living room TV without tons of static and interference that made it unplayable. He returned it the next day. We eventually got a 7800 that ended up on a different TV altogether. In hindsight, that was a bit of a downgrade. The XE probably would have worked just fine on the other TV too. The living room TV had a VCR and other equipment wired up through a rat's nest of cables. They didn't have much of an issue with interference, but the abominably cheap video cable and switch box Atari used on their systems didn't do it any favors.
I had had an Atari XE130 (It had 128kB of RAM instead of the 64kB) The Basic programming handbook was very well made! Except for the flight simulator I spent most time fiddling with and expanding/changing the example basic listings.
@@TheLairdsLair Yeah, but it was the gaming system version ;-) It was sold pretty cheap in Germany as the complete package with the gun, joystick, keyboard, several hundred pages of excellent documentation, bug hunt, flight simulator and built-in missile command. Sadly, I had neither a floppy disk drive nor a datasette drive so all my coding adventures vanished when I shut off the machine :-/ :-)
There was only one version of the XE Games System (XEGS) the one in this video and the one I looked at here: ua-cam.com/video/fLfLR29eYJk/v-deo.html It had 64k of memory the same as the 65XE, there was never a version with 128k (like the 130XE) although it is possible to mod it to add more memory.
@@TheLairdsLair Ok. I was soo sure that it had 128kB. Might have been a note in the documentation/handbook that came with the system. Well, it's been over thirty years... ;-)
I love the XEGS and it was a great way for Atari to make headway in the console wars. The GTIA chip was, even in '87 an amazing console engine that was still ahead of the competition, even after many years in production. Atari should have stuck to it's light-guns and made an early break into the 16-bit market with an ST derived console. It would have eaten up far less resources than the Panther project, and could have been out the door much sooner, making Atari the trend setter rather than a follower - given they had all the ingredients right there in '87, a year before the Mega Drive got out in it's home market, let alone the 2 years longer it'd take to make it to the rest of the world.
An ST console was a no go, the hardware wasn't well-suited for games and was expensive to produce. I am guessing you aren't aware of the Super XEGS? That was the 16-bit console that Atari developed in the late 80s and not going ahead with it was a terrible decision IMO. Here's a video I made about it: ua-cam.com/video/pFvghJjjJsA/v-deo.html In an ideal world the Super XEGS would have followed the XEGS in 1989 with the Panther arriving in '91 or '92 and the Jaguar in '95 or '96 with no bugs and a CD drive as standard.
The atari xe is definitely a great system,in fact i can hardly believe that the atari 7800 is actually more powerful in most ways, And while you did mention it, I found it very sad that pac land didn’t make it out of the factory for release,what i misoppertunity from atari,who ever knows how well that game could,ve compeated against nintendo’s own platformer,dang it.
I'd love to see them do a mini Xegs with loads of built-in Atari classics like Centipede, Missile Command, Super Breakout, Star Raiders 1&2, Caverns of Mars, Lunar Lander etc.
I can't believe they were sold out, as i remember piles of boxes of these in Debenhams going for £49.95. i don't think many were aware it could play 800 games and tapes too.
Even if someone did an Atari XE laptop is a tough one to swallow. However, the Atari XE joystick controller does not have an A and B fire buttons, including a Start and Select buttons as if the NES controller has is the only con.
Great job on the video. Where did you get the 250K sold figure? That number sounds about right. These are very sought after today but on release it was not an amazing product. Nowadays they are great, if cheaply built. The ones with a copper/gold motherboard are very desirable. Tons of software for the line and the XEGS is fully compatible with all 64K XL/XE software and can run nearly all 400/800 software.
I got it from ex-Atari people. Atari only produced 250k XEGS consoles, this is actually recorded somewhere, and sold all of them to retail at full price.
@@TheLairdsLair Blue Max should have been the pack in game. With a pack in, it should be a fun, pick up and play game, which Blue Max is. Maybe Star Raiders 2 also. Flight Simulator 2 was a fantastic game at the time (I had all the scenery disks:) but it's not appropriate as a pack in title.
