Thread 12093891

Why are consoles released before the NES generally unpopular among retro gamers?
I'm not saying literally no one cares about them, but NES games are clearly talked about more often than Atari 2600 games

because they're trash

>>12093892
Retard
>>12093891 (OP)
Breakout is simple and addicting fun you can pick up and play for however long you want: 5 minutes to an hour. It's perfect. But its simple and honest fun also means you can't make video essays about Breakout, thus giving it less attention.

>>12093909
autistic sensory toy

theyre a bit primitive and not as engaging.

>>12093891 (OP)
There's retro gamers and there's tendies. Not the same thing.

>>12093912 (Too)

>>12093891 (OP)
the games are disposable fun for a few minutes, but not interesting compared to nes or master system games
>>12093909
i actually saw a video essay about a book someone wrote about breakout
https://youtu.be/cSrP1ipkes0?si=oImFxmp5aMCxqQHU&t=393

>>12093891 (OP)
Because they are a pain in the ass and either require you to be an electrical engineer and rebuild them and upgrade them to function on a modern television. Or you can go and buy a 50 year old TV and pray to god it works so you can play the most barebones video games you could imagine.

>>12093927
>buy a 50 year old TV
Boomers throw out CRTs for free all the time.

The jump in sophistication from the second gen to the third gen is the biggest in history. The Famicom can run pretty much any 2D game at some capacity. The Atari VCS is very limited.

>>12093891 (OP)
>Why are consoles released before the NES generally unpopular among retro gamers?
they are popular, you're just nothing more than a sad compulsive liar.

>>12093957
>The Famicom can run pretty much any 2D game at some capacity.
>any 2d game
that's just fucking nonsense.

>>12093891 (OP)
The simple answer is that most people, even people who play retro vidya, see the graphics and are immediately turned off. The longer answer is that most of the games are of a different philosophy than NES and later. Someone who plays Mario, Final Fantasy, and Half Life a lot is most likely not gonna have a lot of fun with something like Space Jockey for example. Age is another factor too, the average Atari gamer is 45 at the youngest I'd say. The amount of chronically online 45+ year olds is small (although will grow eventually) so obviously when the main demographic for these games aren't online you're less likely to see discussion of them. Personally, I think everyone should learn to enjoy the 2600. I'm a zoomer myself and it's in my top 3 favorite systems. Even if later games are objectively better, Atari games are still incredibly addicting and fun. I once spent 2 hours playing nothing but Battlezone just because it's that good. It's sad to see a whole generation of gaming dismissed because it's too simplistic. Ironically however it will eventually spread to other systems. There's people who are starting to say NES is too simplistic. Eventually it'll be SNES, then N64, then PS2, and it will continue until we're snuffed out.

>>12093989
What genre of game is 2D and cannot be ported to the Famicom?

>>12093925
fuck I kinda wanna play breakout now

>>12094007
Anything with physics

>>12093891 (OP)
picture how primitive and janky the nes and master system games were, now picture them even worse

>>12094003
2600 games are largely the same as smartphone mobile games (minus ads and freemium shit ofcourse).

There's no real objective reason to praise 2600 games over mobile games besides the aesthetic. If flappy bird was originally on the 2600, many people would praise it.

If kaboom started life on the iphone many people would shit on it for being simple normalfag shit.

>>12094007
A game where you put together colorful puzzles using realistic puzzle piece shapes

>>12094013
Try Mr gimmick NIGGA (nigga said in the same way as SEGA used to be said in the commercials really fast)

>>12094043
Counterpoint: Smartphone games are being made alongside modern games. It's not really fair to compare them to the 2600 where that was pretty much it. You wouldn't compare Toy Story with a CG movie from last year. Another point too is that if the game is fun then it's fun. Flappy Bird is a fun game regardless of the platform. Same with Kaboom.

>>12094075
>Counterpoint: Smartphone games are being made alongside modern games. It's not really fair to compare them to the 2600 where that was pretty much it.
I'm not bitching about old people with nostalgia so much as countering the USUALLY TRUE notion that old good, new bad.
>You wouldn't compare Toy Story with a CG movie from last year.
I fucking would because Toy Story 1 and I 2 are better than anything in the past 20 years. (3 and 4 suck ass). So this example is bad.
A better example is: "you wouldn't compare 8bit games to modern games" and that example would still fall flat on a board where people choose to play 8 bit and 16 bit games when cheap or free modern alternatives exist.
I'd rather play Tooie than Odyssey. I'd rather play Diddy Kong than Mario Kart World. Etc.
>Another point too is that if the game is fun then it's fun. Flappy Bird is a fun game regardless of the platform. Same with Kaboom.
That's fine. If you're willing to say this, than you don't have the attitude my post was intended to counter. I was (still am?) expecting an avalanche of people telling me to kill myself for saying water is wet.

>>12093891 (OP)
In the case of the 2600 it's because most of the games worth playing were arcade ports, that looked and played and sounded significantly better on arcade.

>>12093931
Good luck finding any from the late 70's and early 80's in working order. Almost every CRT you find will be from the late 90's or early 00's

>>12093927
Emulators.

There was sort of a revival of fascination with the Atari 2600 about 20 years ago. As we move further away from it naturally people into retro games now are going to see it as too archaic. Especially if you don't have any nostalgia for it, it's hard to convince someone. When /vr/ was first created I remember there being several Atari threads on the catalog at once.

