It's pretty funny that Atari would release 64k cartridges at the end of life for the 2600 - without needing a module. I met Jerry btw before he passed away. Insanely brilliant not only at tech but dealing with the Fairchild corp in getting his ideas out the door with massive pushback internally. He made the expo rounds for decades after the fact, and was always very open to excellent Q&A sessions during his appearances. Still miss him.
Atari did it with an extra chip on the cartridge solution, as Mattel then intended to after their module was cancelled. That's awesome, I would have loved to have spoken to him, very interesting career he had. I've spoken to Nolan Bushnell several times and was awestruck by him, could talk to him all day long.
One of the biggest add on screwups was the Atari XEP80 80 column expansion. Back when the 800XL came out, and especially the 130XE, Atari should have included the simple and Cheap CRT Controller chip like used in Amstrad CPC and computers for adding 80 column text mode. With cheaper ROMs by then, Atari could have sold a whole lot of Atari Writer 80 Carts.
ADAM computer was released in fall of 1983 for $700! By Christmas of 1984 the price had already been dropped to $200 which is when my Father bought one for the family. My dad bought it because getting a proper word processor for $200 was an incredible deal. Especially since the ADAM used a real daisy wheel printer not dot matrix printer like most computers of the time. He used it to type business letters and to apply for patents. For us 4 kids (3 boys 1 girl) we loved that it played Colecovision Games and came with a pack in game of Donkey Kong which was so much nicer than 2600 and Intellivision versions. I was the oldest boy in the family and learned to code simple programs on it. ADAM computer also had it's exclusive games on cassette tapes. The most amazing IMO was Family Feud because we played it for days and never got repeat questions/answers. On the NES trivia games like this would start repeating questions within first hour of play and you could memorize every question with a couple days while the cassette tape held so much data it had what seemed like unlimited questions. So in 1985 my house had an Intellivision, Atari 2600, ADAM and a Radio Shack Pong Clone. The ADAM Computer was our main entertainment machine until my grandmother bought the family a NES in 1987. Once my 10 year old self got my hands on an NES I rarely looked back at the ADAM since it Toy's R Us didn't carry games/software for it anymore. I recall trips to Toys R Us to pick out a game for one of us 3 boys as a magical experience! They had dozens of NES games with papers in sleeves and if you wanted to buy a certain game you would grab a paper from the sleeve and take it to the cage up front to get it. It was quite sad when the game you wanted most was out of the paper coupons to buy your game. Kids today will never experience the thrill of that trip to Toys R Us to get us a new NES and later SNES and Genesis games. I took my kids to Toys R Us in it's last days and it was more of a sad experience then magical.
Yeah, I really miss Toys R Us, I bought games for my 2600, ZX Spectrum, Lynx, Atari ST, Mega Drive and Sega Saturn there. I have particularly fond memories of getting 2600 games there in particular, as they always had the best selection locally.
@@TheLairdsLair I recall playing the Demo machine of Saturn at Toys R Us and it had a FPS dungeon crawling type of game to play and I just remember being unimpressed by it compared to PSX. My brother and I split the price and bought a PS1 instead. (We also did same with (Jaguar, Sega CD and SNES) By then we were both teenagers and could buy a game a week. We ended up buying like 20+ Big Box PS1 games. During the Big Box Era these were our top 3 games we played most. 1. Ridge Racer got the most play by far. My brother and I always trying to one up each other for the best saved record times. We mastered this game. 2. Mortal Kombat My brother and I being competitive gamers loved fighting games and for Playstation MK3 was the fastest fun fighting game. 3. Battle arena Toshinden for an early 3D fighter this was probably the best available in 1995 at least on Playstation.
