Official Racketboy Suggestion Forum Thread

[Hobie-wan]

All others NG, TG-16, Atari, Coleco, etc...are going to get much less support...so, I think we are good where we are, other wise we're going to open a can of worms looking for a forum for Intellivision and FM Towns, etc...

As soon as I find a dedicated Pippin forum full of people that understand me, I am the fuck outta here.

[alienjesus]

I disagree pretty strongly with this one. Atari doesn't rate a forum of its own. I can see giving it better billing under "Other Systems" but not a space to itself.

If SNK couldn't manage to get its own forum, it's silly to argue that Atari needs one.

You don't buy the "# of systems" argument? What do you think the rationale for a seperate subforum is/should be?

How often people talk about said systems. I don't tend to see much Atari discussion at all. They have a large number of systems, but posts about the Lynx, 5200, XE and the likes seem few and far between. Even posts about the 2600 aren't all that common.

[Flake]

I disagree pretty strongly with this one. Atari doesn't rate a forum of its own. I can see giving it better billing under "Other Systems" but not a space to itself.

If SNK couldn't manage to get its own forum, it's silly to argue that Atari needs one.

You don't buy the "# of systems" argument? What do you think the rationale for a seperate subforum is/should be?

Continued relevance. Atari definitely gets some footnotes in the history books but they haven't been anything more than a brand name to be traded back and forth between companies for decades now. Atari's current representation seems like more than enough.

Also, if number of systems is the main point...why is it SNK doesn't have a forum again?

[dsheinem]

You don't buy the "# of systems" argument? What do you think the rationale for a seperate subforum is/should be?

Continued relevance. Atari definitely gets some footnotes in the history books but they haven't been anything more than a brand name to be traded back and forth between companies for decades now. Atari's current representation seems like more than enough.

You could say the exact same thing about Sega. I actually think that the amount of homebrew activity, active collecting, and general enthusiasm for Atari systems and games far outweighs that of Sega in the larger scheme - just not in this particular community of users (at this time).

Also, if number of systems is the main point...why is it SNK doesn't have a forum again?

They have three - far less than Atari.

Again, I think that a subforum on Atari would generate a lot more discussion on the company and their games if we had a place to put it. The same thing happened with the advent of the "Games as Culture" and "Shmups" "Game Deals" and "PC Gaming" subforums when they were implemented some time ago: the number of discussions on those respective topics ticked up.

[noiseredux]

gosh, I hate to agree with Crusty Old Dean Dave, but... I agree with Crusty Old Dean Dave.

(but still think SNK could have its own sub-forum as well. Of course, I've long said Sony and MS should have separate sub-forums, so the F do I know?)

[BoringSupreez]

I'm for keeping Atari under the "Other Systems" header. Atari isn't discussed often enough to deserve a forum of its own. It'd be a ghost town. And I don't think a forum would increase discussion. We don't have that many Atari collectors here compared to the other systems.

[Flake]

You could say the exact same thing about Sega.

Maybe it's the fact that I write for a Sega blog but Sega is not exactly some tiny little indie developer these days. That company puts out a LOT of software still and has maintained much of the original infrastructure.

They have three - far less than Atari.

Are you kidding me? Have you ever looked at the sheer number of hardware sets and variations SNK developed? It's not all Neo Geo.

Again, I think that a subforum on Atari would generate a lot more discussion on the company and their games if we had a place to put it.

There's already an obvious spot for Atari conversation. Giving a broad topic its own space does not beget conversation. I was a big supporter of forming the 'Platformer' forum back in the day. Yeah, oops. 94 whole threads.

[dsheinem]

You could say the exact same thing about Sega.

Maybe it's the fact that I write for a Sega blog but Sega is not exactly some tiny little indie developer these days. That company puts out a LOT of software still and has maintained much of the original infrastructure.

Atari is no slouch in contemporary software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari,_Inc ... sidiary%29

They have three - far less than Atari.

Are you kidding me? Have you ever looked at the sheer number of hardware sets and variations SNK developed? It's not all Neo Geo.

