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Hmmm... going by this video, the Fairchild games (and controllers) were impressively innovative for the day, considering that Pong-like games ruled at the time. Unfortunately, it appears that with the Atari 2600 being released less than a year later, Channel F's thunder was essentially stolen, and rightly so because of the A2600's superior complexity and innovaton. So close, and yet so far!
the A2600's superior complexity
Now there's a phrase that I didn't expect to see. :-)
I do think that the console's controllers look kind of interesting. I've never seen them before, sort of an alternate fork in console controller design that we didn't go down. A handle with a six-degrees-of-freedom thumbstick on top.
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns (1984) is pretty wild for being on a console from 1977 with 128 bytes of RAM. Clearly some fun programming tricks were learned in those seven years.
Now there’s a phrase that I didn’t expect to see. :-)
I feel there's a lot to talk about in that area. Not only were the A2600 games clearly superior to the Fairchild's right off the bat, but the programmers kept pushing the envelope year after year with all kinds of little tricks & techniques.
Also, it's kind of mind-blowing to me how Mattel began work on the Intellivision as early as 1975, eventually got it out the door with significantly superior hardware specs in 1979, yet kind of fumbled the ball when it came to the controllers, and specifically failed when it came to their library of games and the 'fun-factor.'
Legendary games like Adventure could have been topped so easily on the Intellivision, yet they somehow missed the opportunity. Or a simple yet brilliant game like "Warlords" was somehow more fun than anything ever produced on the INTV, far as I know. How could that happen?
Then again, Atari sort of failed in similar fashion in preparing to win the next round of the console wars, being utterly blown out of the water by the Nintendo NES a whole 8yrs after the A2600 first came out. That pretty much killed off their whole console line, with the "Lynx" being their last gasp IIRC.
Haha, sorry for the ramble. Just chatty at the moment...
Jaguar and Lynx. The Lynx was Epyx's last gasp as well. The Epyx guys who created it were former Amiga designers, and it's a bit hilarious that Atari had to buy Amigas from their nemesis Commodore to be able to develop games for Lynx.
While I did play a few games on the A2600, I never owned one myself. I do have to say that I remember the joysticks -- these things -- requiring a fair bit of muscle to work compared to any other joysticks that I've used.
If I remember correctly, I think the game I liked the most on it was Combat.
with the “Lynx” being their last gasp IIRC
Yeah, I do remember that. Had a friend who had one, possibly because I -- probably bad advice -- recommended it over the Game Gear.
Then again, Atari sort of failed in similar fashion in preparing to win the next round of the console wars, being utterly blown out of the water by the Nintendo NES a whole 8yrs after the A2600 first came out
You know, I thought that the Sega Master System predated the NES, but I just looked it up, and apparently the NES was 1983, and the Master System was 1986. So I guess it really was the NES that hit it first.
If I remember correctly, I think the game I liked the most on it was Combat.
Good game for sure (based on an actual Atari arcade game), but oh man, that system had many games equally-good, as well as borderline amazing. For example, their version of Defender's sequel Stargate was -seriously- impressive. You can try it out (and others) at this link if you care to: https://www.free80sarcade.com/atari2600_Stargate.php
You know, I thought that the Sega Master System predated the NES, but I just looked it up, and apparently the NES was 1983, and the Master System was 1986. So I guess it really was the NES that hit it first.
Oof, I forgot about the Sega MS. Actually, I'd say that was a much closer race than any of the earlier comparisons. For example, they were really close in hardware capability IIRC, with the NES hitting NA in 1985, and the Sega MS coming over ~one year later. By that point I wasn't really in to consoles anymore, but IIRC theirs was a reasonably close sales and popularity race.