Originally Posted by
Aswald
The 7800 existed before they took over. Everyone knows that "Atari" became "Home Atari" and "Atari Games."
This was something the 7800 had to deal with that the 2600 and 5200 didn't: before, it was reasonable to assume that any Atari arcade game would appear on an Atari system, since it was all one big company. Tempest, for example (we could hope...). But after mid-1984, although they both had "Atari" in their names, they were independent, and Atari Games could thumb its nose at "Other Atari." Too bad, this arcade game goes to Nintendo. Neeyeh.
But after the Tramiel take-over, we all wondered what was going to happen to that "ultra-cool 7800 with the Maria chip that lets it move anything in any numbers around." We knew, after a time, that either it was NEVER going to see the light of day and would either end up in a landfill somewhere or in a near-forgotten box with other prototypes and unreleased products, or the Tramiels would release it. That's exactly what happened; we did not know back then that Nintendo had approached Atari earlier with a deal for the NES.
(Had it happened, the NES would likely have been a system that nobody here ever heard of...)
Sure enough, the Tramiels had the 7800. If Atari had NOT created it and had instead stuck with the 5200, the Tramiels would not have created the 7800. They wanted some quick money, and the 7800 existed, so- they released it. Why do you think the instructions were so cheap, as were the boxes and cartridges at first? To save money. Compare the whole 5200 Centipede package to the 7800's...or even the 7800 vs. 2600 versions!
Long ago I read up on why Tramiel did so well with Commodore, but completely blew it with Atari. It had something to do with the differences between the two companies in large part, and they could not handle Atari the way they did Commodore.
I was there as the Tramiels ruined any chances with the 7800. I had to watch in awe as the system I bought with the once-great Atari name on it became a joke. I actually felt sorry for the thing!
To all 7800 homebrewers- more power to you.