I was counting retail releases of major console and handheld hardware - not iterations (e.g. no 2600 Jr, no PS2 Slim, etc.) or PC/Consoles (XE, ST, etc.) I am not counting arcade stuff, where Atari would give any company (including SNK) more than a run for their money. Unless I am missing something, SNK did the AES, the NEO CD, and the NGPC for home sale. That's 3. Atari has 5-6 at minimum.

Again, I think that a subforum on Atari would generate a lot more discussion on the company and their games if we had a place to put it.

There's already an obvious spot for Atari conversation. Giving a broad topic its own space does not beget conversation. I was a big supporter of forming the 'Platformer' forum back in the day. Yeah, oops. 94 whole threads.

Other than "Guides", that's the only example of a subforum that was instituted in the last two years that has had less than 100 topics. Every other subforum has had at least 1-2 topics a week on average at minimum. In many of those forums, I think it is obvious that more conversation was initiated because the forum existed.

I guess I don't really see a strong argument against it other than "well we really don't talk about Atari much" or "We talk about SNK a hell of a lot more and it doesn't have it's own subforum." Here is a rebuttal of sorts to that:

Search term across the forum:

"Atari" - about 7000 hits
"2600 -Atari" - about 1250 hits
"7800 - Atari" - about 250 hits
"5200 - Atari" - about 175 hits
"Jaguar -Atari" - about 1400 hits
"Lynx - Atari" - about 270 hits
---------------------
about 10,350 hits of posts talking about Atari hardware


"Neo Geo" - about 7640 hits
"SNK -Neo" - about 2300 hits
"AES -Neo" - about 560 hits
"Neo Geo Pocket Color" - about 900 hits
---------------------------
about 11,400 hits of posts talking about SNK hardware

So overall the discussion of these are both pretty close. I think an argument could be made that subforums for both are warranted, but I am only personally advocating for Atari at this point becasue I think we could use more discussion of the company and their hardware around here.

Also: in both cases those are more posts related to Atari or SNK than we currently have listed under totals for several of our other subforums (e.g. there are about 8000 posts in the PC subforum currently).

Looking more closely at the "Other Platforms" section only:

Search term:

Atari terms from above - about 75 unique thread titles
SNK terms from above - about 135 unique thread titles

Again, in both cases that's almost as many or more topics than we have in a number of other active subforums. I think that in either case, that's enough threads to split each company out into its own subforum where they would likely generate even more discussion.

[mjmjr25]

"Atari" - about 7000 hits
"2600 -Atari" - about 1250 hits

"Neo Geo" - about 7640 hits
"SNK -Neo" - about 2300 hits
"AES -Neo" - about 560 hits
"Neo Geo Pocket Color" - about 900 hits

Strong argument, Dave.

Gonna pick hairs, just for the heck of it.

Most of the "Atari" posts i've seen were in the vein of "Found this atari 2600 cart at the flea market today, $0.10 so, why not." Not really Atari discussion - though, ultimately that may actually make your point...to stimulate Atari discussion.

Also, more hairs to pluck at. The times I post about Neo Geo, I use the keywords "MVS", "NG", "NGCD", "NGPC" and just plain "Neo". If those 5 were added to the search, I think the numbers would skew up quite a bit, in fact I think MVS would have more hits than AES.

[dsheinem]

"Atari" - about 7000 hits
"2600 -Atari" - about 1250 hits

"Neo Geo" - about 7640 hits
"SNK -Neo" - about 2300 hits
"AES -Neo" - about 560 hits
"Neo Geo Pocket Color" - about 900 hits

Strong argument, Dave.

Gonna pick hairs, just for the heck of it.

Most of the "Atari" posts i've seen were in the vein of "Found this atari 2600 cart at the flea market today, $0.10 so, why not." Not really Atari discussion - though, ultimately that may actually make your point...to stimulate Atari discussion.

Also, more hairs to pluck at. The times I post about Neo Geo, I use the keywords "MVS", "NG", "NGCD", "NGPC" and just plain "Neo". If those 5 were added to the search, I think the numbers would skew up quite a bit, in fact I think MVS would have more hits than AES.

Differentiating "why" people talked about Atari from a basic search of everything is hard, which is why I included a subforum topic word search for those terms as well.

Searching for "Neo Geo" includes "Neo".

MVS is arcade hardware, so not strictly germane to this discussion. I left out VCS, XE, ST, Jaguar CD, Jag, etc. as well...