The History of Atari Video Game Consoles (1975-1996)

[@joesshows6793]

I’ve absolutely seen the Jaguar shell repurposed in a doctor/dentist office and couldn’t believe what I was looking at

[@RetrogamerGenX]

How cool is that. Ive never seen one repurposed for medical use in person. Just pics online. Awesome man, thanks for sharing.

[@wallacelang1374]

I have a few different Atari video game consoles and home computers in my personal collection: • Atari 2600 VCS • Atari 5200 Super System • Atari 7800 Pro System • Atari 400 Home Computer • Atari 800 Home Computer • Atari 800XL Home Computer I have even bought an original Atari Pong home video game console at a garage sale in the mid-1990s that still works to this very day. I am a fan of Atari products and I am a bit of an amateur historian when it comes to Atari.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Man, you sound like me. Here's all my Atari's: Atari 2600: heavy sixer, light sixer, 4 switch, vader, jr, sears arcade light Sixer Atari 5200: 2 port Atari 7800 Atari XEGS Atari Jaguar Pong Super pong Video pinball Atari flashback portable: I know not retro Atari 600xl My wife says I have an Atari addiction.🤣🤣🤣 Thanks for sharing brother.

[@wallacelang1374]

@@RetrogamerGenX You are welcome man.

[@mattblom3990]

Loving the commercial integration as always! Anyone see the Atari logo in Blade Runner 2049 and go "Hey! Sweet!!" ?

[@RetrogamerGenX]

I love them old school ads too man.👍👍 The Pong and 2600 ones I don't remember. I was way too young. But all the others I do.. Love the use of the Atari trademark in that movie💲💲💲 🤣🤣

[@digitaurus]

@@RetrogamerGenX I think that was a nod to the original Blade Runner movie wasn't it? At the time of the first movie, Atari was still a thing.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Yep.. Atari was huge back then. The ceo of Atari now said in and interview with GamesBeat that the appearance of the Atari logo in both movies is the result of a product placement deals. So they paid money for the atari logo to be in the movie. The first one too promote the consoles then. The new movie for the "new" Atari VCS that launched a little while back.

[@MotownBatman]

Went Missin on Me Again Found one I Somehow Haven't Seen before, Or I forgot to Like,... I always thought the Guy from the Atari 7800 Interview Commercial was John Laraquette What Up Brotha!

[@RetrogamerGenX]

What's up man? Yeah it's been a while bro. Well I'm glad you found one that you haven't seen. As always, thanks for the like and the comment brother. Should be more content coming up on the channel again. Just keep an eye out. Probably be releasing a video today or maybe tomorrow. I'm going to try to get back to weekly uploads depending on how busy I am in my real life.

[@BURRITO44]

Awesome video

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Thanks!! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@tarstarkusz]

I don't think it was the bad first party games that caused the crash. What really caused the crash was a bunch of different consoles being released. It was by no means just the 2600, colecovision and intellivision. Add the vectrex, Bally Astrocade, Channel F, Oddysee 2, Spectravision and a bunch of others. In addition, there was a bunch of 3rd party shovelware being produced and sold cheaply for the consoles along with the home computers competing with the high number of consoles. The crash totally killed the console market. Not a one survived. That cleared the way for Nintendo to walk in and take over the market. Eventually, the savior of video games, the home computer market also entirely collapsed without a single example surviving.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Nah man, it was single handedly on the ET game that caused it.. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 (being sarcastic)

[@aleks1939]

Oh man, I always wanted a Vectrex. Always loved the vector graphic arcade games.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@aleks1939 I have 2 of them myself. They are awesome. I love Star Castle on it. Only decent console version ever made.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

@@tarstarkusz Bro you gonna sell one to me??? 🍻🍻🤣🤣

[@RetrogamerGenX]

@@aleks1939 Right!! I had one years ago, but it never worked right and I ended up selling it. It had CRT issues, and really needed a new one. The electronics worked fine, the tube itself just was shot. Awesome console though👍👍

[@GregsGameRoom]

Nice job on the video. It’s always been my contention that the XEGS is what the 5200 should have been. But in all honesty nothing could have made that hardware a successful game console considering what was happening in the market at the time.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Thanks for watching bro. Yep, seeing the PC Engine launched at about the same time in Japan. The 16 bit era had already started.

[@2001pl]

From 2600 to ST, Atari has been a leader. Forever in our hearts !

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Absolutely, I loved my Atari back in the day.

[@tarstarkusz]

The atari 8 bit line was certainly an industry leader. But I don't see the ST as a leading computer of the day. It wasn't a bad machine, it just wasn't setting the world on fire with all its new stuff.

[@2001pl]

Yes you're right, but in fairness there wasn't any clear leader back then, in the late 80's early 90's, ie when the ST was big: PC wasn't as widespread as now, Amiga wasn't a leader neither, Amstrad was losing speed, Sinclair as well, Apple was too expensive to be mass market, MSX was only in Japan, etc etc... No single platform set the computer world "on fire", and then the ST had a fair share, and a big presence in Europe for sure, Germany UK France.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@2001pl The thing with PC and MAC is by the late 80s, both had settled in to a pattern of incrementalism. By that I mean each new version was incrementally better than the previous one. Pretty much the whole industry was "me too"

[@2001pl]

@@tarstarkusz if only the TT & Falcon had been released years before...

