Atari 7800 VS Nintendo Entertainment System - Atari 7800 Part 2 - Video Game Retrospective

it's a david and goliath story and today's video game retrospective i'm just not sure which one is david and which one's goliath hi i'm jacob with video game retrospective and today we are continuing our look at the atari 7800 last time we took a look at how the atari 7800 almost released in 1984 before being cancelled due to a weak market and corporate shakeups at atari then things changed course two years later once atari was a little more settled and the home video game market was stronger if you haven't seen that video yet make sure to go do so right now i'll wait you know as long as you pause the video okay you done let's go so it's now 1986 and you are looking to buy a brand new video game console ignoring sega you have two options the nintendo entertainment system and the atari 7800 pro system let's compare the two on their specs and games and see which one was a better buy here are the categories we're going to be comparing controllers price game library graphics and sound first a battle of the controllers as we saw with the predecessor the 5200 shipping with a bad controller can kill a system so let's take a look at our challengers the nes launched with this classic controller featuring nintendo's baby the d-pad it's a pretty decent controller though it is a bit unergonomic with its sharp corners and aligned a and b buttons but it's overall very solid atari launched with this thing i'm really torn on this controller the side firing buttons are kind of mushy and the stick is extremely stiff but it's relatively comfortable in the hand it's a shame that atari reverted to placing your function buttons on the console itself when that was one of the few things the atari 5200 controller actually got right overall atari played it really safe with this one but that makes it feel quite archaic power regions got it much better with this controller a clear knockoff of the nes's design it's actually pretty good we don't have one in our collection since they have become quite the expensive collector's item but i have used one in the past and found it quite great though the concept of a screw-in joystick is dumb stick to the d-pad still the thing that is going to put the nes over the top is the sheer number of other controllers available nintendo and third parties made an absurd number of optional controllers some are just stupid or straight up don't work but there are an equal number of great controllers out there as well personally i'm a big fan of the nes advantage for a great arcade field so yeah point to the nes next let's look at the price that each system would launch at back in 1984 the 7800 was intended to cost 140 but the actual launch two years later atari was able to sell these systems they had sitting in a warehouse on a fire sale for 79.95 bundled with two controllers and pole position two the nes launched at a price of 199 for the system itself with no pack in title however prices for both systems would shift quite a bit over time as components for the nes became cheaper and atari ran out of their initial stock of consoles and had to produce more i've managed to find both systems in the 1987 sears christmas catalog here is the standard atari bundle which has actually increased in price to 90 dollars and the nes basic package which now includes super mario bros is also 90 the system itself is one thing but one area they are very different in is the price of games atari 7 800 games were considerably cheaper averaging 10 to 15 dollars whereas nes games were almost always 25 to 30 dollars each and keep in mind that the 7800 is also backwards compatible with the 2600 and by that point 2600 games were so cheap and over printed columbia house was offering massive bundles of them for pennies so overall the point does go to the 7800 despite it actually getting more expensive over time let's talk about the overall game library now atari loved to say in their advertising that the number of games for the 7800 was far larger than nintendo's offerings which was true if you counted the entire library of 2600 games yeah that claim was pretty misleading if we were talking about the 700 specific games the library was pretty pathetic atari ran with the original launch titles for so long the release of new games past those was painfully slow you know how many new games were released in all of 1986 two yeah in total 59 games would be released for the 7 800 between the 1984 originals and the entire life of the system that includes several titles that were exclusive to either north america or pal regions as well the vast majority of these were published by atari themselves due to an extreme lack of third party support largely due to nintendo's strict licensing agreements locking most third parties into developing for one system or the other and guess which system most publishers picked also i know this is minor in the grand scheme of things but atari cut costs pretty drastically as the system aged by printing the game labels in black and white instead of color which is awful in comparison the nes would have just over 700 officially licensed games for it i think we know which one wins this one next let's look at the graphics if you remember from our first part was one of the most impressive things about the 7800 both