Retro Gamer forum

The Laird wrote:

Lost Dragon wrote:Game Gear and Lynx both paid price for being colour systems, battery life not a patch on GB's.Plus you had GB and Tetris, yet Atari turned down Loopz, saying puzzle games not ideally suited to handheld (thankfully game was released, but not via Atari).

I really don't believe that this is true given that Atari released Shanghai, Ishido, Klax, Chip's Challenge, Block Out and Super Skweek - all puzzle games. I would say it's more likely to do with the fact that Atari put all external Lynx projects (Handmade were converting Loopz) on hold while they got the Jaguar out. The Tramiels were not foolish enough to licence something if they had no intention to release it. Same thing happened with games like Fat Bobby, Hot Dog, Raiden, Road Riot 4WD, Rolling Thunder, Dungeon Master, Eye Of The Beholder etc.


Anyway this has gone WAY off topic, this thread is supposed to be about the Wii U.

well, claim made over on Atari Age, going off memory it seemed to be from ex-Handnmade coder, in amongst him talking about proving ST Elite worked on Lynx, Atari not wanting to green light it, so you'd have to take it up over there.

from personal experience of being a Lynx owner, i do know Atari were foolish enough to create fake screenshots for it's promo.material, if those Cabal and Rolling Thunder screens are actual Lynx shots, i'll happily eat the sun Mk 1 Lynx console as they are far too high resolution.

You've only to look in the how far along did coding get..thread to see numerous film and comic book rights bought, games abandoned early on or work never even got started started on.Marketing is all about smoke and mirrors, if your consumer thinks your going to be bringing a big name game out for your product, they are far more likely to buy it, easy enough to knock up some demo code for a trade show (hell just ask MS/Bungie with Halo 2, entire 9 min demo.made up just for an E3, bore no resemblance to final game, nor did much of the marketing posters).

We could devote the entire forum to things Atari have been foolish enough to do on console, let alone the Lynx, Jaguar thread is full of examples, from rushing unfinished games out, to putting pressure on developers to put in lots of polygons, texture-mapping etc, just to try and compete.History littered with Atari's f**k up's.

Loopz is hardly a big game and I have never seen a single screenshot for Cabal on Lynx. When it was featured in Lynx Log II they just showed art for it.

But anyway, as I already said, this thread has nothing to do with Lynx. Do we really need yet another thread ragging on Atari right now?

Back to the Wii U (again)

Found the Lynx thread (Hello from ex-Lynx programmer), post's were from Rob Nicholson (Handmade Software) he also wrote ST/Amiga Elite and converted 3D engine as tech.demo to show Atari it was possible to run on Lynx, but as he said...'Atari just was'nt interested.Ho hum.'

Regarding Loopz he commented that 'loopz was the obvious game that never made it to market.I loved puzzle games, but Atari once again did'nt see that as their market'.

Now this is from a coder who produced games for at least 2 Atari formats talking here, so i think his words carry some wieght.

If you've seen same Atari promo.materrial i have, then you've seen same shots of Cabal and Rolling Thunder i have and we both know they are not Lynx screens.Resolution is that of ST/Amiga or PC screen.



Never guess who's post was directly under Rob's either!

We might be talking Atari and Lynx/Jaguar, but it's clear Nintendo have not learnt from mistakes they made as with Wii U they've released a powerful system, which out does it's less powerful rivals in key areas (PS3 would love the Ram Wii U has, the Vita linked up to PS3/PS4 cannot compete to Wii U screen on level pegging etc), but is crying out for the software support they get, plus the tools for developng, along with documentation are poor (Jaguar but not Lynx as that did'nt suffer with that issue) and as R J Mical put it, when describing the Lynx, it was a good piece of technology, but it suffered from a lack of public awareness, which is exactly the issue facing the Wii U-Great hardware, but Joe Public has'nt a clue what it is, too many still think it's a controller for the Wii!.

Many of us, having bought the Jaguar, Lynx, PSP, probably good few Wii U owners are quite happy to post past and present frustrations as we did'nt get half the games we expected through no fault of our own!.

Atari made a lot of claims over how Jaguar version of a multi-platform game was the best version, Nintendo promised Wii U owners their versions would be worth waiting for.

simple fact is, where as Sony initally learnt from mistakes 3DO/Jaguar made, when coming to market with PS1, by time PS3 was out, they were making mistakes on an epic scale, cost them, thankfully learning again, it seems and now Nintendo don't seem to have learned from their own mistakes or those of Sega or Atari.No-ones ranting about 1 specific platform or company, just that as consumers, just once we'd like to spend £200+ on something and see it's potential reached, not squandered by things we have no control over.


The Jaguar/3DO thread opened up a lot of debate, no reason this Wii U thread cannot do the same.

It always likely that he is remembering it wrong and the game was simply put on hold like so many others as I already pointed out. People do that you know, you can't always take something said by somebody as gospel just because they worked in the industry. In my video of the recently released Ocean book I pointed out a number of quotes from ex-Ocean people that were just totally wrong. As the author Chris said, they were obviously just remembering things wrong, does happen. Especially when you see how rusty his memory was when reading that thread, he couldn't even remember anything about Power Factor and he worked on that!

Lost Dragon wrote:which is exactly the issue facing the Wii U-Great hardware, but Joe Public has'nt a clue what it is, too many still think it's a controller for the Wii!

Is it great hardware though? When compared to the competition? Not really in all truth, spec wise it's the weakest of the bunch and that doesn't help it.

^ Maybe so, but for me it's technically good enough to have a spot under my TV. I found the Wii rather underpowered compared with PS3 etc, but the gap is much closer now. For me anyway. I would love the spare cash, I would get one for the sake of getting one...