8:00 I think this section really emphasizes one of the reasons consumers in my region of the US ( parents and kids alike) completely disregarded anything Atari at this time (1988). Those games with the stickers were too recent and frankly, crappy to be considered classic/retro/vintage as retro gaming makes them seem now. In the US parents who opened the business section of the newspaper , considered Tramel era Atari to right be up there with junk bonds... Why would they see their products any differently? If mom and dad would spring big cash at the time for a computer, Atari was the last place they were going to look. Teachers and mom's might go for the more functional printing and publishing of an Apple II. Cooler gamer dad's would go C64. Mom's and dad's in fortune 500's or the sciences probably went for PCs. And Radio Shack/Tandy and Texas Instruments had niches in the US at this time too. There was no room for Atari really . Everyone, including 6 graders like myself knew that Atari slapped these stickers on these shovelware games because it cost less than paying for landfill ( like the millions of ET cartridges they literally dumped). Friends would come over with shoeboxes full of 2600 games they got at a garage sale for 4 bucks and take the two out they didn't have and literally leave the shoe box behind ( you want any of these?). It was amazing how the value of these games, even in kids minds had dropped by the late 80's. Probably all these different 8 bit options didn't help. If they had just focused on the 7800 ...and competed with their catalog rather than shoveling out retreads like Asteroids and missile command. Kids might have been interested. Nintendo made us think their stuff was fresh and new, because it was.
I totally agree yeah, titles like Breakout and Basketball weren't going to excite anyone in 1987. Although the NES wasn't popular here, the home computers that most people had all the latest arcade conversions and great original games. The only real support for the Atari 8-bit machines was through the budget games market - cheap games on tape.
@@TheLairdsLair Yes, it is really interesting how much the markets differed back then. Did the 16bit generation change that ? Seems. I never saw a single ZX Spectrum in the US... That is one I missed out on.
@@TheLairdsLair the best way to work it out is one that fits your style and will gain a huge number of views! Maybe a series ? 5 mins a pop, 6 or 10 episodes?
The best part from atari was to put nintendo games (aside from sega games) onto their systems,in order to form a serious threat against nintendo,hahaaa🤣🤣🤣
8:55. Hahhahaa. Only Atari comes with a real Joystick!!! Translated in the mind of a 12 year old American kid in 1988: " Look at that POS joystick, the same shitty joystick that Atari put with the 2600, when I was only 3 years old. Your friend's little brother will have that cheap rubber cover ruined in 5 minutes.. and still only 1 button?"
I know it's iconic but I was never a fan of the Atari joystick. I did prefer sticks to pads but they should have updated it with a more ergonomic shape, especially given they were pushing the flight sim element, or even split between the packages with the "basic" set getting re-coloured 7800 pads, and the premium one getting new 2-button joysticks and the light-gun.
The NES Advantage made any "real joystick" for the Atari rather pointless. That said, while I grew up in the 80's as an NES fanboy, I've grown to appreciate the Atari for what it is, and I'm now more curious about writing homebrew for it before the NES. :D
Hardly any games used it, especially cartridge ones. All it'd have done is make the console more expensive, for a feature no one would have used. Who brought a console based on how much *memory* it had? It was all about graphics ability, and thanks to the GTIA chipset and the pedigree of the 8-bit line that was *very* well documented, the XEGS had the benefit of a whole generation of programmers who knew how to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the silicon, dishing up great, colourful, beautiful, fast-moving games by the bucket full. No one who played Fractulas was going to wish they'd brought a NES.
I was just a kid when the Atari XE came out. I asked my parents for an NES for Christmas, but they bought me an Atari XE. I think I was slightly disappointed, but also confused, and intrigued. I never said anything but ‘thank you,’ and ‘I love you,’ but at the same time I was jealous of my friends who got an NES. A year later, they bought me an NES, second hand, for 50$, and it worked just fine, and I loved it. It’s too bad the XE never got its heyday, but I guess it got its small place in history. I hope I’ll get a small place in history someday; but if I don’t, I won’t miss it.
