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There's a leaked memo about this deal available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20080327135150/http://www.atarim... . Atari had already paid General Computer to design the 7800 when Nintendo reached out to them about distributing the Famicom. Atari viewed the 7800 hardware as likely being superior to the Famicom, so their strategy was to string out the negotiations for as long as possible until the two systems could be directly compared. The Coleco Adam dispute was probably just a convenient excuse to continue delaying.
When Ray Kassar was forced out due to insider trading (he sold a bunch of Atari stock around half an hour before Atari reported much lower than expected earnings), the business press was generally dismissive of the idea of introducing a new console into an already oversaturated market. The 7800 ended up getting delayed into 1984, then Jack Tramiel bought the company and didn't want to pay General Computer royalties on the consoles or software so they sat in a warehouse until 1986 when Atari finally paid up.
If Atari did end up going with the Famicom instead of the 7800, I imagine it would have ended up delayed and hamstrung the same way the 7800 was. If anything, maybe this would have left space for the Sega Master System to take over in the US.
People were tired of the 5th home version of Galaga, Pac Man, and Dig Dug (even though the 7800 had decent ports, especially compared to the 2600, which it was also backward-compatible with). Nintendo came out with originals like Super Mario Brothers and Zelda, and then all the third party games...
Rescue On Fractalus and Ballblazer*, the first two titles out of LucasArts, were supposed to be lead titles for the platform. And the 7800 was technologically superior to the Famicom. But when has that mattered relative to the game library? See also the Jaguar port of Doom, which was the most faithful adaptation of its generation, written by Carmack himself, on a bizarrely advanced (2 RISCs plus an overclocked 68K) platform born for the dustbin of history because the Tramiels had burned all their karma to the ground messing up the amazing Atari Lynx.
I'm sure there's a timeline where somehow the Nintendo titles ended up on the 7800, looking fantastic, and it all ended with Atari continuing to dominate the console world. But it sure isn't this one. And it probably requires someone other than the Tramiels running Atari (into the ground until it was sold off to a hard drive manufacturer).
*The OG Rocket League
I'd never heard this before, in what ways?
The 7800 seemed to be lower resolution and I don't really remember any examples of games that looked close to what a good NES game looked like. But even the basic ports like Galaga/Dig Dug looked better on the NES.
I know there were over 10 times as many games released for the NES and probably just as many more developers so they definitely had more work put into them.
We'd exchange those handhelds with other kids & play 'em to death. Plane & Tank Battle, Highway and Q-Bert spring to mind as some favourites.
https://perfectpacman.com/2022/09/06/new-technical-analysis/
so technically first Donkey Kong game in Donkey Kong series is actually a Mario game. i understand why and how it happened. but this is a trivia that you either know or you would not believe from untrusted sources
The user avatar is only “Mario” in appearance. He was called “Jump Man” in that game and even his outfit colours differed from the Mario games that followed.
The Famicom was a top-loading console, like the SNES, but had hard-wired controllers that came out of the back of the console. There was a controller port on the front that was used for the light gun peripheral.
The NES had pluggable controllers, but the cartridge was front-loaded. The cartridge would plug into the bus in the back, then the whole thing was pushed down, which allowed the contacts on the bus to touch the contacts on the board.
Those contacts often became worn and lost their elasticity over many uses, basically becoming more curled over time. These would then not make full contact with the board, causing games to not load.
They eventually redesigned the system to be a top-loader like the original Famicom. They also introduced this design to Japan so they would gain swappable controllers.
Also, the Famicom cartridges were smaller, just large enough to contain the board. NES cartridges were much larger with a lot of empty space. Didn't cause any issues technially, but it was a choice.
You can take a flaky NES, cut 1 pin on the security chip, and it will work near perfectly.
I am not saying what you stated isn’t true, however, it wasn’t the reason for the solid pink or flashing screens many of us saw.
contrast to my SNES controllers that still work today and feel more or less like they did literally 34 years ago. that blows my mind.
on the console side, the 2600 itself had some components go out which had to be replaced back in the day (remember when you'd take your console to the video game shop and they'd repair it?). The 800 itself didnt have any failures but the 810 disk drive was always a nightmare.
my comparisons are all to the SNES so admittedly these are all unfair comparisons, I never had an NES.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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