Have you played Atari today?
(Note: I began work on this article the day before Hurricane Irma struck Florida. After three days of sweating and suffering, power was restored to my neighborhood. The following days were a blur of catching up with work, trying to get my internet service back up, and generally going nuts. This article took a back seat. I know this article is way past the Atari 2600’s anniversary date of September 12th, but there is no way I couldn’t post this article. So apologize for the delay. Hopefully, the article will make up for the delay.)
On September 11, 1977, Atari, Inc. released a home video game console. Known as the Video Computer System, the console wasn’t the first to enter the home market. That honor belongs to the Magnavox Odyssey, a Pong console that predates even the June 27, 1972 creation of Atari, Inc. itself. The Video Computer System, later shortened to VCS and later still to the 2600, was just another entrant into the nascent home video game market of the time. Its impact on the market and, eventually, the video game industry, deserves pages upon pages of writing.
I’m not going to be able to write pages upon pages about the 2600 because I’m insane enough as it is. But as big as the 2600’s impact was on home gaming, its impact on my life was greater. The 2600 was quite literally the foundation for my love of video games. Without it, I may have a much different perspective on gaming.
To mark the console’s 40th Anniversary, I will discuss the console’s history in tandem with my introduction to home video gaming. It’s a mix of industry history and personal recollection of a console so near and dear to my heart, I still own my original CX2600 “heavy sixer.”
Slow Start
Back in 1977, I was six years old. My introduction to video games arrived due to a fortunate (or unfortunate?) set of circumstances about a year before. My mother once took my younger brother and me to a local mall. There, I was introduced to an arcade, a place where pinball machines and new-fangled video game cabinets sang to me. It was there that I discovered what video games were and how awesome they were. My favorite was Atari’s Football, a cocktail-style cabinet with a trackball and a rudimentary set of mechanics that nonetheless entranced me.
It entranced me so much, I lost my younger brother, who I was supposed to watch over at the arcade while she shopped. He ran off to find our mother in the mall, bored of watching me pump quarters into Football. Spoiler alert: my brother was found. Further spoiler alert: my mother beat me to within an inch of my life.
Yes, back in the 70s, it was okay to beat your children like a rented mule. It was never malicious or overtly traumatizing. It is what old-school parents call “tough love.“ Things were different back then.
When the VCS made its debut in 1977, it didn’t exactly set the world on fire. The market was still new and saturated with dozens of different Pong consoles which played several variations of the seminal game and not much else. The year before the VCS’s release, Fairchild Semiconductor released the Channel F, the first home console to feature interchangeable games. At the time of its launch, the VCS had nothing to distinguish itself from its competition. The launch titles for the console included classics like Combat and Air-Sea Battle, but nothing truly noteworthy. It would be an uphill climb for Atari, Inc.
Slow Burn
I loved video games more than I thought I could love anything back then. It was during Christmas 1977 that my mother gifted me my first home video game console: Coleco’s Telstar Ranger. It was yet another Pong console. Back then, I wasn’t even mad. OK, it wasn’t Football, but I was able to play different kinds of games on the family TV set. There were great games like Pong. And Ice Hockey, which was Pong with more paddles. And Jai-Alai, which was Pong with one less paddle and a wall. There were a few more games built into the Telstar Ranger, most of them variations on the same theme.
For almost a full calendar year, The Telstar Ranger was all the gaming I knew within my confines. Of course, I wasn’t confined. A friend of mine that lived a couple of houses down from mine had the VCS, and I played it whenever I went to his house. It was leagues above my woeful Telstar Ranger, and I envied him for having it. I knew my mother, a single woman trying to make ends meet in the 70s, couldn’t muster up enough scratch to gift me an Atari console.
From 1978 to 1980, Atari, Inc. CEO Ray Kassar did everything he could to bolster the VCS. He managed to weather low initial sales, believing in the VCS’s promise. He then saw the 1979 launch of their main competitor, Mattel Electronics’ Intellivison, and still believed in his console. Sure enough, his belief was rewarded. By late 1979, the VCS was gaining in popularity. And the 1980 release of Space Invaders finally gave Kassar his cash-in moment. The release of the port of the wildly successful Taito game was huge. It singlehandedly quadruped sales of the VCS. Before then, I was fully on board.