Well the heyday for all the A8 series is now! Never before one could found so many different upgrades (memory upgrades, storage mediums, sound and graphic upgrades) and quality games for the system. That is true for ,almost, all 8bit machines.
I was an NES kids through and through. Thank you for opening my eyes to the games I missed out on as kid. Glad there are ways to play these games still.
I love how the XEGS looks too, its just so late 80s. Its like the console equivalent of a shell suit.
Great analogy! I'll have to steal that :P
@@TheLairdsLair feel free man!
Nice info, great presentation - thanks!
The Atari XEGS would fit right into the Ten Forward set in Star Trek The Next Generation. 😍
I never had one in the day but later would pick one up. It is a nice looking system ...
Ninja Golf would have been sweet. At least they got Airball out.
Your affinity for stylish color theory implementation is reflected by the intertitles. Cool. 🤙
Necromancer, one of the most impressive 8 bit computer audio intros period.
Amazing game too!
The problem really boils down to this, the United States is a geographically huge country. Growing up a Toys R Us was an hour and a half away and I can count on one hand the number of times we went there. Other manufacturers realized the industry was changing and got products in the smaller stores where people could actually purchase them. Relying only on big cities killed so many companies back then. Then the internet came and killed all the box stores..... In the 80s we loved getting the Sears catalog but we never ordered anything from it. The catalog ordering died in the 70s, Then Atari saying they had more powerful machines than Nintendo and it still looked like 2600 games, and advertised missile command. No one cared about old crap anymore.
Loved the xe. I got one for Christmas in 88. Absolutely loved it, only problem was that all the games advertised on the rear of the box were never available were I lived in the UK. Had to buy a second hand cassette player and loads of game cassettes.
In Australia in the 80s, I believe we had a law that meant we couldn't use TV commercials from other countries. As a result, I distinctly remember a very different Australian made Atari XEGS ad. In this version, the kids are in their room zapping bugs in Bug Hunt, when they hear their mother coming to the door. By the time the mother walks in, the kids are quietly typing on the keyboard, doing what looks like homework and the mother gives a reassuring smile and pats one of them on the back. I thought for sure the Internet would have a record of this, but I've searched high and wide. Only the three American ads come up.
That seems familiar for some reason, I wonder if they re-used it over here?
I actually had one way back then, but only for a day. My dad couldn't figure out how to connect it to the living room TV without tons of static and interference that made it unplayable. He returned it the next day. We eventually got a 7800 that ended up on a different TV altogether. In hindsight, that was a bit of a downgrade. The XE probably would have worked just fine on the other TV too. The living room TV had a VCR and other equipment wired up through a rat's nest of cables. They didn't have much of an issue with interference, but the abominably cheap video cable and switch box Atari used on their systems didn't do it any favors.
I had had an Atari XE130 (It had 128kB of RAM instead of the 64kB)
The Basic programming handbook was very well made!
Except for the flight simulator I spent most time fiddling with and expanding/changing the example basic listings.
I also have a 130XE in my collection, I did a video on it here: ua-cam.com/video/m-YNLIeBvrY/v-deo.html
@@TheLairdsLair Yeah, but it was the gaming system version ;-)
It was sold pretty cheap in Germany as the complete package with the gun, joystick, keyboard, several hundred pages of excellent documentation, bug hunt, flight simulator and built-in missile command.
Sadly, I had neither a floppy disk drive nor a datasette drive so all my coding adventures vanished when I shut off the machine :-/ :-)
There was only one version of the XE Games System (XEGS) the one in this video and the one I looked at here: ua-cam.com/video/fLfLR29eYJk/v-deo.html
It had 64k of memory the same as the 65XE, there was never a version with 128k (like the 130XE) although it is possible to mod it to add more memory.
@@TheLairdsLair Ok.
I was soo sure that it had 128kB.
Might have been a note in the documentation/handbook that came with the system.
Well, it's been over thirty years... ;-)
I love the XEGS and it was a great way for Atari to make headway in the console wars. The GTIA chip was, even in '87 an amazing console engine that was still ahead of the competition, even after many years in production.
