This Partnership Would’ve Been a Disaster

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]At Toy produced home console ports to many popular arcade games like Pac-Man, Galaga, and Defender. They also had their own IPs like Missile Command, Millipede, and Breakout. When the Famicom was released in 1983, Nintendo originally commissioned Atari to distribute the console in the US, but the deal fell through. Before that happened, though, Atari gave Nintendo the license to publish some of their well-known games on the Famicom, including a prototype that has never been seen until now. Let's take a look.

[00:00:36]What's going on? It's Poer coming at you with another video. We're going to be talking about Atari's relationship with Nintendo as well as the Galaga prototype that was recently discovered. If that sounds like good time to you, hit that subscribe button right there. I upload every Wednesday and I have nearly 200 episodes to binge watch. You don't want to miss it. Check out our Discord server. discord.poer.net.

[00:01:00]Okay, let's get started.

[00:01:22]Nintendo was originally founded as a toy company, but with the success of consoles from Atari and Magnavox, Nintendo was inspired to make their own.

[00:01:29]In the US, Pong consoles were increasing in popularity, so they decided to bring that technology over to Japan. They released the TV game series, which were units that contained built-in games.

[00:01:40]Nintendo also published the Game and Watch series, which were these small handhelds that had a game built in. The Game and Watch consoles would end up being a big success for Nintendo, selling 43 million units. In the US, Atari released a 2600. Unlike Pong consoles, which only had a few games built in, Atari's console took cartridges. While the console originally had trouble gaining popularity, this would all change when Atari secured the license to reduce Space Invaders. It would become one of the bestselling games on the 2600 which gave Atari the idea to start publishing more arcade ports. The 2600 was initially a huge success and Atari became the biggest video game company in the US. Speaking of arcade ports, one game that was brought over to the 2600 was Donkey Kong. With how successful their game was in the arcade, Nintendo licensed out the property to KCO on home consoles and Atari on computers. Donkey Kong would end up being a big reason why the KCO Vision was successful because not only was it the best version, it was even a pack-in game. Speaking of the KCO Vision, it was one of the first consoles to represent arcade games well. Nintendo was impressed with the hardware, but they thought they could do better. So, they began development on their own console. Nintendo was planning on releasing the Famicom in Japan themselves, but they approached Atari about manufacturing the console in the US. This made sense because Atari was the biggest video game company in the US and they knew how to market video games over there. Atari flew over to Japan to look at the prototype of the Famicom, but they were reluctant to make a deal with Nintendo because another company, General Computer Corporation, was working on the 7800. Atari wasn't sure if they wanted the Famicom to be their next console or the 7800, so they didn't make a decision right away. The agreement was the following. Nintendo would ship out the Famicom hardware to Atari in the US, and Atari would assemble it into a working console.

[00:03:25]Atari would also create the plastic shells and packaging. Nintendo would still develop and manufacture games.

[00:03:31]Atari could develop games if they wanted, and Nintendo would even give them all the resources they needed. Had this agreement went through, I wonder how differently Atari would have handled operations. Would there have been a seal of quality, an exclusivity agreement, or a five games a year limit? Probably not.

[00:03:47]In fact, they most likely would have been more lenient like they were with the 2600. This could have been bad for the Famicom as they might have made the same mistakes as they did with their own console. It's definitely an interesting what if situation. As part of the agreement, Nintendo agreed to port over four of Atari's properties. Joust, Stargate, Millipede, and Galaga. Out of all of them, Millipede was the only one that Atari actually owned while the rest were licensed. Like Nintendo promised, the games were completed, but they commissioned the company Hail to develop them. The title screens were purposely made to resemble the ones from the three launch titles on the Famicom with a black screen, the name of the game at the top, and a copyright at the bottom.

[00:04:26]The four games were supposed to be released by Christmas of 1983, which meant they would have been among the first Famicom games to be published. The music on the title screen was the same for all the games.

[00:04:46]Atari was credited at the bottom with no mention of Hail or Nintendo. When the games were released in the US, though this wasn't the case. Let's take a look at each game individually and try to figure out why Atari chose these franchises to represent the Famicom. In Joust, you play as a knight who must destroy the enemies by jumping on their heads. If you land on them, they drop an egg, which you have to grab in time, or else they will hatch into a new enemy.

[00:05:11]If you land anywhere but their heads, you lose a life. The biggest challenge comes from the controls because your character is very slippery and cannot turn around easily. You play on the same level, but as you make it further in the game, the layout will change slightly.

[00:05:25]The US version has a new title screen, and the graphics have more color and detail. Otherwise, the gameplay is exactly the same. The American version does look better, but both iterations are fantastic arcade ports. Stargate is a horizontally scrolling shooter where you must destroy all the enemies to beat the level. Humanoids are located at the bottom, and you must keep them from being captured. If they succeed in capturing one, they'll become faster and more powerful. You have a basic weapon along with a bomb that kills everything on the screen, but they're only temporary. You can enter the Stargates, which bring you to a different location on the map. The game was released in the US under the name Defender 2. Unlike the Japanese version, you can actually see the amount of lives and bombs you have during the game play. The graphics are also slightly better. Millipede is a fixed shooter where you must destroy the millipede to advance to the next stage.

[00:06:15]When you kill enemies, they'll leave mushrooms which act as barriers. The more there are, the less time it takes for the millipede to travel to the bottom of the screen. Every four stages, you fight a swarm of enemies instead of the usual millipede. The spiders are one of the toughest enemies because they constantly block your path and their movement patterns are unpredictable. The US version made an unnecessary change to the graphics. Instead of plain blue, the status bar was given a green checkerboard pattern which looks ugly.