>>12093891 (OP)
Its about the demographics who are online. Gen Xers who love Atari are much fewer in number than millennials who love later consoles, and they don't come here to talk Atari. They are on Atari age. Also, people over 50 stop caring as much about escapism, games etc. They are busy with life not reliving things from 45 years ago
Summary:
Raw numbers of Nintendo generation is much bigger
Old gen Xers don't go online to talk about their childhood games as much as younger people, and when they do, they sure as hell don't come here

>>12093891 (OP)
One factor is that game journalists largely focus on Nintendo first, modern consoles second, and barely register anything else as even existing. The reasons for this probably warrant an essay, but I think some of it is what >>12094158 says, it's a generational gap, with people who grew up on the NES and later having no fond memories of anything from before, and zero interest.
Which if you're supposedly a game journalist is kinda shitty IMO.

>>12094103
>most of the games worth playing were arcade ports
Not true in the least, even Atari's first party lineup contained many original games that were big hits. When people dismiss the 2600 with this "arcade port machine" meme I want to hit them over the head with an Adventure cartridge.

When I play 2600 I'm playing that or Seaquest or River Raid or Kaboom or Pressure Cooker or Dark Cavern or Circus Atari or Dragonstomper or Haunted House or Pitfall or Yar's Revenge.

>>12094007
anything with more than 8 sprites on a single line
anything with physics
anything that requires complicated math

nes was a joke console for retarded toddlers.

>>12093891 (OP)
It's just that you self selected to be in younger weeb environments like 4chan. There are still large communities of older retro gamers who are obsessed with Atari and get hyped for stuff like the Gamestation Go.

>>12094179
Adventure is one I still come back to often. The randomizer mode has given me so many hours of fun.

Millennials who grew up with Nintendo have no self-awareness that their feelings for certain consoles come from nostalgia , they think it's "objective quality". They can't comprehend that certain people who grew up with Atari 2600 or old arcade games, or c64 have the same feelings for those games that they do about fucking Mario and Pokemon.

>>12093891 (OP)
Because they're exclusively focused on gameplay and the play experience. There's not much financial interest, even the "expensive" things like vectrex barely have any buyers so it's not really a market you get into to make money. The people playing the consoles and making homebrew hardware and software for them are just interested in playing. They rally around good new products like the 7800+ and it's not remotely expensive to get.

Those old dudes who play Atari and Coleco are cool as hell.

because the "games" suck dick. if you combined every atari game into one it would not be half as engaging as a single NES game.

>>12094202
>engaging
>bug ridden, sprite flickering mess
lol. that thing had more shovelware released for it than the 2600.

>>12093891 (OP)
It wasn't until the NES era did home console graphics evolve to where characters were clearly identifiable, often with details that gave them personality. Add to this recognizable environments, and music that people were able to immerse themselves in.

Graphics with Atari and its cohorts were largely abstractions. That blob of 8 pixels? That's a cat.
And no amount of exposition in the manuals could transfer any personality to that cat on screen.

>>12094251
>And no amount of exposition in the manuals could transfer any personality to that cat on screen.

>>12094013
>>12094183
Explain this.

>>12094043
Plenty of smartphone games resemble 4th generation games, should the SNES be dismissed as simplistic normie slop?

>>12093925
>master system
sega system

>>12094282
Yes

>>12094287
I am wishing you head cancer.

>>12093891 (OP)
Most people under the age of 50 were introduced to these systems through snarky YouTubers or Nintendo-centric history on the 1983 video game crash and waive the whole era away as primitive and unremarkable.

It's certainly primitive. The gap in gameplay depth between your average game from 1980 and 1989 is quite staggering. The only thing that had a semblance of modern single player gameplay depth in the late 70s/early 80s were home computer games like text RPGs and later Ultima.

There is definitely a specific subset of retro gamers who want simple pickup and play games to test skill/score attack/speedrun, but the arcade games from that era are vastly superior for scratching that itch.

Atari/Coleco/Intellivision are best experienced as a social dynamic at a party or with a group of friends. Most of the best games of that era are 2 Player and most of the single player games can be beaten in a few minutes tops. They get a lot of extra mileage if you play them in turns with other people.

My favorite systems are NES/Genesis/SNES/PS1 but I always thought Atari was cool because the games are so primitive that figuring out what to do in some of them without a manual is like reading a map written in alien runes.

>>12094271
>the retarded nintentoddler thinks this is actual physics
embarrassing. pre-calculated tables, retard. and it's still underwhelming. and to make things more comical, it isn't even a game released when the nes was a viable platform. hilarious.

>>12094295
>chatgpt slop

>>12094295
>Most people under the age of 50 were introduced to these systems through
being alive when they came out, or through re-releases and emulation. Remember that people born in the 1970s are turning 50 this decade.

>>12094345
you're replying to a single digit iq loser using chatgpt. this board is dead.

>>12094345
>being alive when they came out
You got me. People who were alive when Atari 2600 came out are as young as 49 now kek.
I get what you mean. I was born in the 90s and my intro was getting a 7800 with a bunch of 2600 games from my uncle.
>>12094342
>>12094348
>t. homo

>>12094183
You can do 2 out of 3 of these if you settle for 5fps like most computer games of the time did.

>>12094282
What I'm saying is I would guess most gamers on the internet would look on mobile games with disdain when they have more or less the same merit as Atari 2600 games which I think would only garner praise. My point is that in both cases they aren't judging the game, objectively.

>>12094464
frames per second was not a thing people cared about in general. This is a thing that became a complaint in the modern era.

>>12094467
My disdain for mobile games has nothing to do with gameplay and everything to do with the monetization ecosystem, so fuck your attempt to >imply some sort of hypocrisy

>>12093892
Zoomers need to be put in camps and gassed.

