[Shameless plug: I made Atari Email Archive and it's fun to peruse if you are interested in primary source material from this era. The emails all come from Jed Margolin (jmargolin.com), with his permission.]
Fascinating threads in there... like discussions about the Challenger explosion and whether or not the tragedy was actually a tragedy (or a spark for a new Atari game).
>Apple’s big advantage in the early days was its color display, but this advantage was shattered with the appearance of the Atari computers, whose graphics far outshone that of the Apple.
I have a recent direct comparison between the two, Prince of Persia. The Atari port is recent:
That is a lame comparison. From what I saw, it doesn't use any of the Atari's advantages. For example, fine scrolling (with redefinable character set), player/missile graphics, display list interrupts (for 256 colors and "altered-perspective scrolling").
It’s neither the best comparison nor a fair one. The Atari was like a little Amiga but the Apple II version captures the spirit of the era better - an Atari port would have looked more like Karateka. As a side note, when I saw Prince of Persia for the first time, I felt a twinge of pain - why would I want to play a maze puzzle platforms version of Karateka, maybe the slowest paced, most masochistic game of the era, the one we played to see the animations of the next stage? Ugh, I did that once already, I don’t need more…
I remember at that time that the discounted Atari 800 was something like $400, then only a year and half later the discounted Atari 800 XL was $99. I was very happy to be able to afford these computers at the time, I didn't understand that this was the death knell.
I was annoyed at having to use a C64 for one of my first for pay projects, when the 800 XL was so much better as a development machine (yes the sound and graphics were better on the C64, but slow disk and lack of good OS ruined it for everything else). But they correctly deduced that the C64 would have more longevity so they chose it.
Funny how some things stayed the same for decades. In junior high or high school, the kids who had Apples were often pompous douches who didn't know anything about computers, but loved to spout off about how Apples were best. Kids who had Ataris actually programmed and could talk about computers technically, and mocked Apples for being double the price while not even offering lower-case letters... let alone any sound or graphics capability to speak of.
In 2019 I went to Vegas (I'm European) to play poker, and there is a place nearby called the "pinball hall of fame" where I spent an afternoon, playing all those retro games in the same conditions that they were played in the 80s and even earlier. It is a charity, the employees there manage the shop and maintain the machines in great conditions. Apparently they have moved nearby recently. It was really fun and worth the time spent.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 67.6 ms ] thread[Shameless plug: I made Atari Email Archive and it's fun to peruse if you are interested in primary source material from this era. The emails all come from Jed Margolin (jmargolin.com), with his permission.]
So even then we suspected the addictive aspect of video games?
See: https://atariemailarchive.org/thread/on-claiming-that-video-...
This is a quote from an Erma Bombeck article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erma_Bombeck).
https://atariemailarchive.org/thread/on-the-challenger-shutt...
Can we get these archived at archive.org? What a treasure trove.
I think Jed's messages are probably archived -- text files linked to at the bottom here too: https://www.jmargolin.com/vmail/vmail.htm
Go to https://archive.org/web/ scroll to the bottom where it says “save page now”. Enter URL and click “save page” button.
I have not found a way to enter multiple URLs or tell the archive to crawl an entire domain/site. If you figure that out, please let me know.
I have a recent direct comparison between the two, Prince of Persia. The Atari port is recent:
Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZDAPp61aak
Atari: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD2Z5FqZi7I
I was annoyed at having to use a C64 for one of my first for pay projects, when the 800 XL was so much better as a development machine (yes the sound and graphics were better on the C64, but slow disk and lack of good OS ruined it for everything else). But they correctly deduced that the C64 would have more longevity so they chose it.
https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/
Apple has always known its audience, huh?
- typed on an iMac