I still have a V-Doctor for Nintendo 64, it's a CD ROM player that allowed any brand of game to be played on Nintendo. Was pretty much illegal then, obtaining pirated CDs for it was extremely difficult (now impossible as few to nobody remembers it, let alone still owns one)
Are you sure the 32FX actually was a thing and not just something invented by the press? Even for the most obscure and/or secretive Nintendo project of the era, prototype hardware or at least a photo or two eventually turned up (e.g. the Nintendo Playstation, the Game Processor Ram Cassette etc). If Nintendo actually worked on this, there would at the very least be a patent or a developer who remembers working on it. Something that does fit the timeframe if not the specs mentioned is the Super Accelerator System, which essentially was the SA-1 co-processor that was put into a number of games and intended to prolong the lifespan of the console. I think Nintendo made a wise choice in putting expansion hardware into individual game cartridges instead of external add-ons.
Great video and a really cool topic. One thing though - the SuperFX chip was not a RISC chip. It was a 10 or 21 mhz 65816 based chip - same cpu in the SNES but much faster, with its own local ram. The 65816 was a 16bit upgrade to a 6502.
Pretty much all the info online about it says its a RISC chip. Here's Wikipedia for example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_FX "This custom-made RISC processor is typically programmed to act like a graphics accelerator chip that draws polygons to a frame buffer in the RAM that sits adjacent to it."
@@TheLairdsLair Yup, I stand corrected. It was the SA1 chip I was thinking of. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips has a lot of info on all of the enhancement chips.
I imagine most, if not all of these expansion ideas, are going to be in the realm of retro gaming. After stuff like the Sega 32X and N64DD, I can't imagine many game companies looking to the idea of console expansions and thinking they are a good idea. 0:53 - "Failing to live up to it's promise" Yeah, that fits the Mega CD well. I understand it's creation and do feel it had additional benefits such as allowing Sega to experiment with the CD format at an early point but it's also true that it's percentage of sales was a huge contrast with it's base Mega Drive sales. I would personally blame the insanely high price; the add-on shouldn't be more expensive than the console it is adding onto. 2:59 - Those "Wafer" tapes look adorable. Given the timing of 1983, I'm unsurprised the American company veered the 3rd console expansion towards making a home computer instead. Shame that most their game plans seemed to be just complete versions of prexisting games on the system. 7:02 - Funny enough, Gaming Historian just did a video about the history of the Fairchild Channel F, which naturally included plenty about Jerry Lawson. 8:30 - Whilst I would still consider it a bad idea, Nintendo releasing a 32-bit add on for the SNES would have made more sense than Sega with the Mega Drive, given the delays of the N64 release compared to the Saturn arriving early. 9:56 - I do wonder if, had Nintendo released it, they'd have carried on through with Star Fox 2's release to show support for the system even if said system was likely to be a failing one. To think Nintendo avoided this add-on mistake... only to later make the same mistake with the 64DD.
Nintendo have been flirting with describes all the way back to it's famicom days. There is a reason original model NES and SNES have a expansion port on the bottom. We don't hear much about these as nintendo would test the waters in Japan then decide to back out wack time. I think the WII is the first console Nintendo did not ship with a expansion port on the bottom.
I can't believe Atari tried to scam people by saying the lie that the 7800 had superior sound effects when it used the same sucky sound chip as the VCS.
The Nintendo 32FX would have made sense. As the Super FX Chip was expensive, it was not very smart to include it in every cartridge. On the other hand, a true SNES expansion would have needed a better, larger lineup of FX games.
Not to go too far in the weeds with the Adam but Coleco if anyone was no where near as poor shape as Atari in 1983. I believe the Coleco remained profitable through the end of the year. It was Atari who largely made the craziest of the supply chain decisions, making more disappointing games than systems existed in the world. The Coleco also had the benefit of being the best looking console till the NES while the 2600 looked ancient at the crash If the Coleco had partnered with say……..a Japanese counterpart in Sega who were releasing an upgrade to their nearly identical Sg-1000 instead of a computer add on…….
What Coleco should have done is made the ADAM a full MSX compatible computer, whilst retaining the ColecoVision backwards compatibility, and then adopted the new MSX2 standard for a Super ColecoVision and and an Adam 2 - a lot like Daewoo did in Korea with the Zemmix range.
Virtuality was the product I believe - the company behind it was W Industries. I worked with one of their machines at a shop in meadowhall in Sheffield in the early 90s. F***ing hated that thing!!
