Hands-On With 7 Atari Rarities & Prototypes

As it's the Atari 50th anniversary, I thought why not go hands-on with some of the rarest and most interesting Atari retro gaming items from my game collection, including some unique prototypes! Here I pick 7 of my favourites, including the original CX-10 joystick, Power Pad, XE Game System, a Pac-Man prototype, the infamous Video Music, a collection of Atari calculators and much more!
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Chapters:
00:00 Weird, Wonderful, Interesting & Rare Joysticks & Controllers
03:00 Atari XE Game System / XEGS
04:57 Pac-Man Prototype / Loaner Cartridge For Atari 5200
06:24 Atari "Sparrow" / FX-1 Falcon030 Prototype Motherboard
08:18 Pong / Stunt Cycle / Video Pinball - Early Atari TV Games
09:36 Atari Video Music
10:54 Atari Calculators
11:53 Even More Rare & Interesting Stuff To Explore!
Royalty-Free Music From Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsound.com:
Cornelio - Feriado
Smartface - Bear Hats
Forever Sunset - City Lights, City Dreams
Jobii - Meander
Duke Herrington - Play It Cool
Dez Moran - August Events
Nocturnal Spirits - Not That Serious
Jules Gaia - Two Steps Back
Outro: Yomoti - Before Chill
#atari50 #atari #retrogaming

[@Yesterzine]

The joint story is good. The best bit on Atari 50 is the “did this happen” weed discussions.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Ha! Can't remember names but I liked the straight-cut guy who was categorically denying that any of that happened, while one of his old colleagues sat next to him with the most obvious poker face imaginable, occasionally smirking 😅

[@PixelPipes]

Such an impressive collection, and a mini museum in its own right! Too many to comment on specifically, but let's just say there's many worth tipping a hat to.

[@RetroBytesUK]

Nice to see all the collection together like that. I know we have got to see bits of it indervidually in the different vidoes, but there is somthing rather nice about see all of it together like that.

[@8bitrocketstudios]

The XEGS is a really cool Atari 8-bit. It's my favorite one without an "800" badge on it (XL and "Bix Sexy"). That detachable keyboard is really cool.. That STE (sic) controller is awesome too. Atari really needed to push the STE as a game machine by making software for that and the expanded STE capabilities.

[@ctrlaltrees]

It's a real shame the STE wasn't better supported by developers - and indeed by Atari themselves. As modern ports and demos have shown, it's such a capable machine.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

@@ctrlaltrees they hyped up bringing Steel Talons to it, claiming it'd make use of the hardware, well not really, the STE hardware was intended to assist in 2D titles... By the time it arrived on Falcon, it was very dated. The STE hardware was too little, too late, not the Amiga beating tech Atari had promised and publishers long since gone to where the real money was to be made, consoles...

[@auronoxe]

And not to forget the amazing Hotz Box! One of the weirdest musical instruments.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Oh I'd really love one of those!

[@bobbus_74]

This is my kind of video. Love seeing rare and obscure Atari stuff. Nice work Rees.

[@10p6]

Nice. By the time Atari released the Jaguar, they could have put the entire 68030 based Falcon on one chip.

[@SUCRA]

Quality entertainment. I thoroughly enjoyed this. On another note, there was a NES clone here in Brazil, that I owned as a kid, that used a chassi that looked a lot like the Atari 2800. It's called the phantom system. Of course I only found this out after getting ample access to the internet probably in the 2000s.

[@coffeecuparcade]

Fantastic showcase Rees! Thank you for sharing that awesome collection of Atari you have. I started with PONG so i'm right there with you. Proud to say we play our Atari 800 XL every day :)

[@ctrlaltrees]

That's the way to do it! Glad you enjoyed the video 😁

[@TPau65]

What a great collection, especially all these 70s stuff! And I really like this grey "Jaguar" controller, which must be VERY rare! Oh, I still have this small pocket calculator. It came with a black plastic flip-case with Atari Logo! I think I got it from the Atari fair 1990 (or so) in Duesseldorf, germany. 😃

[@10p6]

One of Atari's biggest mistakes was they should have put a 80 column CRT Controller in the 800XL and other 8 bits from then. It would have cost very little by then, but give it a leg up over the C64, been much cheaper than the C128 and offered competition to PC's.

[@RetrogradeScene]

Trying to resist not going straight to the auction sites after watching that!! great recap of your collection!

