The Atari 7800

[Krunchy9999]

The Atari 7800 didn't get a lot of support back in the day, it's biggest downfall was Atari being sold to Jack Tramiel, which delayed the launch of the 7800 by 2 years, and destroyed any chance it had of succeeding. Compounded by the fact that Jack was a massive cheapskate, and didn't want to spend much time or money on game development, plus devs didn't have good tools either. And so as a result, games that WERE made for it looked like trash compared to the NES, and SMS. But nowadays, the 7800 is getting the love it deserves by homebrew developers, and with new efficient tools, and programming techniques to maximize the utilization of processor cycles, and efficient ways to shuffle data around without choking off the CPU, or GPU too much (due to the shared memory bus), its capabilities are finally being realized.

This is the original version of Mario Bros arcade game made very cheaply by a dev no one has ever heard of.


Compared to the brand new remake made by AtariAge


Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest, which runs at 60FPS

Capcoms arcade game 1942

Rikki & Vikki which uses the 7800's high res mode

Even Bubble Bobble is being ported to the 7800

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Shows what it takes software wise to max a piece of hardware. We get the same on other 8bits. First you had your games. Then your demo crews who pushed the envelope. Then the enthusiasts decades later eking every piece of work from silicon gate. Can you imagine what gamers would have been like if someone had been able to drop a modern title on the machines back in the day?! I guess the joy with these machines is they are simple enough you can understand the entire thing - every chip and route and clock cycle and instruction. Later machines are probably too complex to tap this well, depending on man-hours committed I guess.

 

[WhiningKhan]

Wow, 1942 does not differ much from the original arcade.

 

[Nesh]

This looks amazing. What a shame this product didn't get the chance it deserved. Incredibly capable

 

[Krunchy9999]

AtariAge is still coming up with ways to further increase the efficiency of there dev tools. The 7800 is kinda like the Saturn in that regard, a ton of untapped potential. As good as these games look, there is still a lot more potential to to tap. The 7800 is more powerful than the NES, and could possibly slightly more powerful than even the SMS.

 

[Krunchy9999]

Wanted to include this game as well. It makes really great use of the 2600 sound chip!

 

[Eternalight7]

Holy smokes. I had no idea. This is as good as the NES, and I'd say some of those pics are up there with the SNES.
..... Here I was playing ET...... /s great use of that graphics/sound chip. /s

 

[Eternalight7]

Holy smokes. I had no idea. This is as good as the NES, and I'd say some of those pics are up there with the SNES.
..... Here I was playing ET...... /s great use of that graphics/sound chip. /s

P.S. I still have that game, I wonder if it's worth anything now, considering fertilized the Arizona desert with them.

 

[Krunchy9999]

Well, I might go as far as to say that Super Mario World could probably be decently done on the 7800 if you put enough time and effort into it. If the NES could do a less colorful version of SMW, than so could the 7800, but with more color.

 

[milk]

Rikki & Vikki which uses the 7800's high res mode

Technical aspects aside, the aesthetics on this one are also brilliant. It feels lile a parallel universe game from a timeline where the graphical tradeoffs were very different.

No scrolling, simple designs, but realised with large and very crisp detailed sprites. It feels more like a cartoon coming to life than your typical 8bit game. In ways, better than many 16bit ones too, within similarly constrained scenes.

Reminds me of those more abstract looking cartoons from the pink panther and crew. Flat BGs, a couple lines, solid colours... Very nice.

 

[Krunchy9999]

Technical aspects aside, the aesthetics on this one are also brilliant. It feels lile a parallel universe game from a timeline where the graphical tradeoffs were very different.

No scrolling, simple designs, but realised with large and very crisp detailed sprites. It feels more like a cartoon coming to life than your typical 8bit game. In ways, better than many 16bit ones too, within similarly constrained scenes.

Reminds me of those more abstract looking cartoons from the pink panther and crew. Flat BGs, a couple lines, solid colours... Very nice.

Totally agree! It really shows off what the 7800 was good at.

The game also uses a custom sound chip called the BupChip that any game new can use.

 

[Krunchy9999]

Forgot about this one. Rondo of Blood graphics demo for the 7800. Looks amazing!

 

[Krunchy9999]

So many games!

https://youtu.be/gsCm9ZMHIxE?si=2Cte7JDXaQMPX_sr

https://youtu.be/IkVF1069Gc0?si=xuSQc3AdoQAc9Jnh

https://youtu.be/rNbhO9qfxJQ?si=Cn43H2tGsRDULu2p

 

[TapamN]

Technical aspects aside, the aesthetics on this one are also brilliant. It feels lile a parallel universe game from a timeline where the graphical tradeoffs were very different.

No scrolling, simple designs, but realised with large and very crisp detailed sprites. It feels more like a cartoon coming to life than your typical 8bit game. In ways, better than many 16bit ones too, within similarly constrained scenes.

Reminds me of those more abstract looking cartoons from the pink panther and crew. Flat BGs, a couple lines, solid colours... Very nice.

It's definitely impressive and has great artwork, but it's worth noting that the ROM is 50% larger than Super Mario World or Sonic the Hedgehog 1, at 768 kilobytes. If someone tried to release this in the 80s, they'd have to bring the ROM size down (or sell the game for more than $100). It's possible that the developer didn't use much compression to simplify development, and adding/improving compression could help, but I would expect that a lot of art would need to be trimmed.

 

[Krunchy9999]

Yeah, the programmer of Rikki & Vikki had some difficulty keeping the game within the ROM limit.

 

[Davros]

. If someone tried to release this in the 80s, they'd have to bring the ROM size down (or sell the game for more than $100).

Not sure about the U.S but in the U.K this was the era of the home computer boom so it would be competing with games released on cassette for £5.99

 

[milk]

It's definitely impressive and has great artwork, but it's worth noting that the ROM is 50% larger than Super Mario World or Sonic the Hedgehog 1, at 768 kilobytes. If someone tried to release this in the 80s, they'd have to bring the ROM size down (or sell the game for more than $100). It's possible that the developer didn't use much compression to simplify development, and adding/improving compression could help, but I would expect that a lot of art would need to be trimmed.

Thank you for that info. I was wondering how much data those large assets were taking...

 

[Krunchy9999]

Forgot about E.X.O. another 512KB game.

 

[Krunchy9999]

Looks like someone may be attempting to port R-Type to the 7800 as well. Looks good!

 

[Krunchy9999]

This looks really close to the arcade.