The Revelation
Fast-forward to Christmas 1979, and it suddenly came to be. Under the Christmas tree, I unwrapped a present that introduced me to the future. It was the box for Air-Sea Battle. Foolishly, I went after the smaller boxes first. Seeing that box, though, made me reach for the biggest box there. It was an unassembled bicycle. Normally, I’d freak out over getting a bicycle, but I knew something greater lurked nearby. Eventually, I found the right present. After unwrapping it, I sat stunned. Staring at me was the Atari Video Computer System. My mind was completely blown. I didn’t know it yet, but my life would be forever changed from that moment.
The VCS’s rise and dominance cannot be understated. By the time it was released, the Channel F and the Bally Astrocade had debuted. The Intellivision and Magnavox’s Odyssey2 arrived after the VCS. That means that by 1980, there were FIVE video game consoles vying for consumers’ attention. Nowadays, talk of a fourth console joining Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo would be considered oversaturation. Back then, it was simply a rush to see who would claim the new market.
By 1980, it was clear: the Atari VCS ruled the roost.
Devotion
I didn’t care about the competitors; I was fixated on the VCS. Electronics departments in department stores displayed Atari’s console prominently back then. The kiosks in those departments allowed me to sample some of the more popular games on the console, like Combat, Maze Craze, and Street Racer. By the time I owned the VCS, I knew those games were on my must-have list. Among my video game haul was a game that would become one of my favorite games on the console: 1979’s Adventure. That game catapulted me into my love for Dungeons & Dragons-style games.
The next few years were filled with marathon sessions on my VCS. Eventually, games were added to my library. Among my first-party favorites were Space Invaders, Missile Command, Super Breakout, and Video Pinball. I didn’t know what first-party games were because no one knew what first-party games were back then, but I still loved them.
Behind the scenes, Atari’s stranglehold on the market was loosening somewhat. The company famously stripped credit for games from developers, adopting the mindset comic book publishers like Marvel and DC had towards their artists and writers. Folks who toiled for months to create a game for Atari felt disillusioned when Atari ignored their contributions when publishing their creation. Eventually, those programmers would pay Atari back with interest.
Activision, the first third-party publisher, was founded on October 1, 1979. It was made up of disgruntled ex-Atari employees who didn‘t approve of Atari’s aforementioned handling of its programmers. The first title they released was Dragster. I didn’t care about first-party, third-party, or any party. All I knew was that there was a new company that made cool games. Truth be told, no one knew what third-party games even meant. For all they knew, Atari was the one that made games. The concept of a third party making games for a console that wasn’t theirs was alien to the point of being ridiculous. The seismic shift Activision’s creation would cause was not understood until it was too late.
Again, this happened 1979. The home video game market was practically newborn. No one had figured things out. Things were different back then. No one knew what to expect. Everything was new territory. Don’t believe me? Look at what happened soon after.
Blind Allegiance
By 1982, I had a stable of games I would play relentlessly. In addition to stalwarts like Video Pinball, Missile Command, and Super Breakout I added Activision titles like Laser Blast, River Raid, and Kaboom! Another third-party publisher, Imagic, threw its hat into the VCS ring. Their titles, Demon Attack and Atlantis, were added to my rotation. Those days were hog heaven for me, as I suddenly had more great games than I could find time for.
Behind the scenes, however, cracks began to form. The days of milk and cookies for Atari executives were slowly fading. Intense competition from the Intellivision and a new entrant, the ColecoVision, began to gnaw at Atari’s relatively new dominance. These consoles were technically superior to the VCS, and they were suddenly worthy of being included in the home console conversation as worthy competitors to mighty Atari.
Scary Rumbles
It was around this time that the third-party market for consoles became saturated with games. There were some quality titles, like Activision’s Pitfall! And Parker Bros.’s Frogger. But there were quite a few stinkers. In fact, there were tons of stinkers. Many were quick cash-ins by shady publishers who wanted a piece of the lucrative game sales. Many more were one-and-done projects that bankrupted the publishers almost as soon as they began.
The biggest surprise, however, was the fact that both Mattel Electronics and Coleco decided to become third-party publishers themselves. In Coleco’s case, the move was utterly mystifying. They purposely marketed the ColecoVision as a superior way to play arcade titles at home. Their first licensing deal, the home console right to Nintendo’s arcade hit Donkey Kong, was a major coup. Instead of being content with that, however, they decided to make a port for the VCS. In fact, they purposely made a vastly inferior version of Donkey Kong for the VCS. Their thinking was that after customers saw the horrible VCS port of the game, they’d flock to the ColecoVision. The gambit didn’t work as planned. Despite looking hideous and being subpar to play, Donkey Kong for the VCS still sold 1.46 million copies.
