The Atari 2600

Monday 17 Nov 2008

Our gaming hobby might be movie like in this day and age, but it is because of consoles pushing the limits by outclassing each other with each new generation that this industry evolves so quickly. Some of you have been with us since the Atari 2600 days in the 70’s and some might have only joined recently without any knowledge of where it all started. Come back every week, as we will be looking at each console and what exactly it did that made us buy into it and how it helped the industry to become the monster we know and enjoy today.

Atari 2600

Intro:

In all honesty, it would be a complete injustice to start with the Atari and ignore all the Pong clones before this, but then it is really the first console to introduce gaming to the world with Pong being the front runner. Back in pre-1977 the world had bought complete consoles for one game (Pong) and after being bored with it they would take the console and stick it into a cupboard to collect dust for years to come. Atari saw the initiative of creating a console that would make use of game cartridges, bought separately, which would mean the console would sit next to the TV permanently as games were always new and fresh providing the audience with a reason to return to it time and again.

Look and Design:

Have a look at the TV’s of the 70’s: they all had these wood trimmings around them. Atari, following the look of those television sets, also added this look of a wooden face to their console thereby making it feel at home next to your telly. At the time it was very sleek with its 6 knobs on the top of the console being used for turning power on and off, switching between black and white, difficulty setting (a or b) for the left and right controller (so that is 2 knobs right there), Game Reset and lastly Game Select (Some cartridges would have more than one game on it and to jump between it you with pull that knob).

The controller mimicked that of arcades which were, at the time, the only true place to experience the latest and greatest in games. It had the large joystick with one single big red button. In time these controllers would develop problems as extensive rough use would damage the mechanism inside and you would find that you would have to press really hard to get any reaction from whatever you were controlling on-screen. Only 2 controllers could be plugged in but in 1977 that was already a massive advantage over what was not really standard back then yet.

The Games:

If one word could some up the success for Atari it would be Asteroids. Realising that people were craving to play arcade games in the luxury of their homes it was common knowledge that the first step was to bring those arcade ports to their system to their consoles, pronto. Asteroids brought the addictive gameplay to homes around the world and cemented Atari with Pong by its side. Pac Man was a hit, which looks terrible now in hind sight, but it was still simple and fitted into homes like a glove. Then we had Pitfall Harry, still a classic to this day.

There were more than enough AAA games to keep people coming back but then a nasty marriage reared it’s ugly head (which haunts us to this very day) – Licensed games. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – the worst Atari game (if not worst game of all time) launched and flopped. It was terrible, so bad that thousands of these games where buried in New Mexico. That game alone is the reason for Atari’s demise and financial loss in 1983 and 1984. So bad that it is known as the “Video Game Crash of 1983.”

Add Ons:

The only real add on that you could buy for this console was the Paddle controllers. Basically it had a large knob on the top of it that could be turned. This was used for pong where, if turned, the platform would move up and down, thereby adding some sort of analog feel to the game with more precision.

Overall:

The Atari 2600 has stood the test of time with classics like Pitfall Harry and Pac Man still living on with the modern versions of the games entertaining us. It was the first console and with that it took the blunt end of the backlash of 1983 with the video game demise. This console alone is the reason that we have consoles in our homes today. If not for this, we might still have been playing in arcades wasting our pennies. One thing is for sure, people loved this beast in the 70’s.