Re: announcement / Brutal Deluxe Software

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

On Feb 18, 2:22 am, Mitchell Spector <mitch...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I still see people writing games for my 25 year old Vectrex,

And for the Intellivision,the Coleco, homecomputers like
the MSX (they even have a yearly competition) and - most
importantly - the Atari VCS.
For some systems new games are being professionally
published with a cartridge (with a printed label), a colorful
manual and a box that looks like a period piece.

> why not my Apple IIGS?

IMHO there are several reasons:
Each of the above console is a minimalistic system, the VCS
is hard to program for - distinguishing a programmer  who
completes a playable game - and the Vectrex is unique alone
for its video generation.
Some of these consoles were also highly popular and some
kids that played with these became programmers and try to
mess with them now that they have the capability to do it.

What I find more interesting is that these systems (and also
other "dead" systems like the NES, SNES, Genesis etc.)
attract people that never had one and which program and
run the programs on an emulator only.

On the other hand there are systems had only barely attract
people like the later Atari consoles (5200, 7800 or Jaguar)
or the Sega Saturn. It appears to me that the processing
power of a platform has absolutely nothing to do with this.

For the GS I can only assume that it was simply not as
popular to reach a certain point that triggers developent
many years after its commercially active phase.

If - and I expressively say that - if someone wants to program
for it and wants to reach a certain audience he should damn
well make sure that he don't need an accelerator to run it
in the first place - simply because it reduces its audience.

bye
Marcus