How Donkey Kong Toppled Atari | Hacker News Reader

How Donkey Kong Toppled Atari

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> Nintendo was about to release a next-generation console, the Famicom, in Japan. They wanted to export it to other markets, but didn’t want to do it alone. Nintendo really wanted to license the Famicom to Atari and have Atari distribute it in North America. Atari CEO Ray Kassar was going to sign the deal at CES in June, but delayed due to the spat over the Coleco Adam version of Donkey Kong. Then the deal fell through the cracks after Atari forced out Kassar as Atari CEO on July 7, 1983. Atari’s next CEO, James Morgan, never revisited it.

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.

The other big problem with the 7800 was it was mostly arcade ports. They didn't really do any original games.

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...

Almost...

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

> And the 7800 was technologically superior to the Famicom.

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.

Famicom was 256x240 whilst the 7800, which was a console variant of the doomed Atari 1400, was 320x240. But to get more colors without doing fancy per scanline tricks, developers opted for 160x240 and you're not imagining it looking clunkier. So as a former demo coder, those scanline tricks were bread and butter to me.

Famicom was limited to 8 sprites per scanline, 7800 had 100 sprites, no limits.

But apparently, you're not wrong and I'm not wrong. Many NES cartridges came with HW enhancements and a few of the homebrew afterlife carts for the 7800 did as well.

But upfront, I thought the NES looked like a glorified Apple 2. The SNES OTOH was the first Nintendo console I loved.

Young me always chose the best technology for my task. Older me looks at the whole package. I miss the younger me.

Yeah the 7800 library was basically a bunch of ports of early 80s arcade games that GCC had done for the initial 1984 release date, then ports of whatever computer or arcade games the Tramiels could get cheap licenses for, done by external contractors. Their strategy with the 7800 was competing with Nintendo on price rather than the quality of the game library. Tramiel led Atari wasn't willing to put a bunch of money and effort into pushing video games forward like Nintendo was, they were mainly focusing their internal efforts on the ST computers.

There's also the dual-screen b/w LCD game (running off 2 LR44 batteries iirc). Back when I was a kid, that was a prized possession during school breaks.

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.

I was a total Atari kid and I still have my 2600 and my 800 on me. If Atari was the one distributing an NES like system IMO they would have just fucked it up. While I loved my atari devices, they were also extremely unreliable mechanically / electronically. The build quality of Nintendo devices (I own about 10 Nintendo devices going back to the SNES that's plugged into my TV with a modern HDMI adapter today) is worlds beyond what Atari was able to pull off in my experience. Granted the Nintendo devices have the advantage of more sophisticated technology but Atari I think really had a cheaper build mentality.

While the Famicom was decent, the NES had mechanical problems.

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.

Note that the actual cause of failure in the NES was NOT the cartridge connector, but rather, the poorly implemented security chip.

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.

in my Atari days, I went through half a dozen of those stupid joysticks, which broke easily as they were poorly designed and put way too much repetitive strain on the plastic insides that broke regularly.

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.

Adding to what you wrote the NES was front loaded because it was designed to look like a VCR because they thought that aesthetic would sell better in the U.S.

Atari's whole attitude in the early 1980s was "you will buy games that suck."

That seemed to be a common theme for games in America even into the 90s. Just looks at the games approved by Sega of America vs Sega of Japan

I remember the January when the gaming market really crashed... the Atari games for 1600/7200 were dirt cheap at Toys R Us... In retrospect, I'd have been happier with Sega at the time... They had more games that I actually liked.

The article mentions Sheriff, which you don't hear about very often. It's a really neat take on Space Invaders, kind of a hybrid of that and Robotron.

wow, it is kinda unexpected that both Mario and Donkey Kong started in the same game. and that in first Donkey Kong game, the main mario was the main character.

Hard to be unexpected for the many of us who lived it. It wasn't that long ago. I remember first seeing a ColecoVison, which shipped with Donkey Kong, and being amazed that, unlike on the Atari 2600, the home version of Donkey Kong actually looked very close to the arcade version.

There is a modern homebrew 2600 DK which is much better than the original.

It’s not a big secret. I’m pretty sure it was mentioned in Chris Pratt’s recent adaptation…

it is not a secret but very unexpected. when I heard of donkey kong, it was in context of donkey kong franchise which obviously feature Donkey Kong as main character just like mario is main character of mario games.

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

It’s more the other way around: the first Mario game was a Donkey Kong game.

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.

you have it backwards . the game was "a Mario game", but it was called "Donkey Kong", so it comes under Donkey Kong franchise.

I don't know why we are making this arbitrary distinction between Mario games and Donkey Kong games.

But if we are the main Mario franchise games are the "Super Mario" games. Donkey Kong is not part of the "Super Mario" series and his "Mario" is not "Super" .

Worth remembering Mario Bros (Not Super)... it's basically the combat mode in SM3+ but as a stand alone game.

Donkey Kong is the main character. Mario was just who the player controlled, he was so unimportant he didn't have a name and they just called him Jump Man.

You could run the original game in Mame.

You could stick it in an arcade cabinet and pretend it's the real thing, like Billy Mitchell

https://perfectpacman.com/2022/09/06/new-technical-analysis/

I fired up DK in mame after the King of Kong documentary came out and ended up playing quite a lot as I recalled as a kid having a very difficult time getting anywhere in the game. It was fairly satisfying getting through all the main stages for the first time.

It's also been re-released on Nintendo Switch as a part of Arcade Archives.

Was he called jump man at that point or am I misremembering this?

He did, as is stated in the article.

Thanks. Site was dead when I tried to read it, presumed it was a hackee news ddos.

I thought that HN didn’t permit “How…” article titles?

There's a link to the submission guidelines in the HN footer

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In general, the original title is preferred, and "How…" is acceptable.

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