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Gaming in 1984 - An Overview, Part II
ColecoVision
Hit after hit made the ColecoVision the hottest home arcade of the holiday season yet again. Games like Jumpman Jr., War Games, Fortune Builder, and Antarctic Adventures - combined with arcade ports aplenty - sold both games and home arcades aplenty, with Coleco looking at a strong, bright future. At least, what seemed like it at the time.
Atari SuperSystem
ColecoVision owners, however, were jealous of the SuperSystem's new killer app, Pitfall II. It wouldn't be until the next year when the hit game eventually made its way to the other home arcades, with the exception of the Commodore 64 port. Other games, such as H.E.R.O. and Rescue on Fractalus proved to be popular enough to keep Atari from surrendering to Coleco.
An update on the Japanese "Home Arcade Wars"
What started off as a seemingly fair competition ended up with Nintendo maintaining a strong lead ahead of Sega, with titles like Duck Hunt and Excitebike proving popular in their homeland. Both companies are currently negotiating potential ways to releases their respective home arcades in North America. Nintendo had approached Atari about importing the Famicom, but Atari declined as they wanted to make their own 8-bit home arcade. Sega was much more desperate about finding a potential American business partner, going so far as to approaching multimedia companies that had never done business with video games before. Analysts believe that both companies should just let their American branches release the home arcades themselves, assuming that there is enough elbow room with Atari, RCA, Mattel, and Coleco already fighting amongst each other.