>>12093891 (OP)
It's just demographics, age specifically though financials are also important. The vast majority of people "into" retrogames these days can hardly even play NES (or any game for that matter) and make the exact same criticisms as people who can't get into pre-NES about the NES. The same thing will happen to gen 4 and then gen 5, and on, and on...

Outliers like people with tolerance (who actually played the things) or people with a focused interest in the hobby will always exist for anything. Things become history and history exists for most to be read, not checked out. It's a shame when you can experience it, but that's how it is.

>>12094491
The worst are original hardwarefags who collect and don't even play games.

>>12094472
Bullshit, being able to run doom at a high enough frame rate was a sign of superiority. This continued with quake and counterstrike, etc... then crisis, etc....
Not to mention, many old games have logic/physics/mechanics tied to frame rate. Way to be a real grade A retard, anon.

>>12094583
>>12094472
Ohh yeah, there were frame limiters too, because older games played on newer hardware were too fast and unplayable. Because fps matterd

>>12093891 (OP)
People connect with characters like Megaman, Mario and Link. They don't connect with the protagonists of 2600 games which are just fucking squares shooting smaller squares.

>>12094797
unimaginative self report

>>12094146
Anon asked why no one talks about the consoles and I explained the number one issue which is that they are all broken at this point and the ones that aren't require more old hardware that is most likely broken.
Emulators are a drop in the bucket for popularity, no one is going out and playing the Intellivision for anything more than a few minutes.
Side note to that, why the fuck did Intellivision Lives! get made, I can't imagine it sold very well. Atari did something similar with the Anthology Collection but those games felt more culturally significant, maybe I'm retarded.

Because their games are shit. The Americans might have invented games, but the Japanese invented GOOD games

>>12094184
looking around forums and stuff, atari fans are very pleased with Atari in recent years.

>>12094339
>pre-calculated tables
>N-NOOOOO IT DOESN'T COUNT IT DOESN'T COUNT STOP THE COUNT!!!!

Pinball was one of the first games on the NES, retard. Pinbot has a multiball mode where the balls can collide with each other. Solar Jetman exists. the argument that any processor "can't do physics" is retarded to begin with. even the 2600 has a pinball game.

>>12093891 (OP)
>Why are consoles released before the NES generally unpopular among retro gamers?
I think it's because most games on those systems are really small and simple ones where you'll have seen everything there is to see in just 15 minutes, and often in much less time than that.
They're too small, short, and simple, to fit later gamer's expectations of what a videogame is actually like.

With NES and C64 games and stuff, you have a lot of full fledged adventures in a long form, or a more exciting and deep arcade experience. You don't get games like Mario, Sonic, Contra, Castlevania, Zelda, etc, on a 2600, the kinds of games where you can be playing them for hours and hours and still not see all they have to offer.

>>12093909
Breakout is ok, but I just look at Arkanoid II on SNES, and it gives me everything that Breakout does and much more, and it's a much more enjoyable way to play that game (which I certainly can play for hours). I don't have the old controllers for games like Breakout though, that part is still special.

>>12094287
I am also wishing you head cancer.

>>12094897
>still believing the cope

>>12093891 (OP)
Just the spectacle of "tv game programs" was enough back then. The novelty was most of the appeal-- they didn't need to actually be fun. Some games still hold up like Pong, Breakout, of course Yar's Revenge, but most of them are just garbage.

>>12093891 (OP)
>Why are consoles released before the NES generally unpopular among children who learned about old toys from youtubes about the NES

>>12093891 (OP)
99 percent of games on Atari are shovel ware.
That's why.
NES games are classics.

I'm glad /vr/ understands that stories in videogames DO matter!

>>12094484
Lmao rent free
Most pre NES games have aged like complete shit

>>12095130
Story can be good, but you can still make an excellent game with 0% story to it. Look at fucking Tetris.

>>12095139
Most pre-snes games aged like shit my man, it's like pre-dreamcast 3d and how much that sucked.
Video games sucked until the 16-bit era, even then the TG16 was a piece of shit and the Genesis took forever to get games that were halfway decent.

>>12095021
>they didn't need to actually be fun
They did, actually. A big contributor to the '83 crash was customers not wanting any of what was flooding the market at that point.

>Jawbreaker
>Breakout
>Tennis
>Robot Tank
>Asteroids
>Joust
All pretty fun games and I didn't even grow up with the atari
If you don't like these maybe Gay Ming isn't for you

>>12093891 (OP)
Because there's no reason to play them unless you've exhausted everything else. Like others have said, they're too primitive. Endings, progression, presentation, and having enough memory for more than 4-5 levels did more for gaming than even 3D. Bubble Bobble wouldn't even be half as fun if it was just the same four levels repeating but harder every loop. If I'm burned out on a game like Donkey Kong Country I'm not going to waste time on something like >>12095206 mentioned when there's a million other things I could play and complete instead.
I still think if you have a child or younger cousins you should introduce them to gaming through early Atari stuff so they develop a real palette and don't spew retarded horseshit like "it's better for Naughty Dog to advance gaming as an artform with games like Uncharted than hold back the medium with Crash and Jak."

Because accomplishment in video games is no longer measured in high scores.

>>12095139
No they haven't. They're as fun now as they were then. Not everything needs to be Fortnite. Go play the latest zoomslop full of Disney style rendered homosexual gender-inclusive characters repackaging the same formula for the last 10+ years with more DLC and in-game data and arbitrary textures you can purchase with real world money. Fuck off.

