Emerson Arcadia 2001 vs. Bally Astrocade: A comparison
This is a not very in-depth comparison of two systems that came out during the original "8-bit" era (pre-crash)
I bought Ward Shrake's fine multicarts for these two systems a while back (2 years ago?), but I've never had any systems to try them on.
I recently won a couple of auctions for both systems and spent a total of about $70 (shipping included) to get both consoles. I've been watching auctions for awhile, but these two were the first ones where I bid and actually won with a good deal. The Astrocade's a bit rough but came in a box, while the Arcadia came loose but in fine shape.
As fate would have it, one of the sellers was very slow in shipping... both systems arrived on the same day! How very nice to come home to two big boxes.
I was always under the impression that the Bally Astrocade (or Professional Arcade... or whatever you call it) was more powerful than the Emerson Arcadia 2001, but it seems I was incorrect. The Astrocade came out in 1978 and is comparable to the 2600, while the Arcadia came out in the early 1982 and is closer to the Intellivision (too bad none of the games used all of the available memory.)
History shows that the Colecovision and 5200 came out shortly after the Arcadia and blew away most of the competition with their superior graphics, sound, and arcade conversions.
EMERSON ARCADIA 2001
The Arcadia is truly a tiny console...
The carts, on the other hand, are huge! Almost 8-track tape in size. The controllers are like the Intellivision with little sticks that screw into the disks to make maze games control better.
I tried this one first and was actually pretty impressed with the graphics. Certainly better than the 2600, especially the isometric game HOBO, a game with FIVE SCREENS and several different styles of gameplay. Lots of Arcadia games were rip-offs of established arcade games
Alien Invaders/Space Invaders
Crazy Gobbler/Pac-Man
Escape/Bezerk
Space Vultures/Phoenix
Baseball
Hobo/Frogger,Congo Bongo, several others
It's a shame this system was such a bomb. There are countless clones of the system overseas as well as another family of systems that share the same basic chips but are not compatible with the Arcadia.
BALLY ASTROCADE/PROFESSIONAL ARCADE
The Astrocade is much bigger and is much more archaic-looking.
The controllers are weird... hand-held pistol grips that had dials on the top that both turn left-to-right and move in directions like a joystick. Hard to get used to, but surprisingly effective when you get the hang of it.
Astrobattle/Space Invaders
Muncher/Pac-Man
Galactic Invasion/Galaga?
Incredible Wizard/Wizard of War
Tornado Baseball
WHO'S BETTER?
Console Design: ARCADIA
Controllers: ASTROCADE
Graphics: ASTROCADE (just barely, though)
Sound: ASTROCADE
Durability: ARCADIA
Software: ASTROCADE
Coolness: ARCADIA
WINNER = ASTROCADE
I like the design of the Arcadia. It’s so small and neat! The Arcadia is a more powerful machine than the Astrocade... 3.58mhz and 28k RAM, a pretty amazing amount of memory for the period. Unfortunately, none of the games use more than 8k of the memory. The controllers are just like those of the Intellivision, and I don't like them all that much. I suppose the numerical pad would be helpful in complicated games, but the Arcadia doesn’t seem to have any complicated games that make use of them. Sound is pretty crappy… only one channel. More beeps and boops.
The Astrocade also has a processor running at 3.6mhz (different family of processors, though) but only 4k of RAM. It also has a keyboard, but it’s on the machine itself, not the controller. Speaking of the console itself… it’s big and fairly ugly with a big cover on the back that you can remove and store carts in a row of slots. Handy, but icky. The controllers are weird but effective. The carts are smaller, too… more cassette tape than 8-track.
In the end, it all boils down to SOFTWARE. Both machines didn’t compete well against the 2600, Intellivision, and CV, and neither machine had much software support. But between the two, the Astrocade has a clear advantage over the Arcadia when it comes to software… it’s got more games, and most of them play better and are occasionally better-looking than their Arcadia counterparts. Incredible Wizard and Muncher are particularly well done. The Arcadia should have a clear graphical advantage over the Astrocade due to its memory and larger color palate, but it seems that the Arcadia hardware just wasn't pushed anywhere near its limits. The Astrocade seems to have been pushed a bit more. The screenshots suggest that the Astrocade was the more powerful machine... just look at Muncher! I'd have liked to have seen an Arcadia game that used all 28k RAM. Maybe one day...
The Astrocade certainly has a stronger following... seems you could do some programming on the thing and there was a quarterly (or so) fanzine devoted to the machine that was produced for several years.
I’m not sure I’ll plug up either machine any time soon, but it was fun to see these old consoles in use. The multicarts are awesome, by the way. Thanks, Ward!!!
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Originally Posted by ubersaurus