systems used very similar cpus based on the moss 6502 even running at the same speed 1.79 megahertz so this battle will come down to their individual graphics processing chips even though it had been years since the design of the 7800s chipset its maria chip was still incredibly impressive and blisteringly fast the most notable thing when discussing the maria is its flexibility any stat i can spit out about it would have multiple asterisks attached to it since the system had many ways to push past the most typically used limits for number of sprites on screen sprite colors overall resolution and more but with each taking a lot of processing power requiring developers to pick and choose what matters most at particular moments of gameplay in their games however that does require a lot of skill to program a really well made 7 800 game far exceeds anything the nes could do whereas less impressive titles just looked like 5200 games so i'm very excited to say that the point goes to the sega master system which beats both of them easily okay okay fine the 7800 can have the point and now sound [Music] point to nintendo so yeah it's not surprising to see just how the nes ended up being the victor of this contest by far even factoring in pow regions where the battle was a lot less one-sided and excluding asia where the 7800 was never sold the nes would still outsell the 7800 around 30 to 1. the 7800 would remain on sale until 1991 as an extreme budget console it along with several other atari systems that were languishing in purgatory would have their support ended so atari could focus on their future projects like the jaguar but that's a story for another day i'm sorry to any hardcore 7 800 fans who might take my opinions on the system is quite negative but i honestly don't see that much of a reason for this system to exist maybe if atari had released it in 1984 it would have gained enough momentum to put up a bigger threat or maybe it would have been best to write it off as a bad idea and not release it at all one consequence of the lukewarm life of the 7800 is that it and the failure of the 5200 would doom the next console atari released the xe game system a computer slash game console hybrid that i actually really like that could have done much better had consumers been able to trust atari but with several false starts under their belt that wasn't going to happen it's pretty much the exact same thing that happened to sega in the 90s you would think that with all that negativity i would advise you to not add a 7 800 to your collection but actually you'd be wrong one of the big reasons is that the 7800 is one of the single most interesting systems out there for getting into homebrew games homebrew took a long time to appear on the 7800 thanks to a lockout built into the system preventing the use of unlicensed carts but since that was solved in 2001 we've seen an explosion of independently made games for the system thanks to dedicated fans and great publishing from the folks at atari age seriously the number of homebrew titles available is approaching the number of officially licensed games released on the system that's nuts now let's take a look at the ratings rarity three out of five you won't have that much trouble finding this one for sale online but they aren't that common to find in local stores price three out of five systems remain relatively cheap but the average price for games is a bit on the high side aesthetics four out of five i love the 80s atari silver aesthetic looks great the only question is which looks better the north american model or the pal model you can debate that in the comments games three out of five if we were only counting the officially licensed games for this system it probably would have gotten a two since the library is relatively small and although games are usually pretty good there's very little that you can't find somewhere else but those homebrew games are just really exciting convenience four out of five this system is a pretty easy one to just pick up on a whim and run with no odd proprietary ports no notable console killing hardware issues basically the exact opposite of the 5200 the main thing knocking it down from five is a lack of a composite video out though you can make that modification yourself if so inclined i really hope you guys enjoyed this look at the atari 7800 let me know down in the comments below what classic video game console you'd like to see us cover next time if you'd like to discuss all the many amazing retro video game consoles out there you can do so on our discord server and of course if you'd like to help keep this show going you can check out our patreon where you can support us and get some nice bonuses and i'll see you guys next time you

Channel: Newsmakers Games

Views: 41,081

Keywords: Atari vs Nintendo, atari 7800 vs nes, nes vs atari 7800, nes vs master system, atari 7800, retro gaming, atari 7800 homebrew, atari 7800 games, atari 7800 review, Atari 7800 vs, Atari 7800 comparison, why did atari fail, video game crash of 1983, video games, ninja golf, jack tramiel, retro games, retro gaming now deep dive, video game retrospective, Video game history, video game documentary, video game historian, NES vs Atari, Nintendo vs Atari, Video game comparison

Id: a9VRXT77-00

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 17 2021