>>12093891 (OP)
>why isnt 50 year old thing popular?
a great mystery

>>12095564
Lots of things which are 50 years old (and older) remain popular though.

>>12095780
No

>>12095819
Masterful retort, you insipid doublenigger.

>>12093891 (OP)
No Atari or Intellivision games are worth playing
The ideas were expanded upon and made better in later releases
But their original forms are terrible
Overly simplistic, horrific art, bad sounds/music
The fact that they sell the Atari collections as virtual museums with documentaries inside should tell you that even they know this bullshit wouldn’t sell on its own merit
Yeah I’ve played Joust.

>>12093891 (OP)
Honestly, its because they've very VERY basic and there were so many bad games. Plus they're generally repetitive single screen games that are just for chasing score.

Once games started to evolve when the NES came back, it was hard to look back. Though I do still love me some moon patrol or name that game on the 2600.

Tank Pong is the greatest game of all time

>The games were ..... Le Bad.
I hate modern /vr/ so much sometimes

>>12095819
>the rekt zbaby says no

>>12096038
>Overly simplistic
The problem with zoomers is that they are pure consumers, not geeks in the old sense of people with technical understanding or interests. Part of the fascination of these early platforms and games is that everything was breaking new ground, and doing it all with very limited resources. At least watch a video on "how the hell did the genius dev manage to do X game on an 8k ROM". I find it fascinating because I have a triple digit IQ.

>>12096380
I'll also add the metaphor that this type of moron is the same that would say ancient sailors were just shitheads who knew nothing about the sea, their tech was laughable, and they should have taken an air-conditioned Carnival cruise instead.

They're kind of just ass lol. There are a few decent ones like Rogue, Adventure, Pitfall, etc - but generally speaking I'll pick a classic arcade game over a classic console game any day.
Same era, significantly better games.

>>12093917
Yes. Tendies have actual judgement and taste and recognize good design that makes things actually worthwhile to play. 'Retro gamers' who don't care for Nintendo are mostly nostalgic hipsters who pretend SEGA/Atari actually made stuff there's much reason to go back to and for whatever reason can't appreciate games where the ways you physically move and can interact with things are actually interesting and well thought out. I wish I was being ironic and that there were equivalent quality games on these systems to play.

>>12094189
This is an example of exactly what I'm talking about.

>>12096485
>I wish I was being ironic
Instead you're just retarded

>>12096485
>This is an example of exactly what I'm talking about.
Please explain

People old enough to care about the 2600 mostly thought arcades were real videogames and the 2600 was a substitute. The 2600 games that were not just inferior arcade games like say that hide and seek game didn't catch on that well while the NES had a lot of popular non-arcade experience games plus a lot of good arcade style games that were more or less exclusive

>>12093892
This, unironically. Bleep bloops and pacheew noises while you watch huge blocky graphics march across the screen.

As better game systems came out people quickly forgot their 2600's even existed.

>>12096514
>The 2600 games that were not just inferior arcade games like say that hide and seek game didn't catch on that well
Complete ignorant horseshit

>>12096590
>As better game systems came out people quickly forgot their 2600's even existed.
You're full of shit and talking out of your ass

>>12096631
I was there. 2600 and other junk went on the shelves or in the closets of America as soon as people got their C64s, Apple IIs, and Nintendos.

You might like those old systems but they were quickly put away once better options appeared.

>>12094271
What game?

>>12096660
https://pubbygames.itch.io/little-sisyphus

>>12096380
I perfectly understand that angle, and there's lots of late 80s and 90s games which wow me technologically, but typically those games are also pretty fun for me to play. Pic related (actually a port of an even earlier 1988 computer game), is one of those which has really wowed me with how its design and themes are really a decade ahead of its time

There's lots of games from before my own time (1992) which I like a lot, but the 2600 stuff never did click with me, and it's primarily because of the gameplay. The graphics and sound are actually fine.

I always figured that if you took a bunch of the best regarded 2600 games and stapled them together as minigames into like a broader 'board game' setup similar to Mario Party, it'd be easier to get younger generations into them.
Seeing people like >>12094295 talk about playing these kinds of games at a party or with a group of friends reinforces in me that this idea could work.

>>12095819
I checked out Star-Trek TOS back when it turned 50, wasn't sure I'd like it having watched TNG reruns in my teens and heard people dismiss TOS as "inferior, hokey and bad schlock," but I honestly loved it, in some ways even more than TNG. Kirk rules.

>>12096645
>>12096590
Are you actually that old? Genuine question.

>>12094142
Newer CRT TV's work just fine with older consoles. They connect to the RF jack and you turn the TV to the channel you have set them to use. If you want to hook them up to an LCD you need an upscaler. There are plenty of plug & play solutions for this but they cost money. So cheap shitheads like you buy chinese dogshit scalers and then complain when they suck. Just get a RetroTINK.

>>12093957
The Colecovision and 5200 are in the same ballpark as early NES games. The Vectrex can do things you wouldn't see on consoles until the 4th generation, but its a very special case. Honestly, if the crash didn't happen we would probably consider everything released between '82 and '87 part of the third generation. There was a way bigger jump from 2600/Odyssey2/Intellivison systems to 5200/Colecovision/Vextrex systems then there was going to the NES/7800/Master System. Especially if you consider that they never had their hardware really pushed until homebrew games came out decades later. It would be like only using NES games made before 1987 for comparison.