Atari should have stuck to it's light-guns and made an early break into the 16-bit market with an ST derived console. It would have eaten up far less resources than the Panther project, and could have been out the door much sooner, making Atari the trend setter rather than a follower - given they had all the ingredients right there in '87, a year before the Mega Drive got out in it's home market, let alone the 2 years longer it'd take to make it to the rest of the world.
An ST console was a no go, the hardware wasn't well-suited for games and was expensive to produce. I am guessing you aren't aware of the Super XEGS? That was the 16-bit console that Atari developed in the late 80s and not going ahead with it was a terrible decision IMO. Here's a video I made about it: ua-cam.com/video/pFvghJjjJsA/v-deo.html
In an ideal world the Super XEGS would have followed the XEGS in 1989 with the Panther arriving in '91 or '92 and the Jaguar in '95 or '96 with no bugs and a CD drive as standard.
The atari xe is definitely a great system,in fact i can hardly believe that the atari 7800 is actually more powerful in most ways,
And while you did mention it, I found it very sad that pac land didn’t make it out of the factory for release,what i misoppertunity from atari,who ever knows how well that game could,ve compeated against nintendo’s own platformer,dang it.
Another system I never heard of at the time, despite owning Atari machines. A cool looking console though.
I'd love to see them do a mini Xegs with loads of built-in Atari classics like Centipede, Missile Command, Super Breakout, Star Raiders 1&2, Caverns of Mars, Lunar Lander etc.
Me too! I even suggested such a thing to a company that specialises in mini consoles.
I can't believe they were sold out, as i remember piles of boxes of these in Debenhams going for £49.95. i don't think many were aware it could play 800 games and tapes too.
Even if someone did an Atari XE laptop is a tough one to swallow. However, the Atari XE joystick controller does not have an A and B fire buttons, including a Start and Select buttons as if the NES controller has is the only con.
Elusive 3.5" floppy drive makes appearance again...
Great job on the video. Where did you get the 250K sold figure? That number sounds about right. These are very sought after today but on release it was not an amazing product. Nowadays they are great, if cheaply built. The ones with a copper/gold motherboard are very desirable. Tons of software for the line and the XEGS is fully compatible with all 64K XL/XE software and can run nearly all 400/800 software.
I got it from ex-Atari people. Atari only produced 250k XEGS consoles, this is actually recorded somewhere, and sold all of them to retail at full price.
Cool vid, K! This is my Favorite A8 hardware.
Mine too!
NOW, I'd adore one of these. Then, I couldn't understand what they were thinking. I still kinda can't.
Whoever decided that Flight Simulator 2 should be a pack in game should never be allowed to work in the video game industry again.
I can see why they included it, but there were better games that would have showed off the computer capabilities.
@@TheLairdsLair Blue Max should have been the pack in game. With a pack in, it should be a fun, pick up and play game, which Blue Max is. Maybe Star Raiders 2 also. Flight Simulator 2 was a fantastic game at the time (I had all the scenery disks:) but it's not appropriate as a pack in title.
Atari put out too much hardware and confused the average consumer. This just furthered the problem.
8:00 I think this section really emphasizes one of the reasons consumers in my region of the US ( parents and kids alike) completely disregarded anything Atari at this time (1988). Those games with the stickers were too recent and frankly, crappy to be considered classic/retro/vintage as retro gaming makes them seem now. In the US parents who opened the business section of the newspaper , considered Tramel era Atari to right be up there with junk bonds... Why would they see their products any differently? If mom and dad would spring big cash at the time for a computer, Atari was the last place they were going to look. Teachers and mom's might go for the more functional printing and publishing of an Apple II. Cooler gamer dad's would go C64. Mom's and dad's in fortune 500's or the sciences probably went for PCs. And Radio Shack/Tandy and Texas Instruments had niches in the US at this time too. There was no room for Atari really .