Oh come on! How the fuck did I miss this awesome and really interesting video by two fucking days?! Anyway, Sega also planned a floppy disk add-on for the Mega Drive alongside a modem, a printer, a keyboard, and what would eventually become the Mega CD.
I've actually talked about all that in a couple of other videos: Sega Mega Drive Facts - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--jOV-DdfveU.html Sega Master Drive - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eCihntBdP3s.html
the SNES CD addon comes to mind. but we all know that SONY turned it into the PS1 we all know and love and in my mind the best console of tat generation
17:29 It's wild that Atari says they "reinvented" the game while showing Ms Pac-Man, a game that's 3 years old, that looks the same as it did everywhere but the 2600
Thanks for the video. I have an important tip to help you. Pro tip. That part where your logo and patreon are at the front? Move them. I kindly say this but no one cares. Get to the content right away. Ppl that are impatient will leave while your showing your logos. This isn’t mean, I want you to succeed. If you think I have no idea what I’m talking about that’s fine but I do. Trust me.
The intro is 15 seconds long, that's really short by intro standards. I know very successful RU-vidrs who have intros that are 3 or 4 times the length, more if they also have sponsorship . . . . . . Also my analytics don't match your conclusions.
So thats where the rotronics wafadrive for the spectrum came from? I had a rotronics wafadrive ( made by BSR) in the 1980's when they were themselves remaindered I wanted a centronics printer interface for my speccy and this was cheaper, but it had 2 wafer drives which were a bit like microdrives to my eyes but could not work out why someone would make them for an off brand add on ( but since have seen another off brand expansion for the Commodore 64)
If ever there was a gaming experience that came to market before the technology was ready, it's VR. Now the tech is more than adequate, it's not catching-on as it should. Shame, really.
I think the market will tolerate a fad if it's cheap and/or emotionally compelling (tamagochi or other memes), or an expense if there is little choice (Microsoft and PC products for year) or a premium of there is a segment for it (Apple), but without a strong use case or being forced by regulation or pushed by collective sentiment, it's hard to see vr taking off, imo
There's a 'slight' chance that Apple's entry into the market 'may' (and that's a big 'may') get it out of the niche. ATM Apple Vision is priced for developers and those with crazy ideas for it. Which kind of makes sense and limits their exposure. 'My' personal take on it - given it's the first 3D wearable camera and immersive sound recording platform (out of the box) it 'may' be able to provide very rich immersive video tours and experiences online via pre-recordings and streaming. RU-vid already supports VR so this 'shouldn't' be a problem. The option to headgear or take a ultra-widescreen tour of National Parks, Global destinations, special events, concerts, amusement rides and experiences designed specifically for VR streaming 'may' (huge may again) be a killer use-case. Combined with drone footage inter-cuts - you could make a hell of a ride for a viewer. Who wouldn't want to skydive or power-sail immersively. I certainly would. The price needs to drop - a LOT - but I like the controller free method Apple is putting forth, and the lack of weight with the external power and battery overall. From a content creator standpoint - I'm starting to drool honestly. Who wouldn't want to see at least one song from the perspective of a popular performer on-stage and see everything from their eyes and ears?
As I said in the video, I had already covered it in a similar video and didn't want repeat the content: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-g4T4KWtHGYU.html&ab_channel=TheLaird%27sLair
I really would like to have to ram module for the colecovision but am also really curious about what the super charger could add to the intelevision, Now about the 32fx chip,eventrough it was sadly scrapped,BUT there was actually a 32bit expansion chip released for the snes wich was called the ST018 chip wich was an 32bit arm based chip wich was only used in 1 snes board game for AI called hayazachi niden shoggy 2, BUT i still do see lots of potential in that chip because if you could connect it to video ram and tell it to generate graphics,who ever knows that you could get low-res ps1 graphics on a snes wich would be a wet dream🤣
The failure of Atari was the l a lack of games and games that graced 5200, 7800 and the failed 64 bit console were in house port of 2600 games from nes wre could of had dd expansion as we should of had of had on the snes n64 dd was a failure to launch outside japan