>>12096631
>>12096645
Which is why they kept selling it and making new games for it until 1991? Jack Tramiel was a lot of things including being a greedy piece of shit. If the 2600 wasn't selling he would have dropped it without a second thought.

>>12093892
>they hated him because he spoke the truth

>>12094271
Is that an actual Atari game?
Looks comfy.

>>12093909
least pretentious /vr/ user

>>12097101
Its a homebrew NES game posted in response to "the NES cannot simulate physics."
Game is >>12096705

>>12095467
I get what you mean, but before nintendo took over with the famicom, i feel like most developers of that era were less game creators and more tech nerds trying different shit to interact with the TV.

>>12094339
>it doesn't count
Not an argument.
>it isn't even a game released when the nes was a viable platform. hilarious.
Moving goalposts, the question was about what things can't be ported to a nes.

>>12097041
Noooo, don't tell the Tendies about how cool the Vectrex is, I just found one for 75% off market value! I was gonna go pick it up on Saturday!

>>12097041
>Which is why they kept selling it and making new games for it until 1991?
>1991 - 4 games made
>1990 - 3 games made
>1989 - 9 games made
>1988 - 1 game made
>1987 - 2 games made
>1986 - 4 games made
>1985 - ZERO (0) games made
>1984 - 7 games made
It cost nothing, the machines and carts were all manufactured already, all they had to do was stick the ROMs in and label 'em.

It was all old stock from before the crash, they massively overproduced.

Nothing good in the OG library (or very little). But plenty of great modern day homebrew.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIMBh_AgIOU

>>12097041
Volkswagen made the original Beetle until 2003 but they weren't selling like like did in the 60s.

>>12093891 (OP)
Define "unpopular".

>>12098165
Atari wasn't making 2600s after 1983. It was all NOS in a warehouse.

They were still selling the machines they wanted to sell at Christmas in '83 eight years later. But it was a dead system by '84.

>>12098084
I don't think that's true. There were very few, but still original titles developed in those zombie years. There's no way Fatal Run was a 1983 or even 1984 game, at least not in the way it was released in 1990.

>>12096003
>>12096097
prove me wrong. Note I didnt say 50 year old thing bad I said 50 year old thing not popular.

>>12098084
You are out of your mind if you think paying professional software developers for 10 years is "nothing." And no, the games themselves were not leftovers from the early 80s. The programmers have talked about writing them in interviews. They were contemporaneous.

>>12093891 (OP)
The games are bland visually. The audio is terrible to. At the time it was fun, now not so much. There are only a few games I can enjoy playing. River Raid, Yars Revenge, Berzerk, Pitfall and Adventure

>>12098279
That's what I said. Very few.

>>12098302
Do you honestly think they were paying a legion of programmers full time for ten years after the crash? Are you retarded? Look at the games published later. Very few were developed by Atari. Those which were developed and published by Atari probably did not involve man-years of work. I'm not saying NONE were made. Just, almost none. A small amount. Nothing memorable either.

Atari 2600 has ZERO cult games. Same as all these other pre-Nintendo systems. They are just too creaky and lame to attract much interest from gamers. Programmers and hardware enthusiasts might enjoy the 2600 for various reasons, recreationally. A few folks might be nostalgic for it. But these old systems will remain a curious footnote in gaming history more than being revived as a fun thing to play. As they are now.

>>12098084
The Atari 2600 Jr. was the model they sold after Atari was sold in 1984 to the Tremeils. It was a new cost-reduced model that hadn't been available before the sale. It was all new production. The reason no games were made in '85 was because Atari didn't restart their console division until 1986. Now remember, the 2600 only sold around 20 million units before the crash. That means they outputed about 10 million units from '86 until the end. The 7800 also played 2600 games out of the box. Atari only released 48 games for it. So, the 23 for the 2600 doesn't seam so bad in comparison. They weren't as serious about it as the 7800 but they weren't that serious about consoles at all. Jack Tremeil's Atari was a computer company. Consoles were just a low effort side gig to make some cash. The moment they stopped making money they dropped it. Tremeil was a giant piece of shit and they only focused on consoles with the Jaguar and then only because their computer line got crushed by PCs.

This thread proves that /vr/ is fucking dead

>>12098483
Holy hell, the ColecoVision version of Dragonfire looks amazing. Is the game good?

>>12098471
They were still selling the old 2600s for years though. Anyway I agree with most of what you say but the point is by '85 the 2600 was laughably behind the NES and other coming consoles.

>>12093891 (OP)
After a point they're more interesting from a hardware or historical point than the actual games.
2600 is still incredibly popular in homebrew circles, still fascinating seeing those old punchcard systems and how the inbuilt rendering and hit detection worked. It's worth playing at least the most popular games just to have played them, you know, gives you perspective and doesn't take long.

>>12094069
I said it like that

>>12098483
every person complaining about this place being dead doesn't know it was slow originally and it was better for it

>>12098484
Dragonfire is fast-paced and fun. A fairly simple game, but ramps up to insane levels. Input lag may be brutal if you're not using real hardware on a CRT though

>>12098574
Slower paced boards are more comfy, I kind of miss it honestly.

>>12097110
But it's the video essays that are pretentious.

>>12098173
Sauce on that? I'm not disagreeing that the Atari's popularity fell off hard after the crash of 1983 and the rise of the NES, but I've never heard that before.

>>12097041
>>12098471
Cool it with the antisemetic remarks

>>12098489
>They were still selling the old 2600s for years though.
The 2600 returned to the market in '86. The 2600 Jr. was the console they were selling at that time. It is a completely different looking machine from the earlier models. Their ads from that time don't even show older models. Its likely that older machines were just stuff left in retail channels from years before. Those aren't even counted in the 10 million number as Tremeil's Atari wouldn't have gotten a dime for them.