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

My memory may be faulty but I remember a credit card sized calculator from a UK Atari show used as a promo item/give away around the time of the Portfolio launch. It seemed a pretty standard solar powered basic calculator with Atari Portfolio branding stenciled on it.

[@mmille10]

I once had an Atari credit-card-size solar calculator, in the U.S. I think I won it as a door prize at an Atari user group meeting.

[@baroncalamityplus]

I speculate that the 7800 sold better than the XEGS (and the Sega Master system in America) was due to the 2600 compatibility. the 2600 had a huge install base and if one broke and the owner needed a replacement, it probably made more sense to get the 7800 which was compatible with their existing library and upgraded games, than the 2600 Jr.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Yes, the 2600 compatibility was certainly a big selling point at the time. Such a huge back catalogue of games and very cheap too.

[@techstormster]

I bought a lightgun for my Atari 1040STE. It looks just like that but with out the XE sticker. You don't see those lightguns very often.

[@MoreFunMakingIt]

Amazing stuff! Love nosing around you collection. Want to see more on that XEGS!

[@ctrlaltrees]

You'll be seeing more of that very soon!

[@Atarikidd]

Great and Outstanding Collection of Atari Consoles and Prototypes. Owned all the consoles, only seen maybe 2 of the prototypes in person. Very excellent video, hard to believe how much Atari did back then. By the way way back then I came up with a handle for myself ( Yes handle meaning BBS's ) which I still use today ( Atarikidd ) back then I was thinking is I did Atarikid it would sound like I was not that old so I added the extra d ( Atarikidd ) aka like Billy the Kidd lol. Hard to believe I been gaming sense 1970's so I got a few years under my gaming belt as they say.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Great stuff, Rees! The XEGS needs lot lot more exploration!

[@dozern]

The XEGS is a fantastic little machine, and very expandable. (well, just as much as the rest of the 8-bit line) I added a Fujinet and a Ultimate 1MB expansion to mine. Might throw myself into getting an svideo-port on it as well to get a bit better video.

[@TheRealCheesemaker]

Damn cool collection, thanks for the tour!

[@supermegagrafx64]

This video is absolutely amazing. Thank you for this. Great channel!

[@wimwiddershins]

Fascinating stuff in there, thank you Sir.

[@Trusteft]

That track and field controller would have saved me money with my Atari ST. Not much, but some. I assume it would work with the ST. The ST version of Missile Command with the mouse option is my personal favorite. I would love a video on that STE controller and the game it supports. HINT HINT, NUDGE NUDGE! Wait, are you saying there were light gun games for the 2600? The sad thing about Video Music is that the visualizations it creates are better and more accurate than most visualizations in software music players of the last 25 years. Another great video. Enough already! :p Looking forward to more and of course yes that cycle home version arcade which I have never seen in person (arcade or home). Thanks for sharing.

[@Chris.Wiley.]

The CX-10 controllers were FAR superior to those which came after it. They came with my original Sears Telegames back when it was first released. Like an idiot, I sold it in the early 80's.

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

Years ago I picked up a monitor for my Amiga, it came with an XEGS, while the Amiga and monitor are long dead, the XEGS keeps on chugging (with a SIO2SD now attached).

[@gamedoutgamer]

Awesome! The original capacitors need replacing on all XE's.

[@ViewpointProd]

your work is phenomonal!!

[@bltxlettuce3444]

I found the XE made an interesting comparison to the C64 Game System, Commodore's late attempt at making a consolized version of the C64 which was more poorly designed in almost every respect to the XEGS Commodore Amiga were never able to do consoles successfully for some reason

[@davidhoitinga8467]

great video. i still love Atari.

[@CruusTube]

great video Rees 🙂

[@loganjorgensen]

