Was the Atari 'MIRAI' going to be a NEO GEO AES Clone ??

cool thanks. I was going to post all of this on AtariAge forums myself, but I am waiting for my registration to be approved.....

more interestingly, there are at least two older threads there on AA forums. one is specifically about the MIRAI. the other, which is much more interesting, is where the MIRAI subject was brought up on the 3rd page of the thread-- and yes, they include some interesting speculation about the Mirai being an Atari-SNK console, based on NeoGeo.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=57561&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50

and

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=43183&highlight=mirai

 

Very cool, and thanks for the wealth of info.

I hadn't heard about this system, until I read this thread. Who actually owns the system in the pic? Wonder if they would take pics of the internals.

Anyone ever see any proto carts or peripherals for this system?


^_^_^

 

It's a mock-up, so there's no internals. Otherwise I'm sure we'd know by now what was inside it

 

Any idea on why this deal didn't work?

 

nope. I know absolutely nothing about it. I read it in EGM
(this was when EGM was fairly credible not the rag it is now) and on the internet. there was never any detail on the deal--unlike the Atari-Nintendo Famicom deal, where there was some detail on the web, and probably in magazines & books.

 

cool! Blur2040, you got a pretty big reply from one Ferris on AtariAge Forum:

^__^

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=65900&highlight=mirai

 

It is stated at the beginning of the thread that the Mirai cartridge slot is similar in size to VIC-20 cartridges. While VIC-20 carts may be big by current standards, they're still dwarfed by Neo Geo ones. Perhaps someone with a digital camera could post a comparison.
Not that this isn't proof in either direction, carts may be shrunk or enlarged at will, just look at how Famicom cartridges grew into the massive NES ones.

 

At the time, making home versions of arcade systems was en vogue. The Neo Geo is the most well-known example, but the Megadrive is quite similar to Sega Systems. Likewise, Capcom dabbled with a home cabinet (cw this site).
Couldn't Atari have looked into making a domestic version of current Atari* cabinets?

*(I know, Atari had been split into home and arcade divisions after being sold by Warner, but the relations still seemed to be good, with Tengen often acting as a mediator.)

 

Well, although the 1988 Megadrive had some of the capabilities of Sega's 1986 System16 board, the two are very different. Although they do share the same CPU, naturally, but they run @ different clock speeds. S16 & MD have completely different graphics processors. both MD & S16 have the ability to display 2 parallax scrolling background layers. The S16 has much, much better color capabilities, closer to that of the NeoGeo.

colors:
System16: 4096 out of 32,768
Megadrive: 64 out of 512
NeoGeo: 4096 out of 65,536

S16 also has hardware zooming/scaling which the MD totally lacked, and modestly more sprite pushing power: 128 sprites vs 80 sprites

I would make the analogy of a Chevy Corvette (S16) compared to a Camaro (MD)

 

Again, it's just the fact that the 68000 was in pretty much everything at the time. There was the Sega System C2, which is *nearly* identical to the MD hardware, but it came out after the MD...

 

I never knew either, it's looks are superb though.

 

Were any carts produced for the console? I wonder what other teams joined up together and made prototypes that will might never know.

 

Holy thread revival. Almost 4 years, very impressive...

Interesting read none the less though.

It's hard to say what there could be out there for the MIRAI. Could be something like the Neptune and all that's really left is that display.

 

As an Atari enthusiast, I'm still intrigued by this machine (and one who actually liked the industrial design of it and the XE Game System). Wish I knew what the story was.

I'm also 99% certain there was also an Atari Mirai desktop system prototype but having trouble at the moment locating photos.

 

not that much "MIRAI" it had then :lol:

 

I feel the need to point out that I love the design of the XE game system too. The colors man...the colors...so very very 80s.

Thinking more about it, I'm inclined to call this some sort of computer though. Why all the buttons on it? So many buttons. Even more than the XEGS (which, FYI, I pronounce "Zegs," because it's fun). I dunno, maybe it is an ST based console. (Unngh, the horror of the idea of it). I wish I could see the rest of the case for it. Might provide some sort of clue as to what it is.

 

The problem with this one is that there was probably no hardware design done in the SNK U.S. office.

 

1) Two different Ataris. The one involved in the Nintendo deal was Atari Inc. (and a lot of what's been posted on the web is only half accurate). The one with the Genesis deal was Atari Corp.

2) The details are: SEGA, disappointing with Tonka, came to Atari Corp. wanting to have the Megadrive manufactured and distributed in the U.S. under an Atari branded name. Head of Atari Corp., Jack Tramiel, didn't want just the U.S. rights, he would rather have world rights excluding Japan. They couldn't come to an agreement and SEGA moved on. Jack wanting more than U.S. rights wasn't off, Nintendo was looking to give Atari Inc. world rights as well.

You'd be 99% off. The Mirai only had to do with consoles, and no - it had nothing to do with Neo-Geo either. We already tracked down what it was for and it'll be in our next book.