[00:06:43]Even on original hardware, it doesn't look great. Nonetheless, this is one of the best versions of the game on a home console. It looks nearly identical to the arcade original. It's unclear why Atari chose these games he represented on the Famicom because none of them except Galaga are overly popular. Why not Pac-Man or Space Invaders? I also wonder why more of their own properties didn't get developed like Asteroids, Missile Command, or Breakout. Their choice to only publish these games might be because they wanted to save them for a future console, or maybe because of licensing issues. The console design might look familiar because the shell was eventually reused for the 2600 Junior. Just imagine if we got this instead of the iconic toaster design of the NES. Unfortunately, there were a few factors that led to the agreement between Atari and Nintendo not happening. The first problem was that at the 1983 Consumer Electronic Show, Kico showcased Donkey Kong running on the Atom computer, which was against a licensing agreement. Kico was only allowed to publish Donkey Kong on consoles, not computers. Atari was not happy with this, which was the main reason they didn't sign an agreement with Nintendo. Another issue was Ray Casar's departure from Atari. The company wasn't doing well financially to the point where Casar himself tried to sell a share of the company illegally, which resulted in him being fined. Casar made some questionable decisions as CEO of Atari, like focusing more on licenses and deadlines instead of actual quality.

[00:08:06]Atari had zero quality control over what games were being released on their consoles. Many inappropriate and mediocre games were flooding the market, and consumers never knew what they were actually getting. These shady practices led to consumers losing interest in video games, meaning they weren't profitable anymore. With no one buying consoles or games anymore, Atari Inc.

[00:08:25]was in financial trouble, which led to Casari resigning. With the CEO no longer being with the company and the US video game market in shambles, Nintendo considered releasing the Famicom themselves instead of working with Atari. They tried showing off their console in American stores, but they quickly realized that the US market wasn't interested in video games. This is where their idea came from to market the NES as a toy instead of a video game console. They made changes to the name, appearance, and lineup of games to make it more appealing to the US audience. It turns out Nintendo didn't need Atari at all to release her console in the US.

[00:08:58]This is where the story ends with Atari's involvement with the Famicom, but back in August, an unbelievable discovery was made.

[00:09:16]While the agreement between Atari and Nintendo didn't pan out, the games were still developed and released, although much later than originally planned.

[00:09:24]There was one game that was not, though, Galaga. In fact, we didn't even know about this game's existence until August of 2025 when Frank Safaldi revealed it at PAX West. The reason that Galaga was never released was because by the time Hal published Atari's arcade ports, Namco already released their own version on the Famicom. There's no point in having two versions of the same game.

[00:09:44]For those who don't know, NES games contain a program chip in a graphics chip. The program chip called CHR contains the actual code, while the graphics chip called PRG contains the graphics of the game. We have both the CHR and PRG ROMs for the three- release Atari games, but we don't have the graphics for the Galaga prototype. To make the game playable, a PRG ROM was recreated using graphics from the arcade version of Galaga. What we see here might not have been what the game originally looked like. Let's try it out and see if it's better than Namco's version. The first thing I noticed right away is that the background doesn't move vertically like it should. Maybe it did with the original graphics chip, but I assume it's the CHR ROM that's supposed to handle that. Your score and lives are actually shown above the gameplay instead of on the side like Namco's version. It actually reminds me of the Famicom version of Galaxian, which did the same thing. There's a few odd gameplay differences. For whatever reason, the enemies that are already in formation don't move back and forth.

[00:10:41]When you lose one of your ships, you're locked in place temporarily. You're also locked in place if you rescue one of your ships. The hit detection is terrible. The projectiles will go right through enemies, and I had trouble hitting them even with two ships. The green enemies turn blue when you hit them, but they still appear green when they're in formation. Again, I assume this is an issue with the game code, not the graphics, because the enemies are blue when moving around. Namco's version is much more complete. The background is animated and the enemies move back and forth like they should. The hit detection is more like the arcade version, and there's no graphical inconsistencies. The only limitation is the choppy movement of the enemies, which is understandable because they had to use background graphics to keep them from flickering. Hail's version of Galaga is basically a rundown version of the one that was released. This is a prototype though, which means the final version might have been improved. It's also unknown how it would have looked graphically since we don't have the PRG ROM, but I don't see why they wouldn't have just copy pasted the sprites from the arcade game. Between both versions, Namco's is clearly the best. If Atari was in charge of the Famicom in the US, there most likely would have been some key differences. The console would have been released a couple years sooner, right around the video game crash.

[00:11:54]Nintendo most likely wouldn't have created the Versa System cabinet, which was a way to lure consumers into video games. We might have gotten more games by Atari as they would have become a developer for the Famicom. Atari probably would have been more lenient with game developers, allowing them to create as many games as they wanted and not looking over the games that were being released. Because the console would have been released during the video game crash, the Famicom most likely wouldn't have sold well. There would have been more lowquality and inappropriate games just like the 2600 had. With the Famicom being a commercial failure in the US, Nintendo wouldn't have had as much of an impact in the region. Maybe they would have given up on the US market completely. Basically, the partnership would have most likely been a disaster.

[00:12:50]If you made it this far in the video, do me a favor and hit that subscribe button right there. And do you think a Nintendo console by Atari would have been successful? Have you played any of the games mentioned in this video? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching.