Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/26/pretty-much-everything-named-a.html
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Seems more like it should be “fails to deliver, these days”
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See also anything trying to be a “modern Amiga”
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My pixelated brain hurts.
To be fair, everything fails, and we march towards the ends of all things when it won’t even be the case that everything failed, but it will instead be the case that nothing ever happened.
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There was the enduring popularity of the Atari ST with musicians because of the built in MIDI ports, but apart from that your assessment is pretty fair.
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Star Raiders on Atari 8 bit computers, like so many Atari games, was so much better than on the 2600.
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Man, I see Star Raiders and in my head I immediately start screaming, “PIX! PIX! PIX!..PIX!..PIX! PIX!”
If you feel me, I know where in the world you grew up.
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Wow, H, you’re gonna’ pull out the whole “we all fail” thing for Atari.
Either your love for Atari runs deep, or you are seriously teetering right on the edge.
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Who the hell is Mac? Come on editors… we need this all important information!
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Counterpoint: Atari teenage riot
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But seriously. Some MBA did not realize the appeal of the NES classic was not the size of the library but the quality of the hardware for the price point.
I want to see them port Star Raiders to Android OR Nintendo Switch. Star Raiders II for that matter.
Fails to do what, exactly? There is a lot of great Atari out there. Emulating a readymade 2600 emu box is just a daft business idea. It was arguably their worst system, but had such market penetration that the supply/demand ratio is skewed against it. So “a little more convenient than a genuine 2600” is not a compelling reason to spend $300 to run an emulator that you could run anyway for free.
I was feeling uncharitable, I could say that “pretty much everything retrocomputing fails” by being focused upon GAMES to the exclusion of all other software.
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I’m guessing it wasn’t “created by Warren Robinett.”
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It’s probably for the best that it doesn’t actually have old Atari games in it. I recently sat down to an Atari 2600 emulator with pretty much the entire Atari 2600 catalog. It was shockingly crappy. I grew up in the heyday of the 2600, and remember the joy of hearing the “BAK BAK BAK” of their crappy version of Pacman, but there is no such joy now, just horror at how shockingly bad it all was. With the exception of Pitfall they were all complete crap. About the only fun part of an Atari that remains is the cool cartridges and all the lever switches on the console, and those awesome joysticks. All of which are missing on an emulator anyway.
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About 25 years ago, I was out of college, in what turned out to be the end of a relationship, and making slightly more than minimum wage on second shift. On weekday afternoons before work, instead of going on a walk, or reading a book, or looking for a better job, or trying to be a better boyfriend, I’d watch TV with my significant other because, well, the TV’s on. One of the shows was Tom and Jerry Kids which was about as bad a spin-off as anything that was ever spun off. In one particular episode (which remains a mental bookmark for that period of my life), they couldn’t be bothered to use sound effects any better than the 2600 version of Donkey Kong. Even in 1992, that shit was old.
I agree. I loved my Atari 2600, but only because that’s all there was. (Yeah, Intellivision was better, etc.)
Now I have a quad core CPU, 16 gigs of RAM and a 4K monitor. Why would I drive a Yugo when I can drive a Ferrari?
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