I don't dislike the 2600 joystick entirely, mainly I'd rather they improved the model rather than just making the same one cheaper to manufacture, I mean it was already basic to begin with so that sounds like a step in the wrong direction ijs. The '83 crash didn't help anything, by 1985 there should have been Atari joysticks with steel rod cores in them. Having gone over the "keypad era" over and over again in my head it's not like they don't have uses, just that uses are exceptions that need to be optional rather than mandatory. Like the 2600 keypad can work in conjunction with a joystick for a single player game well but by itself it's more about party games or programming carts. Like the Jaguar keypad is good in position but should have slotted in via module simply because it's not needed roughly 80% of the time. 1:37 Funny thing about the Space Age Joystick is I used it's shape as a basis for a better Driving Controller design, imagine like an RC controller with a steering knob and analog trigger using that grip. I should really build one. ;) Worked on some Button Controller designs recently, mainly with examples they were so bespoke they couldn't apply for more general game use. Like the Track & Field controller only having the buttons relevant to one game, rather than whole port pinout expressed in face button form. Turned out to pair nicely with the game console mouse problem where you need a WASD style cluster to use a mouse input more effectively like RTS games for example. The bigger Trackball controllers kind of leaned towards that but the ergonomics could be better. What I found with home light guns was everybody kept making them with a single trigger long after arcade games had been using two triggers as a near constant running standard Eg. Fire & Grenade. O_o??? Would love to see some gun homebrew on 2600 but it's a bit like the Genesis mouse, really need a third party like Hyperkin to make some more of them like they did with the SNES mouse. I have a soft spot for the XEGS as I thought it was a really nice consolidation of computer and game console. Internally quite solid, really just needed better and more diverse controller selection as keyboard and light gun was a good start. 5200 joystick was just in need of Kraft joystick intervention as their spring based centering was and is still quite good. These days a common analog thumbstick can step in, "MakerMatrix, will you ever not be out of stock?". ^_^ Very cool collection, find the Falcon fascinating and love Stunt Cycle. ;)

[@wonderdog8895]

That 260ST is gorgeous. Integrating the PSU and disk drive was certainly the right idea in the long run, but the 260ST is so neat compared to the slab like behemoths that succeeded it!

[@elbiggus]

The XEGS was doomed to failure; not quite as much of a stupid idea as the C64GS, granted, but still ill conceived. There was very little specific software support for it, and most of the 32 games that *were* released specifically for the platform were several years old - I think some of them were literally a repressing (or maybe even new old stock) of the original black carts with a sticker saying they worked on the XEGS - and while there was the existing catalogue of A8 games you'd have been hard pressed to find any older cartridge titles still available at retail in 1987 so in order to take advantage of the bulk of it you'd have needed to buy a disk drive or cassette drive which kind of makes the whole console thing redundant (particularly the version that came without a keyboard). To top that off it was also more expensive than the functionally identical 65XE (and possibly even the 130XE) making it a tough sell.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

I'd sold my 800XL by the time the XEGS arrived, software support was simply horrendous and turbo loaders impossible on cassette for the A8 system. Likes of Ocean etc made clear they weren't going to back the XEGS, Atari's focus was very much on the ST line, so it was very much apparent it was simply a move to shift warehouses of unsold inventory. Only Atari could pitch the 2600Jr,7800 and XEGS, for the same, limited, 8-bit cartridge based console UK market.

[@gamedoutgamer]

Atari gave the stores a choice, and they decided on the XEGS instead of the selling the existing 65XE. The whole point of it was to sell huge warehouses full of inventory that wasn't moving. It was a success in doing that. It was a very welcome last parting gift to the 800 series, even if the XE computers were sold for a few years afterwards. The platform had a big catalog of titles that most people had never seen or played. The failure IMO was including FS II as the included game because FS II is not even a game. People got carts where they bought the console or by mail order I guess lol. True it wasn't intended to be a big launch across all stores. 250,000 were made. The matching XF551 drive and other devices like an 80 column text video etc were all welcomed. Even in the late 80's the platform had loyal and enthusiastic customers and in many countries the 8bits were the affordable platform of choice (either XE or C64, etc).

[@protox07]

I like your videos

[@galier2]

I always wondered if the regular Jaguar controller works on the STE. I don't have an STE to test. Nobody knows where my late brothers STE and SC-1224 landed. My Mega-ST and my TT don't have the port to check.

[@ctrlaltrees]

I haven't tested it, but there's no reason why it shouldn't.

[@TPau65]

It works, on STE and Falcon! I think there is a demo-game or something for the STE which supports Jag controller, can't remember the name though. On Falcon there are several (well, a few ^^) titles with Jag controller support.

[@slaapliedje]

OIDs was modified to work for it. Also, the only difference between the Atari PowerPad and the Jaguar controller besides the color is that the cord is thicker and longer on the Jaguars (makes sense for a console vs computer).

[@galier2]

Nice.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the video. 😁

[@dsadkhin]

Your pro version in not original Jaguar controller. It’s a cheap aftermarket controller. Original pro controller has Atari stamped logo on a top.😅

[@vacuumdiagram]

Experiencing unexpected thunder, I accidentally knocked the 'dislike' button on the way out to disconnecting the pc- rectified it now! Sorry!