The Laird wrote:It always likely that he is remembering it wrong and the game was simply put on hold like so many others as I already pointed out. People do that you know, you can't always take something said by somebody as gospel just because they worked in the industry. In my video of the recently released Ocean book I pointed out a number of quotes from ex-Ocean people that were just totally wrong. As the author Chris said, they were obviously just remembering things wrong, does happen. Especially when you see how rusty his memory was when reading that thread, he couldn't even remember anything about Power Factor and he worked on that!

Lost Dragon wrote:which is exactly the issue facing the Wii U-Great hardware, but Joe Public has'nt a clue what it is, too many still think it's a controller for the Wii!

Is it great hardware though? When compared to the competition? Not really in all truth, spec wise it's the weakest of the bunch and that doesn't help it.

Well, considering he seemed pretty clued up on what happened to Lynx Elite in that post, i'd say he has a fair shout at knowing what he's talking about regarding Loopz, it was obviousily close to his heart.

Coders do like to let slip just what it was like working under MS, Nintendo, Sony, Sega etc etc as well as Atari, all makes for very good reading, stuff you just would'nt hear of otherwise.

Compared to PS3, yes Wii U is good tech in terms of not being throttled by lack of RAM and since so many 3rd party games on Wii U have been PS3/360 ports, it's clear that's it's competition, just that Nintendo released it 2 years too late.

No idea on the Ocean stuff, don't have the book, do know Gary Bracey did'nt know about Syndicate on Jaguar, still have the press ads here with OCEAN logo on, maybe there was something in the water over at OCEAN? might explain why Knight Rider and Street Hawk ended up how they did....

General Opulence wrote:

Matt_B wrote: The hardware sold well, but games sales were abysmal. If there was a machine last generation that people tended to buy, get a couple of games for, and then stick in a cupboard and forget, the PSP was it.

I would hardly call them 'abysmal', Monster Hunter sold 4.8million, Gran Turismo 4.2million and 17 games in total sold over a million units each....

Some individual titles obviously did well but overall, the picture is a gloomy one. The PSP has far and away the lowest attach rate of its generation with just 3.3 games sold per console. For the DS it's pretty much dead on 5, and the home consoles are all between 8.5 and 10.

Also, a million sales isn't necessarily that great. There are many games being made these days where that wouldn't even cross the break even mark.

Every time somebody tries to explain the Wii U's poor retail performance they always fall back on the "Joe Public doesn't understand what the Wii U is". I'm sorry but that's a load of guff. Joe Public knows exactly what the Wii U is but just isn't that interested in it. Unless you're an ardent Nintendo fan there's not much to draw you to the Wii U that isn't done equally well or better on other formats.

Nemesis wrote:Every time somebody tries to explain the Wii U's poor retail performance they always fall back on the "Joe Public doesn't understand what the Wii U is". I'm sorry but that's a load of guff. Joe Public knows exactly what the Wii U is but just isn't that interested in it. Unless you're an ardent Nintendo fan there's not much to draw you to the Wii U that isn't done equally well or better on other formats.

Few people where I work actually think the Wii U is just a standard wii with a facelift and nifty new controller, they have no idea its a totally new console.

Nemesis wrote:Every time somebody tries to explain the Wii U's poor retail performance they always fall back on the "Joe Public doesn't understand what the Wii U is". I'm sorry but that's a load of guff. Joe Public knows exactly what the Wii U is but just isn't that interested in it. Unless you're an ardent Nintendo fan there's not much to draw you to the Wii U that isn't done equally well or better on other formats.

I know lots of people who didn't even know it was out, no matter what it is... I'm not saying they'd all rush out and get one if they did, but it certainly can't help sales... How would "joe public" know "exactly what it is"? Theres been no adverts and these people aren't trawling game sites looking for console release information...

Also the kind of games that nintendo make just aren't represented or very poorly so on other consoles... Wii sales show the public like these sort of games, so i'd think this shows that the wiiU does have some drawing power...

RodimusPrime wrote:Few people where I work actually think the Wii U is just a standard wii with a facelift and nifty new controller, they have no idea its a totally new console.

And even those who do know that it's a new console tend to think that it's still less capable than the 360 or PS3, rather than somewhere in between them and the XB1/PS4.

Not that I can really blame them, as most Nintendo games still have the look of the GameCube era about them, even if they're now in HD.

Matt_B wrote:

RodimusPrime wrote:Few people where I work actually think the Wii U is just a standard wii with a facelift and nifty new controller, they have no idea its a totally new console.

And even those who do know that it's a new console tend to think that it's still less capable than the 360 or PS3, rather than somewhere in between them and the XB1/PS4.

Not that I can really blame them, as most Nintendo games still have the look of the GameCube era about them, even if they're now in HD.

It is less capable though. I love my Wii U but I'm not going to pretend it's on par with the XB One or PS4.

RetroBob wrote:

Matt_B wrote:

RodimusPrime wrote:Few people where I work actually think the Wii U is just a standard wii with a facelift and nifty new controller, they have no idea its a totally new console.

And even those who do know that it's a new console tend to think that it's still less capable than the 360 or PS3, rather than somewhere in between them and the XB1/PS4.

Not that I can really blame them, as most Nintendo games still have the look of the GameCube era about them, even if they're now in HD.

It is less capable though. I love my Wii U but I'm not going to pretend it's on par with the XB One or PS4.

He said 360 or ps3.

Good catch I skim read.

Matt_B wrote:Not that I can really blame them, as most Nintendo games still have the look of the GameCube era about them, even if they're now in HD.

Now, can someone clear this up for me. Which consoles can you play HD games on ? I presume when people say 'HD', they are talking about 1080p or something?

Are there any consoles that shift 1080p graphics around?

Or does 720p count as 'HD' ?

(forgive my lack of knowledge)