Page 47 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #4

ver wondered what would hap- future expandability. Atari was certain Atari would try to battle the NES
pen if the Atari 2600 mated that this would be the system to turn with some of Nintendo's own titles.
E with the Atari 5200? the videogame industry around. It all Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, and Don-
When the videogame world crashed sounded very promising...then the key Kong Jr. were all well done but un-
in 1983, the gaming universe needed a Tramiel family (founder of Commodore fortunately, like almost all of the 7800's
savior. Atari had a system in mind: computers) bought the Atari video- library, they were all outdated games.
The Atari 7800 ProSystem, which fea- games and computer division from There were some awful titles as
tured a design that was a hybrid of pre- Warner Bros. and shelved the system well, such as Atari's remake of Broder-
vious Atari game systems. It had the for almost two years. bund's classic Choplifter and Technos'
sleek, state of the art design of the By the time Atari dusted off the Mat Mania Challenge, which were
Atari 5200 and the size of the Atari 7800 and sent her out into the world, it barely playable. Atari's Ninja Golf was
2600 (closer to the Sega Genesis to be was 1987. She awoke to find an envi- utterly ridiculous. Epyx's Impossible
exact), a huge silver streak running ronment where the Nintendo Entertain- Mission lived up to its billing as
across the middle of the system, four ment System would single handedly "Impossible" because the game was
buttons near the bottom (Power, turn the videogame industry around released with a fatal bug that prevented
Pause, Select, and Reset), two joystick and become the world's number one the player from completing the mission!
ports, difficulty switches, and an expan- system. Atari would have a lot of How these titles were ever released is
sion port. The 7800 had all the right catching up to do. a mystery in itself.
touches that made her a beauty to look Atari was a couple of years too late By the early 90’s, the Atari 7800
at. It also featured an attractive price, and the 7800 would almost certainly would finally get some good original
about $120 dollars. The Atari 7800 have stumbled and gone up to the Sili- arcade and platform games. Titles
would be the last system to be devel- con Valley in the sky had there not ranged from Atari's Crossbow, Dark
oped under the Warner Bros. regime. been an NES shortage that would allow Chambers, Desert Falcon, Ikari Warri-
Atari really wanted to make this sys- gamers to take a second look at the ors, and Tower Toppler; to Activision's
tem right. First, the controllers. Atari 7800. Double Dragon and Rampage; to Ab-

didn't want a repeat of the 5200's con- Atari's first selection of games were solute Entertainment's Title Match Pro
trollers disaster, so they borrowed the all impressive remakes of arcade clas- Wrestling and Kung Fu Master. Atari
same futuristic design but removed the sics like Centipede, Food Fight, would even try to develop a Super-
numeric pad and function buttons, Galaga, Joust, Robotron, and Xevious. Mario-esque title called Scrapyard Dog
made it smaller, and replaced the horri- All the titles would feature the great but all this would be too little, too late
ble non-centering joystick with one that graphics and intermissions that their and Atari would finally put the system
would center perfectly. This controller arcade counterparts had made famous. to rest for good. Some credit has to be
would rival Atari's own 2600 standard Titles like Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, and given to Atari's loyal supporters for
joystick. Asteroids turned out as good as, and in never waning in their demand for new
What about Atari 2600 compatibil- Asteroid's case, better, than the arcade titles. In the end, the Atari 7800 would
ity? No problem! Atari promised that originals! It was a shame that Atari had end up having one of the smallest li-
they had learned their mistake from waited so long in releasing a system braries of original games for any sys-
their 5200's 2600 adapter and would that had so much potential. By the late tem, falling far short of its original
delight gamers by allowing the 7800 to 80’s, the world wanted Nintendo, and promise: a system with many games.
run all of the 2600's huge library of as great as these Atari games were, What about Atari's other promises?
games without the need for an adapter they were just remakes of yesterday's While the 7800 was compatible with a
or add-on! old arcade greats. lot of the 2600's library, a large number
How about expandability? Rumor Atari would frantically try to intro- of 3rd party titles would end up being
had it that Atari laser disc technology duce original titles and succeeded in incompatible. How about future ex-
was right around the corner, so Atari porting some great computer hits, from pandability? As you can guess, the
made sure an expansion slot was built Accolade's Ace of Aces and Fight keyboard was scrapped while in the
into the left side of the system. Not Night; to Broderbund's Karateka; to developmental stages and the won-
only could you connect an Atari laser EA's Touchdown Football, One on One drous laser disc player ended up being
disc player, but a keyboard add-on was Basketball with Dr. J and Larry Bird, vaporware like so many of the future
also in the works, which would allow and SkyFox; to Eypx's Summer Games Atari products to come. The expansion
the user to attach other Atari related and Winter Games; to Lucasfilm's Ball- port would end up being removed in
products as well (Atari's disk drives, Blazer and Rescue on the Fractalus. later models.
tape recorders, printers, modems, etc.). Unfortunately, these were all old com- In the end, the Atari 7800 was a
Atari really wanted game players to get puter remakes; even though titles like foreshadow of the new Atari company
a taste of Atari computing. BallBlazer, Rescue on the Fractalus, that was to come. Lots of vaporware
Atari's game plan was simple: De- and Karateka were more graphically and promises broken.
sign a videogame system that offers a impressive than Atari's own 5200 and
large library of games, great graphics computer versions, they were all past
capability, Atari 2600 compatibility, and their prime.
Classic Gamer Magazine Summer 2000 47