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Chances are, if you were like most people and had a home video game in the
late 70s or early 80s, it was an Atari 2600 (also repackaged by Sears as
the "Sears Tele-Games" console). The
Odyssey 2, bless its soul, was just a bit too
esoteric for most people, and Mattel's
Intellivision suffered from that general
perception as well. ColecoVision was a very
high-priced luxury game, and the Atari 5200 would've
meant an expensive upgrade to a machine that couldn't play the Atari 2600
games (Coleco got an Atari adapter on the market long before Atari itself
furnished one for the 5200 - ironically, 2600 compatibility was a pivot point
for sales of the next generation of consoles).
The Atari 2600, known early on as the Atari VCS (Video Computer System), was
Atari's second shot at a cartridge-based system. The company's R&D
department had been working on a machine called Game Brain which would have been
the exact opposite of the original Magnavox Odyssey: Game Brain cartridges would
have contained all of the computing power for their four built-in games
per cartridge; the main unit itself had very little inside it, simply passing
the video and audio generated by the cartridges on to the TV screen.
Ultimately, it was little better than Atari's dedicated Pong and
Stunt Cycle consoles, and it was set aside in favor of a truly
programmable system.
Ironically, while some people later blamed Atari - and specifically CEO Ray
Kassar - for keeping the 2600 on the market too long (its last new
mass-production game was released in 1990), the machine almost died an early
death under Atari's founder, Nolan Bushnell. He wanted to move on and start
developing the next generation of game hardware, but Kassar, representing
Atari's new corporate parent company Warner Communications, had other ideas. A
deal was sealed to license Space Invaders, the
first-ever arcade title licensed by another company for home translation, sales
skyrocketed, and the 2600 was here to stay.
   
Rogues' gallery of controllers
Seen here are just a few of the many joysticks and other specialized
controllers manufactured for the Atari 2600 by Atari itself and several other
companies. The standard Atari CX40 joystick is nearly an icon unto itself,
while arcade control maker Wico got in on the act with its Command Control
series including an arcade-style joystick and trakball. For young hands too
small to handle Wico's massive joystick (which, at the time, meant mine), Suncom
made the very cool and responsive Slik Stik. Other controllers were specific to
just one game or a handful of them - and you'll find them elsewhere in this
archive as well.
 
49 wonderful flavors!
Say what you like about Atari, their marketing department sure knew a thing or
two about making kids drool. This addition to the Phosphor Dot Fossils catalog
lineup (also see catalogs we've scanned in the 5200,
Odyssey2 and Intellivision sections) features some
classic Atari ad blurbs and "screen shots" (not!), as well as
some vintage vaporware announcements. Click on the thumbnail image of the
catalog cover to
browse through it, and remember when you too were an eleven-year-old drooling
over this stuff that you just had to have.
Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster/editor-in-chief
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