Everyone, including 6 graders like myself knew that Atari slapped these stickers on these shovelware games because it cost less than paying for landfill ( like the millions of ET cartridges they literally dumped). Friends would come over with shoeboxes full of 2600 games they got at a garage sale for 4 bucks and take the two out they didn't have and literally leave the shoe box behind ( you want any of these?). It was amazing how the value of these games, even in kids minds had dropped by the late 80's.
Probably all these different 8 bit options didn't help.
If they had just focused on the 7800 ...and competed with their catalog rather than shoveling out retreads like Asteroids and missile command. Kids might have been interested.
Nintendo made us think their stuff was fresh and new, because it was.
I totally agree yeah, titles like Breakout and Basketball weren't going to excite anyone in 1987. Although the NES wasn't popular here, the home computers that most people had all the latest arcade conversions and great original games. The only real support for the Atari 8-bit machines was through the budget games market - cheap games on tape.
@@TheLairdsLair Yes, it is really interesting how much the markets differed back then. Did the 16bit generation change that ? Seems.
I never saw a single ZX Spectrum in the US... That is one I missed out on.
@@TheLairdsLair a video on why the NES could not conquer the UK market, would be fun to watch. I suspect it is a complex topic.
Yeah, it is a fairly complex topic but it is one I want to tackle at some point. I've just got work out the best way to approach it.
@@TheLairdsLair the best way to work it out is one that fits your style and will gain a huge number of views! Maybe a series ? 5 mins a pop, 6 or 10 episodes?
The best part from atari was to put nintendo games (aside from sega games) onto their systems,in order to form a serious threat against nintendo,hahaaa🤣🤣🤣
Plus some useless Amiga trivia -- The light guns Actionware sold for the Amiga were actually the Atari XE light guns. Atari logos and all.
Wow! That's very interesting indeed!
That's funny! ....I made an adapter to use a Sega gun for my 800XL!
8:55. Hahhahaa. Only Atari comes with a real Joystick!!! Translated in the mind of a 12 year old American kid in 1988: " Look at that POS joystick, the same shitty joystick that Atari put with the 2600, when I was only 3 years old. Your friend's little brother will have that cheap rubber cover ruined in 5 minutes.. and still only 1 button?"
I know it's iconic but I was never a fan of the Atari joystick. I did prefer sticks to pads but they should have updated it with a more ergonomic shape, especially given they were pushing the flight sim element, or even split between the packages with the "basic" set getting re-coloured 7800 pads, and the premium one getting new 2-button joysticks and the light-gun.
The NES Advantage made any "real joystick" for the Atari rather pointless. That said, while I grew up in the 80's as an NES fanboy, I've grown to appreciate the Atari for what it is, and I'm now more curious about writing homebrew for it before the NES. :D
Just a re-packaged 65xe :) useless! They should have done a re-packaged 130xe (more memory)
Why? Almost no games use the extra memory, so that would have been pointless.
Hardly any games used it, especially cartridge ones. All it'd have done is make the console more expensive, for a feature no one would have used. Who brought a console based on how much *memory* it had? It was all about graphics ability, and thanks to the GTIA chipset and the pedigree of the 8-bit line that was *very* well documented, the XEGS had the benefit of a whole generation of programmers who knew how to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the silicon, dishing up great, colourful, beautiful, fast-moving games by the bucket full. No one who played Fractulas was going to wish they'd brought a NES.
I was just a kid when the Atari XE came out.
I asked my parents for an NES for Christmas, but they bought me an Atari XE.
I think I was slightly disappointed, but also confused, and intrigued.
I never said anything but ‘thank you,’ and ‘I love you,’ but at the same time I was jealous of my friends who got an NES.
A year later, they bought me an NES, second hand, for 50$, and it worked just fine, and I loved it.
It’s too bad the XE never got its heyday, but I guess it got its small place in history. I hope I’ll get a small place in history someday; but if I don’t, I won’t miss it.
Well the heyday for all the A8 series is now! Never before one could found so many different upgrades (memory upgrades, storage mediums, sound and graphic upgrades) and quality games for the system. That is true for ,almost, all 8bit machines.