[@AloanMoreira1]

1977 June 4, Atari 2600 CES debut - lived well until 1983 when crashed happened, but was still produced until 1992. 1977 September market release $199,00 1979 (Intellivision) 1982 (Colecovision) - 1982 November Atari 5200 1984 Atari 7800 1986 Atari 2600 Jr. produced until 1992. (total reign 15 years)

[@Sinn0100]

I know I already posted but there's something I want to address. While the Atari 2600 did indeed have a long lifespan commercially...it is not the longest. Believe it or not but the longest selling console in history is the Sega Master System. It officially went on sale in 1986 (unless you're counting the Mark 3). It continued to sell well into the 6th generation of gaming in Brazil as an official Sega product. Addendum - I believe they still sell them through a company called Tec Toy today.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Yeah when I made the video I thought the Atari was the longest but it wasn't. Turns out that the famicom/NES is the longest officially without a third party making it. Went from 1983 when it was released in Japan until 2003 when it was discontinued in Japan. A 20-Year lifespan, that's crazy. Spanning three generations , all the way from the third generation to sixth.

[@Sinn0100]

@RetrogamerGenX Absolutely!

[@Fungib1e]

The name is actually Ted Dabney btw.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

👍Sorry brother. Dyslexia is a mother... I'll make sure it's corrected in future videos.

[@terran0797]

The XEGS was as much a console as the 5200. They did fix a lot of mistakes they made in the 5200 for the xegs however it was too little too late after the 7800 was held back. It just put their consoles on a no win road from there. Had Atari released the 5200 being backwards compatible with the 2600 and all 400 computer cartridges, I think it could have been a win for them. Then had they released the 7800 in 1984 and with a good sound chip, I think the 7800 would have seen success as well. Finally had they released the panther as a strong 16 bit console and then had a later release with better hardware for the Jaguar, we may have seen Atari do a strong finish before backing out of the console wars. Atari was never able to duplicate the success or even have a success after the VCS(2600). A combination of many factors did that, letting bushnell go, timing, short sited decisions, budget, rushed decisions, lack of third party publishers, and not knowing a market or keeping control over it for quality control. It’s always easy in hindsight but there were a lot of decisions that I’m sure people saw as bad ideas and couldn’t convince the people in charge of changing their minds.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Sorry my man, just catching up on comments. This one was a great one. You have a lot of valid points. I would probably say the xegs was more of a computer than it was a console. But it seems like throughout history all these computer to console conversions were never really successful.

[@tarstarkusz]

20:30 i disagree that the 7800 was inferior to the NES or that this is why the 7800 failed to compete. . The NES is just as old as the 7800 and an unexpanded NES is a pretty weak system. What saved the NES was cartridge hardware. The 7800 would benefit from cartridge hardware as well, but the 7800 never got any money put into developing better cartridge hardware whereas Nintendo dumped a ton of money into the NES cartridge hardware. Plus the NES was widely developed for and getting the most out of the hardware came from that experience as well as the mapper schemes. As far as failing to compete goes, this was largely the fault of the Tramiels along with Nintendo breaking the law. Nintendo enforced illegal competition stifling contracts with almost all 3rd parties preventing them from porting games to multiple systems. Also, there was a massive bubble in Japan with money everywhere and falling on the streets. At one point, I think there was a single building or maybe block in Tokyo which had an appraised value higher than all of the RE in California. There was no shortage of money in Japan to dump into the NES. The Tramiels on the other hand acted like money was a sacred artifact never to spent under any circumstances, that, and they didn't really have the money Nintendo had.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

I agree if Atari would of had more 3rd party developers, and more games used the pokey chip, it could of competed better. The Maria chip is very capable, even more so then the PPU in the NES. But those god awful controllers, still trying to use the design of the 5200, but digital instead of analog. They did eventually come out with the Joypad, but still was not as good as the NES controller. Then you have to get up to hit pause on the console instead of the controller. Atari suffered from what Warner Communications did to it, then the Tramiels took over, and it was game over. But I can't hate on Jack too much, I loved Commodore products. Commodore died after he left and Irving Gould took over.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@RetrogamerGenX Not to mention a poor first party. Atari just wasn't Nintendo in that era. While Nintendo pumped out lots of great games in the arcade and the NES, the new Atari was no longer related to the arcade Atari and there was little good first party stuff.

[@ChannelWackadoo]

🕹

[@0takudad]

Same old games with slighly better graphics.. Sounds like 2022 to 2024.. The remastered years. But people still buy em these days.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Right! 🤣

[@tarstarkusz]

The XEGS is nowhere near as powerful as the NES, 7800 and especially not the SMS. The XEGS doesn't even have multicolor sprites. The chips were designed in the 70s. It was inferior in every way to the NES, 7800 and SMS.

[@RetrogamerGenX]

The XEGS had the GTIA chip which could do multi color sprites. Using PRIOR bit register 7 and 8, you could enable multi color player Mode. The biggest issue with the XEGS was the games were really just ports of the 8 bit line games. There were some "exclusive" games, but not many. So since it ran the same old games from back in 79', most of what you get are those single colored sprite games.

[@christophertuckwell9665]

Great info peace of history I own Atari 6 switch lite Atari 2600 Vader Atari JR Atari 7800 Atari flashback gold 50th anniversary Atari flashback X Atari flashback 3 Atari flashback Nintendo switch including atari 50th anniversary Atari flashback viol 1 2 3 for Xbox one Atari flashback portable I grew up with the NES / SNES are you getting the atari 2600+ I m 40 now fund atari interesting company

[@RetrogamerGenX]

Great collection you have there. I'll get the 2600+ once it launches and reviews start coming in. Hard to justify to Mrs. Retrogamergenx the purchase of yet another Atari 2600 when I currently own 8. 🤣🤣🤣 Thanks for watching and commenting.👍👍👍

[@christophertuckwell9665]

@@RetrogamerGenX great I will be getting the atari 2600+ in November when come out the reason why I don't own atari 5200 because I m from Europe which I believe it did not come out in Europe