![]() Michael Katz, hired to be in charge of Atari's games and consoles division with the title Executive Vice President, was supposed to gather software titles for the 7800 as it was being readied for launch. Believe it or not it was in place not only before the NES actually released in the US proper in 1986, but even before it was market tested in 1985. What you likely didn't know however, was how early this policy was in place. While many people don't know this, most people that are likely to post on a gaming forum are likely privy to this information. Despite the myths of Jack not wanting to have anything to do with game consoles, he decided to go ahead and pay what was owed, and even payed GCC extra money to finish developing the contracted software they were originally supposed to release for the 7800 in 1984l, even going so far as to having banners for the 7800 at the 1985 CES along with the 26 on physical display, both of which Atari Corp decided to manufacture new cartridges for, and release new games that were not previously available pre-asset sale, including the popular Lucas Arts classic, Rescue on Fractulus for the 5200.Įverybody knows that Nintendo had some unpopular policies that repelled western developers and even in some cases, Japanese developers from releasing software on their console, the most infamous of which was the console lock-out, a policy that made it so that you could not release NES software on a competitors game machine for 2-3 years, and while a rumor it is said that in some specific cases, a deal was made so that for some software couldn't EVER release on other systems. The 7800 itself was a separate deal from all the other Atari assets acquired by Atari Corp, and CEO Jack T had to pay for the console separately from the 2600 and the 5200. Eventually a deal was made and a lot of these assets were moved over to Atari Corp. Even though Atari engineers did work with them on the hardware GCC basically had ownership and so held all the cards. ![]() But there was a problem during the sale of Atari assets to the new Atari Corporation, primarily GCC the creator of the 7800, was demanding royalties holding things up. Some history, the Atari 7800 was originally supposed to release proper in 1984, and was test launched earlier that year in California and Texas, Texas being invite only. Overall it's a great representation of the gaming industry of the time. The Atari 7800 is a highly underrated system that I strongly recommend, especially now that you can get one for a reasonable price in most of the countries it was available in, and it's awesome software library being a mixture of 80's arcade goodness, along with game design commonly found on computers.
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