Their next move was even crazier. The ColecoVision featured an Expansion Port in front. Coleco designed it as a way to extend the capabilities of the console. As a further strategy to erode Atari’s market share, the first Expansion Module for the ColecoVision was an adapter that allowed players to play Atari VCS games on the ColecoVision.
Think about that for a second. If Sony decided to publish video games for the Microsoft Xbox One, Sony fans would rightfully think Sony had stripped a gear. If Sony doubled down and announced an adapter that allowed its PlayStation 4 to play Xbox One games, many people – including Microsoft – would go through the roof in disbelief.
Of course, all this was possible back in 1982 because the video game market was new. Everyone was still figuring things out. Atari, of course, sued ColecoVision and ultimately won out in court. The Expansion Module #1 was pulled from stores.
But the damage had been done. By 1982, the combination of an oversaturated market of systems and games, poor game quality, and the confusion caused by Mattel Electronics and Coleco developing games for a rival, began to take a toll.
Didn’t See the Crash
In 1983, video game manufactures had raked in $3.3 billion in revenues. My mother contributed heavily to that number. I had accumulated a large VCS library, I was thrilled to include Pac-Man and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial to it. Before that, I also received Raiders of the Lost Ark. Those first-party titles are considered today to be the worst first-party titles for the VCS. I didn’t care. I still played the hell out of them. For some reason, I enjoyed them.
The typical consumer, however, wasn’t as enthusiastic as I was. Consumer began to turn on video games, tired of shelling out $40-50 for crappy games on what they felt to be overpriced toys. That $3.3 billion figure in 1983 became a mere $100 million by 1985. Many gamers know the story about Atari paying $20 million to Steven Spielberg to secure the rights to E.T. They also know that Atari famously produced more copies of that game than there were VCS consoles in homes. And everyone knows the story about Atari dumping tons of cartridges in a New Mexico landfill just to get rid of overstock. These are all part of the lore surrounding the Video Game Crash of 1983. It was the beginning of the slide.
As a 13-year old, all I knew was that video games for my VCS became much cheaper.
The End is Upon Us
For my 14th birthday, I managed to rake in a little over $100. For a teen back in 1984, that was a serious amount of money. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the money, too: buy video games. I eagerly jumped into my mom’s car and bristled with excitement at the prospect of nabbing a game or two with my birthday money. What I found at the local department store was beyond even my wildest dreams.
At the front of the store stood two huge bins filled with VCS games. Almost all of them were priced between $2 and $9. I was flabbergasted. Suddenly, I envisioned 10 or more games coming home with me. The final tally was 12. My smile could not have been bigger as I got back in the car for the ride home.
I had just unknowingly picked through the corpse of the second generation of video games. Not only was I ignorant of the fact, I was absolutely pleased.
The wheels came off soon after. Coleco and Mattel Electronics quietly packed up their tents and went home. GCE Electronics had debuted then soon after pulled their entry, Western Technologies’ Vectrex. Atari remained, refusing to give up. The VCS was rebranded as the 2600. Before that, the 5200 had debuted. Later, Atari would try again with the 7800. The market died and wouldn’t recover until the NES made it to North American shores in 1986.
By then, I was over video games. The arrival of 14 also signaled the arrival of a force greater than video games: puberty. Suddenly, I cared less about the VCS and more about girls. I wouldn’t get back into video gaming until 1989, where I was approximately the last person on Earth to play Super Mario Bros. on the NES. That game reignited my love for video games.
Memories
Strangely enough, Atari did not give up on the 2600 until 1992. That’s when they officially ended support for the console. In the time since its discontinuation, I’ve rediscovered my love for it. My son and daughter both took their turn on it. Now, it resides in my mom’s house. There, my nephew’s son plays E.T. and enjoys it for a good 15 minutes before he’s bored. My mom still loves E.T. and plays it from time to time. The old “heavy sixer” still sees good use.
It’s hard to believe that the console that I loved so much is 40 years old. My taste in games has evolved from those day, but I still love playing Missile Command and Kaboom! I still have the games, and I play them on my 7800 whenever I get the urge.
Sometimes, I think back all the time I spent trying to “flip” the score in Missile Command or trying for high scores in Laser Blast or Asteroids. I must’ve spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours on my old VCS. Some of my earliest and best gaming moments happened thanks to that console. To many, it signaled the beginning of modern gaming as we know it. For me, it was the beginning of gaming in general. I literally grew up with gaming thanks to the VCS.
I wonder if I’ll was as nostalgic as I just did when the NES turns 40. Knowing me, I’ll just feel real old. Which I am.
