Back with another research "report": "Project Atlantis"

celebi23 · December 2010

So, I was cleaning out my basement & found some old things that I had from a camp I used to go to (1995-1997). I found a page from Next Generation Magazine issue 19 (July 1996). The subject of said page? Project Atlantis

So, I decided to work on a little information gathering project (had a little downtime between final projects/studying for final exams) and this is my result (note: there's WAY too much to post here, hence why I'm just posting the link):

http://web.me.com/celebi23/project_atlantis/frames.html

If you have any other information not on my site, please feel free to post it/pm me

NESHomebrew · December 2010

Interesting. I'm so out of the loop I didn't even know this existed.

celebi23 · December 2010

Yeah, it was quite the rumor in the mid-1990's

Tanooki · December 2010

I remember that whole thing and then it was as far as the magazines were concerned ultimately the GB Advance as Atlantis I recall showed up off and on as a higher spec version of a gameboy, but I don't remember 3D being really explicit with it. I do remember, color, higher spec, better audio and visuals, more buttons, still cart based, but that's all I can remember.

DragonmasterDan · December 2010

Nintendo has revealed quite a bit about it over the years. It eventually evolved into what would be the GBA. A few years ago, someone at Nintendo (possibly Iwata) spoke a bit about it at length and basically discussed how Nintendo took advantage of extending the original GB hardwares life, rather than rushing out a new platform.

Tanooki · December 2010

Now see that's what I do remember too. If I recall more depth of how it went, we need to look back to when two things popped up and market trends at the time. GB was looking dusty, Gamegear got up to a 33% market share which scared the crap out of Nintendo as they were losing their grip. As that happened Atlantis was dangled out there to the stupid magazines and early online sites to cause some waves. But then out of nowhere came Gamefreak and Pocket Monsters, GB again started to sell like crack, and as they were hurting in the NA market as bad if not a bit worse, they ran the big big please don't end up a short term fad test with Pokemon, and yeah like 15 years later it's still ticking. Anyway with that they held on, some third parties started to flock back again with more titles, but they also were biting at the Atlantis bit, hell just any bit that wasn't a stupid black and white screen with a very lowly chipset. Nintendo being thrifty...hell cheap (why we got Wii not Super Gamecube or something) decided to take the existing system and introduced backwards compatibility while giving developers and antsy gamers wanting more...more. Doubled the GB guts or more depending on which cpu or bits of ram we're talking, and then threw in a color palette that while not as deep as the Gamegear or TurboExpress, they had a system that still lasted like 20hrs on batteries, could run old games, give those games 4 shades of color, built into firmware gave some titles specific color sets(best one I know of is Metroid), and then had full on titles that did like 32 colors out of like a 256 palette on screen. That brought a lot of life back into dusty hardware but in a way that duped the masses and held off having to really do the Atlantis thing until 2001 which ultimately ended up being a souped up SNES on steroids with a lack(stupidly) of 2 buttons and a screen so dark in some games it hurt.

lisalover1 · December 2010

I seem to remember the DS initially just being a system to hold gamers off until the launch of the supposed Game Boy Evolution.

Tanooki · December 2010

That was a Nintendo cover story what I've learned (brother is a producer for a subsidiary of THQ games) and the DS was that 'third tier' system because they had no faith in it. They needed to do something about the PSP yet they also didn't want to make a $200 hand held, so they went for gimmick, copycatting the idea of the PDA -- stylus fun. They fully intended if DS choked to keep backing the GBA until they could pump out something on a better footing with the PSP, but for them they got lucky and it took off. Had it failed, then yeah GB Evolution was a real concept, a fall back on DS failure if it went the way of the virtual boy.