>the point is by '85 the 2600 was laughably behind the NES and other coming consoles.
Why are you moving the goal posts? First you spout some bullshit about it not selling, even though it moved 10 million units. Then you say it was because it was all New Old Stock, which is clearly not true. Then you backpaddle and say it was about the technology being old. No shit. The NES came out in 1985 in the USA and the 2600 in '77. That is the same timespan as the SNES and the Dreamcast.

Face it samurai, the 2600 had a 15 year lifespan. Sure, selling for under $50 bucks by '87 helped. It was even cheaper near the end. Tremeil's Atari put out 9 games for the machine in '89, 12 years after it first sold. They weren't doing that because no one was buying them. It was a budget console. Same reason why the Genesis and NES kept having games released for them after the Saturn and SNES came out. They were highly successful and had a long tail.

>>12098574
I have the coom adhd riddled brain of a /v/ poster but almost never play games released the past 20 years. I need this board to be fast.

>>12097041
>Newer CRT TV's work just fine with older consoles. They connect to the RF jack
I rarely see RF jacks these days, like I don't know when they stopped putting them on TV's but I am guessing some manufacturers kept them while others dumped them. I don't have a Sony anymore but if anyone was keeping them into the 90's it would have been them.
But personally I have one single TV with RF and it is used as a bench because the TV died over a decade ago, and I don't care enough to fix it. I'd wager most of them share a similar fate.

>>12093891 (OP)
Because it's too old for this board. You can already see this starting to happen to NES.

The argument that the games were "trash" is subjective and in the future will be applied to NES, to SNES and so on. It's simply the march of time. It's why people care so little about the board games and toys of the 1920s etc.

>b-but things really were worse in the past!
If you believe that, you are a dumb zoomer who belongs on /v/

More specifically, the 2600 is too old for the youtubers whose opinions the zoomer posters on this board adopt as their own because they weren't there. Youtube is currently dominated by millennials even if the posters are themselves zoomers. And millennials love their Mario.

>>12093892
I don't think they were trash as much as the jump from 2600 to 8 bit consoles was so drastic that it made pretty much all Atari systems look like shit. Something happened along the line where they just upped their game drastically.

>>12093891 (OP)
The 2600 had like 3 good games. You can play the entirety of the good parts of the library in about 3 hours. There is nothing really to talk about.

>>12100576
>I'm ignorant, but let me tell you how it is

>>12100418
Every CRT TV I have has an RF jack. Newest is from 2008.

>>12100550
The problem Atari had was every 8-bit console they release was a stopgap or half measure. The 2600 was cranked out in about a year to respond to the Fairchild Channel F (released in '76). They knew cartridge based systems were the future and wanted to get something out ASAP to keep Fairchild from establishing a foothold. They only made it powerful enough to port their current gen arcade games to. The ink wasn't even dry on the final schematics when they started work on a successor. They expected it to be ready in a about 3 years.

Sadly, Bushnell was replaced with Ray Kasser in '78. The original next gen system plan was changed. Instead of making a high end computer and a console they instead made two computers. The Atari 400 and 800 were years ahead of anything else on the market when they were released in '79. The 400 was supposed to be the next Atari console. Kasser wanted to sell the 2600 forever and had no plans to replace it. When the Intellivision came out and started selling well they panicked. They reworked the 400 into a console; the 5200. For a litany of reasons it was a failure.

To fixed the 5200 fiasco their second party developers, GCC, created the 7800. It was supposed to release in '84 but Atari was sold and the new owners weren't interested. It was a hamstrung console. It was thrown together very quickly and the backwards compatibility requirement made it difficult to hit the price point Atari wanted. So, it shipped with a weak sound chip. Like the 2600, GCC were already working on plans for a successor when Atari was sold before the 7800 released.

That said, the 7800 and the NES were comparable systems in the graphics department. Outside of sound, the real difference between them was the MMC chips NES games could be packed with. Outside of putting a POKEY sound chip in a few games Atari never bothered with something like that.

>>12100950
>The 2600 was cranked out in about a year to respond to the Fairchild Channel F (released in '76)
Atari 2600 was ready for release before Channel F was out. They had to delay because otherwise they would have to pay temporary license fees to Magnavox who sued every company in video game field for patent infringement. Fairchild settled I think, but they had to pay and that's basically why they were out by 1979 and the rights were bought by Zircon.

>>12101008
Atari were indeed sued by Magnavox in '74 but settled with them before the sale to Warner. The 2600 was not Atari's first system. Their earlier Pong, Video Pinball, and Stunt Cycle home games came first. Their home port of Pong came out in in October '75.

The Channel F was announced in June and released in November of '76. The 2600 started development in December of '75 but was delayed do to financial problems at Atari and chip design issues. They were sold in '76 to Warner and that got them the money needed to finish the design and produce the system.

>>12097041
>>12098471
Cool it with the antisemetic remarks

>>12100950
>When the Intellivision came out and started selling well they panicked
Fun fact, the Intellivision only came out because Kassar canned a whole slew of wild R&D projects that Bushnell had running, whose primary purpose was to monopolize all the chip fabrication plants until a 2600 successor was ready. Kassar called it a waste of time and money, cancelled all the projects (including some very cool stuff) and suddenly competitors began to spring up again.

>>12093891 (OP)
we literally have 30 zork and wizard of wor threads a day, what more do you want

>>12101452
pc and arcade games did age well, it's the consoles specifically that suck. the most you get is something like pitfall being a historical marker for platormers

>>12101456
Intellivision had stuff no one else was doing.

>>12093892
/thread

>>12093891 (OP)
Because we've experienced so many games nowadays that their level of gameplay is something you would find as a minigame meant to pass some time in other games or so simplistic that it's hard to view them as anything other than an extremely boring thing. Even basic flash games released 20 years ago that are meant to be like 30 minutes long like those zombie tower defense games are more involved and are more engaging than the overwhelming majority of those games.

A simple example is something like ET on the 2600. That entire game is falling into holes until you find enough objects to leave while you dodge the cops. There's nothing special to it, there's nothing interesting about it, it's basically wandering around aimlessly falling into holes hoping said hole has a flashing object in it and stretching your neck to get out while at the mercy of the cops randomly spawning in as you transition rooms.
How about Shark! Shark! on the Intellivision which is you playing a small fish eating bigger fish as you try to dodge a very slow moving shark?
Or Snoopy and the Red Baron on the 2600 which is just you flying around shooting stuff in the sky until you lose.

Games that are made explicitly to evoke an arcade-esque experience like Dig-Dug or Asteroids are timeless because from the get-go you understand they're meant to be survived in, gain as many points as possible, you very likely transition stages, and there is constant progress in how difficult it gets with each stage and how the game itself looks. Pong and Breakout are super simplistic, but they exist for score attacks so they're easy to pick up.

It's also because a lot of these games have updated versions that make the old versions entirely obsolete. Space Invaders, Breakout, and Tetris are all examples where the old version is so outdated it's not necessary anymore outside of nostalgia. You have Space Invaders Forever on modern systems, Breakout Beyond on modern systems, and Tetris Effect on modern systems.

>>12093892
Εither that or they aged poorly, unlike NES that aged like an old good wine. Vectrex was cool though and ahead of its time. It's weird nobody has made a similar console even today.

>>12102230
A /v/-ass post about why all retro games are bad. This is literally what the average zoomer will tell you about all video games released before 2020.

i'm only 22 but i think kaboom and yar's revenge are fun. i think the problem with a lot of zoomers is that they are allergic to simplicity.

>>12103507
>all retro games are bad
I never said that at all, I said that's why people find those older games much more difficult to even get into at all. I'd also like you to explain how I'm wrong and how that's not how people view these games, especially the newer generations who didn't grow up with them. I was a Game Boy onward, arcade, and DOS kid so I never got to play the NES since only one relative even owned one, but I've still played a lot of NES games and loved them or at the very least enjoyed them despite parts I disliked. When it comes to consoles and games prior to the NES I find them quite hard to get into, and I can only imagine people who were born 5-10 years after me would find it even harder to care.

>>12093891 (OP)
No shit? Games didn't become games until the NES or C64 era. Before that, it was muh high score

>>12094797
>People connect with characters like Megaman, Mario and Link
No, children and low-IQ people "connect" with those sprites...as an adult, I blast shit in Asteroids then I go and read a good book. Mascots, plots etc in video games hold no interest for me.
I also play Atari games for 10-20 minutes then move on with my day, because there's too much going on in my brain not to get bored by lengthy game sessions of any kind, whether retro or modern.

>>12103538
You are not wrong, this is why almost no one plays retro games, especially ones they didn't grow up with. Most people see all old games as "simplistic" and "extremely boring" and "obsolete by updated versions". /v/ and /vg/ are 100 times more active than this board.
It's just a pointless argument to bring up on a dedicated retro game board, where the premise is that we do play old games. The 2600 being obsolete in your eyes is no different from whatever you like being obsolete in the zoomer's eyes.

The weird thing on this board is the active hate and contempt for old systems which the (millennial or zoomer) anon doesn't like. I think it's just a board culture thing, if you're on 4chan you are basically unhappy and abnormal, and have absorbed a bit too much of the hostile online culture that we all have over the last few years.
It's like going on to a retro aviation board and finding everyone shitting on the Wright brothers, or a retro computing board and everyone has contempt for the pioneering old transistor mainframes. It's a retarded take even for a normie, but on a dedicated board for old stuff, there's something fundamentally odd and unhealthy going on.

>>12103596
For example, the Speccy hate threads - another one just went up today. We get it, you think Spectrum is bad and stupid. Why post this on a board for old systems, when this opinion gets posted weekly if not daily? Because you are a pathetic loser.

>>12103596
It's just people who only care about the games of their childhood and are just as ignorant about everything else as the average zoomer.
And the ones who are interested in a broader view get their opinions from youtubers who transmit their own biases to them, presenting a distorted image of the past and elevating Nintendo to a mythical status.

>>12096485
while i don't agree with how harsh this post is unfortunately it's pretty much on the dot. you see a lot more nintendofags because older nintendo games were worth celebrating compared to everything else around. i can pick up NES super mario bros and get a solid afternoon of entertainment out of it to this day, and other companies were putting out classics like contra and castlevania for the system that also offer solid entertainment no matter the replay count. it's all about what stood the test of time.

you try to play a 2600 game today and you're going to be bored of the novelty in minutes. not only was the jump in tech massive the quality control was important too. no one cared about giving devs time to make something decent versus having shit out on shelves so you got shit like the ET situation where it was rushed out and unceremoniously dumped into a literal landfill. you have some stuff like pitfall that was a glimpse of what was to come sure, but at the same time it's fucking pitfall. a whole 20 minutes of fun. what exactly are people meant to discuss about that?
>oh man that pit that disappeared and reappeared sure was a crazy obstacle. same with the next screen it was on, and the next one!

similarly you see people bring up the old sonic games time and time again but you don't see much love for other genesis titles. then you look at the other crap even sega themselves were doing and it becomes clear. something like ristar is just okay. third parties? as an example, for some reason there's a big debate over which console aladdin game was better when if you actually play both the entire way through it becomes blindingly obvious that capcom's offering had much more thought put into it compared to virgin's where the level design completely falls apart. neither is an amazing game by any measure but it's the sort of comparison you'd see time and time again, there's a reason why vectorman is utterly forgotten compared to donkey kong country after all.

>>12093891 (OP)
Because of the NES generation being the first gen with a Nintendo console.

>>12100550
Well that's the thing about old consoles, they had leaps in technology with each new gen.

>>12103637
Wrong. You see more nintendofags because of marketing and the continued influence of Nintendo and its mascots (Mario, Link etc) in the modern video game market.

>NES is a massive jump in tech compared to the console released 8 years before it
yeah, no shit? What kind of argument is that?

>what exactly are people meant to discuss about that?
AtariAge forums have 5 million posts, there are obviously things to discuss if you aren't a prejudiced tendie. Perhaps the people there are just hipsters who only pretend to be having fun.

Only 4chan cares about the Nes. No one else gives a shit. Nonexistent homebrew scene cos the system is fundamentally uninteresting.

So, was the best way to play Atari 2600?
Some old VCS? Coleco Addon or the Flashback series?

>>12103596
>is the active hate and contempt for old systems which the (millennial or zoomer) anon doesn't like
I never understood the active hatred for any of these old machines.

I look at and try some of these much older games, and they don't really stick with me, yet I don't hate them for it, I just don't pay them very much mind. There's many games from later generations which I don't pay much if any attention to because they don't interest me.
Wasn't for me, and I move on.

>if you're on 4chan you are basically unhappy and abnormal,
Speaking for myself, definitely abnormal, but not so unhappy.

>and have absorbed a bit too much of the hostile online culture that we all have over the last few years.
I actually greatly resent the tireless (and frequently very unintelligent) cynicism a lot of people are completely mired in.
It feels like the web as a whole has grown exponentially more hostile and rude in the past decade.

Lots of people with pointless chips on their shoulders, lots of people who, in better times, would have been taken care of in institutions, rather than been let loose on the rest of the world.

>>12103610
>the Speccy hate threads
That shit has been formented by one single, extremely mentally ill shitposter.

I'm in my 40s and I was always an anti-Nintendo guy.
Recently I realized that, while I don't have a personal connection with that brand, I am missing a number of games that are exclusive to their systems and I've been trying to play the retro stuff I always missed.
Is it normal to feel an aversion for a company to the point of not even wanting to emulate/pirate their stuff?
I don't even know why I hate them do much, might have to do with relating the brand with arguing with people online for so long. I am aware it's an irrational hate but it's so ingrained in my mind.

>>12102230
>uses ET on the 2600, one of the most notorious games ever made, as generalized evidence for why consoles before the NES are "unpopular"
You're an idiot, but worse than that, you're an idiot who thinks he's enlightened.

>>12093891 (OP)
I'll give you the REAL reason, which weebs and zoomers aren't going to like. The real truth is because younger generations have generally by psy-opped into believing the Nintendo lie. The lie that they were the "one good company amongst the sea of competition" when in truth, on consoles at least, the vast overwhelming majority of the competition killed itself off years before the NES's introduction, and it was competing with literally no one. This vacuum allowed the NES and Nintendo to shine where they could only be challenged by minor competition. When they went up against real competition such as with Sony and the Playstation 1 and 2, it was game fucking over. They got their asses smashed into oblivion and had to completely rethink their entire strategy on gaming as a whole, which resulted in the Wii.

Pre-NES consoles had great games, and they had awful games. The quality control was generally everywhere. Nintendo's "seal of quality" was nothing but a psychological placebo, where the NES really had games just as fucking awful as any other console out there.

Over time, due to the filtering of games most played, most fondly remembered, and most culturally relevant, it naturally results in a bias towards such games that were the most popular and generally good. Not necessarily the best. Same with any medium, really.

>Games that are made explicitly to evoke an arcade-esque experience like Dig-Dug or Asteroids are timeless
Another zoomer misunderstanding. Most games on old pre-NES consoles were designed to be arcade-like. Revolving around repetitive, simple tasks, with high scores being the ultimate goal was generally the majority design of games, and further proof you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

>>12096485
>>12103637
Insanely poor samefagging, I hope. Embarrassing if there are actually two people who think like this on planet earth. Yikes. I see no game on the NES that is better than Pitfall.

>>12093925
Nigga's face is like half beard, lmao

>>12093915
The game manual and packaging used to really capture my imagination

>>12093915
Understandable, but not as engaging =/= bad

>>12104124
>the competition killed itself off years before the NES's introduction, and it was competing with literally no one.

Very American and ahistorical take, there were countless consoles in Japan it was competing with trying to take hold of the market. When it did finally reach America, both the 7800 and Master System released shortly after.

>>12104187
>he 7800 and Master System released shortly after.
With like zero marketing. They had no chance, Nintendo's commercials were everywhere with that dumb robot. (Friend of mine had one, his mom bought it because he was into engineering and robots and shit as a kid, and his considered opinion was that it was kinda lame, lol)